A writer on another site has just informed me that someone is selling plagiarzed stories on Amazon.com. Since he knew I was involved with this site, he suggested I supply you the link so that you can see if you are affected. She's using the actual titles, too.

*not_secure_link*www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=node%3D133141011&field-keywords=elizabeth+summers

 

I would be delighted to learn that someone had made money selling my stories and claiming to be the author. That would mean that I have the talent to be a professional writer. Because of the subject matter I would not want to be identified as the author of "My Daughter Sally," and "What Happened Last Night?"

 

Very interesting

 

Amazon's response to one of the inquiries:

Hello,

I am so sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Many titles in the public domain are no longer covered by copyright protections and may be offered by many different publishers or sources.

If you have any concerns over the content available on website, please contact the publisher directly.

I'm sorry I couldn't solve this problem right away, and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

Thank you for your recent inquiry. Did I solve your problem?

If yes, please click here:
*not_secure_link*www.amazon.com/gp/help/survey?p=A1NLQTBYNAKUN5&k=hy

If no, please click here:
*not_secure_link*www.amazon.com/gp/help/survey?p=A1NLQTBYNAKUN5&k=hn



Best regards,

 

Yeah, now does that sound like a form response or what? The below is from their Conditions of Use page:

Notice and Procedure for Making Claims of Copyright Infringement
If you believe that your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement, please provide Amazon.com's copyright agent the written information specified below. Please note that this procedure is exclusively for notifying Amazon that your copyrighted material has been infringed.

• An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
• A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed upon;
• A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site, including the auction ID number, if applicable;
• Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address;
• A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
• A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.

Amazon.com's Copyright Agent for notice of claims of copyright infringement on its site can be reached as follows:

Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108
phone: (206) 266-4064
fax: (206) 266-7010
e-mail: copyright@amazon.com

Courier address:

Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
410 Terry Avenue
North Seattle, WA 98109-5210 USA

 

Thanks - I forwarded that information.

 

That's basically a DMCA notice.

Amazon has the gall to ask for a person's mailing address. Did the person selling the copyrighted works provide a mailing address, name and telephone number? Could they prove that they are the author of those selected works?

 

I believe in order to sell on Amazon, and other places, you do have to provide a mailing address, etc.

 

I thought they are selling electronically

Kindle is a download, isn't it?

An address wouldn't matter because they are receiving payment through paypal or some other service, or so I am led to believe. Amazon allows online purchases, as far as I know, so what good would an address do once the purchases are finalized?

Maybe my questions are better directed to Amazon itself, though like the other places I have been plagiarized by, I won't receive a response to my inquiries.

 

My bad. I have a client who sells on Amazon and he gets paid by check. Wasn't thinking...sure, they probably do pay electronically. And with that, someone probably could fake a registration. Don't know for sure. Probably should just shaddup.

 

If I sounded snippy, I apologize

Kindle is 99% of the time purely an online downloaded and paid feature. I am almost positive that a person selling electronically / digitally isn't going to want to receive payment through the mail, in my opinion.

 

This is why I never post any of my poetry.

 

I see opportunity here.

Okay, some sap is ripping off a few unsuspecting writers. Stuff posted here and on other sites is free to the reader and the author makes zero.

Instead of getting caught up in a copyright battle, just give up on the old posted stuff and move forward from this point, no longer post for free. Write new stuff & go straight to Amazon and sell your stuff.

2 cents

Tina :rose:

 

One has to create a demand before selling a product.

 

There is a great discussion about this issue on another site:
*not_secure_link*forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=757743

 

This chick has been doing this for about a year, give or take, despite being warned by numerous authors and the management of ASSTR. I'd like to see someone get a high powered lawyer and clean her out, bank account, car, and house.

 

That thread ejls linked has "her" previous incarnations listed, or at least some of them. Makes for very interesting reading. It has been over a year, me thinks.

I received an email message from asstr a while ago saying that there was someone named "Louise Taylor" selling stories on Amazon. They chose dormant accounts with stories, and sold off the chosen works for profit. Only one author did much of anything before this person shed their account (on Amazon) and created another.

 

What annoys me the most about all this is that it could have easily been prevented by the websites which hosts these stories in the first place by finding some way to disable the copy function. There are a LOT of websites that have the copy function disabled so that images, photographs, and even text cannot be copied. I do not know if it has to be written into the coding or what, and I have noticed that websites that work off of templates or which are put together by novice webmasters do not have the function disabled, but I do know that it can be done. I noticed a few years back that even some of the photographs of hand-crafted jewelry that was being sold on e-bay had the copy function disabled so that users could not save a copy of the photograph to their computer. It would save all of us writers hours of worry if this simple thing could be accomplished on the websites that host our stories.

 

A woman going by the names of:

Rebecca Geissler
Rebekah Geissler
Becky Geissler
Rebecca Bick
Rebekah Bick
Ana Phylaxis
M. Ana Phylaxis
Mistress Ana Phylaxis

was recently taken down off of Amazon after she plagiarized numerous authors from Lit and ASSTR, including a personal friend of mine. It took a bit of back and forth between the authors and Amazon, but they finally managed to get all 7? of her books removed. She was also selling them through Lulu, but the site took her entire collection down as soon as they were informed of the copyright infringement.

 

Yep. And now she's back . Or a copycat.