DISQUS

Dean W · 2 months ago

I would have sent (would still send!) an invoice to Newandusedbooks. Money pretty much always speaks louder than words - especially deleted ones!

PurpleCar · 2 months ago

Sending them an invoice would just be an experiment, and ending up being an experiment in futility I'm sure. But if my review is still up on newandusedbooks.com without credit in 3 business days, I will send them an invoice.

This is a legal hole, I think. Amazon says they own the content and can sell it (I'm assuming), so newandusedbooks.com will refer me to that policy. Still, it doesn't seem that newandusedbooks have set up protection from this. I'm not a barister or a lawyer, so I don't know. It would be interesting to find out. The point of contention is that they removed the links. Amazon lets you have a link in exchange for the review, but they let their affiliates remove those links. That seems unfair.

I may call up my intellectual property lawyer friend about this.

thomast · 2 months ago

Amazon's position on this isn't particularly hard to find or hard to understand. It's in their conditions of use. Paragraph two of the "REVIEWS, COMMENTS, COMMUNICATIONS, AND OTHER CONTENT" section:

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose.

Crummy policy, indeed, but there it is. The "irrevocable" part means that deleting the reviews doesn't obligate them to stop distributing them either on their own site or sublicensees', though in practice they almost certainly will. It is a nonexclusive license, so you do retain copyright, which you can use elsewhere however you see fit. I think you've now made an informed decision, which is far more than most other Amazon users do - you've decided that the value that Amazon offers in exchange for the license (exposure, publication, and link-backs if they feel like it) they demand is worth less than the value of your work. Bravo. I don't review regularly on Amazon, and don't make my living from writing, but I might very well come to a different, but equally well-informed, decision.

One quibble, with your description of "fair use" above. Fair use refers to allowed use of material under copyright without any implied or explicit license. Credited uses of excerpts for the sake of commentary, satire, etc. are fair use, and would be allowed regardless of your license. If a site which sells stuff cited a paragraph from your review of NurtureShock as part of a longer review, they would be making fair use of your content, and you wouldn't be able to rely on the non-commercial clause of your CC license to make them stop. When non-commercial sites use the entirety of one of your blog posts, with the specified attribution, they are making licensed use of your content under the CC license that you granted them, not fair use. Just as Amazon and NewAndUsedBooks.com were making licensed use of your work, albeit under a different license whose terms Amazon, not you as the author, set. Your FairShare alerts probably turn up both fair uses and licensed uses of your work, and it's important to know the difference.

PurpleCar · 2 months ago

Thomas, thanks so much!

Firstly, good work on the Amazon TOS. I was hoping someone like you would find the exact paragraph in all that muck. My gratitude!

Secondly, thanks for clarifying "fair use." Will think about revising my post to cut out the unofficial use of it. Can't do that right at this moment but I will look at it soon. (Not a big fan of major editing after posting, so I may just publish an "Update" of your useful information.) Again, my thanks.

Thirdly, yes, you're correct, Amazon can still publish my work even though I deleted it, but deleting it is my little form of protest. Also, it's my hope that their huge infrastructure will re-claim the dinky white (disk) space and truly delete the work, or at least remove it from the freely-referenced content. I'm not privvy to their infrastructure design, but I know as a former sys admin that it's possible that my deleting the work may keep it from being distributed again.

Mike S. · 2 months ago

Interesting -- and good to know. Thanks!

PurpleCar · 2 months ago

No problem Mike! You know me (literally!). I'm a font of information. Or copied and pasted emails, which pretty much constitute "information" nowadays.

Thanks for stopping in!





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peterdurwardharris · 1 month ago

I am sad to hear that you get so upset over this issue. I have posted a substantial number of reviews on Amazon on several of their sites, but especially in Britain and America. My reviews are on more websites than I care to imagine because of the Amazon affiliate rules, but it doesn't bother me. I never expected to make money from my reviews although I have benefited a little by being offered free stuff to review, most of which I don't accept as it's not what interests me.

I eventually became an Amazon affiliate myself but I haven't exactly exploited it. I make a modest amount of money that I receive as credit to buy stuff from Amazon. At one time, I looked into the rules for posting Amazon reviews on my own blogs. I discovered that these rules are actually quite strict and I couldn't just cherry-pick which reviews I wanted. In fact, although Amazon reserve the right to do anything and everything, affiliates are restricted to taking reviews off the main product pages, and they must refresh their affiliate pages at regular intervals. If you're familiar with Amazon's product pages, you'll know that some products have hundreds of reviews. Only a few of them are featured on the main product page, the rest being buried on continuation pages - or back pages, as reviewers call them. Reviews on back pages can't be used by affiliates. Reading what you've posted, it seems that even the reviews on the main page can only be used in the way that Amazon supplies them. So while Amazon's TOS make it appear that they can do what they like with my reviews, that's just a catch-all piece of legal jargon. From an affiliate perspective, things are somewhat different.

Amazon do not own the copright to my reviews. I own the copyright, but by posting my reviews to Amazon, I have granted them nonexclusive rights to distribute those reviews. The nonexclusive bit is crucial - it means that I can post my reviews (or quote from them) elsewhere, and I can give permission for other people to use my review on their own website or blog, whether or not they are an Amazon affiliate. On my own blogs, I prefer to post links to the Amazon Permalink pages containing my reviews, rather than to copy and paste my actual reviews. (There are several reasons for this, not least that if I edit my Amazon review, I don't have to edit my blog version). If I choose, I can use this method to discuss other people's reviews, since I'm merely linking to an Amazon page rather than copying from it. But I rarely do that.

As far as I know, Amazon do not sell the reviews they distribute. The affiliate scheme makes money for Amazon on the products sold. So if you buy something from Amazon having arrived there through a link provided by an affiliate AFTER signing into Amazon, the affiliate gets a small commission but you pay the same price as if you'd signed in to Amazon in the standard way. Amazon presumably get extra traffic through these affiliates so this extra traffic pays for the commission.

I am sad that you have decided not to review on Amazon, but that's your decision. As a prolific reviewer, I have made contacts around the world as well as getting those freebies. I've also had plenty of aggravation but the pleasures outweigh the aggravation otherwise I'd have quit years ago.

One other thing - Amazon never truly delete anything as far as I know. Your deleted reviews are still there, hiding from view. Amazon even remembers the dates, so if you decide one day to review the same products from the same account, they'll be given the dates of the original reviews. Somehow, I don't think you'll be doing that.

PurpleCar · 1 month ago

Peter, thanks for your thoughtful response.

Amazon does, in fact, sell your reviews. This is a different system than affiliate selling.

Amazon charges sites to access their catalog. Along with the catalog, they include some reviews. I'm not privvy to the formula (or what coders call "algorithms") that choose which reviews get packaged along with the catalog, but be assured that the user reviews are offered as a part of that catalog. Amazon would sell less catalog rentals if people stopped writing free reviews for them. The reviews are what set them apart from other ISBN/product code catalogs.

This really comes down to how one views the internet and how to use it. Reviews are work. Getting the "freebies" of which you speak is now a forbidden practice, as per new FTC "guidelines."

I'm not in it for free books. I can get my books from the library or buy them myself. The amount of "freebies" of stuff I don't even want or have space for doesn't compensate me for the work of reviews. You obviously don't have the same opinion about that, and that's cool. Lots of people enjoy seeing their name in the Amazon review areas, even if their reviews end up on the back pages. The thrill of that for me faded a long time ago.

-PC




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