Re: Help, a plateful of plagiarism

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

If the "book" includes material from your web site that is NOT on Wikipedia, 
you have a clear copyright infringement case (or reasonably clear, because 
nothing in copyright law is ever completely clear) against the publisher. 

Amazon is notorious among authors for being unresponsive to claims of such 
copyright infringement, but just persist and make life difficult for them, 
including posting bad reviews and complaints. Or get a lawyer. The legal 
details differ between Germany and the US.

If the material is only what you had posted on Wikipedia, I am not familiar 
with the law and the rights which Wikipedia insists on being transferred to it. 

I make my living writing, and professional writers have been complaining about 
abuses like this, where companies skim material posted on the web -- including 
copyrighted material as well as what is nominally in the public domain -- and 
sell their versions through Amazon. The operation in question, called LLC 
Books, has more than 300,000 "publications" on sale through Amazon in the US. 
Much of what they do is of questionable legality. 
-- 
Jeff Hecht, science & technology writer
jeff@jeffhecht.com or jhecht@nasw.org
525 Auburn St., Auburndale, MA 02466 USA
tel. 617-965-3834  http://www.jeffhecht.com