Print-On-Demand Publisher VDM Infects Amazon 190
erich666 writes "In recent months a flood of so-called books have been appearing in Amazon's catalog. VDM Publishing's imprints Alphascript and Betascript Publishing have listed over 57,000 titles, adding at least 10,000 in the previous month alone. These books are simply collections of linked Wikipedia articles put into paperback form, at a cost of 40 cents a page or more. These books seem to be computer-generated, which explains the peculiar titles noted such as 'Vreni Schneider: Annemarie Moser-Pröll, FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, Winter Olympic Games, Slalom Skiing, Giant Slalom Skiing, Half Man Half Biscuit.' Such titles do have the marketing effect of turning up in many different searches. There is debate on Wikipedia about whether their 'VDM Publishing' page should contain the words 'fraud' or 'scam.' VDM Publishing's practice of reselling Wikipedia articles appears to be legal, but is ethically questionable. Amazon customers have begun to post 1-star reviews and complain. Amazon's response to date has been, 'As a retailer, our goal is to provide customers with the broadest selection possible so they can find, discover, and buy any item they might be seeking.' The words 'and pay us' were left out. Amazon carries, as a Googled guess, 2 million different book titles, so VDM Publishing is currently 1/35th of their catalog, and rapidly growing."
Read the license? (Score:5, Informative)
It's all about the license
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_Attribution-ShareAlike_3.0_Unported_License [wikipedia.org]
Creative Commons Deed
This is a human-readable summary of the full license below.
You are free:
- to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and
- to Remix—to adapt the work
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution—You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)
- Share Alike—If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.
With the understanding that:
- Waiver—Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Other Rights—In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
-- your fair dealing or fair use rights;
-- the author's moral rights; and
-- rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights.
- Notice—For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do that is with a link to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ [creativecommons.org]
As it is, they fit all of these. They attribute the original writers in their books. They are fully legit.
If you make content under Creative Commons or other licenses that allow paid redistribution, you also agree for someone else making money out of it in a suitable way. That is the real freedom and the basis of Creative Commons ShareAlike license - everyone is free to use it as they please, as long as the original author is attributed. If you don't like that, then don't write to a site that releases your content under that license. Simple as that.
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Attribution—You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.)
Which is actually somewhat hard to do for wiki articles. You really need to go through the history pretty carefully to find not only the authors who contributed directly but also the authors whose work was copied and pasted around with only a vauge reference to the source in the edit history to put together a proper atribution for a
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Yes, this makes the original Wikipedia authors liable for copyright infringement. This is a point I've made on several other public wikis where sometimes contributors are fast and loose with culling copyrighted content. Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects even have a "test" they apply which is simply called the "Google test". If a suspect piece of prose is considered to have been lifted from another source (there are various ways to suspect this), simply post about 10-15 words into Google and check if
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The Wikimedia Foundation is absolved of any liability as they function more as an internet service provider with thee associated protections that come with it. The WMF does have DMCA take-down procedures that have and are being used when copyright violations are formally noticed as well
Wikipedia may be able to avoid liability through the DMCA safe harbour but I doubt reusers would have that protection. Especially in the case of reusers that are compiling then selling copies of subsets of the wiki.
Also often
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I've considered an algorithm that would try to compare edit changes from one version to the next and try to at least attribute who wrote literally each and every word in a Wikipedia article, although you are correct that there are some "soft mergers" that simply do a copy/paste from one article to the next without really giving proper attribution.
Attribution of Wikipedia articles is something that is a big deal in a legal sense, and for precisely the kinds of problems you are noting here that can cause some
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more about the questionable nature of their publishing than their use of Wikipedia content.
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more about the questionable nature of their publishing than their use of Wikipedia content.
It made me smile to see someone appreciate a very simple matter without feeling a need to delve into copyright law or otherwise complicate it. I hope this is modded up.
VDM is trying to charge money for a static copy of frequently-updated information that is trivial to obtain for free. They seem to be counting on Thomas Tusser's observation that "a fool and his money are soon parted." As far as I know, no one is accusing them of using force or fraud so anyone who does business with them is acting voluntarily. For that reason, I have no moral objection to what they are doing, though I believe it deserves to fail because it lacks merit.
VDM are Spammers (Score:2, Insightful)
This is simply book spam, a new form we're not used to seeing. The conditions are all there: it's randomly generated nonsense blasted to as many people as possible with the intent of getting money from them. Ergo, it's spam.
Although they're certainly free to use Wikipedia content, the problem people have with them is that they're spammers. Nobody likes spammers. We're not against them because of how they generate their messages from a mish-mash of other texts, we're against them because they're spammin
Re:VDM are Spammers (Score:5, Insightful)
This is simply book spam, a new form we're not used to seeing. The conditions are all there: it's randomly generated nonsense blasted to as many people as possible with the intent of getting money from them. Ergo, it's spam.
Although they're certainly free to use Wikipedia content, the problem people have with them is that they're spammers. Nobody likes spammers. We're not against them because of how they generate their messages from a mish-mash of other texts, we're against them because they're spamming us and making it hard for real people to communicate.
This is part of what I meant when I said I believe it deserves to fail because it's without merit. I don't view it as morally wrong but I don't believe it should be rewarded either. The best way to discourage this behavior is for VDM to waste their time and money on it. If that happens, others who might be inclined to do the same thing will take notice that it has been tried and has failed.
I agree that it's a nuisance but I'm not certain it's spam. I am not receiving unsolicited e-mails or cold-calls to my phone about this. Unlike my personal inbox or my personal telephone, Amazon is a place of business. I am not going to see any of VDM's products unless I go to such a place of business and search for books. If I go to say, Wal-mart and see advertisements for products Wal-mart carries, those ads might or might not be annoying and might or might not worsen my shopping experience, but I would not call them spam. If all spam worked this way, we would not have a situation where over 90% of SMTP traffic is due to spammers.
Though I believe they are shoddy, these are legitimate products that are being sold at a legitimate store. Amazon and other booksellers offer these books because they have voluntarily made agreements with VDM, not because they need to use more sophisticated captchas. I think your real issue is with Amazon and other online businesses that are providing VDM a forum. If it annoys enough of their customers, they will probably cease.
For what it's worth, I don't like this company or its practices any more than you do. I just think "spam" is a strong word, and should be, but becomes weakened by using it where it doesn't really apply. It's sort of like what has happened to words like "lady" or "gentleman".
Re:VDM are Spammers (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe you haven't seen it yet, but I've received a number of e-mails from Amazon announcing "new books" from these guys with titles referring to topics that I'm interested in. Yes, I can opt-out of such e-mails from Amazon but automatic notification of new books in my field is a useful service to me, and it's led directly to Amazon getting sales out of me because they provide it.
So yes, it does lead to spam of a form, and I think Amazon needs to handle this very carefully.
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Just because you aren't interested in the books you think it's spam? Who opted in to receive the emails from Amazon? You?
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Just because you aren't interested in the books you think it's spam? Who opted in to receive the emails from Amazon? You?
Just because you aren't interested in Viagra you think it's spam? Who opted to have an email account? You?
These aren't a problem if they are a niche offering, but if every search I make on Amazon winds up containing 10 or 20 of these, then that's interfering with Amazon's business and they're going to have to deal with it somehow.
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Yep. I consider them the digital equivalent of selling bottled water. You know, that stuff that is generally the same stuff that comes out of municipal faucets for pennies.
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Have you ever considered that public water in some areas just tastes bad?
Yes, it does in some places. I have lived in Brussels where tap water was terrible, and I used to buy bottled water there.
Where I live now, the tap water is excellent, yet supermarkets have huge displays of bottled water (some even imported), so I guess many suckers actually do buy it, even though it probably doesn't taste as good as the tap water.
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I can say that Amazon (and Barnes and Noble, and whoever else is carrying this content) isn't going to de-list them until they get a massive PR backlash. They're indirectly making money off of this as much as VDM is.
You could try to get your local consumer advocate news program to cover it, perhaps... that might force Amazon into taking some kind of action.
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VDM is trying to charge money for a static copy of frequently-updated information that is trivial to obtain for free.
But let's be clear: you're not saying that the basis for whether you pay for something is whether it's trivial to obtain free or not, correct? That's just might makes right.
I hope this is trolling.
"Might makes right" is about using force of some kind. Wikipedia's contributers are writing and editing articles voluntarily. Wikipedia has chosen to use a Creative Commons license voluntarily. They have chosen to publish their articles on wikipedia.org where anyone can read them for free, voluntarily. If I go to that site and enjoy the free articles, which are something they have worked hard to allow anyone to do, I also am doing that voluntarily. None of these activities in
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I'm pretty sure no one's buying this stuff. Too expensive, nonsense titles. Maybe only some libraries will grab them. What's the motivation here?
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Throw enough shit at a wall and eventually some of it will stick...
At $45-60 per book, the risk:profit ratio is pretty favorable here. Print-on-demand makes it very lucrative since there's no cash up front to start the business, and you can contract out/automate all the printing. Hell, I bet most of those "books" aren't even written/generated; they'll just crunch the data to print if/when someone actually buys one of the "books".
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't like that, then don't write to a site that releases your content under that license. Simple as that.
You're confused about where the complaint is originating from. Honestly I'd be flattered to buy my words from Amazon.com in a printed format. I've never been published nor produced anything worth publishing. Sure I might be annoyed money went to a shady company but "Look, ma, it's me!"
The complaints are coming from the people buying this tripe--and rightfully so. You used to be able to acquire a book and know that since it was a book the author(s) had done their homework. It was hard for idiots to get publishing deals because the publishers would actually read their work. Sure, you'd have small publishing houses printing "work" on things like free energy or whatever might sell to a niche market. But you'd never have a publisher capable of VDM's feat because of the print-on-demand requirement.
So now we're in this transition period where a few folks know everything about Multigrid GPUs and notice a new book has come on sale [amazon.com] and they must have it to complete their library. Well, it's pure unadulterated shit. But VDM Verlag gets that $60 on a couple sales for college libraries or well paid GPU engineers. And it takes a while for word to get out that VDM is what it is. VDM is capitalizing off of this transition period of consumer trust in books to consumer awareness about print-on-demand. VDM is making a boatload of money but I can't think of a good way to fix the system and, like you said, there's nothing technically illegal about their strategy.
Sadly instead of empowering books and their content, the advent of print-on-demand will cause people to doubt the once rigid standards books held. And rightfully so with entrepreneurs like VDM waltzing around. Don't think this won't spread or VDM won't set up fronts to publish under to avoid their known muckraked name.
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
> You used to be able to acquire a book and know that since it was a book the
> author(s) had done their homework.
Not in the nearly sixty years that I have been reading books.
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Porno mags don't count.
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You used to be able to acquire a book and know that since it was a book the author(s) had done their homework.
I used to be forced to buy textbooks and know that I was being screwed by my university and the textbook publishers simultaneously. In one year I had to get three different calculus textbooks that basically all had the same contents. Even in middle school I'd find inaccuracies in the textbooks.
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It's too bad that we don't have a better means of evaluating a persons' knowledge and capabilities. Stuffing people in a room for 4 years and expecting them to be the next generation of innovators is simply not going to work.
And whoever modded you off-topic needs to look at the topic in the larger context.
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love for this to happen. It's about damned time the average person became more savvy and learned that skepticism and the ability to distinguish good information from bad are extremely healthy traits. These things are not burdens that one should resent having to perform; they are privileges. For that matter, it's about time it was widely understood and appreciated that no one has your best interests at heart quite like you do. Over-reliance on someone else to be your "gatekeeper" is for people who need to be spoon-fed and have their information interpreted for them. All of the damage VDM could possibly do to anyone would be a very small price to pay for this. I do not exaggerate in the slightest when I say that if critical thinking became a common skill, it would radically change our society for the better.
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So, what you are saying is that we should all buy the books VDM publishes, and judge for ourselves?
Won't that reward them, even when we find their products to be lacking?
So, doesn't this become an argument about replacing one reputation system (publishers) with another, or perhaps with none except self-evaluation?
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If this spam really starts turning up in every Amazon search, I'd imagine a lot more people will be complaining, and eventually looking for alternatives. Someone at Amazon has let greed got to their heads, and is chasing their golden egg laying goose with an axe on hand and a mad glint in the eye.
Re:Read the license? (Score:4, Funny)
"It was the sound of hundreds of millions of Christians grinding their teeth (and their axes) ..."
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I'd replace "Christians" with "strict constitutionalists". But then it'd be referring to the same people 99% of the time. I reckon they have double sided placards to save time between their teabagging parties - "socialest healthcare - know way" on one side and "Fetuse's for Jebuses" on the other. If you watch carefully there's always one or two at the back who forget to flip 'em around.
Re:Read the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, you're right, they're a-OK from a legal point of view, but they still are a bunch of douchebags. If nothing else, because they flood the search indexes of Amazon and Google with useless crap that matches almost anything and makes it harder to find relevant publications. This benefits absolutely no one. Actually, I don't see how it could benefit even them and Amazon, as I can't imagine anyone buying this crap for any purpose, other than maybe some extravagant and expensive kind of toilet paper.
Additionally, this doesn't seem to have anything to do with the spirit and purpose of Wikipedia, which is not as well-defined and, arguably, as important (well, from a legal point of view, it's not important at all) as the license, but it is there nontheless. People who create content and release it under permissive licenses still have their right to say that they don't appreciate some uses of their work, even though they allow it. Of course, any wise author will admit that it's just the price of making Free things, but even wise people need to rant and gripe sometimes.
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This was actually discussed at length on foundation-l. Basically, as long as they keep to the licence, there isn't much the Wikimedia Foundation or even the individual contributors can do to stop them. That they don't mention Wikipedia is actually in their favour because they then aren't abusing the trademark. Etc., etc.
Unfortunately, freedom to reuse for any purpose includes freedom to cut'n'paste into spam.
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Reading material on the toilet paper itself. Brilliant!
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Sorry to disappoint you but it's only one article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper [wikipedia.org]
I'll sell you a print version if you really want it.
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In addition, they apparently do not cite the authors. Another violation.
It's Not Just Amazon (Score:5, Insightful)
Now before you fall all over yourself to point in horror at the infected zombie Abe Books lumbering your way, lets engage in a simple mental exercise. We hate expensive books. Online retailers know this and they cater to us by giving us near wholesale prices. Good. Now, they shave a little bit off but in their strive to be number one, they rely on large volumes of sales with razor thin profits on each sale. This means that its in the company's (and your) best interest for them to automate book sales for publishers and remove the human element. But also remove the overhead cost that comes with it. And maybe even encourage several thousand books so their marketplace looks vibrant and full of sellers selling anything imaginable.
Enter VDM Verlag. All too happy to profit off of the above situation. They have freely available material to publish and they have end users ready to pay.
I'm not an expert in any of this but my gut tells me that this is what is going on. Go to Borders and note their 4 VDM "books" [borders.com]. Now, if the lack of titles was a matter of principle and ethics, there would be zero titles. If they had a difficult to use process to register book sales with them then you would have few books (likely case) and if you were streamlined like Amazon, Abe Books or Blackwell then you hit the hilarious numbers. Everybody hates the big guy but in this case the One-Click-Demon is not really the culprit nor are they the lone retailer.
There's really no way to fix this except consumer awareness. Be aware that your paying an exorbitant fee for something that is just a few keystrokes away and a bit of link clicking.
Can someone help me out with an example of how they came to an author for each particular "book"? I'm having a hard time tracing these people. Some of them appear to be legit authors published through other publishers like (random example) Michael Sage [amazon.com]. Other people appear to
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VDM Publishing itself specializes in print of demand of various people's theses [blogspot.com]. Something like a vanity press, but as a bonus the authors don't have to pay anything, and VDM takes 80% of the earnings. These are sometimes weak offerings, and often available to download for free [realtimerendering.com], but the practice itself is nothing out of the ordinary. So VDM Publishing's authors really are authors, but of theses and similar.
Alphascript and Betascript Publishing (and Fastbooks, in German) are the Wikipedia-aggregation publish
Re:It's Not Just Amazon (Score:5, Interesting)
What about if some people just want to get a paper version of those?
Those what? Wikipedia articles? Someone is [labnol.org] but it's only the top 400 articles I think. Anyway, once you print wikipedia it's not wikipedia anymore. Wikis are living documents. It's some sort of Snapshot of a Wiki.
I'm not sure if Wikipedia currently offers such, but if I wanted to get encyclopedia on my bookshelf I would want it to be Wikipedia and all of its contents.
Get a printer and get ready to spend lots of money. There are resources out there to help you format wikipedia. But seriously if you want Wikipedia on your bookshelf, burn a snapshot cd [download.chip.eu] (newest ones are torrented) of the HTML and put that in a jewel case and put that on your bookshelf and update it yearly ... for free. Yes, you can't just flip pages but you have it "on your shelf." Although it's cheating, that's your best bet.
I would buy a book that is based on for example all of the gaming articles on Wikipedia. Maybe it's not up to date, but so ain't any other encyclopedia, and Wikipedia has a lot of content that isn't found on others.
What follows is my opinion. Books tend to fail when they set grandiose objectives. "All of gaming" is setting up an author to fail. Seriously. Hard. Embarrassingly so. That's why we get books limited to dates and ranges and specialties. It's possible. Sometimes you get great books written by groups like the gang of four and they complement each other. Sometimes you get complete trash that is badly titled and that's what's happening in this article.
My advice is not to look for one be-all-end-all book on gaming but instead to seek out the gems that cover your most interested specialties and then augment them with online works. Yes, you have to do work. Like a lot of things there's no silver bullet for something so large. I'm a nerd, such research is fun.
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You do realize that Wikipedia has at least a page on pretty much every game ever published, plus every publisher, [wikipedia.org] development house [wikipedia.org], and some individual developers [wikipedia.org]. Here's a partial list of puzzle games [wikipedia.org] on wikipedia, linking to 175 separate multi-page articles on puzzle games alone, and it's not exhaustive. Wikipedia actually has a list of Video Game Lists [wikipedia.org], with 67 similar articles. Assuming similar numbers of articles, that's already 11,725 multi-page documents to print. Or you could jump right to the
welcome to the world of UGC (Score:2, Insightful)
what exactly is Amazon supposed to do here? unless it's something clearly illegal like kiddie porn their model is not to take sides and let people sell their content
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If there's a flood of garbage content like this on their website, Amazon suffers from customer perceptions of reduced quality, harming the rest of their (potentially more-profitable) business.
On a vaguely-related note, the Steam "New Games" list would be a lot more interesting if every other entry weren't another $20 RailWorks add-on.
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> what exactly is Amazon supposed to do here?
They could charge $1 up front for each title listed.
But it's their problem, not ours.
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hat exactly is Amazon supposed to do here? unless it's something clearly illegal like kiddie porn their model is not to take sides and let people sell their content
What the fuck are you talking about? Very recently, Amazon has delisted the entire offerings (both print and electronic) of a major publisher because they disagreed with their pricing on Kindle ebook titles. Amazon has also threatened to delist the entire catalog of other publishers who disagree with their Kindle pricing.
Given the above behavior, what is to stop Amazon from delisting all VDM publications? It's not like VDM is even close to being in the league of the publishers that have already been threat
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and I suppose they should put warnings on all of their movies that they are recycled Shakespearean plays?
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VDM? (Score:3, Funny)
Made me think of venereal disease...
I'm so tempted... (Score:3, Interesting)
The obvious question (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Half man half biscuit (Score:2)
I can assure you that half man half biscuit are not computer generated. Do some research!
Indeed (Score:2)
May I suggest this book [amazon.com] as a starting point?
Who would buy one of those books? (Score:2)
Seriously. I'm asking for reals. Anyone with a room-temperature IQ (or higher) would look at those listings and say, "What the Hell is this crap?"
Generally, when I purchase something online, I either know exactly what I want or I base my purchasing decision on the description and reviews. These titles have absolutely nothing that would lead me to believe they would be useful or even interesting. A few random facts and that's it. There's nothing in those descriptions that would induce a rational, intell
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a room-temperature IQ (or higher)
Fahrenheit or celsius?
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why, is he stewpid?
FUHHHREEEEEDOOOM OFFFF SPEEEEEAAAACH!!!111 (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of all possible problems or lack of ones with licensing, it is obvious that the purpose of this "publishing" is fraudulent, as publisher relies on customers believing that those "books" are not random compilation of Wikipedia articles.
However since this publisher apparently "infected" all online book stores, Amazon will do nothing, as it doesn't make Amazon any less attractive for the customers than its equally shitted-up competitors. The only solution is to clarify the law that would make this kind of fraud trump publisher's "freedom of speech", just like many other kinds of fraud should.
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It's possible it does already violate the law, since misrepresenting a product is already not covered by the First Amendment. One problem is that the only people who could complain are those who were actually misled: customers who genuinely thought the book was legit from the description, and only after purchasing it found it to be auto-generated crap. But they most likely can just return the book, so don't have a very strong complaint either.
Really the main people harmed are customers who never get misled
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It is costing Amazon money by consuming their resources and distracting customers who may give up and go away rather than buying something. However, if Amazon is willing to tolerate it, that's their business.
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Size of Amazon's Book Catalog (Score:3, Interesting)
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I wonder how many of those are "* For Dummy" titles.
Might I recommend to those buying these compilation books that instead, they start with this For Dummies [amazon.com] book?
New money-making scheme (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Vandalize the wikipedia article about yourself
2) Order the print-on-demand book
3) Sue VDM for libel
4? Profit!
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While VDM's strategy is "interesting," they are going to have some problems making this work. If they steer clear of copyright infringement, they are fine.
However, if they are automating the production of these books without checking for copyrighted material, Company A will not be happy when they find their copyrighted material in there. Not to mention that being a "legitimate" business puts a massive litigation target on their back. Since the material is print there is no more DMCA slap on the wrist.
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! (Score:2)
Look for anything on Amazon by one or more of Lambert M. Surhone, Miriam T. Timpledon, and Susan F. Marseken
"Showing 1 - 12 of 18,308 Results" for just Surhone alone
For instance
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Battlecrab-Spacecraft-Humanoid-Technomage/dp/6130461658 [amazon.com]
A rip off of a Wikipedia page on Babylon 5, or
http://www.amazon.com/Valgrind-Programming-Debugger-Performance-Debugging/dp/613052904X [amazon.com]
Well could be funny as a novelty (Score:2)
For the Babylon 5 fan or something, if it's nicely printed.
Not really (Score:2)
SHADOW VESSELS ARE NEVER REFERRED TO AS CRABS!!
Shadow "spider" nightmare but never in any of the material from any source connected to B5 as Crabs
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This might actually be a pretty good development. (Score:2)
I really hope they succeed. When a PUBLISHER can make money by publishing stuff that is actually free to get from somewhere else, that would pretty much contradict the preaching of the MPAA/RIAA that publishers can only make money when they put heavy DRM on their stuff and lock it down as much as possible.
And it *might* actually be a sensible service to offer. Putting together articles / web pages you need for something, and order a reasonably priced hardcopy of them might actually wind up up being cheaper
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These books are not likely to sell all that well on account of their computer-generated nature. People will buy them expecting one thing (on an impulse buy), and get something else.
On the other hand, if a publisher were to undertake the same thing this company is BUT have their books be topical while being accurately targeted...
For instance, you could make a selection of books such as:
* The Thralls of Greece - Greece, Past and Present
* Castles of the World
* Indigenous Cultures of The World
* Common Diseases
*
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Not really. This kind of stuff is categorized on wikipedia making it pretty easy to find related articles, especially for well known topics like castles or diseases. If it was a mass amount of articles use something like mechanical turk (from amazon) to cheaply and quickly whittle it down.
Its an infestation (Score:2)
computer generated meshes of articles are as good as spam. if amazon doesnt take necessary precautions, more than half of their index of books will be comprised of VDM shit soon.
Circle jerk (Score:5, Interesting)
Does this mean Wikipedia articles can now cite themselves in book form as authoritative sources? Super-holy-shit-vicious-circle Batman!
It has already happened (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia citing a newspaper that was citing wikipedia has already happened, and been discussed on /.
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/10/2211220 [slashdot.org]
Ha Ha Ha Ha (Score:2)
When content is available for free, someone will take it and make money with it.
Here we have a bunch of text often with inaccuracies, distortions and lies. But it is a lot of text. That should be worth something, right? So we have a company taking that because it is free to take and making money from it.
This should be the first guidepost for those that would like to remove copyright protection from things. They will be picked up by companies like this and sold. So if your music is free to download and
French meaning... (Score:2, Funny)
If you edit Wikipedia, you agreed to this. (Score:3, Informative)
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Amazon can help here (Score:2, Informative)
They can provide a checkbox, off by default, that says "include low-selling titles." For logged-in users they can provide user-specified thresholds of what "low selling" means.
I would recommend a default of something like "has sold more than 10,000 copies worldwide in any edition, at least 1,000 in the last year in any edition, and at least 100 copies in Amazon in any edition" -OR- "in the last 12 months, author has received advanced or earned royalties representing at least 10,000 copies and at least $5,0
VDM wanted to publish my Master's thesis! (Score:5, Informative)
A few months after I finished my master's degree I got contacted on Facebook by a VDM representative who wanted me to publish my thesis with them. I was incredulous -- what respectable publishing company contacts people on Facebook??
Upon Googling it turns out that VDM is a very shady vanity press. They employ people who go through university websites looking for things to publish (anything will do; there is no quality control). The author gets 5 free copies, and VDM puts the manuscript up on Amazon for hundreds of dollars. The author receives some percentage of sales, but only if they exceed some amount (a few hundred, IIRC), which they probably never will. Otherwise the author gets nothing.
See here [chronicle.com] for a long thread (complete with VDM sock puppets!) of other people's experience with VDM.
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As an author you receive one free copy, not five. The list price on my book is $73 on amazon, which is not cheap but it is not hundreds of dollars. Truely I will not receive any cash payment unless the book sells above some threshold, but hey - for me
Call it what it is: SPAM (Score:3, Insightful)
I have not had the misfortune of buying one of their books, but if I were Amazon or B&N, I would do something about this book equivalent of SPAM (something which costs NOTHING to produce that you can posts thousands of, with the proviso that you print it when someone shells out $60...).
The sad thing is, as long as you post enough of these on Amazon, you will make money. The scheme will multiply. I'm sure they'll fix it (perhaps require that they send a single printed & bound copy and have a human look over it for not being absolute drivel) -- because it sounds VERY annoying...
The solution: competitors (Score:3, Interesting)
Why Buy These Books? (Score:2)
There is one thing I don't understand, and that is how people get to the point where they actually buy one of these books. Sure, they may turn up in lots of searches, but wouldn't taking a single look at it be enough to determine it is a piece of drivel?
A glimpse of the future? (Score:2)
While I would probably call this particular example fraud, because their Amazon listings apparently do not explain the source of their material, the general principle of repackaging online "open-source" content in hardcover form is legitimate (if it satisfies the appropriate licenses). What intrigues me is the fact that these books are being automatically generated. As artificial intelligence gets better, we're going to start having computers which can generate music, poetry, and maybe even novels or movi
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Why on earth buy these articles when you can have them for free in the kindle's built in web browser?
Not all countries have Kindle with free web browsing, and not everybody even in supported countries can afford Kindle.
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Not all countries have Kindle with free web browsing, and not everybody even in supported countries can afford Kindle.
If they can't afford a Kindle, then how can they afford the outrageous prices of these VDM titles, plus shipping?
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Still, the VDM books are EXPENSIVE for what they offer. I wouldn't mind offering to reprint public domain works, but their books are way out of what a reasonable price range would be....
Compare to PediaPress (Score:2)
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I like my "linux in a nutshell" book, you insensitive clod!
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Re:Yes, let's ruin our credibility. (Score:4, Interesting)
For an analogy, my views on this are similar to my views on free speech. I may strongly dislike an opinion that you express, but that does not give me the right to attempt to censor you. Instead, the way to handle that is to use persuasion, or to challenge you with an example of what I believe is better speech. Likewise, I think this is a rather selfish use of Wikipedia's information, but I don't believe it should be prevented. It is clearly the intention of Wikipedia that such uses be allowed, and their freedom to make that decision is more important to me than my personal opinion of this particular use. If the "proponents" you mention don't understand this and are as petty as you suggest then they merely hinder themselves.
This discussion is actually an iteration of a general worldview. It's a shame that in many conversations about freedom, there is an such an undue emphasis on personal opinions. The unstated assumption is that they are more important than the concern for freedom. I can see that the root of this is a desire to control others, to have them do only the things of which you would approve. It's contagious and so prevalent that everyone has to interact with it in some way, either to acknowledge and reject it or to be conditioned to accept it as normal. Apparently the latter choice is more popular, as there are not many who would seriously defend (otherwise harmless) speech with which they strongly disagree. Most would either do nothing or try to silence the speaker.
I see that this is the norm. The environment created by such a norm makes it all too easy to overlook the significance of claims I never made. So I can't count it against you that it seems logical to you that I'd advocate stronger copyright controls, since that would amount to using the force of law to prevent something not because it's wrong, but because I dislike it. I'm hoping you can see that my position is not what you may have expected. Interpreted in that light, some of my statements should make more sense. If VDM stops doing this, I want it to be because they change their minds and agree with me that they can do better, not because someone made a law to stop them.
Incidentally, I don't like what VDM is doing because I believe they are charging a high price for a shoddy, low-quality product when the high-quality version is available for free. I would not use words like "exploitative" if I believed they were doing anything to actually earn that money. I consider this to ultimately be a matter that is between VDM and its customers. I am merely explaining why I won't be one of them.
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I can't be responsible for what headline the Slashdot editor chose to write. It was not my decision. What I can do is provide a counter-example if I think it's petty. What I can do is to decide not to allow a thing like that to prevent me from joining this discussion. Besides, it's not hard for me to understand why t
Interesting thoughts on openness (Score:2)
Kudos to you, Mr. Coward.
True openness shall sometimes lead to apparent "non-openness"
Seeking 'openness' for its own sake seems to me to be, ironically, just as close-minded.
It seems only logical that there's some room for both, especially if you're really looking at each individual product on its own merits.
If the independent/open model inherently produced better results like it supposedly does, than that will show itself.
(I find music label discussions to be an analogue or component of these issues, as my
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