I have submitted the following to GNU.org, to Amazon, to Alphascript Publishing, and the FTC, so maybe they can professionally sort it out. I may not have legal footing, but if not, it still stinks:
Amazon.com is allowing the fraudulent marketing of published content by Alphascript Publishing. The materials in these books: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=John%20McBrewster ...was not authored "by" John McBrewster. It was authored and edited by several editors on Wikipedia.org who claim copyright to the material and released it under the terms of the GFDL and the CC-by-SA licenses. As you can see, Alphascript is making no attempt in its marketing to inform the buyer that the material is freely licensed, that it has merely been re-packaged (not "edited"), and that the listing of these ancillary editors does NOT fulfill the attribution terms on the free licenses which transport this media. I have multiple expectations: (1) That the GNU.org and the FTC will act to the best of their abilities to work with both Alphascript Publishing and Amazon to inform their course of action to help assure that proper attribution and sourcing does come into effect, or simply to advocate removal of these publications from the marketing database hosted by Amazon until they are made compliant. (2) That Amazon more effectively address its few publishers who are brazenly violating American licensing laws, even if they are offshore companies. We need go no further than Amazon's own terms of service to read: Intellectual Property * Recopied media. Recopied media infringe upon copyrights and trademarks and are illegal to sell. Unauthorized copies, dubs, and duplicates of any copyrighted material are prohibited on Amazon.com. This includes: o Books - Unauthorized copies of books are prohibited. The content published by Alphascript is authorized if and only if the terms of the original licenses have been met, and I assuredly believe they have not been so met. Gregory Kohs Cell: 302.463.xxxx CC: FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection (Case number: 24307600) _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
