A lecturer in philosophy at a UK college found that an organization has been promoting his current dissertation as a e book on-line by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, and Blackwell’s, full with a canopy.
The official cowl web page of Richard Elliott’s dissertation (left), and the quilt created for it by an organization for the unauthorized model it’s promoting (left).
Richard Elliott, a lecturer at Birkbeck School, College of London, says “I’ve given no authorization to be used of my work.”
He has taken some steps to have the gross sales stopped. He writes:
At this stage I’ve made contact with an organization known as Ingram, whom a authorized rep at Waterstones notified me is the distributor for the net listings they (Waterstones) submit. I’ve to date requested Ingram instantly take away this materials for the itemizing, and have additionally requested info from them in regards to the course of by which this infringement has come to move. They’ve to date replied with: “We’re taking the suitable motion and are within the technique of eradicating the infringing title(s) from our distribution feeds. Please observe that 1) if the title was in distribution, it could take time for retailers to take away the obtainable standing from their web site and a couple of) many retailers should still preserve the title listed, however this doesn’t imply it’s obtainable to buy.”
He additionally says, “I seemed up the so-called ‘writer’ and located a whole lot of what is perhaps comparable circumstances of stolen copyrighted PhD supplies.”
Maybe it’s best to examine to see if somebody is promoting unauthorized variations of your dissertation.
Dr. Elliott is open to options about “how you can take away or no less than mitigate the net presence” of the unauthorized e book, “in addition to any prospects for litigation.”
I contacted a regulation professor at Cambridge College, Lionel Bently, about this sort of case. He mentioned:
The doctoral scholar clearly owns copyright and thus has the correct to forestall replica, distribution of each copy and communication to the general public (e.g. in ebooks). So there are not any doubts that the distributors are infringing and a courtroom would instantly put a cease to this.
Maybe some authorized motion by these whose theses are being bought with out their permission, or motion on their behalf by the schools from which they’ve earned their levels (and which routinely submit the dissertations in on-line repositories, as Birkbeck had performed with Elliott’s) is so as.
