
Amazon Caught Selling Counterfeits of Publisher’s Computer Books–Again - howard941
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/amazon-caught-selling-counterfeits-of-publishers-computer-books-again/
======
ckastner
The counterfeit and review manipulation issues have rendered Amazon unpleasant
enough for me that buying local is something I've started to enjoy again.

I trust the merchant to have performed some kind of vetting for merchandise
sold on premise, and the price is often good or (interestingly enough) even
better than on Amazon. Often enough local is still more expensive, but it
beats browsing Amazon for an hour, sifting through reviews that can no longer
be trusted.

~~~
crowbahr
I purchased some wire cutters a year or two ago from Amazon and they were fine
for the speaker wire I was cutting... Until this year when I tried to cut a
guitar string with them and found a perfect guitar gauged hole in my snips
every time I tried to cut.

I was irate, having paid $10 for these. So I go online to leave a review and
warn people off... only to find that the seller "no longer existed". They
absolutely did, and were selling their awful snips but had changed their name
and paid for a bunch of 5 star reviews again.

I've been far more aware as of late that whenever I search for something (say
the staple gun I recently got my wife) all I get are offbrand or knockoff
results showing for often several pages. I have to go, figure out which brands
are reputable and then come back to actually make my purchase.

I'd rather just go to a brick and mortar at this point. I'm definitely not
renewing my amazon prime.

~~~
joshu
inexpensive wire snips are usually only good for cutting copper wire, though.
they aren't made of hardened steel, which is necessary for cutting the steel
guitar strings.

~~~
crowbahr
$10 is not inexpensive for wire snips though. Which is my complaint.

~~~
lostapathy
$10 is nothing compared to the cost of high end, quality hand tools that will
last. In the case of a expecting to cut hardened wire, the cutter needs to be
of a good alloy and hardened adequately to hold an edge. $10 doesn’t buy
anything from the knipex catalog, for instance.

~~~
crowbahr
Guitar wire should be perfectly fine to cut with $10 snips. The $5 Stanley
brand snips that I got to replace my terrible ones work like a charm.

I recognize I don't have the heaviest duty cut-through-anything shears that I
could have with more money, but where I'm mainly doing light jobs like speaker
wire and guitar strings it's not a problem... unless the snips themselves are
terrible.

I don't expect to have to replace the Stanley set unless they become rusty
from disuse.

------
blueadept111
I knew this would blow up. Sadly, Amazon/createspace (now called KDP)
apparenty has no mechanism or will to ban users who abuse the system. I am a
KDP author myself, with three titles under my belt in the nature/regional
category. About three months ago I noticed flagrant copyright infringement of
a well-known author in my field. The title had a one star rating, because a
number of people had left negative reviews pointing out (in no uncertain
terms) that it was not genuine.

I emailed and then called support (twice) and pointed it out. Even after
escalating the issue as far as I could, it resulted in no action. Even a
cursory review should have stopped the title from being published, since it
was of ridiculously poor-quality (analogous to someone publishing a title
called "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Legacy by J.K. Rowling" and having an
apparently legit front cover but an interior filled with almost nonsensical,
semi-autogenerated text). The fact that a title like this can be published on
the platform at all indicates that the review process for new titles is sadly
lacking any application of common sense.

I'm appreciative that Amazon is pushing the envelope in supporting self-
publishers via their print on demand services, but by failing (and actually
refusing) to police it they are giving a bad name to the whole enterprise.
Through their inaction they are encouraging the copyright infringers and
scammers to turn what could/should be a great service into a toxic ecosystem.

~~~
m463
There are so many glaring problems.

I don't know why you can't just highlight text in a kindle book and say:

    
    
      [x] typo
      [x] mispelling
      [x] grammatical error
      [x] garbage characters
      [x] plagiarized
      [x] missing section separator
      [x] other [______________]
    

maybe the REAL issue is that all of these are post-sales problems

------
tzs
In the Tweet about one of the counterfeits, Bill Pollock says:

> Images of counterfeit copies of Python for Kids being sold on Amazon. Legit
> copies are thicker, color, layflat binding, nicer paper

I've noticed on occasion my local Barnes & Noble will have two copies of a
book and one will be noticeably thicker than the other. Same edition, same
cover art, same number of pages, but one just seems to be on thicker paper.

I've only noticed this in the computer section, but I generally only visit
that section, other STEM sections, science fiction, and graphic novels, and of
those only the computer section is likely to have multiple copies of books
that are thick enough that a difference in thickness would be noticeable while
browsing, so there may be selection bias here.

Does this mean counterfeits are even making their way onto bookstore shelves?
Or do some publishers have a range of paper sizes they might use for a give
book, and what is actually used varies from print run to print run?

~~~
thefrostytruth
No, it's likely to be different legitimate print runs. Sometimes the same
paper is unavailable, sometimes a book moves to a different manufacturing
method based on demand (e.g., offset to short run to print-on-demand).

The source of Amazon's problem is their third-party marketplace and their
practice of "co mingling" third-party stock with their "regular" stock -- this
is unlikely to be the case with Barnes & Noble

------
petilon
I ordered a copy of Deep Learning [1] from Amazon last week. On Barnes & Noble
[2] the book costs $76.80. On Amazon it is just $28.00. I received the book a
couple of days ago. The pages look like it was printed using a low-resolution
printer, and the ink color is uneven across pages. I am returning the book.
Possible counterfeit, sold by a third party seller. On the other hand this
book is also available free online [3]. Maybe it is legal to print it and sell
it?

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation-
Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Adaptive-Computation-
Machine/dp/0262035618/ref=sr_1_3)

[2] [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deep-learning-ian-
goodfello...](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/deep-learning-ian-
goodfellow/1126352242?ean=9780262035613)

[3] [https://www.deeplearningbook.org/](https://www.deeplearningbook.org/)

~~~
jbay808
I ordered a textbook on control theory from Amazon. It arrived, but the
material inside the covers is from a small animal veterinary textbook. Byaa
different publisher. I took a closer look at the cover, it was poorly printed
and didn't quite fit.

I'm still confused about how the vendor expected to get away with it. Did they
just guess that half of people won't bother opening the textbook? And why not
fill it with blank pages then?

~~~
vonmoltke
Might just be that a large-scale counterfeit printing operation mixed up the
covers and bound materials. There are probably counterfeit veterinary
textbooks floating around that contain control theory materials.

~~~
lostapathy
Quite possible. It seems likely that the people assembling the counterfeits
don’t even read English, let alone have enough interest in the material to
notice.

------
jihadjihad
I first heard about counterfeit goods on Amazon from HN, and at the time
thought, "Hm, must be a west-coast thing, hasn't happened to me before." In
the last year I've received a handful of very obvious fakes and have
(thankfully) been able to return them since the items were "fulfilled by
Amazon."

It's not surprising that with the volume of items pushed by Amazon there are
going to be some fakes. What is surprising is how merchants fulfilled by
Amazon lack any incentive AFAIK to ship real goods. For any major purchase
from now on, I'm going to buy local or buy direct from the manufacturer. It's
just a waste of time to hope that what you get in the mail is what you ordered
in the first place.

------
mindcrime
[https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-
invest...](https://qz.com/1542839/amazon-has-finally-admitted-to-investors-
that-it-has-a-counterfeit-problem/)

Well, admitting you have a problem is the first step, so maybe now they'll
finally get serious about fixing this shit.

~~~
ProAm
Its hard to admit you have a problem when your problem still brings in buckets
of money everyday. I dont think they care, how much can a publisher or author
sue amazon for peddling counterfeit wares? That is when it will matter, when
they start losing large settlements.

~~~
the-pigeon
Why hasn't the US Consumer Protection Bureau stepped in at this point?

Isn't this exactly the sort of thing they are suppose to prevent?

~~~
dragonwriter
> Why hasn't the US Consumer Protection Bureau stepped in at this point?

Because no such bureau exists?

You may be thinking of the Consumer _Financial_ Protection Bureau (which deals
with financial products) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (which
deals with physical safety issues), but (while physical safety issues are
among the problems produced) neither one is really focussed on these issues.

The kind of fraud at issue is probably more in the bailiwick of the Federal
Trade Commission and the International Trade Commission (when the original
source is foreign), but probably most people affected by counterfeits are just
returning products or eating the cost and not complaining to the FTC or the
falsely-purported manufacturer (who, IIRC, would be the party in position to
complain to the ITC).

------
mojomark
Totally, this. As a case in point, my "Digital Image Processing and Analysis:
Human and Computer Vision Applications with CVIPtools, Second Edition" text
book stated right on the cover that the book was "Not for sale in the US" (or
something to that effect). Seemed odd, then I read the intro in which the
author was excited that he finally convinced the publisher to print in color.
My book was not in color (super great for an image processing text). Two weeks
later, the binding started to come undone - not just a little - literally all
of the pages fell out.

Awesome, thanks Bezos!

~~~
moftz
Your situation has nothing to do with Amazon or counterfeit books.

The "not for sale in US" editions are international editions that are usually
made with cheaper materials and sometimes with different graphics to avoid
royalties. These books usually have the content and are usually in black and
white but sometimes there are slight content changes. It's not usually the
best idea to buy one of these unless you know it's identical, check the
reviews. You need to use the ISBN to find the US edition if you don't want to
gamble on a cheap international edition. Funny story, I bought an
international edition once, used it for the semester, then sold it back to the
third-party bookstore in town for more than I bought it for.

~~~
CamperBob2
If it comes in a box that says "Amazon" on the side, then it has everything to
do with Amazon.

------
pheeney
I am currently caught up in an amazon scam. The third party seller listed
items, put in fake shipping, item never arrived. It's been over a month and I
am still fighting amazon to get my money back. They have an "A to Z guarantee"
which doesn't work, at least not in my case.

The seller didn't even need to sell counterfeit items without running off with
my money. Amazon customer support has no idea what to do since the third party
is supposed to refund me.

~~~
FakeComments
I’ve never had success with “A to Z” refunds, to the point it seems designed
not to work — and instead, actively use Amazon’s brand loyalty to enable
fraud.

I wonder, was my trust as a customer who spends thousands of dollars a year
ever worth more than $20 to Amazon?

Because they sure were quick enough to throw it away over $20, when one of
their business partners defrauded me via their website.

(PS — if you work at Amazon, and your internal metrics show that customer
trust is worth more than 0.005 dollars per customer dollar spent, you have
made business decisions WAY out of alignment with your metrics.)

~~~
pheeney
Its ironic as well because the customer service agents kept saying if this was
an Amazon purchase they would have refunded me. Kept reassuring me that this
wouldn't have been an issue if you purchased with us, we would have taken care
of this. But I kept telling them this still IS Amazon. They just deflected
like it has nothing to do with them.

------
cobookman
How isnt Amazon liable for this / sued?

If Walmart did the same there would be various lawsuits

~~~
ocdtrekkie
More than likely, they can just claim "we're just a platform, someone else
uploaded the file". This is the inherent problem with Section 230 immunity for
platforms: We've given companies a blank check to be used as part of criminal
enterprises, and given them no incentive to police illegal behavior on their
networks.

In this scenario, Amazon is able to literally produce, sell, and distribute
counterfeit material, keep the profits from doing so, and face no legal
repercussions. That is the definition of a broken law.

~~~
lftl
Does Section 230 apply at all when we're talking about a physically
distributed product like this? I get that, even if it doesn't apply, Amazon's
defense is probably that they're an intermediary and not the seller, but I
thought the DMCA applied pretty strictly to digital copyright violations, and
that any lawsuit in this instance would hinge on older laws for physical-good
copyright violations.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Well, for one, there is some exception to Section 230 in the realm of
intellectual property, which is an angle that could be pursued, but there's
been some "conflicting rulings" on it. But I think Amazon would argue that
their publishing service is an interactive computer service, and that they are
not the providers of the infringing information.

Which is to say, it's possible Section 230 would not apply here, but Amazon's
extremely expensive lawyers would probably fight like heck to include it
anyways.

~~~
numbsafari
But isn’t this case an example of Amazon physically printing and delivering a
book? They aren’t just moving bits: they actually printed the book.

~~~
DannyBee
This is correct. 230 liability would not protect this case.

In general, physical publishers are always liable for what they print.

It doesn't matter where it came from.

(at least in this context. Things like libel are more interesting)

------
blunte
Amazon has little incentive to stop selling counterfeit goods.

It is simply not reasonable to believe that they are not capable of accurately
preventing counterfeit goods from surviving in their site. Remember, this is
the same company run by the brilliant micromanaging CEO. Everything that
happens within Amazon is known to him.

If an individual setup their own website and sold counterfeit goods, the feds
would come down on them hard. So you have to wonder what keeps Amazon immune
from being shut down for willfully breaking laws...

~~~
widowlark
It's only their job to attempt to prevent listing and supporting counterfeit
products. Every individual is responsible for themselves to not break the law
and sell a fake product.

------
rubyfan
Isn’t it more accurate that a seller is using Amazon’s publishing platform to
counterfeit and sell other publishers books?

The title suggests Amazon has wrongdoing here. You could make the case that
they need more policing and review but it’s not like Amazon is knowingly
selling counterfeit here.

~~~
bleriot
Considering that Amazon fulfills orders using counterfeit items from suppliers
that they know have previously provided fakes to customers, and then removes
reviews that point out counterfeits, I’d say they’re complicit in it. I’ve
personally had a review removed that called out an obviously counterfeit item
I received. That was two years ago and the seller is still on Amazon, and
Amazon is still removing other reviewers’ bad reviews of them.

~~~
busyant
This seems like a long-term recipe for disaster for Amazon.

Why do it? Or am I being naive? Or is it too difficult to clamp down on fakes?

------
chiefalchemist
Amazon is my site of last resort (read: less that $100 per year). I'll check
it for the reviews (but am always mindful they could be bogus), and to get a
general sense for price. I purposely us BN.com or just about anywhere else for
books.

I can't allow myself to be a regular Amazon customer. Its ethics and practices
leave me feeling dirtier than I want to feel.

------
djaychela
Surely this should be an easy fix for them to be able to detect counterfeit
books being created? If they are anything like other on demand self publishing
platforms, you upload a pdf or similar file to create the book, and surely
it's not beyond the wit of those at amazon to create an ml based system that
would be able to detect similar files to those of legitimate books that they
already carry and flag them to the legitimate publisher for manual review (if
they can't be bothered to police it themselves as it appears)?

~~~
sacheendra
It is not that easy. They need a reliable system to do that. For what can go
wrong, see all the hate Youtube's ContentID gets. But, identifying whole books
should be simple enough.

~~~
DennisP
If the official book is available on Kindle, then it actually should be quite
simple for them to use a locality-sensitive hash to find plagiarized uploads.

------
gesman
+100

Amazon is trying hard to keep counterfeits and fake products/reviews under the
rugs for as long as possible, so the more publicity to their ignorance - the
merrier.

~~~
jihadjihad
With the prevalence of counterfeits and their push to feature "Sponsored"
products in SERPs, the case to ditch Amazon becomes easier every day.

------
mark_l_watson
Yup, this happened to me: I saw a very low price on a Chez Scheme book and
bought it. I am fairly certain the book was an unauthorized copy. I felt like
the author and publisher were cheated, but to be honest I did the simplest
thing and just kept the book and I am gentle with it when opening it for
reading so it does not fall apart.

------
acd
In Sweden BBS-lagen is applicable here. That is you run a community service
where the users publish works.

5 § "Skyldighet att ta bort vissa meddelanden" The obligation to remove
certain messages 2\. It is obvious that the user has infringed copyright or
rights protected by regulation in Chapter 5. the law (1960: 729) on copyright
for literary and artistic works by submitting the message.

Here is the US law [https://www.bu.edu/law/journals-
archive/scitech/volume1/orou...](https://www.bu.edu/law/journals-
archive/scitech/volume1/orourke.pdf) "contributory infringement"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infring...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributory_copyright_infringement)
Material contribution "second situation is when the means for facilitating the
infringement such as machinery is provided by the defendant"

Providing printing press ability and the electronic means to upload/download
without scanning via OCR for copyright infringement of known text and print
service and the platform itself

------
lotaezenwa
I once ordered a copy of Introduction to Algorithms (CLRS) on Amazon.

I had been a TA for Thomas Cormen at the time, and wanted the author's
signature. He took one look at it, compared it to the copies he had in his
office and said, "This is a counterfeit copy. Where did you get this?"

The embarrassment haunts me to this day.

------
EliRivers
Here's a previous discussion when the same publisher was being pirated by
Amazon previously.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13924546)

------
buttholesurfer
Another trend I've seen is stores selling international editions. It's not a
big issue to me, minus the usually crappier paper and cover. But it does seem
shady.

------
mnm1
90% of the stuff on Amazon is fake or counterfeit. Why would anyone expect the
book division to be different? This is what Amazon has decided to be: a
marketplace for garbage products, most fake or extremely low quality. Their
strategy is based on the fact that consumers don't know better and if they do
and start returning products, shutting those accounts off. Some copyright
infringement is perfect for diversifying their business model of selling
garbage.

------
DomreiRoam
Is the problem affecting all amazon or mainly amazon.com?

I m shopping mostly on amazon.de or .fr and I didn't encounter the problem
yet.

------
SubiculumCode
Whenever I am buying something I care about I avoid Amazon. I am cancelling
prime because of it.

------
jdkee
I stopped buying books from Amazon and returned to buying from a local
independent bookstore.

------
1024core
Back in the day, when song piracy was hot in the news, you'd hear of people
claiming that each song pirated had cost the copyright own over $150K.

Why can't Amazon be sued for $150K per book?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
That only really worked because the defendants couldn't afford good counsel.
That sort of fraudulent legal claim won't work against Amazon.

Besides which I think the courts did eventually move on to realistically
valuing contributory infringement (15¢ perhaps instead of $150k).

------
widowlark
Is a book by another spine still a book?

------
thaumasiotes
These aren't counterfeit books. They're unlicensed books. You're getting
exactly what you order.

~~~
tzs
They are pretty much the definition of counterfeit. The Oxford dictionary
defines counterfeit as "Made in exact imitation of something valuable with the
intention to deceive or defraud".

~~~
thaumasiotes
There's an implication that you're defrauding the person buying the
counterfeit item. That's not true here; the person being "defrauded" is the
copyright owner.

~~~
tzs
The buyer purchased a book that claims to be, and is marketed as, a No Starch
Press book. No Starch Press books are known for their physical quality and
their lay-flat binding. These books were lower quality and did not have a lay-
flat binding.

How is that not defrauding the buyer?

~~~
thaumasiotes
kfwhp is right. It is not even conceivable that anyone is buying a book for
the sake of having a No Starch Press book. Everyone buying a book is buying it
for the content.

It is conceivable that someone might think that No Starch Press books offer a
quality premium that might justify a higher price. In the case where that
higher quality is thought to occur in the contents, that's still not relevant.
In the case where the higher quality comes from the better physical quality of
the book, it is relevant, but that is a negligible part of the market for
books of any type, even those that do come in collectible editions.

Consider an example: I own a copy of
[https://www.eastonpress.com/prod/EB8/2720043/Rudyard-
Kipling...](https://www.eastonpress.com/prod/EB8/2720043/Rudyard-Kipling-s-
THE-JUNGLE-BOOKS) .

If someone were selling imitations of this that fell apart after a month or
so, I would indeed consider that to be defrauding the buyer. Easton Press'
entire reason for being is to sell existing books at a higher physical quality
than you can normally get.

But Kipling's work is available in every form factor, from free ebooks at
Project Gutenberg through cheap paperbacks to high-end collectibles. If Easton
Press were the only party legally allowed to sell this book, I would no longer
be willing to say that cheap imitations were defrauding the customer. I'd
assume that people buying the cheaper versions were just trying to read the
book. With only one vendor, there is no signal that the customer wanted
physical quality, and overwhelmingly they don't, so there is no reason to
assume that they do.

------
sonnyblarney
It's one thing for counterfeits to be found among all of the 3rd party
resellers ... but this is just beyond pale.

I think NYC was wrong to kill 25K jobs on the general merits - but - if Bezos
wanted the counterfeiting problem solved, it would be solved. Ergo - Bezos is
a counterfeiter.

Think of all of the other 'competitive advantages' that Amazon has - now they
use their 3rd party an in-house counterfeiters to screw other value chain
members as well.

------
pfarnsworth
Amazon gets away with this because it's practically impossible for small
business owners or authors to police their site. It's similar to Google, where
they let counterfeits thrive, but real content creators get fake DMCA notices
and shut down.

I really hate to say this, but large companies like this need to be regulated
via laws. There's simply no other choice. Having Amazon throw their hands up
and say "There's nothing we can do, we have algorithms" or hiding behind the
safe-harbor laws is not acceptable.

Having their ability to shut off peoples' incomes or being victimized by
counterfeiters, with no human contact and no process, is unacceptable and
needs to be changed. They aren't changing fast enough and they don't want to
change because it's expensive, and the only solution is to force them via
laws, which I'm loathe to support but it's the only way.

~~~
dnautics
Why should large companies be regulated on this specific topic but not small
companies? It's equally illegal activity.

~~~
sonnyblarney
In this case, the laws probably need to apply universally.

But scale matters.

Systems (even economic systems) at scale have different characteristics than
those that are not. Just like you'd implement a massive AWS system differently
than you would a little, single Ec2 service - regulations would probably be
characterized differently given the scale and power of the entities involved.

One major difference is risk mitigation: individual consumers may have some
power to influence a mom and pop shop, especially one that has a physical
retail presence. A negative local news highlight could make a big difference.
A single legal grievance could have consequences. There's material risk.

At a certain scale, it seems some of these entities simply don't have to worry
about fraud, because 'who's gonna do something about it?'. The only public
recourse is public institutions.

