Dumb Ripoff Alert
I just found a book in the Kindle bookstore that (incompetently) rips off some of my sudoku puzzles. The book is called “The Most Difficult and Hardest Sudoku Puzzles” and is “copyrighted” by one Johnny Cohen. Here’s the cover:
The cover helpfully informs you that the book is a BEST SELLER. Here’s a sample of the text.
Interestingly, my original copyright notices are plastered throughout the entire book. The “author” apparently attempted to produce the book by using one or more of my PDF files as source to Amazon’s Digital Publishing program, but their text-processor eliminated all the puzzle graphics, resulting in a confusing jumble of numbers and krazydad copyright notices.
I only found out about this because somewhat bought the book, and asked me how to solve the strangely formatted puzzles.
I’m in the process of filing a copyright infringement notice, but feel free to post some amusing reviews on the Amazon page for your entertainment. I think I’m going to have to check to see if any of my puzzles have been more successfully ripped off. If you spot any other krazydad puzzles in the Kindle store, let me know!
UPDATE: Oh gee, I just found two more.
800-Tough-Sudoku-Puzzles by Naeem the Krazy Boy
UPDATE #2:
The number of these things is up to 912 now (that’s just from searching the Kindle store for “Sudoku 800” and “Sudoku 1200”). Sigh… I have some paperwork to do this weekend, I guess…
January 6th, 2012 at 7:41 pm
Wow, that’s pretty sad and inept. I looked at the samples of the others and it looks like they’re nearly the same except for the author text at the top.
January 6th, 2012 at 8:07 pm
“See? This is why we *NEED* DRM.” ~ someone smart
January 6th, 2012 at 10:55 pm
I’m happy with R. Don’t need the DRM to fight for ’em.
January 7th, 2012 at 2:47 am
Nick: Also sad, the handful of folks who bought these things, and didn’t understand they were scammed. There are some comments on a couple of them where the buyers are seeking assistance from the “authors” because the puzzles look funny.
January 7th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Hello Jim…so happy to see you workin-it-out! (can’t help from giggling a bit inside)
Thank you Supa Hero!!!!
Kim
January 9th, 2012 at 12:49 pm
It looks like you should be writing a book! There seems to be a good amount of demand for books you write, even though you didn’t know you wrote them ;) From the looks of things all three books have been removed from Amazon, congrats on the prompt response!
January 9th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
I’ve written puzzle books before. Creating content for puzzle books is fairly easy. The hard part is everything else. The publishers that dominate the market don’t pay puzzle constructors well ( a few hundred dollars up front, that’s about it ) – I think the only puzzle person who actually makes a decent living at it is Will Shortz.