Repost from Ferrel "Rick" Moore - An Open Letter to Amazon

http://thewriterandthewhitecat.blogspot.com/2011/10/open-letter-to-amazon.html

They're big, they've got money and clout and we all need their help to protect our works from plagiary for profit, a.k.a. Consumer Fraud.

Here's the letter I just sent them:

*****

October 19, 2011

Amazon.com
Legal Dept.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Reference File No. 10-CP-62157, Consumer Fraud Filing, Office of the Indiana Attorney General, Consumer Fraud Division. Filed with Deputy Attorney General Tom Irons, 302 W. Washington St., 5th Floor, Indianapolis, IN 46204

Dear Amazon Legal Department:

I want you to write a letter.

My name is Ferrel D. Moore and I’ve filed the Consumer Fraud Complaint cited above against the plagiarizing publisher David Boyer of Vincennes, IN. Mr. Boyer has plagiarized over 60 writers and is currently producing extensively plagiarized books using your publishing services and selling these products to unsuspecting consumers using Amazon’s storefront.

Two examples of this are his books “Shadow Dolls” and “Mystery Indiana.” In them, he has plagiarized Richard Matheson, Mr. Matheson’s son, George R.R. Martin and many others. To see the extent of his documented plagiaries, you may visit the site we prepared for Mr. Irons, the Deputy Attorney General of the state of Indiana, Consumer Fraud Division. The website address is https://sites.google.com/site/bthoughtful/

The National Writers Union, Local 1981 UAW, the SFWA and the HWA have all written Mr. Irons in support of my filing, as well as hundreds of writers across the country.

I and many other authors have filed consumer fraud charges against Mr. Boyer. We are filing consumer fraud because the laws apply. He is selling stolen works, re-packaging them under false label as his own works and then selling them to consumers across the country using Amazon’s publishing services and storefront to profit even though this leads to the “…leads to sales wherein the consumers either do not receive the good or service or the good or service is materially different than what the seller initially represented it to be.” Which is, in a word, consumer fraud.

To the best of all of our knowledge, Amazon is unknowingly participating in this enterprise. Amazon’s reputation for dealing swiftly and efficiently with such instances of fraud is impeccable.

It is for this reason that I’m asking you to send a letter of support for our efforts to treat this as consumer fraud. We, both the writers and cited organizations supporting our efforts, understand that copyright violations are involved. These avenues are, however, too expensive for the average writer to pursue, especially when the matter crosses state lines. For example, I spent over $7,000 having my works removed from his books that you and others published.

Consumer fraud is a different matter. There is no cost for a writer to file a consumer fraud complaint with the appropriate state Attorney General’s Office.

But we need your help to stop this plagiarizing publisher and others like him. He changes his name, changes his book titles, and then publishing the same stolen works all over again. But you have his social security number, which he uses to publish these works. It doesn’t mean that every word he publishes is plagiarized. It takes time to dig into that.

In cases such as those documented on the website I directed you to, the evidence is clear.

Would you please consider sending a letter to the Deputy Attorney General of the State of Indiana supporting the principal of my Consumer Fraud filing? You are not the police force for the book world, but you are the single strongest, most respected presence in the world for the written word and we very much need your help.

Google David Boyer, plagiarist. See what you come up with.

Then write a letter, if you think the cause is just, to:

Deputy Attorney General Tom Irons
Office of the Indiana State Attorney General
Consumer Fraud Division
302 W. W. Washington St., 5th Floor,
Indianapolis, IN 46204

I’m posting this as an open letter to you on my writers blog http://thewriterandthewhitecat.blogspot.com so that the other hundreds of other writers sending letters to Mr. Irons and organizations who have done the same can see what I’m asking. There are too many of them involved to contact them separately.

Ferrel D. Moore
White Cat Publications, LLC.
33080 Industrial Road
Livonia, MI 48150
editor@whitecatpublications.com