Whenever I see a title “Please Don’t Buy This …” I pretty much expect just the opposite: the author would use the tricky title to promote his product. Not Seth Godin. When he says Please don’t buy this book, he really means it.
He wrote the book in 2005, always meant it to remain a downloadable freebie, did not authorize it to be published, although did not explicitly preclude it, due to the particular Creative Commons licence he picked.
That brings me to answering my own question: the book is probably not “pirated” in the strict sense: Seth Godin is clearly indicated as the author – yet, as Seth says, “there’s no doubt in my mind that marketing a book for money with my name on it is not kosher.” So if not pirated, perhaps hijacked?
A little digging into the publisher’s background brings us to interesting discoveries: is there a (decent) publisher in the 21st century without a website? www.bnpublishing.com resolves to this eBay store, where, not surprisingly we’ll find Seth Godin’s book for $5 more than the Amazon price.
The only other non-commercial reference to Bnpublishing I’ve found is yet-another story of shady business: apparently they’ve taken a bunch of audio files from a public domain project and are reselling it on Amazon, again, without the author’s permission or even knowledge. Note: the author calls these *stolen* files – again, I’m not competent to judge if it’s theft from a legal point of view, but to quote Seth, it’s certainly “not kosher.”
What do you think? Is Bnpublishing a bunch of shady freeloaders or is what they do simply smart business? (of course it would be nice if Seth’s blog allowed comments for this conversation…)
Related posts:
- Everyone’s An Expert (Just Not On Copyright Law)
- The Letter and Intent of Creative Commons Licensing
- Capitalizing on Creative Commons – relaying a warning from Seth Godin
- When Creative Commons Licensing Gets Taken For Granted
- Everyones An Expert Some Are Thieves
- Don’t buy this book
Tags: seth godin, copyright, trademark, bnpublishing, boook piracy, amazon, ebay, shady business
Hi Zoli,
No, Amazon is not selling pirated books. They are selling copies of the book authorized by Seth himself. Seth had been generous enough to license his book under one of the Creative Commons licenses that explicitly allows such printing. I feel he is now going against the intent of that license by discrediting the printed book.
Whether they are shady/ pirates or what not is irrelevant, what they are doing is totally legal under the terms of the license Seth published the book under.
As for the idiots with the public domain recordings, what did they expect? You can’t “steel” as they claim, from the public domain, the very nature of public domain is that it’s free for any one to do with as they please.
To both Seth and the recording people: you’ve got no one but to blame but yourself. There’s a simple answer: it’s called copyright, try using that next time instead of some hippy crap license from creative commons.
What about pirated CDs and DVDs.
I have gotten several with not the right jacket cover or the right jacket cover but no info or original print on the CDs and DVDs itself. If stealing from artists as I suspect. Amazon needs to get sued and I have warned them by phone today on this matter.