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on the left, Bill Pollock; right, Jon Sawyer (@jcase)
On February 13, Bill Pollock, the founder of the No Starch Press technical book publisher, called Amazon for selling what he claims to be counterfeit copies of his company's book, The art of badembly language-Copy apparently printed by Amazon.
Just discovered today a new case of copyright infringement directly by AMAZON'S CREATESPACE. Not the first time! This is obviously NOT printed by No Starch. Please report any other cases. Please RT and share. @Amazon @nostarch pic.twitter.com/ayjebwTiOI
– Bill Pollock (@billpollock) February 2, 2019
One of the fake printed Amazon. Note the bad packaging of the spine. @nostarch pic.twitter.com/3pcm0BYVHN
– Bill Pollock (@billpollock) February 12, 2019
After Pollock posted on Twitter on Wednesday, other people posted photos of Amazon's other counterfeit No Starch books, including books whose pages had been badly cut. What's even crazier is that it's not the first time this has happened.
In 2017, Pollock received information that Amazon was selling counterfeit copies of Python for children, a popular introduction to programming for kids, and four other No Starch titles. The books were easily distinguishable from No Starch's production due to the poor quality of the paper and the binding, changes likely resulting from the production of print at the request of Amazon.
Images of counterfeit copies of Python for Kids sold on Amazon. Legendary copies are thicker, color, flat binder, paper prettier. @Amazon pic.twitter.com/P1tRBnKcvc
– Bill Pollock (@billpollock) March 21, 2017
Amazon markets the publisher service as a way to get "100% book availability" internationally, and the company has hired a number of publishers. The service is part of Amazon's CreateSpace offering, which allows content creators to self-publish both in electronic form (via Kindle) and in print form. Authors and publishers are forced to control the Amazon market themselves for counterfeit books – the same goes for Amazon's other products.
The problem is that, apparently, Amazon does not check if the content of the book uploaded on CreateSpace actually belongs to the person who is downloading. As discovered by other vendors selling through Amazon, Amazon is experiencing a problem of mixing legitimate products and counterfeit products in warehouses, due to the way it prepares the product for Prime Delivery.
Two years ago, Amazon launched an effort to crack down on counterfeit products sold on its market through a trademark registry, but piracy of books via CreateSpace has continued unabated. These pirated titles are sold directly by Amazon, not by third-party vendors in the Marketplace. Earlier this month, Amazon executives admitted in the company's findings that the company had a huge counterfeit problem.
In some cases, individuals simply copied the text from other books directly and sold them through Amazon as their own works.
.@jlendino can you explain what's going on here? The book of Steve S. Thomas has exactly the same text as yours, the only thing that has changed is the name of the author. pic.twitter.com/o7sY6cI33o
– Kevin Savetz (@KevinSavetz) April 12, 2018
Amazon would not comment on the details of a statement provided to Ars. "Amazon uses a variety of tools, including automated and manual journals, to protect against abuse," said Amazon PR. "When we determine that one of these types of fraud has occurred, we take steps to stop the activity."
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