In this case, I am the author of 4 books that were being published through CreateSpace, an on-demand publisher. Somewhere about 7 years ago, i granted CreateSpace permission to sell my books through Amazon, but did not give permission to do so through Kindle (KDP).

Unknown to me, about 1 1/2 years ago, without my permission or knowledge, CreateSpace sold out to Amazon/KDP. After wrestling with Amazon's (Indian) customer service, they have deleted my Amazon/KDP account. But they continue to offer my books for sale! I have copies of my emails in which I assert my copyright ownership, and demand that they remoive the listings, to no avail (so far).

I can't find anything about a lawsuit against Amazon. They supposedly have a subdomain where copyright compaints can be made, but I can't go there because my account is closed.

Any advice will be welcome. Like: law firms to contact, etc.

What, in Central America? Of course not. And last time you asked us to find you a "constitutional" lawyer [in Central America], I told you call your local lawyer referral service. That obviously applies now too.

No, I'm not looking for a Nicaraguan law firm, nor was I doing so in the thread you mentioned. I am a US citizen, and the works are covered under US copyright laws. So your advice is as worthless now as it was the first time.

So call your local lawyer referral service and get better advice, then?

I stand corrected. dugan's advice is not worthless. It is worse in that he keeps offering it, and has by so doing has removed this thread from Zero Replies, perhaps preventing someone else from offering real advice.

Clue: if anyone here (who doesn't know where the hell you live anyway, because you've wisely concealed that that information) answers with anything other than "call your local lawyer referral service", they're wrong.

LQ is not your local lawyer referral service.

You have gotten real advice, and you've been given the correct answer. By me. Both times. You have refused to take it and you have therefore gotten nowhere. That's what happened last time and that's what will happen now.

@dugan: Your 'advice' just gets stupider and stupider. For one thing it doesn't take an 'LQ guru' to see that I've openly proclaimed in my profile that I currently live in Central America.

Secondly, it is supremely idiotic to suggest local (i.e. Central American) law referral service as an answer to a US citizen and US copyright infringement, much less to claim that as the only valid advice.

Thirdly, this is not primarily about lawyer referral. It is about an online company stealing intellectual property. Having wrestled with Amazon to no avail, and having difficulty finding a solution on my own, I've come (perhaps inadvisedly) to LQ's General Forum, in the hopes that someone here may have some light to shed upon the issue.

It's ENTIRELY about lawyer referral, and "call your local lawyer referral service" is the only valid advice. Your specific question was to find you a lawyer. You want an American lawyer and not a Nicaraguan one? Then the advice still stands. You call an American lawyer referral service long-distance.

Now, do you or do you not want to deal with the reality that you were given this advice before, you refused to take it, and you therefore not only got nowhere (because you refused to take it), but became an object or ridicule in your other threads? (EDIT: reference)

If you'd rather label correct advice as "supremely idiotic", then that's your problem. You have already seen how far that approach has gotten you in the past.

LOL! I got a Visitor Message from dogpath (EDIT: I'm not correcting this typo) saying that he'd added me to his ignore list!

WHEN your lawyer asks you why you didn't just call a lawyer referral service, you are welcome to tell him that you were told to, but you thought the advice was "supremely idiotic". I already know what the reaction will be.

Would the site at the link below be what you are referring to? It appears you need an Amazon account to login so are you banned or for some reason not allowed to create a new account? Not sure what you want to do but, if you want to sue for violation of copyright infringement you will need to contact a law firm licensed to practice law in the US which may be possible where you live. More likely to be able to contact a local law firm with an agreement with a law firm in the US. Have you tried to contact amazon using the method below as that seems like it would be the simplest and most cost-effective method.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=201995100

You know what actually is "stupider and stupider" and "supremely stupid", dogpatch? Thinking that you need a lawyer at this stage. I mean, that's about as realistic as, oh, the time you were convinced you needed "constitutional lawyer" to get the spelling of a name changed on a piece of ID.

The first thing the lawyer would ask is "Have you tried restoring your Amazon account so that you could do the following" and dogpatch's answer is obviously going to be "of course not":

Unpublishing and Deleting Books

I googled that. That means dogpatch could have too.

I mean, people get their ebooks (or their estates' ebooks) removed from the Kindle store all the time. I actually was going to buy an ebook last night, and realized it was no longer available. I asked the publisher what was going on, and got told that the estate (well, they were more specific than "estate" but I'm not going to name the individual or relationship to the writer) had pulled all of the author's books.

And the reality is that if you do go to court for something like this (I assume you want an injunction? I assume you know what that word means?), then you would file the lawsuit yourself instead of paying a lawyer thousands of dollars to do it for you. Sure, talk to a (local) lawyer first. That's what lawyer referral is for.

I must take a wee exception. OP might be far removed from needing to retain a lawyer, but a consultation with an experienced copyright lawyer might clarify whether or not OP has any cause to proceed.

I suspect, though, that the first thing OP should do is carefully reread the agreement when he sold publication rights to Amazon. I would not be surprised if publishing an e-book was buried many fathoms deep in the fine print. It would be out-of-character for Amazon to miss a bet.

The aforementioned subdomain is sellercentral.amazon.com. You need to be a member to post complaints there (I discovered too late). A new account would not serve as it would not connect me to my former account.

Toward the bottom of one page (similar or identical to the link provided by yancek) is the following contact point:

Copyright Agent
Amazon.com Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108
phone: (206) 266-4064
e-mail: copyright@amazon.com

which allows non-members to file a complaint. I have sent my complaint to the email address, and have received an (automated?) reply saying they will review my email and respond within a couple days. Will try to keep this thread posted.

I didn't originally contract with Amazon directly, but authorized CreateSpace, the on-demand publisher, to sell my books through Amazon. I created the Amazon account mostly to have an author profile there. My complaint would be that I never contracted with Kindle, an Amazon company, to print my books (and never authorized the selling of Kindle e-books).

I think the answer to my original question may turn out to be: No, because Amazon wants to avoid the bad publicity, and so most claims are settled w/o a legal wrangling. That would explain the existence of the subdomain and other contact point. At the moment am hoping for the best - with 'bated breath, as they say.

Problem still not resolved, but here's a small update.

My previous post of a week ago was a bit optimistic. There does seem to be grist for the legal mill here, but am still having a tough time finding help. I've found one website that is proposing a class-action lawsuit against Amazon, but it appears to be written in Chinese, for a Chinese audience, probably not what I need. Another website by a lawyer or legal eagle whose entire practice and website are for resolving Amazon copyright disputes. Her advice seems to be for disputes between adversarial Amazon clients, and most of her online correspondence appears to be directed through Facebook, to my mind worse than Chinese. So haven't addresed either of these potential leads, yet. Am still tying to reason with the Amazon legal dispute folks, an onerous task.

Will try to keep this thread posted.