Amazon Kindle Publishing System Flaw

Earlier this week Amazon opened its Kindle publishing platform to all blogs allowing bloggers to create a feed for their blog in the Amazon system. This allows bloggers to setup a RSS feed which they can charge Kindle subscribers to download and read. However, there within lies one small problem – anyone can claim your blog and charge any rate they want for it.

What does this mean?  Well, it means a number of things – 1.) obviously there is no verification process to claim a blog 2.) someone else can make money off of your work and you won’t see a penny of it 3.) someone else can upload a offensive thumbnail for your blog 4.) in addition to a possible offensive thumbnail they can write a poor description and lastly, 5.) there is no guarantee that your real blog will show up first in the search results.

How could Amazon be so careless and overlook something like this?  It seems blatantly obvious that a verification system would be necessary for this service – or is that just me who thinks that?

Nonetheless, while some blogs may not care if someone is charging for their content – I do (to an extent).  Sure I love the fact someone would like my blog enough to think they could actually charge people to read it.  I also love the fact it brings more exposure to my blog.  However, the idea that someone else can do this so easily make money from my hard work or perhaps even damage my brand is what bothers me.  Additionally, as a son of two lawyers (one of which is an intellectual property lawyer) I believe in copyrights and to me, this would seem blatant infringement.

See the image below (courtesy of TechCrunch):

What do you think?  Leave a comment!