Round up #67: Goodreads, International Touch?, plagiarism
The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.
Kindle Touch goes international?
There are several stories out there (including a link sent to me by a reader of mine in a private e-mail) that the Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi only is now available internationally.
Interestingly, when I checked it just now, it still said, “U.S. only”. I was careful to check it in two browsers (Chrome and IE), and to click on the non-ad-supported version.
My guess is that we’ll see this officially with a press release before Monday (quite possibly tomorrow, Sunday).
A couple of reports said that countries that have their own Amazon sites couldn’t order it directly from Amazon.com. That makes sense…Amazon will want them to order it from the country-appropriate site.
I also saw one suggestion that this might also mean the Kindle Fire will be available internationally soon. That’s a much bigger leap, in my opinion. Amazon would probably want to have the international app clearances in place and maybe streaming video. The Touch is mostly different hardware, although there are Touch specific games. The Fire, as it has been implemented in the US, is largely different content. That’s much more complicated.
Let me know if you see the Touch available internationally, if I haven’t updated this post first. 
Plagiarism on Amazon
As regular readers may remember, I wrote about a situation about a year ago where a reader alerted me to someone who had plagiarized my work in an e-book in the Kindle store. Plagiarizing is when you claim to have written something that someone else wrote. That isn’t inherently illegal. You could send a Shakespeare sonnet to a Significant Other and claim to have written it yourself without necessarily being at risk for criminal penalties (unless you were using it to commit fraud, I would think).
Commonly, though, it is also done when someone’s copyright is being infringed. That’s what happened in my case: someone else was copying and distributing my work in a manner outside of Fair Use. They were selling a book in the Kindle store that had something I had written in it as part of it without my permission.
The articles referenced above talk about a specific case where one person pirated quite a bit of erotica and sold it as their own.
When Amazon is alerted to that situation, they pull the offending book.
However, as pointed out in the article, the original author has to try to get any recompense from the sales on their own.
That’s reasonable, although it makes it likely that plagiarism and infringement will happen again and again. It’s just too hard to go after a pirate for the royalties to which you are rightfully entitled.
So, here’s the scenario:
Infringer takes material under copyright protection (especially stuff posted to the web…that’s easiest) and submits it to Amazon as their own…certifying, by the way, that they have the rights to the material.
Book goes up on Amazon and generates sales.
The actual rightsholder somehow eventually finds out about it and notifies Amazon.
Amazon pulls the book from sale. Amazon can always pull any book from sale…they don’t need a legal justification for that. So, if they think a challenge is reasonable, they pull it.
However, Amazon can’t simply withhold royalties to the alleged pirate…they are contracted to pay them, and they don’t have a legal reason not to pay them.
The rightsholder could try to take legal action against the pirate, but that’s difficult and expensive to do…and we may be taking about only a few hundred dollars in damages.
Now, you might wonder why Amazon doesn’t require proof of the registration of copyright before accepting a book for sale.
That’s because you don’t have to register a copyright.
What you are reading right now is under my copyright…automatically, without me taking any other action. I do register some copyrights, because it makes it easier if you go to court. In the USA, though, copyright is automatic.
So, pirates can make some quick money without any serious fear of retribution…especially from independent authors who don’t have a legal staff. If you plagiarized and infringed on a book from a big publishers, that’s different…they have the wherewithal to go after you.
Goodreads stops using information from Amazon
Thanks to one of my readers, Morgan, for sharing part of an e-mail from Goodreads.org, a social literary site.
The main thing was that Goodreads was going to stop using information from Amazon’s API (Application Programming Interface), which they had been using to fill in information about books. As they put it on their blog:
“Since its inception, Goodreads has relied on Amazon’s public API for much of this information, and while Amazon data was free, it came with many restrictions. “
I don’t find those restrictions unreasonable. Amazon puts a lot of work into their product pages. They may have permission from publishers to use copyrighted cover images and summaries specifically for use in selling the books.
Amazon gives other entities access to that information, but it needs to be used in certain ways. You can’t take book images from Amazon and use them to link to other websites for sales of the books. For example, you couldn’t use Amazon’s data to link to Barnes & Noble’s product page for the same book.
I remember Amazon tightened up the restrictions on that some time back.
That means that there may be some holes in listings at Goodreads. They are asking their readers to help fill them in…things like titles and author names. That’s reasonable.
This seemed odd to me, though:
“If you see a book missing a cover, feel free to find a new one on the author’s or publisher’s Web site and upload it to Goodreads.”
My understanding is that you would need the rightsholder’s permission to do that. You are copying their material, and using it for commercial purposes without their permission. I don’t think that falls under Fair Use, but I’m not an intellectual property lawyer.
It’s worth noting that Amazon owns
which is arguably a direct competitor to Goodreads.
LYKF is now part of the KOLL
I have now made my latest book
Love Your Kindle Fire: The ILMK Guide to Amazon’s Entertablet
available in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library (KOLL). Eligible Prime members are able to borrow up to a book a month from the KOLL at no additional cost. Most Prime members are paying $79 a year for it.
I’m honestly a bit nervous about having done it, and it is an experiment. I’m likely to make more money on each sale than on each borrow…but it’s possible I’ll have a lot more borrows. Also, hypothetically, the exposure from being in the KOLL may increase the sales. One way it could do that: more reviews.
We’ll see how it goes, but I thought you’d want to know.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
