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> Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's
by notJim 5y ago
> Criminal impersonation, fraud, forgery, it's someone assuming your identity for financial gain. It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud.
It doesn't not require fraud or forgery to sell someone else's book. You don't claim to be the author, you claim to be a publisher. Publishers always publish authors' work, that is literally the business of a publisher. You are also not forging anything, unless you are claiming that your version of the book is a specific edition of the printed work.
If you sold an author's work and claimed that you have a contract with that author, so that they receive a share of the proceeds, and if that claim was untrue, then that would be fraud. But you could simply not make that claim.
> It's similar to selling a car you don't own or someone else's real estate property through title fraud.
The title represents the property right. If you didn't have the right to exclusive ownership of cars, then the title would be irrelevant, because you could just obtain the keys to the car and sell them to someone. Property rights are the reason this is illegal, not title fraud.
- kristopolous 5y agoI'm not an attorney. If this has become a question of legal interpretation I'll have to excuse myself. I would be very surprised if IP law was the only possible legal wall in such a bad faith action as the one you're referring to but I'm completely unqualified to argue any actual legal nuance. Sorry. What I really want is easier access to historical primary source research material without having to drive an hour and spend all day combining through microfiche. It feels stupid having to still do that in the 2020s. These should have been fed through a digitizer 20 years ago, it'd take like a weekend. It's not hard. The IP boogeyman is the only thing holding this up. Heck, sometimes, say with various local LA city paper, there's often only 2 existent copies, one in Downey or Lapl central and one in Sacramento. When I get that role I literally have half the world's copies in my hand. I mean really, what the hell is that? Disk space is effectively free. Let's get on this. I wish you luck on your book
- mcguire 5y agoI feel your frustration. But I don't think removing IP law entirely is the right answer.
- kristopolous 5y agoIntent has to be somewhere in there. If someone took a rare out of print book and after a good faith search for the copyright holder, started printing it and set aside the proceeds in escrow to go to the owner if they were found or donated otherwise, that's materially very different from stealing works in print and price sniping them.