This Is Annoying

[Shmid]

I was on a...site when I found out that this company called Books, LLC has been selling content from wikis on Amazon and Barnes & Noble without letting the users know about it. After some searching, I found this. Yah. It looks like these guys are publishing stories from the Epics forum. What do you think about that?

[Rarity]

Holy... That is like super illegal.Might need to call Lego about it, since Bionicle is copyrighted and stuff.

[Ghosthands]

Amazon should also be informed, so that this "Books LLC" can be blocked from selling through them.EDIT: Having read the excerpt, it appears to me that this is not the epics themselves, but rather a collection of Wikia articles on the characters involved in them.

Edited November 6, 2011 by Ghosthands

[electrodude]

huh, do the admins know?

[Phauxx Lightning]

What the-This is strange. You should definitely notify someone about this. Huh...

[Erebus]

Oh man, LEGO's gonna love this. :PThis must be some sort of mistake.

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Hmm... the first one is by "European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction".This is like a Twilight Zone episode.EDIT: Oh wait I was looking at the wrong thing. That wasn't very smart of me...

Edited November 9, 2011 by TheSkeletonMan939

[CroMagnonMan]

Thanks to this I now know about a second meaning of BZP. Now "BZPower" is forever tainted to me... tainted with HILARITY.Haha, I don't even know what to say about this. Are people actually paying for these books? If they are, I fear for their intelligence.~QMark

[Toa of Nerds]

I'm not familiar with copyright laws regarding stuff you post on the internet, but I might do some research. Still, it seems really strange that Amazon would bundle together a bunch of fan-fiction about a dead toy line and try to sell it. Who would buy it other than people on BZPower who can just look it up for free?EDIT: I did some quick research, and came up with a couple of links:http://mason.gmu.edu/~montecin/copyright-internet.htm http://www.benedict.com/digital/Internet/Usenet.aspxBasically, anything that you post that is original is copyrighted. I cannot go and copy off somebody's epic here and re-post it on another site unless I have the writer's permission to do so. I can link to the epic from that other website, but I cannot reproduce that content. If this book is really full of BZPower epics, then it violates copyright law. -don't touch my pocket protector

Edited November 6, 2011 by Toa of Nerds

[Dralcax]

Why would anybody buy that when they can look it up on BZP for free?

Edited November 6, 2011 by Makuta Dralcax

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Why would anybody buy that when they can look it up on BZP for free?

Why would anybody buy it period?

[vulpelibrorum]

I've looked at the Books LLC website, and it seems from the FAQ that it is mainly designed for people to preorder/ download PDFs of out of print books and speedly find books to then buy on Amazon or from another bookseller. They also directly sell printed copies of Wikipedia articals to libraries and for "people who prefer to read a paperback than a computer screen." However, I'd say that what this company is doing is tecnicaly legal, since wikipidia is a free information source, but it gets into deeper publishing copyright laws. Definitly a rather shady operation.

Edited November 6, 2011 by Leto

[fishers64]

I welcome the publicity. Bring it on! (it's not like I'm making much money off this anyway)

[Akuna Toa of Sonics]

They're readable for free in the Epics forum. Who would buy them?And yeah, the copyright law was violated. That's some heavy plagiarism.

Edited November 7, 2011 by Akuna Toa of Sonics

[Phovos]

If they don't have permission from the authors of either the epics or the wiki, they can't sell them.

[Padishah Mehmet II]

... Wat. That's just. Somebody should really, really, stop them. 20 bucks for epics, not too good ones at that...-Dovydas

[Bambi]

It's kind of cool that people are making all of your stories into books, though.

[Padishah Mehmet II]

It's kind of cool that people are making all of your stories into books, though.

And earning money that you don't get off of them.-Dovydas

[Taipu1]

It's kind of cool that people are making all of your stories into books, though.

And earning money that you don't get off of them.-Dovydas

Well said. I don't recognise any of the epics there as mine, and I doubt anyone would pick mine. I'd like to think mine are good and possibly worthy of publishing, unfortunately I never finish them, so it wouldn't be worth anyones while.

[Klak]

What the heck...? Does Lego know about this? Do the admins know? This is plagiarism. If I would want to publish my works, I would do it myself. Besides, YOU CAN READ THEM FOR FREE ON BZP! *slaps Book LLC* No! Bad book company! Bad!

[Padishah Mehmet II]

Plus, you can't sell fanwork by definition, it's encroachment on copyright laws in itself, even if you did make it.-Dovydas

[Gatanui]

I wonder how even buys this books. Or even more, why this strange company with a generic name and an unprofessional website produces them in the first place. If I were affected, I would definitely try to take legal action or at least contact them about it. The more affected people do so the better.~Gata.

[UltraHau]

Books, LLC will be hearing from my personal nuke supply shortly.On a more serious note, this is some serious copyright violation. Unless those authors explicitly permitted such sharing with a CC-0/CC-BY/CC-BY-SA license, copyright law explicitly states that once writing is published anywhere - including the Internet - it cannot be copied unless either permission is obtained from the author or the writing is under a license that allows such sharing, like those Creative Commons license I mentioned. Since it appears neither is the case, Books, LLC has committed copyright violation.Now, in the case of wikis, their content license normally permits such redistribution (take Wikipedia for example). But I don't think any authors here have bothered to look into licensing, so I doubt that applies to those epics being sold.

[Argentum]

Apparently, because its under creative commons on wikia (is it CC-BY-SA or something like that) nothing can be done about it, if they give the proper credit. The only thing that can be done is if the proper credit is not given, then Wikia can file a lawsuit to make them give it. They have to name the author.And if you think they're making money off of your work that you supply for free, never fear! Wikia do exactly the same thing, and take a profit from your work. So in all honesty, it makes no difference to me. My life continues, possibly even better than usual now that I'm a published author. :DAlso, it's not being ripped from BZPower, it's being ripped from wikia. So don't get your hopes up about a BZPower lawsuit.~Argentum~

[Ghosthands]

Hi guys, if anyone had read my post earlier, they would have seen this:I read the excerpt, and I don't think it's the actual epics.It appears to be compilations of character articles from Wikia, not the stories themselves, and thus I believe it may not be as much of a big deal as it appears to be.

[~kh]

Apparently, because its under creative commons on wikia (is it CC-BY-SA or something like that) nothing can be done about it, if they give the proper credit. The only thing that can be done is if the proper credit is not given, then Wikia can file a lawsuit to make them give it. They have to name the author.And if you think they're making money off of your work that you supply for free, never fear! Wikia do exactly the same thing, and take a profit from your work. So in all honesty, it makes no difference to me. My life continues, possibly even better than usual now that I'm a published author. :biggrin:Also, it's not being ripped from BZPower, it's being ripped from wikia. So don't get your hopes up about a BZPower lawsuit.~Argentum~

However, Books LLC is infringing on LEGO's partnership with other publishing houses, such as DK, Papercuts and Scholastic. Scholastic especially; while I haven't explicitly looked at the contract made between them, I'm pretty sure they have exclusive rights to all text-based printed media (I say text-based because Papercuts publishes the graphic novels in their stead; unless Papercuts is a subsidiary of Scholastic and I just didn't know/realize that) regarding BIONICLE. And while the information is released under a Creative Commons license, there are some technicalities to that that could be brought up in a formal lawsuit; I'm sure there is at least some case to be fought for here.This is more appalling on principle rather than just legal technicalities, however; although the Creative Commons license still stands, I know I would be quite disgusted and angry if my work was being used not only without my permission, but being sold for a profit of which I saw nothing of.

[Rarity]

So, one could sell wiki stuff, and it's be legal?

[GSR]

I've heard of these companies before - it's a very, very shady practice which largely goes unchallenged due to the ambiguity involved in the legality of it and the fact that 99 times out of 100 the sites they lift information from aren't aware of it. I imagine it's a wholly automated process; just look for Wikia pages with x number of hits or greater and make a corresponding listing.

[GeluNumber1]

So, one could sell wiki stuff, and it would be legal?

Shockingly enough, yes. It probably shouldn't be legal, but the stories aren't copyrighted. Thus, it's legal. Still, it's taboo in a way. Edited November 8, 2011 by GeluNumber1

[Toa of Nerds]

Looks like epics aren't the only BZPower thing they make:http://booksllc.net/search.cfm?keyword=BZPowerFrom what I understand, though, all of these books are print-on-demand. They don't print up a whole store of books and wait to ship them, they print them if you want them.-don't touch my pocket protector

[~kh]

Looks like epics aren't the only BZPower thing they make:http://booksllc.net/search.cfm?keyword=BZPowerFrom what I understand, though, all of these books are print-on-demand. They don't print up a whole store of books and wait to ship them, they print them if you want them.-don't touch my pocket protector

.........You have got to be freaking kidding me.So, apparently I'm getting ripped off by this too.Guess I'll have to look into this...

[Rarity]

... Dang. But it's just the wiki, and not the actual stories, right?

[Bambi]

I wonder how even buys this books. Or even more, why this strange company with a generic name and an unprofessional website produces them in the first place. If I were affected, I would definitely try to take legal action or at least contact them about it. The more affected people do so the better.~Gata.

I doubt anyone buys them, to be honest.

[Taipu1]

The epics I see there all seem to follow a similar format, suggesting the same author? Is it possible just one member asked these people to publish their epics?

[Klak]

Apparently, because its under creative commons on wikia (is it CC-BY-SA or something like that) nothing can be done about it, if they give the proper credit. The only thing that can be done is if the proper credit is not given, then Wikia can file a lawsuit to make them give it. They have to name the author.And if you think they're making money off of your work that you supply for free, never fear! Wikia do exactly the same thing, and take a profit from your work. So in all honesty, it makes no difference to me. My life continues, possibly even better than usual now that I'm a published author. :biggrin:Also, it's not being ripped from BZPower, it's being ripped from wikia. So don't get your hopes up about a BZPower lawsuit.~Argentum~

However, Books LLC is infringing on LEGO's partnership with other publishing houses, such as DK, Papercuts and Scholastic. Scholastic especially; while I haven't explicitly looked at the contract made between them, I'm pretty sure they have exclusive rights to all text-based printed media (I say text-based because Papercuts publishes the graphic novels in their stead; unless Papercuts is a subsidiary of Scholastic and I just didn't know/realize that) regarding BIONICLE. And while the information is released under a Creative Commons license, there are some technicalities to that that could be brought up in a formal lawsuit; I'm sure there is at least some case to be fought for here.This is more appalling on principle rather than just legal technicalities, however; although the Creative Commons license still stands, I know I would be quite disgusted and angry if my work was being used not only without my permission, but being sold for a profit of which I saw nothing of.

Looks like epics aren't the only BZPower thing they make:http://booksllc.net/search.cfm?keyword=BZPowerFrom what I understand, though, all of these books are print-on-demand. They don't print up a whole store of books and wait to ship them, they print them if you want them.-don't touch my pocket protector

.........You have got to be freaking kidding me.So, apparently I'm getting ripped off by this too.Guess I'll have to look into this...

So have I, but on a different wiki based a different RPG in a different forum. Luckily, since this RPG mixes original elements with those of other works, these people might get letters with interesting language from other authors.

I wonder how even buys this books. Or even more, why this strange company with a generic name and an unprofessional website produces them in the first place. If I were affected, I would definitely try to take legal action or at least contact them about it. The more affected people do so the better.~Gata.

I doubt anyone buys them, to be honest.

Even still, this really angers me.

... Dang. But it's just the wiki, and not the actual stories, right?

Supposedly, yes. But in my case, it's the Wiki pages mixed with stories. So what are we going to do about this?

[WORT WORT WORT]

Looks like epics aren't the only BZPower thing they make:http://booksllc.net/search.cfm?keyword=BZPowerFrom what I understand, though, all of these books are print-on-demand. They don't print up a whole store of books and wait to ship them, they print them if you want them.-don't touch my pocket protector

.........You have got to be freaking kidding me.So, apparently I'm getting ripped off by this too.Guess I'll have to look into this...

i feel kinda bad for laughing about that page :(Well, i guess i'll think of it as laughing at the seller Edited November 8, 2011 by WORT WORT WORT

[The 1st Shadow]

.......Wow.BZPower, it looks like we have a task on our hands, eh?This is outrageous. I may not know a lot about copyright and stuff, but I am thoroughly disgusted by this Books, LLC. A little action taken against them wouldn't be so bad.

[Klak]

Apparently they have content from BZPRPG.I sent an email to them. This is the response I got:"Hi – I understand you and some other Wikia editors are angry that we published licensed content from Wikia. You definitely deserve to be recognized! That is why we included a credit at the end of each article with the source URL. We didn’t “notify” Wikia’s hundreds of thousands of editors because we don’t have their email addresses. We would be happy to receive constructive criticisms from you and the editors you represent. Regards, Thomas"Thoughts?

[TheSkeletonMan939]

Apparently they have content from BZPRPG.I sent an email to them. This is the response I got:"Hi – I understand you and some other Wikia editors are angry that we published licensed content from Wikia.You definitely deserve to be recognized! That is why we included a credit at the end of each article with the source URL.We didn’t “notify” Wikia’s hundreds of thousands of editors because we don’t have their email addresses.We would be happy to receive constructive criticisms from you and the editors you represent.Regards,Thomas"Thoughts?

Tell them that they're lucky 99% of what they publish hasn't been discovered by the authors, that they shouldn't be charging money for things the author has not authorized them use for, and that they'd better take their BZP stuff down from sale or we'll contact somebody.

[BULiK]

On amazon, it even say that the "author" is wikia.We should seriously put this to court. This is plagerism. Plagerism is against the law.They are making money off other people's work without even thanking, emailing, commenting on, or even paying the people who are creating this. When you think about it that way, it almost seems like a form of slavery.

Edited November 8, 2011 by Bulik