eBook Scams

This article first appeared in Cyberlaw Currents, a Frankfurt Kurnit legal blog.

The rise of eReader devices and eReader marketplaces provides more and more opportunities for online self-publishers. While these technologies have given a myriad of authors the joy and remuneration of publishing their work, they have also led to modern abuses – abuses that affect intellectual property owners and consumers alike.

First, because the barriers to uploading manuscripts through self-publishing programs are low, some self-publishers have deployed automatically generated content (e.g., pages of HTML code), Web-collected content (e.g., Wikipedia.com pages), or altogether fake content (paragraphs pulled together seemingly at random), and uploaded these as eBooks for sale. Scam self-publishers receive royalties, use multiple identities to manipulate their "book" reviews, and move their "books" to other eBook stores if they are revealed.