Slashdot Mirror
Legitimate eBook Lending Community Closed After Copyright Complaints
Ian Lamont writes "LendInk, a community for people interesting in using the lending features of the Kindle and Nook, has been shut down after some authors mistakenly thought the site was hosting pirated ebooks. The site brought together people who wanted to loan or borrow specific titles that are eligible for lending, and then sent them to Amazon or BarnesAndNoble.com to make the loans. Authors and publishers who were unaware of this feature of the Kindle and Nook, and/or mistakenly assumed the site was handing out pirated copies, were infuriated. LendInk's hosting company received hundreds of complaints and shut the site down. LendInk's owner says: 'The hosting company has offered to reinstate Lendink.com on the condition that I personally respond to all of the complaints individually. I have to say, I really do not know if it is worth the effort at this point. I have read the comments many of these people have posted and I don't think any form of communication will resolve the issues in their eyes. Most are only interested in getting money from me and others are only in it for the kill. They have no intentions of talking to me or working this out. So much for trying to start a business and live the American Dream.'"
Make a EULA that states you can charge for responding to errant take down notices.
Respond to every take down notice with a bill for hourly services rendered.
Profit??
Surely this falls under harassment, or something equally court-worthy. The American dream isn't to start your own business, it's to sue some rich asshole and get showered with money.
Crowdsource the job of responding to them all. I'm sure enough of us are infuriated at this turn of events that we could all lend a hand. I think the first thing you'd need is a lawyer-type to draft a boilerplate response. Nothing too long, but substantial enough to explain in, say, 3 paragraphs that you are 1) your site is 100% legal, 2) this is a standard feature of the readers, and 3) no money will be paid out to anyone under any circumstances. Then let us volunteers each "adopt" a complaint to handle. If a sufficient percentage can be done away with, perhaps your venture can survive.
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Why doesn't he just sue the hosting company? I mean, imagine if you leased commercial space to run a store and the owner of the property came by and just randomly shuttered your shop for a few days and then opened it back up? Fine, if under some sort of court order. Complete bullshit if just arbitrarily done by the owner, as in this case. Fuck them and fuck the authors.
Every time the world's underlying assumptions shift there's some backlash and attempt to prevent the future from inevitably coming. But honestly either I'm just too knowledgeable about current events or everything I've read about other historical similarities seems tame in comparison. Yeah it was more violent but the world was just more violent then. Easier to club some heads or burn some equipment than employ lawyers. The breadth and scale of the backlash across everything in the digital space is just depressing.
Copyright, first sale, fair use, etc.
This was just the equivalent of a book club (slightly monetized). A twist on a library. This is getting ridiculous.
The authors' claims don't have any more legitimacy than someone arguing that people should be forced to buy their products because otherwise they won't make any money. This was a legitimate community. I guess we should get rid of book lending, though.
(knock)(knock)(knock)
Hi yes. I received this email that you are complaining because I (and others) are loaning out books with our Kindles and Nooks. This is perfectly legal under the terms of Amazon and Barnes & Noble's contracts with the Authors' Guild.
"I don't care. I will porsecute you and rape you for all your money!!!!" - typical author at the door
Oh okay. (BAM). From time to time the Tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants (and any others who would seek to limit freedom within these united States). So that's one tyrant down. Who's next?
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
for Complainer in Complainers:
print("Dear " + Complainer + ", \n");
print("No.");
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Crap. I wish I knew this existed before. Is there any alternative sites out there? Maybe I should start one myself.
This would let a LOT of these kind of sites flourish.
I say, turn it around on them. Let them all spaz out when they see 100 more sites offering this service pop up.
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
He should publish the name of the authors who complained. Authors are definitely vulnerable to negative press. And certainly legal threats can't be thought to be private.
So I can boycott them forever.
Ignore the irony of book authors who can't (or can't be bothered to) read. They gave him the rights to do what he did, and they had day after remorse.
I did not see DMCA mentioned, only "cease and desist". The "were infuriated" link contains equal parts infuration and people reminded the infuriated that lending was part of their agreement, if they checked the box to allow it.
You invented DMCA because you associate it with copyright protection. What seems to have happened, based on the information presented, is that the hosting company was inundated with C&D notices instead of DMCA. These are legally backed threats which can lead to lawsuits directly, outside of the control of the DMCA process.
In other words, the hosting company most likely had a choice between shutting down the service and responding to multiple court summons, if not full blown cases. Were I the hosting company, I would have folded, and I would have laid the responsibility of responding to the customer, just as this company did.
C&D is a lose-lose proposition unless you have deep enough pockets to defend yourself. DMCA covers the host well enough if tey do what they are supposed to do. Which is most likely why the authors went with C&D instead of DMCA. One is quicker, one is more effective. If you're going for the kill, as the summary says, C&D is the way to go.
I just read a bunch of the posts in the Kindle forum which is populated by the indie authors. The overwhelming majority there is fine with the lending and feel bad for Dale. The vocal few always get things their way ...
What's weird is that I don't understand how he was going to monetize this? Ads? Priority lending status for paying members?
He can solve his problem by going to another host and start again. I'm sure he has a backup somewhere. Just host it outside the US to be safe.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Don't quit now, you just got the media attention that you need! You've worked hard on this project and owe it to your self to see of your new found publicity is the tipping point. Good luck.
This really disappoints me. :(
I saw this coming when the site started circulating the facebook groups I'm involved in. In each case I explained how the site worked, and defended LendInk.com for what they were doing.
The knee-jerking that resulted in this sites shut down is a perfect exampled of what happens when a bunch of frustrated indie authors don't take the time to read or research a site before crying foul.
Thomas A. Knight
Author of The Time Weaver
I own them. Neither Amazon nor the author can take them away from me.
I can loan them to whomever I wish for however long I wish and the author can go pound sand.
You might want to avoid the following webhost:
$ whois lendink.com | grep -a1 servers
Domain servers in listed order:
NS3.MEDIALAYER.NET
Hey, I was only kidding. You don't have to MOD me "Troll" . . . again . . . .
WAAAAAAH this makes me so sad. The business owner clearly did not give a flying fuck if authors' revenues dried up as a result of strangers swapping ebooks in his digital marketplace, rather than buying them from Amazon or B&N. Tough shit for them, they need a better business model, he would've said.
Instead, it's tough shit for the business owner.
No. Amazon gave the strangers the ability to swap ebooks. All this guy did was make a place where strangers could meet and compare lists of books.
If anything these authors and publisher should be kicking themselves for giving Amazon this ability.
Switch to a better hosting company.
"I really do not know if it is worth the effort at this point" - If the site creator isn't willing to respond to a few hundred emails, then the business probably wasn't worth much to them to begin with. Responding to the complaints "individually" doesn't mean having a full on conversation with each person complaining either. If you don't want to respond each person, then just switch to a different host: problem solved!
Right here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk/124974504234948
Interesting discussion there.
is ludicrous anyway. Virtual lending? Are you serious? This is beyond ridiculous; even more ridiculous then the used digital download games business. Why go through all the trouble and theater? Just send a copy to your friends and be done with it; it makes no difference.
It's amazing the absurdities people are willing to subject themselves to...
No, it's not home ownership, it's vigilante justice.
Yes folks, if you are an American you can shutdown -k a the website of your choosing simply by complaining. There's not waiting for some crusty old judge or lawyers saddled by common law or the rules of evidence. Just pick a site and complain to their hosting service that something on the site violates the Mickey Mouse/Sonny Bono law Copyright or the DMCA and wait for 5 minutes.
Authors had to sign contracts allowing said lending though. Not all did, and you can't lend out those books, not even once.
Thing is, book lending is good for sales, as Baen has discovered.
I don't read AC A human right
Let the crowd have their Names and Contacts. If they're lucky 4chan stays out of it.
I bet this didn't make the slightest dent in book piracy either.
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Once again, thank you copyright.
With a capital F.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3035829&cid=40926559
Not GoDaddy, as evidenced by anyone who knows what whois is.
Any company would comply to multiple cease and desists.
Yeah! Let's burn down all the libraries! We'll murder the inter-school lending programs too! And all of their administrators!
just not in piracy.
Did someone tell him that magically, good things happen when you start a business?
It's all fun and games until legal issues come about.
"The Right to Read"
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The lady is now currently scrubbing her website of all her posts on the subject. Try these google caches
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Spl34jUBXMMJ:allonbooks-thekingdomofallon.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-is-pirate-site.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Spl34jUBXMMJ:allonbooks-thekingdomofallon.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-is-pirate-site.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Oh, and she hates Neil Gaiman.
The 'business owner' needs to grow a pair. "Ohhhhh! Woe is me, I have to sit in my easy chair and answer E-mails! THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD!" A little dramatic, are we?
For that matter, Baen has also discovered that giving away copies of certain books is good for sales of later books in those series.
God, I love the 1632 series.
Looked at the Facebook page. It all seems to be women authors complaining, and they all seem to be wrong.
I guess that settles it. I'll consign myself to buying up whatever dead tree editions I can; and completely forget about buying any eReader or eBooks if these "Authors Guild" idiots are going to be a rabid crowd of money mongers. Unionized writers and publishing houses, like these belong on a do not buy list. And so the world grows smaller once again. Thanks to Greed.
This strange comment at the bottom of the message is illogical.
They not only banned you
The message you posted also got deleted !
I have just lost all respect to those so-called "authors"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Release the names of the authors please. So i know who's books i will never buy or borrow.
The Bible doesn't say "Thou shalt not judge". In Matthew 7:1-2, Jesus says, "âoeDo not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
There is one sentence that summarize all the above
Judge Not, Lest Thou Be Judged
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
i THINK tHE nEW kINDAL OuGHT TO BE oWNED bY A fUzzY kITTEH
kIttEh hAs Always Been A bIg PArt Of tHE kiMDAL fAMiLY,
jUS lOOK AT All thAT fUr In bETwEen ThE kEyS
What got to me was that on the complaining authors blog - which someone linked to - there was a part of a post saying that the reason they complained was because lendlnk was not an authorized lender, and only loans through authorized lenders cause the author to get their commission from the loan. Now, from what I've gathered lendlnk didn't loan the books themselves, they sent people to amazon - an authorized lender. However that's really not the big news here.
The big news is that authors are getting paid when we loan an e-book to someone else. If this is true it's horrendous.
Seriously, what's next, will they want to get paid if we read it in a new room? If we remove it from the kindle and then re-download it? If we read it in the dark? I mean, clearly it's amazon that pays out, but of course the cost ends up with the end consumer eventually... and even if it didn't, we really don't want to create another class of content producers that are fully expecting to write a book or three and then sit on their fat asses and ride the royalty checks for the rest of their lives. That's how the music and film industry got to be the giant douche-nozzles they are today - keep getting paid over and over again for the same work they already did and moved on from.
Man, I wish I could go to work at say a supermarket, work for a day, or hell work for a year... and then get paid a .01% royalty every time someone goes through the checkout for the rest of my life.
Now I'm not one of those people who devalue abstract goods... Ideas, books, poetry, whatever... these are valuable things. People should get paid to bring these to the world... However they should get paid for the work they do. Paid per book, per work, or per hour - whatever business model the REAL WORLD can handle... but they shouldn't be paid for future use of work they've already done. If they write a book in three months, they should write another one six months later, or a year, if they want to keep making a living as an author. Or if they do it for fun, because they WANT to write... well then they can just as well do it while working in wallmart to put food on the table. A lot of us - me included - could probably live off things we do for fun... But only if we made it our fulltime job. Of course eventually the market for professional gameplayers and buckyball artists would be saturated, but you get the idea. If it's a fulltime job, you should get paid while you work it.
So stop going the other way by bending to give these lazy fucks more money for things they shouldn't be able to even know. If I lend my hardcopy to someone, the author doesn't get paid again. Nothing has changed in what happens, so nothing should change in the payscheme.
I think many of them DO actually at least partly approve of these things, but feel guilty enough to lie about it. If there are so many of these purported "moderate christians" who dont want to burn gays at the stake and dont want to tell women what to do with their bodies and dont want to teach creationism in science class and just want to be good people and love their neighbors and follow the teachings of christ... do they not vote?
Because various referendums around the country definitely indicate that these mythical voiceless moderates dont really represent a significant percentage of christians, much less the general population.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
But see, they're writers, not readers!
If the lending is a feature of the Kindle, wouldn't Amazon want people to use it? (Obviously if they didn't want people to use it, they wouldn't have put in the feature.) Amazon should step in and help LendInk.
It sounds like Kindle enables user-to-user lending, and Lendink was some kind of middleman that matched up readers with each other. That's not especially evil or anything, but the business concept just sounds like another useless "web entrepeneur" doing stuff people can perfectly well do for themselves, like through a web forum or IRC or something like that. There's also the issue that if he was getting a fee off the "loans" then they in some sense weren't really loans but rentals. So while it may have all been on the up-and-up and relatively unobjectionable per se, it also doesn't seem like it was doing anything that important. It's not that big a deal if it's gone.
The authors had to sign contracts? Who exactly forced them?
Dilbert RSS feed
Take down their stars with negative reviews.
He (she?) meant that for those books to appear on LendInk, there had to be an existing contract signed by the author. Therefore, if the author hadn't signed a contract, his book wouldn't be on LendInk. So, authors had to sign contracts allowing said lending.
You're right, I misread. But then I don't really get the point of that post, since that was essentially what GGP had already said.
Dilbert RSS feed
"It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it."
-George Carlin
It really saddens me that we have invented that machine that can make copies for effective 0 costs and distribute them around the world with light speed for effective 0 costs again, but we pass legislation to cripple the new technology as best as we can.
It's like we invent the warp engine and pass legislation to limit the maximum speed to 100km/sec to prevent the old space rockets to go out of business. Or we invent the replicator and pass legislation to throw out at least as much food as we produce out of energy to save farming.
We need finally wake up and stop destroying new emerging markets. No wonder entrepreneurs have trouble come up with business models in the internet. It's not that people don't pay or the piracy or any other straw-man. It's the simple fact that any business on the internet is dealing with information and we try our best to destroy information sharing via politics.
Put the copyright back in the way it was (with registration, only 14 years and 14 years extension) and then successive lower the copyright terms as the distribution becomes easier and easier.
How much lost revenue we have because of the draconian copyright laws? How many new jobs can we create in the new markets?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
This guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_J._Howe
http://www.howeswho.co.uk/
or someone else?
I'll admit, I probably could have spent a few more minutes phrasing it clearly.
My point is that the authors still had to agree in the contract to the lending policy. Amazon/B&N only 'gave' buyers of ebooks the ability to lend their ebooks(once per title, for two weeks only) in the sense that they programmed in the functionality. In the case of Amazon, further research that I've don revealed that you could be eligible for a 70% royalty rate if you agree, but it's maxed out at 35% if you want to disallow lending. As such, it makes NO SENSE to not allow lending, because you get twice as much money, and at most a 3rd party gets access to the book for 2 weeks; if they like it and want to reread it, they'd have to buy it(discounting piracy here, which is a separate issue).
My second point is that studies conducted by Baen(a publisher with a great DRM-free ebook store), shows that 'free samples' tend to INCREASE sales. "Mother of Demons" saw increased paperback sales when they released the ebook free for download to the whole internet.
Even the AC wasn't entirely correct - part of the problem was that the site would list ALL books; 'borrow' was simply greyed out where lending was unavailable, and the site then encouraged you to buy the ebook, which if you purchased would give LendInk 6% referral commission, and the author his 35-70%. The authors didn't look close enough in their herd frenzy and thought ALL listed books were available for 'borrowing'.
I don't read AC A human right
Giving away copies helps sell the physical book, later books in the series, other books by the same author, books by Baen, etc...
Baen has managed to get better than a grand out of me. Of course, I have almost a thousand books out of them...
I don't read AC A human right
That's an interesting point, because we also have technology that can see through clothes, issue bogus and profitable tickets for "running" red lights (usually while making a right turn) and that can track your mobile device just about anywhere--and we use laws to ENCOURAGE more of that sort of thing.
It almost makes you think that when technology is good for people, governments are hell bent on stopping it, and when technology abuses people then government, and especially law enforcement, is right there cheering it on.
I'm sure all those people whom they now made it more difficult for to legally lend ebooks will happily buy them instead and not be annoyed to the point of pirating them.
Respond to each complaint, personally, with a lawsuit.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Here's an example of how truly insane it is.
In 1932 an Australian music teacher wrote a song: "Kookaburra."
In 1934 she entered it into a competition run by the Girl Guides Association of Victoria and won, giving over the rights to the Girl Guides in exchange for a prize (I don't know what, but the budget would have been low so most likely something donated by a local business). The rights for the song were sold in 1934 and the proceeds used to buy a camping ground far from the city where land was cheap. After some years Australian copyright expired and the song would have gone into the public domain.
Fast forward to around 1980 and the flute player with the band "Men at Work" put a riff from "Kookaburra", at that time public domain, into the song "Down Under", and that version was recorded by the band in 1981.
Move ahead to near the present day and Australia adopting copyright extensions on the insistence of some shady characters in the USA as part of one of the many one sided conditions of a "free trade" deal. Then one recording company wanted to take over another but they were not selling. The lawyers were called in, the archives searched, and it turns out the company doing the takeover had previously owned the rights to "Kookaburra" before it entered the public domain and thanks to new laws it was out of the public domain and theirs again, and even better the company they wanted to take over had recorded the song "Down Under" with that "Kookaburra" riff. It all went to court, the law had changed to retrospectively make it an offence to use part of a song that had been in the public domain. Substantial damages were paid, of course none went to the heirs of the composer or the Girl Guides, and the flautist that included the riff suffered months of depression before being found dead in his home.
All that messing about just so one company could find a blunt instrument to use on another.
Looks like publishers and authors didn't read the contracts that Amazon and B&N sign. The authors gave the rights to electronically distribute their books and even "lend" it from one person to another. Along comes LendInk to help people to find people willing to lend/borrow book(s) with others. Nothing else; no piracy and the actual lend/borrow is conducted via Amazon or B&N.
Does anyone have a list of publishing companies and/or authors that bitched about LendInk? I'd like for my money to go somewhere else.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
I realized as I was typing a complaint letter that the only thing I have to say to them is 'FUCK YOU' over and over. I thought to myself, "Well, that's really not going to help", and then cancelled it. Do you (or does anyone) have any kind of form that we can send to MediaLayer that isn't quite as insulting as I want to be to them? I can't write the letter myself, because it would come out too offensive.
I've got one detail wrong - it turns out that even though the rights changed hands many times the copyright persisted until some years after the original composers death, even though the original composer had signed away the rights 54 years earlier. It's an insane mess and a huge waste of time for something that really shouldn't be taken so seriously.
Find the authors involved (people like british children's author Nick Mackie), and find their books on Amazon, and leave bad reviews stating that you shouldn't expose your children (or yourself) to the works of bad people. I vote we include Debbie Bennett in this little campaign, by virtue of the golden rule. Whine first, ask questions later. Maybe tomorrow we can apologize for being ignorant jerks, like she has, and that will make it all better.
1) Start a Kickstarter campaign. Raise a crapload of money to fight the trolls. (I'd gladly donate)
2) Hire a good lawyer.
3) Fight the trolls (and your ISP).
4) Expose the trolls (Groklaw style) as a reward for those who donated to the Kickstarter campaign, as a call for a boycott, and as a warning to would be trolls.
For a motivation and inspiration watch this: http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_curtis_how_i_beat_a_patent_troll.html
Additional benefits include popularizing Lendlnk, changing the world for the better, and that smug feeling you get right after you kick the bully's ass.
Nothing helps an author get sales like good reviews, word of mouth, etc. If the authors want such finite control over who can and cannot read there books, and what people can and cannot say, we must simply ask permission. If one person does it, they will think that person is sick. If ten people do it, they will believe those ten are insane. However, when enough people do it, and the author is no longer able able to communicate with their publishers, editors and lawyers, because they cannot even access their e-mail, they may begin to realize that their ignorance of the situation is what has crippled them, not the actions of these few people. Picking a fight with their readers is the easiest way for them to find themselves out of a job. Then they can go back to having someone else tell them what they can and cannot do, and when they can and cannot do it.; which is something that they have worked very hard to not have to do. Then they will see that the freedoms that they wish to restrict for their readers will lead to a restriction in freedoms for themselves. We will mourn their loss, and as Luddites, they will pass into history only their failures; their dreams forever removed from the common memory. Others, who can understand and appreciate the subtle differences of today's world, will pick up those readers and gift them with many wonderful new feelings and ideas; visions of a more open world.
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
And following that logic (whether for biblical reasons or otherwise).
I don't have a problem judging people on certain criteria. However, I would expect them to judge me (and generally judge myself) by the same criteria.
Basically it follows along the whole "practice what you preach" line of thinking.
It's the hypocrites that are the problem. Those that believe themselves better than others and thus act worse. Religion does sometimes attract those types, as some people seem to believe that going to church automatically makes them a "better person" despite their poor behaviour: gossip, shunning of others, discrimination, abuse, etc.
However, as I've also often seem religious types go out of the way to help their fellows, it's not a set rule by any measure. Many of these people do follow the "do as you'd have done unto you" rule.
As with anything, the vocal combative types do tend to be more visible though.
If the people who want to use the service are - as part of their membership - required to defend the service, you have an ad-hoc army of letter responders (making the ISP happy).
I'll be honest, as an avid reader this is why I choose to avoid self published/e-published authors. I haven't seen a single once who isn't a whiny baby about people being mean to them, even if they really aren't. No wonder most of them are authors, as I can't help but wonder if they even possess the social skills to hold down a workaday job for more than six months. Do they even realize that some people might borrow their books, like them, and then go on to buy them for themselves to keep? I've done that many a time for books I've borred from the library.
Face it - producing something that can be considered intellectual, rather than tangible, property maintains the inherent risk that you work will be borrowed from someone else instead of outright purchased. It's not lost sales, it's just life.
As for the authors, well, stop whining, get yourself a paperback deal with Tor, and then I might read your stuff.
The publishers have recently collectively sued - twice! - libraries and such to shut down the practice of lending books, I shit you not. Not little tries, but HUGE attempts. What sickens me is that ebooks, instead of setting books free for all, is becoming a method of stopping centuries of reading books for free. And not only that, but they are burying any book that can't be show to be copyright free - millions of paper books will disappear when the libraries are finally closed down. Google and Microsoft almost saved them all - but it seems that the idiots will win. And history loses. REAL history - the words will disappear.
Yet still they flourish, and their predecessors flourished centuries before them.
No one guaranteed that history will stop for you because you've always made a living doing what you like to do. Tell that to the steelworkers, auto factory workers, and all the other people who were told to go work for Wal-Mart. No one sued for them. And they are the country.
To stop history, we need to monitor everyone's communications and make sure they don't read what they are not supposed to read. A total eyeball control police state. And now we have one.
Congratulations, "content creators". You've stuck a meter on everyone's eyeballs. No fascist state has ever dreamed of accomplishing what you have done. We used to mock the Soviets because all copiers had to be registered with the State to make sure unapproved materials weren't being reproduced. And here we are. And here we will live. And it's all because of you. Winners all.
Don't worry, this is only the penalty for the fools that actually pay for crippled content. Ebooks are much easier to crack than it is to scan and OCR paper books, and the resulting files are small. Distribution via torrent/usenet/sneakernet is efficient. I now carry a library on my phone.
Ah yes: the American dream of living off the work of others, creating nothing original, and making millions in the process. Why, isn't that what the American dream is *really* all about?
What was created in this instance is a useful service. A perfectly legal one at that.
By your own argument, a person who buys anything and then resells it for a higher price has also "created nothing original" - Amazon would be a perfect example of that.
Crosspost from HN by me :
I tried my best to defend this site. I was in the thick of it with many of the authors that frankly were quite simply, technically challenged as to how the site would work.
I was in the accusation threads on Kindleboards ..
You can see a lot of the back and forth there. It was really spiraling out of control. So much so, it was ripe for disruption (it likely still is) as many of the authors were (and are) looking for methods to have essentially DMCA takedown notices on cruise control.
(seriously, there seems to be a big market for this amongst the indie authors that don't have a handle on some of the more technical and copyright issues at hand. ps. if anyone wants to know more or talk through ideas, reach out.)
Anyway, I put forth quite a bit about how the whole Amazon associate world works (in plain terms) and how other sites, that have been around much longer and were MUCH bigger (no offense LendInk) such as lendle.me (which if memory serves had their site name challenged because they got on the amazon radar back in the day).
I dunno.. I was pretty amazed to see how quickly it all unfolded and how others jumped on board without a full understanding of how the site functions worked.
Sorry to hear about the whole situation. I have a site in the same space (but not lending) and its unfortunate to see the door closed on what could be a very good (and profitable) promotional engine for both the site and the book authors.
EDIT : a bit more of the backstory
I can add something valuable from being a part of the thread. A big problem for some of the early authors was that their books were NOT available to be lent (as per author -- I didn't verify).
ASSUMING this was accurate of some of the initial outraged authors and not the "hey get my book down" others that came along in time, I put forth the idea in multiple threads that perhaps the devs of the site got too much data in a sweep via the API.
In other words, they didn't bother to get books that were available to be loaned. And, did just a big sweep across the Amazon API looking for any and all Kindle books.
Somewhat makes sense -- the more books, the more opportunity for affiliate tag clicks. And, it probably errors out (or did) saying this book is not eligible. I believe an author even confirmed this early on.
It was this simple oversight that REALLY added the fuel to the fire.
Hope that gives some additional insight to those that weren't part of the madness.
Enjoy! :)
I thought about warning you guys about that. Amazon does remove reviews that they think are not actual reviews of the books, but "attacks" on the author if the author complains.
I don't know how to get around that while alerting shoppers about the character of the authors. Especially now, since these authors are probably on guard for it.