Kspace: Steve Karmazenuk's Writing Weblog

Well, in the last week I've sent 2 notices to Amazon.com about the plagiarism of my book, The Unearthing, by one vile little thief, Peter Michelsen.

Well, Amazon has yet to get back to me about taking this down and doing something to block this piece of shit, Michelsen.

Today, I discovered someone is also selling - at $4.00 a pop, no less - the eBook for Through Darkness and Stars on Amazon, as well.

Needless to say, I'm vigorously pursuing all legal avenues open to me; and at this point I'm not only considering action not only against Michelsen and whoever this other fuckwit selling Darkness is, but against Amazon as well.

I released both of these novels as FREE downloadable eBooks a while back. The Creative Commons license stipulated that the eBooks were allowed to be read and FREELY redistributed...I did this because it was more important to me to be read than to be remunerated. But to find out that some opportunistic parasites out there are making profit off of my work - blatantly and flagrantly STEALING from me - and violating the Creative Commons license - I'm outraged.

What astounds me is the utter lack of effort on the part of Amazon.com to ensure that the products they are selling on behalf of these people are in fact their legally copyrighted work. Peter Michelsen has literally dozens of titles for sale, all of which are obviously stolen from other authors. This other person posing as me, again, is not only using my work but MY OWN FUCKING NAME to steal from me.

I'm shocked at the lackadaisical effort Amazon has put into verifying ownership of work. I'm offended by their lack of response to my repeated requests to fix this matter.

It's one thing to share a file for free that an author has put out there for that express purpose. It's a whole other kettle of fish to take that same work and try to make a buck off of it at the author's expense.

I'm also pretty sure I'm done giving away my shit for free.