[Foundation-l] Alphascript Publishing scam

Wed Oct 14 15:13:17 UTC 2009

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)