After all these years... Ebay is still profiting from and facilitating copyright infringement, or so it appears.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fantastic-Beasts-The-Crimes-of-Grindelwald-by-J-K-Rowling-2018-eBooks/192756806118?_trkparms=aid%3D555018%26algo%3DPL.SIM%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20160908110712%26meid%3D8e5df7aec01147c2af7b6045aed0b1ef%26pid%3D100677%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D30%26sd%3D233049677965%26itm%3D192756806118&_trksid=p2385738.c100677.m4598
Do the sophisticated people at ebay seriously believe that Scholastic gives or sells licenses to Ebay sellers to sell up to ten copies at a time of a legal ebook?
Moreover, their "have one to sell" appears, in the context, to solicit copyright infringement.
Showing posts with label EBay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EBay. Show all posts
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Sunday, August 13, 2017
Are Your Works Being Infringed?
Someone asked me how to find out if their works are being infringed.
One method is to do an online search for the title of their book(s) and of their authorname. Another is to set up a variety of Google Alerts for their book title, also for some distinctive phrases used in their writing.
Osborne Clarke suggests some practical ways to respond to infringement.
Not every infringement can be taken down. Sometimes, Google lawyers will declare (mistakenly) that an infringing use is "Fair". Google lawyers have done that to me over "Knight's Fork", and I have no recourse.
I can say with reasonable certainty that, if a so-called online library is lending a "Rowena Cherry" book--for instance "Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry" to subscribers in any digital format, that online library has no right to do so, because I never gave permission --and explicitly refused permission-- for any of my books, except "Mating Net" by Rowena Beaumont Cherry (which is published by New Concepts Publishing), and the hunk cover version of "Forced Mate" by Rowena Beaumont Cherry which was published by NBI, to be released in ebook formats.
Did you notice that? A lawful digital copy of my work is by "Rowena Beaumont Cherry". Any ebook by "Rowena Cherry" was illegally created and illegally sold.
However, if the (alleged) pirate site uses a privacy service, and the privacy service is the only link provided on the (alleged) pirate for any kind of contact at all, an author is within her rights to contact that privacy service to complain vociferously and repeatedly.
But... do not create an account. In my opinion, Congress and the Administration and the Copyright Office make a serious error when they agree that it is lawful for a site such as EBay to force authors to join its VERO (verified rights owner) program in order to complain about copyright infringement.
Why should a creator who is being ripped off be denied the right to send a DMCA notice, as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and forced instead to subscribe to a site or become a member of a site?
It's like being forced to purchase a product one does not want or need. Only it is worse.
The trouble with joining any site or service, (apart from the possibility of having to pay them) is the Terms of Service. One cannot join (even for the purposes of asking them to cease and desist from piracy or facilitating piracy or profiting from piracy) without agreeing to their TOS.
Have you ever read TOS? Try it sometime. Any site's TOS will do. Do judges and lawyers and lawmakers read TOS? Usually, part of what you agree to is that you give up the right to sue them.
How's that? A site like EBay or Google may protect alleged copyright infringers, and give the alleged copyright infringers the ability to profit from alleged piracy, but in order to send a takedown notice, the ripped off author is forced to promise to indemnify the host and patron of the alleged copyright infringers. That does not seem right to me.
On the other hand, there are many online "subscription libraries" that one suspects do not have the books they claim to have. They may only want your credit card information.
Stay wary, my friends!
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
One method is to do an online search for the title of their book(s) and of their authorname. Another is to set up a variety of Google Alerts for their book title, also for some distinctive phrases used in their writing.
Osborne Clarke suggests some practical ways to respond to infringement.
I can say with reasonable certainty that, if a so-called online library is lending a "Rowena Cherry" book--for instance "Knight's Fork by Rowena Cherry" to subscribers in any digital format, that online library has no right to do so, because I never gave permission --and explicitly refused permission-- for any of my books, except "Mating Net" by Rowena Beaumont Cherry (which is published by New Concepts Publishing), and the hunk cover version of "Forced Mate" by Rowena Beaumont Cherry which was published by NBI, to be released in ebook formats.
Did you notice that? A lawful digital copy of my work is by "Rowena Beaumont Cherry". Any ebook by "Rowena Cherry" was illegally created and illegally sold.
However, if the (alleged) pirate site uses a privacy service, and the privacy service is the only link provided on the (alleged) pirate for any kind of contact at all, an author is within her rights to contact that privacy service to complain vociferously and repeatedly.
But... do not create an account. In my opinion, Congress and the Administration and the Copyright Office make a serious error when they agree that it is lawful for a site such as EBay to force authors to join its VERO (verified rights owner) program in order to complain about copyright infringement.
Why should a creator who is being ripped off be denied the right to send a DMCA notice, as prescribed by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and forced instead to subscribe to a site or become a member of a site?
It's like being forced to purchase a product one does not want or need. Only it is worse.
The trouble with joining any site or service, (apart from the possibility of having to pay them) is the Terms of Service. One cannot join (even for the purposes of asking them to cease and desist from piracy or facilitating piracy or profiting from piracy) without agreeing to their TOS.
Have you ever read TOS? Try it sometime. Any site's TOS will do. Do judges and lawyers and lawmakers read TOS? Usually, part of what you agree to is that you give up the right to sue them.
How's that? A site like EBay or Google may protect alleged copyright infringers, and give the alleged copyright infringers the ability to profit from alleged piracy, but in order to send a takedown notice, the ripped off author is forced to promise to indemnify the host and patron of the alleged copyright infringers. That does not seem right to me.
On the other hand, there are many online "subscription libraries" that one suspects do not have the books they claim to have. They may only want your credit card information.
Stay wary, my friends!
All the best,
Rowena Cherry
Sunday, October 26, 2014
EBay and PayPal Profiting from Sale of "Resell Rights" to Dean Koontz, Jeffrey Archer, Robert Ludlum
EBay does not post the name and contact information of a copyright agent on their site.
http://www.ebay.com
Therefore, IMHO, EBay does not qualify for Safe Harbor under the DMCA, at least in Northern California, if it could be argued that Oppenheimer v. Allvoices, Inc is a precedent.
Quoting from a blog on Lexology:
"In the case of Oppenheimer v. Allvoices, Inc., the plaintiff, a professional photographer, alleged copyright infringement by the defendant. The defendant is an online service provider that publishes various audiovisual content.......... The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that the defendant "may not invoke the safe harbor … with respect to infringing conduct that occurred prior to Allvoices designating a DMCA-related agent with the Copyright Office"
Sources:
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9e287e9a-d490-41de-bc83-f7bfa20c95bb
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a05489bf-ea30-4f66-bb22-1d2a2c9aa422
This might be interesting to Random House, given that Dean Koontz appears to have an address in California.
I am not posting this to encourage anyone to knowingly (which it would be, if you follow this link )
to try to buy "Resell Rights" to any living or recently deceased author's body of work. The point I want to make is how outrageously eBay turns a blind eye to the most obvious copyright infringement.
Perhaps I would hesitate to talk about turning a blind eye, except that I have a record of correspondence that I had with eBay CEO John Donohoe's office in which I pointed out multiple instances of copyright infringement, and suggested that, given that EBay can force would-be sellers to provide every detail of the weight, package size, shipper they will use and much more before the seller can complete an auction listing, EBay could easily use the same metric to oblige sellers who claim they own the copyright and the right to sell resell rights to 55 Dean Koontz stories, and 29 short stories by Jeffrey Archer, and a bunch of works by Robert Ludlum.
I believe that EBay deliberately chooses not to even try to educate sellers about copyright. The quotes below show gob-smacking ignorance of copyright law. The fault is eBay's, IMHO, because they allow alleged falsehoods to be published and perpetuated.
Alleged falsehoods such as this:
One seller boasts that he is not greedy. He readily claims that he has created multiple copies of the ebooks in different formats: "I have multi platform converted these ebooks so more people can read them on multiple readers"
It is easy not to be greedy when one sells "stuff" for which one did not pay!
I sincerely hope that someone raises the matter of EBay and how difficult it is to takedown this sort of thing at the USPTO multi-stakeholder forum on October 28th.
Rowena Cherry
http://www.ebay.com
Therefore, IMHO, EBay does not qualify for Safe Harbor under the DMCA, at least in Northern California, if it could be argued that Oppenheimer v. Allvoices, Inc is a precedent.
Quoting from a blog on Lexology:
"In the case of Oppenheimer v. Allvoices, Inc., the plaintiff, a professional photographer, alleged copyright infringement by the defendant. The defendant is an online service provider that publishes various audiovisual content.......... The United States District Court for the Northern District of California held that the defendant "may not invoke the safe harbor … with respect to infringing conduct that occurred prior to Allvoices designating a DMCA-related agent with the Copyright Office"
Sources:
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=9e287e9a-d490-41de-bc83-f7bfa20c95bb
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=a05489bf-ea30-4f66-bb22-1d2a2c9aa422
This might be interesting to Random House, given that Dean Koontz appears to have an address in California.
I am not posting this to encourage anyone to knowingly (which it would be, if you follow this link )
to try to buy "Resell Rights" to any living or recently deceased author's body of work. The point I want to make is how outrageously eBay turns a blind eye to the most obvious copyright infringement.
Perhaps I would hesitate to talk about turning a blind eye, except that I have a record of correspondence that I had with eBay CEO John Donohoe's office in which I pointed out multiple instances of copyright infringement, and suggested that, given that EBay can force would-be sellers to provide every detail of the weight, package size, shipper they will use and much more before the seller can complete an auction listing, EBay could easily use the same metric to oblige sellers who claim they own the copyright and the right to sell resell rights to 55 Dean Koontz stories, and 29 short stories by Jeffrey Archer, and a bunch of works by Robert Ludlum.
I believe that EBay deliberately chooses not to even try to educate sellers about copyright. The quotes below show gob-smacking ignorance of copyright law. The fault is eBay's, IMHO, because they allow alleged falsehoods to be published and perpetuated.
Alleged falsehoods such as this:
This a PayPal only auction. Upon Payment this eBook collection will be sent to you within 24 hours.
Attention eBay Staff: I am an Authorized Reseller of this product and also the copyright holder or I have resale rights to this eBook or item.
Full Resell Rights are Granted by the copyright owners to sell these eBooks with Resell Rights or Master Resell Rights Granted! This ad complies with all eBay rules and regulations.
"I will send this item by postal mail. Sending this item by email or by any other digital delivery method is not allowed and violates eBay policy."
On the rare occasions that a copyright owner discovers an infringement, joins VeRO and submits a take down notice before the auction ends, buyers of the illegal items are not informed that they bought an illegal item, or that they actually did not acquire Resell Rights (or, they weren't a year or so ago.... and if they are now, this particular seller appears to be unaware that he does not own the rights he is offering to sell.)
Also, eBay posts "Have One To Sell"? "Sell Now". That implies that anyone who buys Dean Koontz's books, or Jeffrey Archer's books, or Robert Ludlum's books from this seller is welcome to relist using the same template, doesn't it?
If this listing truly complies with all eBay rules and regulations, IMHO, EBay's rules and regulations are woefully and deliberately inadequate and or inadequately communicated to users.
It is easy not to be greedy when one sells "stuff" for which one did not pay!
I sincerely hope that someone raises the matter of EBay and how difficult it is to takedown this sort of thing at the USPTO multi-stakeholder forum on October 28th.
Rowena Cherry
A reminder that the USPTO and NTIA will host the fifth public meeting of the Multistakeholder Forum on improving the operation of the DMCA notice and takedown system. The meeting will be held on October 28, 2014 from 9:00am - 12:00pm in Berkeley, California at the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall, Booth Auditorium, 215 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94720). The weblink to access the live webcast for this meeting is: http://new.livestream.com/uspto/multistakeholderOCT2014. The phone bridge information for remote participation is: 1-888-453-9955; Passcode – 6039037.
At the meeting, the Working Group will report on the substance and progress of its work to date. Attendees of this meeting will thereafter have an opportunity to respond and further discuss or identify matters for the Working Group to address.
For more information about the Multistakeholder Forum, please visit the Multistakeholder Tab at: https://www.signup4.net/public/ap.aspx?EID=THEG32E&OID=148. For an archive of documentation relating to past meetings of the Multistakeholder Forum please visit http://www.uspto.gov/ip/global/copyrights/index.jsp.
To register for the meeting, please follow the instructions at:
https://www.signup4.net/public/ap.aspx?EID=THEG32E&OID=130
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Science, Fiction and the Public Domain (comma intended)
If one includes Vampires and The Occult as "science fiction", I count 5 instances this week where "Sellers" on EBay have mistakenly announced that multiple works of science fiction are "in the public domain" and that therefore they (the sellers) assert that they either own the copyright or have the legal right to flog these e-book collections on CDs.
Example
Not so!
Another example
Please note the small print "NOTE TO EBAY".
These two examples of EBay listings are themselves works of fiction. Please note, it is quite possible that the Sellers honestly do not understand the words they are using. My rant is against ignorance and disinformation.
The so-called "freely distributable" eBooks are in fact snagged from well known file-sharing sites. They are not "in the public domain".
The fact that some ignorant/unscrupulous/malicious/greedy person has upped copyright-protected works to a file-sharing site, and is "sharing" them with the general public does NOT put the works into the public domain.
The works are only "freely distributable" because technology makes it possible for the works to be distributed easily by copyright infringers. That does not mean that it is legal to distribute them, copy them, "share" them, encourage others to "share" them, or to sell them.
I apologize for posting two weeks in a row about copyright infringement. Authors of all genres ought to be aware of what is going on, but most of all, of the damage being done owing to the apparently widespread ignorance or disregard for what "the public domain" means.
There is a natural perception that "If 1,000 EBayers are doing it, it must be legal", which is really difficult to combat, especially when the EBay feedback system touts alleged mega-copyright infringers (who might be illegally sharing multiple copies of 8,000 or more copyrighted works per auction) as 100% positive.
The problem may be even worse on other auction sites, depending upon one's focus. Mine is on what happens when people are told that e-books are in the public domain, when they are not.
Example
Not so!
Another example
Please note the small print "NOTE TO EBAY".
These two examples of EBay listings are themselves works of fiction. Please note, it is quite possible that the Sellers honestly do not understand the words they are using. My rant is against ignorance and disinformation.
The so-called "freely distributable" eBooks are in fact snagged from well known file-sharing sites. They are not "in the public domain".
The fact that some ignorant/unscrupulous/malicious/greedy person has upped copyright-protected works to a file-sharing site, and is "sharing" them with the general public does NOT put the works into the public domain.
The works are only "freely distributable" because technology makes it possible for the works to be distributed easily by copyright infringers. That does not mean that it is legal to distribute them, copy them, "share" them, encourage others to "share" them, or to sell them.
I apologize for posting two weeks in a row about copyright infringement. Authors of all genres ought to be aware of what is going on, but most of all, of the damage being done owing to the apparently widespread ignorance or disregard for what "the public domain" means.
There is a natural perception that "If 1,000 EBayers are doing it, it must be legal", which is really difficult to combat, especially when the EBay feedback system touts alleged mega-copyright infringers (who might be illegally sharing multiple copies of 8,000 or more copyrighted works per auction) as 100% positive.
The problem may be even worse on other auction sites, depending upon one's focus. Mine is on what happens when people are told that e-books are in the public domain, when they are not.
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