Hello, I'm D T Pollard and I am having
an almost out of body experience after being accused by an agency of the United
States federal government of claiming copyright and saying that I published one
of their publications. I am a
self-published author and use the name Book Express when I publish my fiction
and nonfiction books, written by me, as the publisher. Book Express is a DBA name that I
registered with the county clerk’s office and use for eBooks and use under a
LLC for my printed paper books.
I received a threatening legal letter from the senior
attorney for the Center for Disease Control out of Atlanta, Georgia accusing me
of claiming ownership of their publication, that I never heard of before this letter, “Biosafety in Microbiological and
Biomedical Laboratories (BMBL), and selling it on my website, on Amazon.com and
at the African Centre for Integrated Laboratory Training held in South Africa
in July of 2013, I’ve never been to South Africa, by the way. Supposedly the
version of the publication I was offering cites Books Express Publishing as
both the publisher and copyright holder of the publication as of 2010. Hold on
a minute, do you see a problem here, Book Express that I use for my
books that I write is not quite the same as Books Express Publishing, there’s
that pesky letter s on the end of the word book and the pesky word Publishing
that I don’t have on the name I use to publish my books under. I was threatened
with notification of the Justice Department, US Inspector General and civil
monetary penalties for violation of some code I never heard of before. This is
the result of a government agency legal department being sloppy and saying close is good enough.
I actually found their book with Books Express Publishing as
the publisher and copyright holder on the Amazon.com UK site here
. I have my books on the Amazon.com UK site also, for example, and the Amazon.com US site D T Pollard Author's Page
and they all list Book Express not Books Express Publishing as the publisher.
Getting the identity right before you go after someone does matter because this is probably some overseas book pirate and they have their name as publisher on several US government publications as a quick advanced search on Amazon's UK site using Books Express Publishing as the publisher will show, but that still is not me.
I was also informed that the CDC publication was found for
sale on my website http://bookexpressonline.com
. I challenged that assertion and was then told it was found through my website
which is possible because like millions of websites I have an Amazon.com search
box on my site, so if someone types in the name of any product Amazon sells,
like flat screen television, guess what, it comes up in the search results and can be purchased on
Amazon.com and I get a few pennies for the referral, it’s an affiliate program.
After trying repeatedly to explain to this attorney and her superiors that they
made a mistake in identity, she requested that I remove my Amazon.com search
box from my website because the CDC publication could be found through my site.
I refused to remove my search box and told her if I wasn’t Books Express
Publishing and had nothing to do with pirating the CDC book, she had no right
to tell me to make any changes to my website. The attorney said she was simply
asking me to remove my link (Amazon Search Box) from my site. This is where
this is out of bounds because now a federal government official is asking a
private citizen to pay a price for something because they made a mistake in
identity. This official ignores the fact that the name of the entity she’s after and
the name I use are not the same and she would have never been on my website searching for their book by title if
she had not confused the two names. For the attorney to use the word simply means the concept of protection from unreasonable searches and seizures guaranteed by the 4th Amendment of the United States Constitution is being missed. Maybe the law is lagging behind technology, but searching my website, my LLC status and requesting that I remove something from my website because she thought that I was someone else seems to be a seizure of sorts if someone can be told do this or I may drop the hammer on you when you clearly are not who they are after.
This is one of the most bizarre episodes I’ve ever been involved in,
but be careful all of you one letter separated individuals. Jon Jones you could
be blamed for what John Jones did. Elle Campbell you might take the heat for
what Ellen Campbell did and McDonald Family Restaurant might get hit for what
McDonald’s® does, it seems in the opinion of some of our highly paid government
legal minds, close is good enough. The CDC has a twitter account @CDCgov let them know how you feel about a department run amok, aren't they supposed to be protecting us from diseases instead of harassing citizens?
