JPF Home Page Forums General Messages Industry Message Forum CD being sold on Amazon w/o permission

Oh, man, if I were listed on German porn sites, I would consider it a tremendous opportunity. I would put banners on my Website (once I had one), and on Soundclick and MySpace, proclaiming "As Seen On German Porn Sites!" Might even change the cover of the CD, too.

With the Amazon (&c.) sales, if they're doing what I think they are, it's not a ripoff. There are a lot of retail Websites that actually have no product; when you order something from them, they just get it from whoever has it, mark it up and send it to you. Sometimes they'll even have the actual vendor send it to you directly (with their name on it, of course). If the actual vendor was (say) CDBaby, you made your money.

One of my first experiences buying on line was five books, that I bought all from one company all at one time. (I think it was Amazon, but I don't remember.) The 5 books arrived in 5 separate (and different) packages, that had been shipped from 5 different locations (all with the company's name on the label, however). Did the company actually have the books in stock? I doubt they had any "stock" at all; they just knew where they could get it, and how to make a little money off the deal.

As a city manager, I ran into one traffic-sign company that operated this way. I visited their place (a surprisingly teeny little place, not much more than an office and a shipping department). When you ordered a traffic sign, they sent you a bill--which, being a responsible entity, you would pay right away; once they had your money, they had *somebody else* actually make the sign. I mostly didn't deal with this company after I learned that; it was cheaper (though not always easier) to deal directly with the company that was doing the actual sign-making. But a lot of people still do order from 'em, and the company does quite a lot of business.

A lot of business is conducted on the Internet in this fashion, by people who are nothing more than professional middlemen, taking advantage of the fact that you-the-buyer haven't a clue where the stuff you order is really coming from. From my end, as the guy who wrote the songs and made the CDs, I don't (and can't) care who sells it or how much they sell it for, as long as what's getting sold is one of the CDs I made and I get paid for it.

Now, bootlegging is a different matter. There, the writer, artist, et al., are *not* getting paid, and that's illegal, and immoral, and should be stopped and punished, yada yada. *If* you can catch the perps, which on the Internet is a very difficult thing to do. If it happened to me (which it hasn't--I am not famous enough), and I couldn't control it, I would try to take advantage of it somehow, if I could. Like with the German porn sites.

Joe