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"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane - By Renee Roberts Dante and Virgil at the threshold of Hell (or maybe the Internet). by Renée Magriel Roberts A few weeks ago I was innocently searching for something or other on ABE, and quite by accident a doctoral dissertation by Renée Magriel Roberts called The Clock and the Rose: Time and Self--Transformation in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy turned up for sale. My doctoral dissertation that is. I was kind of surprised, since although we are publishers, we haven't gotten around to publishing my own work. Yet here it was, for sale on ABE, big as life. The seller goes by the name of "Discantus", gives his location as Majadahonda, Spain and gives no other contact information anywhere, not even on his "own" website. I was more than curious about how he obtained a copy of my unpublished dissertation, so I sent him an email query. I told him that my dissertation was copyrighted, that I was not dead, and the work was not in the public domain. I asked him by what right he was copying it and selling it without my permission. I asked him to remove it immediately from ABE and any other place on which it was listed. What I got back was a couple of emails I can only describe as arrogant. Basically he said that if he could list my work, he could sell it. He seemed to have no knowledge of or care for the International Copyright Convention. In the meantime, I took another look at his stock. Turns out he had listed every single doctoral dissertation that was being stored in UMI's (the University of Michigan's) database. He had millions of listings on ABE, and over 20,000 alone from my own university. I contacted Richard Davies, the public relations guy at ABE (he is the only person whose telephone number is readily available) and told him what I could see, i.e. that "Discantus" was selling stolen property on their site, a lot of it -- not only my dissertation, but millions of others. Richard was charming and polite, but ABE's first reaction was not what I wanted to hear. They said they had no responsibility for their listings being legal. They were only offering a place for sellers to sell their wares and their job was not policing the listings. I was really surprised that they hadn't noticed such a suspicious seller -- obviously somebody posting millions of listings is getting them from somewhere en masse. I told them that I felt pretty strongly about my dissertation being stolen and then sold publicly on their site. When a car dealer sells stolen cars, and they are notified about the stolen cars, do they not share legal liability? How did they think millions of other doctoral students across the country would feel about their work being stolen and sold for a profit on ABE? At first I got no reaction, and my conversation with UMI was not a whole lot better. They told me that they couldn't control somebody just going into their ill--protected site and stealing the data on it. Moreover, since they were eventually selling copies of dissertations to "Discantus", they, like ABE, were profiting from the theft, so they seemed pretty unmotivated to stop it.
"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane - By Renee Roberts none Apparently when I graduated and sent UMI my dissertation, the vague form that I filled out allowing them to provide academic copies has now been broadened by them into a general publication permission that allows them to print up copies, just like a book, and then sell them to whomever. They told me that if I didn't want them to provide copies I could choose to do that. In the meantime, ABE finally came back to me with a statement, which I print here, in its entirety, unedited: Dear Renee One of my colleagues in Europe has been in contact with the bookseller in question… Here is an update -- when you put your article together, please consider this email content as our official response to your inquiry from Friday. -------------------------------------- On Friday, we removed the listing offering your dissertation for sale. This is common practice for us when an author or publisher has a problem with a listing and then makes contact with AbeBooks.com. We almost always remove the listings in cases like these. The seller in question, Discantus, is listing the catalog of a print--on--demand (POD) publisher. That POD publisher is working with the University of Michigan and other universities. The publisher should only be issuing books and dissertations that it has authorization to print but this is not being done. We're going to help Discantus clean up his database. However, he is very much dependent on receiving correct data from the POD publisher. As you can see, certain aspects of online bookselling are dependant upon information stored in databases, which can be incorrect. In terms of our policies in an issue like this, booksellers selling through AbeBooks.com are allowed to offer any book that they are legally entitled to sell. Discantus was not legally entitled to sell your dissertation, so we have acted upon your information and intend to remove further illegal listings by working with this bookseller. Thank you for helping us. With 100 million listings to police, we are simply not going to be aware of issues like this unless third parties contact us. In case your article addresses the issue of drop--shipping, this is a subject that we are frequently asked about. In terms of location of the book, we cannot define where the book offered for sale is physically located while actually on sale through AbeBooks.com. Please note that we do not discriminate against booksellers who do not have the book in their possession but fulfill the order directly from a distributor. < br> However, our site policies do not allow AbeBooks booksellers to copy or "scrape" listings from other AbeBooks' booksellers and then offer that "scraped" book for sale with the intention of drop--shipping the book if it is ordered. If a bookseller believes another AbeBooks' seller has copied their listing, then they should lodge a complaint with our customer support department. They need to be able to demonstrate proof that a listing has been copied. If you have any further questions, please contact me. Regards Richard (Davies)
"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane - By Renee Roberts none Incredibly, even though "Discantus" stole millions of listings, no problemo, all is forgiven, he is back in business on ABE, selling print--on-demand titles from other universities and government agencies. After much protest, my dissertation was finally removed from ABE. The last time I checked, the USA database of doctoral dissertations appears to have been expurgated from "Discantus'" offerings as well. "Discantus" is down to a measly 26,312 listings. However, if you or anybody you know deposited a dissertation with UMI, you may wish to consider contacting them and explicitly asking that they restrict the publication of your dissertation, unless you want it to be exploited in the same manner as mine was. They are selling and reselling these materials commercially and they do not care if someone else copies and sells them too. If you want a dissertation published, there are many excellent ways in which to do that on your own. Moral black holes are not confined to Internet book sales. As a postscript, a number of years ago I agreed to sub for part of a year in a high school programming class. I was teaching adolescent males C++. When I got to the class, I discovered that in the absence of any teacher who knew anything at all about computers, the boys had already taken over the school's network, including the root administrator login, and had set up remote access to the computers through other machines. They were using them and a series of other UNIX boxes to jump around and hack into other computers, and download a wide variety of wildly inappropriate materials, including safecracking tools that enabled them to break into other accounts. When I confronted my young charges, I was told "you can't stop us." They thought that on the Internet no civilized rules or morality applied. The next morning, when they arrived, they discovered that I had disabled the entire computer network. Every single cable connecting a keyboard, modem, printer, and computer had been removed and was locked up. I passed out C++ textbooks and told them that I would be perfectly happy reading about programming for the rest of the semester. One of these students eventually went to M.I.T. and became a tech support guy; another was arrested for breaking into computers and stealing people's bank accounts; and a third perfected his skills and went on to found Napster. There are probably a few of my ex-students selling books on the Internet, running major websites, and developing scholarly databases.

"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane

- By Renee Roberts

Dante and Virgil at the threshold of Hell (or maybe the Internet).

by Renée Magriel Roberts

A few weeks ago I was innocently searching for something or other on ABE, and quite by accident a doctoral dissertation by Renée Magriel Roberts called The Clock and the Rose: Time and Self--Transformation in the Romance of the Rose and the Divine Comedy turned up for sale. My doctoral dissertation that is.

I was kind of surprised, since although we are publishers, we haven't gotten around to publishing my own work. Yet here it was, for sale on ABE, big as life.

The seller goes by the name of "Discantus", gives his location as Majadahonda, Spain and gives no other contact information anywhere, not even on his "own" website. I was more than curious about how he obtained a copy of my unpublished dissertation, so I sent him an email query. I told him that my dissertation was copyrighted, that I was not dead, and the work was not in the public domain. I asked him by what right he was copying it and selling it without my permission. I asked him to remove it immediately from ABE and any other place on which it was listed. What I got back was a couple of emails I can only describe as arrogant. Basically he said that if he could list my work, he could sell it. He seemed to have no knowledge of or care for the International Copyright Convention. In the meantime, I took another look at his stock.

Turns out he had listed every single doctoral dissertation that was being stored in UMI's (the University of Michigan's) database. He had millions of listings on ABE, and over 20,000 alone from my own university.

I contacted Richard Davies, the public relations guy at ABE (he is the only person whose telephone number is readily available) and told him what I could see, i.e. that "Discantus" was selling stolen property on their site, a lot of it -- not only my dissertation, but millions of others.

Richard was charming and polite, but ABE's first reaction was not what I wanted to hear. They said they had no responsibility for their listings being legal. They were only offering a place for sellers to sell their wares and their job was not policing the listings. I was really surprised that they hadn't noticed such a suspicious seller -- obviously somebody posting millions of listings is getting them from somewhere en masse. I told them that I felt pretty strongly about my dissertation being stolen and then sold publicly on their site. When a car dealer sells stolen cars, and they are notified about the stolen cars, do they not share legal liability? How did they think millions of other doctoral students across the country would feel about their work being stolen and sold for a profit on ABE?

At first I got no reaction, and my conversation with UMI was not a whole lot better. They told me that they couldn't control somebody just going into their ill--protected site and stealing the data on it. Moreover, since they were eventually selling copies of dissertations to "Discantus", they, like ABE, were profiting from the theft, so they seemed pretty unmotivated to stop it.

"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane

- By Renee Roberts

none

Apparently when I graduated and sent UMI my dissertation, the vague form that I filled out allowing them to provide academic copies has now been broadened by them into a general publication permission that allows them to print up copies, just like a book, and then sell them to whomever. They told me that if I didn't want them to provide copies I could choose to do that.

In the meantime, ABE finally came back to me with a statement, which I print here, in its entirety, unedited:

Dear Renee

One of my colleagues in Europe has been in contact with the bookseller in question… Here is an update -- when you put your article together, please consider this email content as our official response to your inquiry from Friday.

-------------------------------------- On Friday, we removed the listing offering your dissertation for sale. This is common practice for us when an author or publisher has a problem with a listing and then makes contact with AbeBooks.com. We almost always remove the listings in cases like these.

The seller in question, Discantus, is listing the catalog of a print--on--demand (POD) publisher. That POD publisher is working with the University of Michigan and other universities. The publisher should only be issuing books and dissertations that it has authorization to print but this is not being done. We're going to help Discantus clean up his database. However, he is very much dependent on receiving correct data from the POD publisher. As you can see, certain aspects of online bookselling are dependant upon information stored in databases, which can be incorrect.

In terms of our policies in an issue like this, booksellers selling through AbeBooks.com are allowed to offer any book that they are legally entitled to sell. Discantus was not legally entitled to sell your dissertation, so we have acted upon your information and intend to remove further illegal listings by working with this bookseller. Thank you for helping us. With 100 million listings to police, we are simply not going to be aware of issues like this unless third parties contact us.

In case your article addresses the issue of drop--shipping, this is a subject that we are frequently asked about. In terms of location of the book, we cannot define where the book offered for sale is physically located while actually on sale through AbeBooks.com. Please note that we do not discriminate against booksellers who do not have the book in their possession but fulfill the order directly from a distributor.
< br> However, our site policies do not allow AbeBooks booksellers to copy or "scrape" listings from other AbeBooks' booksellers and then offer that "scraped" book for sale with the intention of drop--shipping the book if it is ordered. If a bookseller believes another AbeBooks' seller has copied their listing, then they should lodge a complaint with our customer support department. They need to be able to demonstrate proof that a listing has been copied.

If you have any further questions, please contact me.

Regards
Richard (Davies)

"You Can't Stop Us": Walking Down a Dark Internet Lane

- By Renee Roberts

none

Incredibly, even though "Discantus" stole millions of listings, no problemo, all is forgiven, he is back in business on ABE, selling print--on-demand titles from other universities and government agencies.

After much protest, my dissertation was finally removed from ABE. The last time I checked, the USA database of doctoral dissertations appears to have been expurgated from "Discantus'" offerings as well. "Discantus" is down to a measly 26,312 listings. However, if you or anybody you know deposited a dissertation with UMI, you may wish to consider contacting them and explicitly asking that they restrict the publication of your dissertation, unless you want it to be exploited in the same manner as mine was. They are selling and reselling these materials commercially and they do not care if someone else copies and sells them too. If you want a dissertation published, there are many excellent ways in which to do that on your own.

Moral black holes are not confined to Internet book sales. As a postscript, a number of years ago I agreed to sub for part of a year in a high school programming class. I was teaching adolescent males C++. When I got to the class, I discovered that in the absence of any teacher who knew anything at all about computers, the boys had already taken over the school's network, including the root administrator login, and had set up remote access to the computers through other machines. They were using them and a series of other UNIX boxes to jump around and hack into other computers, and download a wide variety of wildly inappropriate materials, including safecracking tools that enabled them to break into other accounts.

When I confronted my young charges, I was told "you can't stop us." They thought that on the Internet no civilized rules or morality applied. The next morning, when they arrived, they discovered that I had disabled the entire computer network. Every single cable connecting a keyboard, modem, printer, and computer had been removed and was locked up. I passed out C++ textbooks and told them that I would be perfectly happy reading about programming for the rest of the semester.

One of these students eventually went to M.I.T. and became a tech support guy; another was arrested for breaking into computers and stealing people's bank accounts; and a third perfected his skills and went on to found Napster. There are probably a few of my ex-students selling books on the Internet, running major websites, and developing scholarly databases.