In Part
II, we looked at Klausner’s punctuation, grammar, and spelling errors
Part
III talked about Harriet’s communication and storytelling skills.
Part
IV took on her math and logic skills.
This section is about intellectual property law and ethics. A candidate for a Masters in Library Sciences must
pass intellectual property law and ethics courses as part of the undergraduate
degree requirements before moving on to the masters level work. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a student
is required to demonstrate this training
in their daily lives, but merely to be
familiar with and understand it
well enough to pass the tests
Intellectual Property
Law:
Very simply, intellectual property law is the law that
governs copyright, trademarks, and patents.
It is designed to protect an individual’s or entity’s rights to own
their creative works and prohibits anyone else from using those works without
permission.1-3 It is designed
to discourage the theft of, or profit from, another person’s creative works.
Why would intellectual property laws be required coursework
for a librarian? It would be safe to say
that all books, magazines, and publications are copyrighted. Libraries deal with the written word and they
are bound to purchase legitimately printed materials and not bootlegged
materials. Consequently, they have to
receive training in this area. In
addition, librarians have access to a great deal of published and copyrighted
information and they need training in the
consequences of breaking the laws related to the dissemination of the material
or its unauthorized reproduction.
The training should instill in students a healthy respect for
the law. It is also
designed to fully train students on copyright law and plagiarism.
Plagiarism is not only taught as part of middle school
English classes, but high school and college instructors particularly investigate students' written papers for it. They view plagiarism as such as serious violation that it is the same a cheating and they
will fail the student on their paper for that reason. Even with all this early and ongoing awareness,
plagiarism is irrevocably tied to intellectual property law because it violates
copyright law. Clearly, an author who
steals another’s idea or works is a plagiarizer and is liable for court
sanctions.
How is this connected to Harriet’s reviewing career? As a reviewer, Harriet
liberally steals from dustjackets, editorial materials, and other reviews,
many times word for word, to craft her reviews in spite of her formal,
educational training to the contrary.
Federal Laws Regarding
Federal Trade Commission Requirements
(16 CFR 255)
Closely tied to intellectual property law are the Federal
Trade Commission’s laws regarding disclosure.
Sneaky Burrito on this blog has written a brilliant
discussion of the FTC requirements for disclosing the receipt of free
products when writing reviews.
The Federal Trade Commission says, in Example 8, that, if a reviewer
is part of a network marketing program and receives free products about which
the reviewer can voluntarily write reviews, a positive review would be
considered an endorsement and a disclosure of receipt of the product for free
is required. It goes on to say, in 16
CFR 255.5 that the reviewer must disclose the connection with the seller when
the readers of the endorsement will most likely not anticipate their
connection.
Almost all of the books that Harriet reviews are received
free from authors, publishers, editors, and Amazon. Yet, not once does she make her legally
required disclosures about free product.
Harriet willfully breaks the law.
Amazon’s Review
Policy:
Among other things, Amazon’s
review policy requires: “Full
disclosure: If
you received a free product in exchange for your review, please clearly and
conspicuously disclose that that you received the product free of charge. . . .”
Harriet’s refusal to disclose that
she receives free product is a violation of Amazon’s reviewing policy.
Ethics:
Ethics comes from a place that is more intangible than
tangible. It’s connected with laws,
right and wrong, and morality. But, it’s
really more about character and about saying and doing the right thing in all
circumstances for the sake of doing the right things. Ethics come from an internal place and not
from external influences.
Do we see Harriet’s ethics in her profiles and her reviews? Absolutely.
Harriet is not an honest person. See “The
Lies that Bind Klausner” for a full discussion of the lies that she has
perpetuated across the internet. There,
not only does she says that she would never use more than one profile because
it’s just too much work (obviously the voice of experience speaking), but you
can see the discrepancies and lies in each.
In the Amazon.co.uk profile, she lists herself as Amazon No. 1 Reviewer,
and yet that wasn’t true for the Amazon.co.uk site. In her second Amazon.co.uk. profile, she says
she was born and lived most of her life in Europe and came to the United States
in 1991 when, in actuality, she was born and raised in the United States and
never lived anywhere else.
Harriet doesn’t read the books she reviews. (Reading
is Not Necessary to Harriet’s Reviews.) She actually makes up things that
didn’t occur in books and puts the false information in her reviews.
Klausner, in violation of the industry’s guidelines, and
possibly other agreements,
resells the free copies of the books she receives under her son’s name on
Half.com. This is a huge indicator that
she knows it’s wrong, but she does it anyway.
Klausner has rated 99.7% of the books that she reviews as 4
stars or higher on Amazon. Orson Welles
indicated that the possibility of a reviewer’s liking a book is about .5% to
2-3%. Maybe Welles was a bit more
critical than most because most reviewers say that the average of good books is
about 5-10%. In Harriet, we have a total
aberration from the norm.
Another ethical issue is that of Harriet's putting up, on a
public website, reviews full of vulgar words, crass euphemisms, and pornographic
language where a child of any age can see them.
This isn’t just bad judgment; this is indicative, at a minimum, of a diminished
standard of public decency.
Conclusion:
What we have then is a lawbreaker, a policy breaker, a liar,
and a cheater.
Is there anything ethical
about this? No. Oh, hell, no.
Return to “A
Reviewer with a Masters in Library Science”
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