African Book Pirates
An Open Letter to Amazon.com CEO and COB Jeff Bezos
Dear Jeff,
So there I was minding my own business when Amazon.com sent me a digital blurb announcing a new book and inquiring whether I wished to buy it.
The book you promoted to me is the alleged “Population History of American Indigenous Peoples” by Charles C. Mann et al. [here].
That was very exciting email because Charles C. Mann is one of my favorite authors, one whose important and artfully-crafted writings are featured at W.I.S.E. [here, here]. CCM is also a correspondent, and so I sent him a congratulatory email.
Imagine my surprise, Jeff, when Charles informed me he had never heard of the book!
It turns out that the publisher, Alphascript Publishing (a subsidiary of VDM Publishing House Ltd. of Maritius [here]), is a PIRATE. They took some old essays by Mann and others, scanned them and created a “book” out of stolen pieces, and are now selling the purloined booty on your website.
You (they) are asking $124 for a paperback copy of a pirated work, which doubles (at least) the piracy factor. None of which goes to the actual authors, by the way, who had no idea this was going on.
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff. You don’t want to be a pirate. Pirates meet cruel fates. Pirates get shot in the head by snipers and their carcasses thrown to the sharks, no questions asked. There is no doctor-supervised waterboarding or other friendly interrogation. There are no trials where pirate “rights” are protected. Just a bullet in the brain and quick conversion to shark chum.
Even the French Navy, heirs to Jean Lafitte and other famous cutthroat brigands, has limited tolerance for pirates [here].
I warmly suggest you cease and desist from book piracy. It’s not a good sideline biz for Amazon. Your liabilities in the matter exceed any possible equity you might gain.
You are welcome to sell legitimate books about pirates. You can shout “Yo ho ho” and drink a bottle of rum. But you don’t want to BE a pirate, or fence pirated works.
This is free advice, but I’d absorb it if I were you, Jeff.
Clean up your act. Hove to and swab your deck. Otherwise, beware of naval armadas steaming into your port and blowing you out of the water.
Your Pal and Card-Carrying Occasional Amazon Customer,
Mike D.
by Forrest Grump
Close reading of the news blurb about the French Navy reveals that they have fished over 100 pirates out of East African waters recently and, contrary to common sense, the French Navy has repatriated the poltroons!
They have, for instance, turned captured pirates over to the “Somali authorities.”
What Somali authorities? That failed state is an anarchist zoo of mercenary thugs. Somali warlords are the organizers and backers of the piracy! Turning the pirates over to their sponsors is not a solution to anything.
The French method of pirate control is similar to the Oregon method of wolf control, wherein offending wolves that slaughter innocent livestock are given a pat on the head, a doggie biscuit, and sent on their bloodthirsty way with a smile by the poltroons in the Oregon Dept. of Fish and Wildlife.
ODFW has been Frenchified. Zoot allures!!!!!!
Sic Em Charles.
Be kind of hard to get a check out of Mauritus. One of those offshores, like the 900 porn numbers or whatever that “call home” telephone scam was?
Miserable slags.