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Amazon has launched a lawsuit against people who are allegedly posing as fake publishers associated with the company.
The e-commerce giant filed a lawsuit in California against a group of nearly 20 individuals and associated companies “that falsely claim affiliation with Amazon services, including Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing”.
Amazon has filed three lawsuits “against bad actors that pretended to be legitimate copyright owners in an attempt to remove products from the Amazon Store”, according to a statement posted on its website on Tuesday (30th October).
David Naggar, vice-president of books and Kindle content at Amazon, said: “We have a consistent track record of working to stop bad actors from taking advantage of our customers, and this lawsuit against publishing scammers continues that work on behalf of authors.”
The statement on the website reads: "We care about authors and are committed to providing them with an innovative, world-class publishing experience they can trust. We also work to protect authors from fraudsters who attempt to take advantage of them by offering fake publishing services that falsely claim to be affiliated with Amazon’s publishing services.
"While we have taken action against dozens of these fraudulent websites, the scammers’ misdeeds have continued, so we are taking greater steps to ensure no authors or publishers are further harmed. The scammers’ websites are designed to lure authors into paying a fee to publish, and then deliver substandard services or no services at all. Amazon is committed to ensuring these scammers don’t continue to take advantage of the author community."
Amazon said the scam sites run by the defendants named in its lawsuit have no affiliation with either Amazon’s trade publisher Amazon Publishing (which launched in 2009) or its self-publishing service Kindle Direct Publishing (which began in 2007).
The company urged people to report suspicious behaviour: “We encourage authors and publishers to report any suspicious communications or sites to us. These reports give us information that we can use to help protect authors and publishers, and identify bad actors to take action against them.”