The listing shows a book jacket with a gavel, a title, a name and a price in US dollars - $33.99 plus shipping.
"[I thought] holy crap, that's my thesis, and it's got my name on the front and there's a cover design and it's there and I can buy it. It was just the most bizarre thing," saidHayden Thorne.
"It was like about an hour of sitting there going 'what the heck is happening."
Thorne is a recent PhD who recently found a listing for his thesis 'The Due Process Revolution' presented as a paperback for sale through online bookseller Barnes & Noble.
"Someone out there is ripping off not just my work other people's work," he told Fair Go.
Thorne quickly found the same listing for his thesis on Amazon, Booktopia, and numerous other sites that sell books.
He has plenty of questions and still lacks answers; it's not easy having a conversation with a website or a big multinational located offshore.
"It would be nice to have someone pick up the phone and give you a ring and say 'hey, sorry that that happened that's our bad or these are the processes that we have, this is what we're doing to try and stop it happening in the future'," Thorne said.
As best as Fair Go can determine, a publisher named Mantara, which appears to have no contact details nor web presence listed is at the heart of this copyright infringement.
It appears to have scraped Thorne's thesis along with many others from online, open-research hubs at universities. These hubs make it clear the author holds copyright and their permission must be sought for reprinting.
Mantara appears to have made the academic papers available published books via a US-based company called Lightning Source, which prints books on demand - as few as one at a time - and then provides a feed of printable, purchasable titles to big players like Barnes & Noble.
Copyright Licensing NZ helps artists and authors get paid their fair share from legitimate source, but said chasing a pirate is another matter - much more complicated.
"The onus is not on the platform unfortunately; it's on the owner of the copyright," said Sam Irvine.
"A take down notice is what you should be sending them; you may need to get a lawyer involved."
But that's a huge burden to put on each creator.
"'If you don't have controls around this then you don't have a sustainable living for writers and authors," Irvine added.
"The average wage for an author in New Zealand is $13,500. It's not enough to live on, so anything we can do to protect the rights of authors is good. Anything we can do to ensure they get fairly compensated is good. Go buy a book, or a piece of New Zealand art."
Fair Go pitched in to help escalate the issue and received confirmation from Australian retailer Booktopia that The Due Process Revolution is no longer available for purchase on its site and it would be refunding Thorne for the copy he had ordered when trying to investigate the scam himself. Sadly there would be no other royalties from Booktopia sales.
"The only copy we ever sold of this book is directly to Hayden himself," a Booktopia spokesperson said.
"We hope Hayden does find a home for a book on his terms and will look forward to sharing that with the world if or when that opportunity arises."
Booktopia's spokesperson said the bookseller relies on publishers to verify who is entitled to reproduce a work. Barnes & Noble said it is in a similar situation.
"We are deeply sorry that this happened with Dr. Hayden Thorne’s thesis and once we were made aware it was immediately removed from our website," reads a statement from Barnes & Noble's PR email address.
The statement said Lightning Source had downloaded it to Barnes and Noble's website.
"Titles feed automatically onto our website from standard, reputable industry databases such as Lightning Source and we do our best to diligently monitor these submissions for violations of our content policy. Millions of books are published every year, making it exceptionally difficult to monitor everything successfully and occasionally we miss something as in this case."
Lightning Source is owned by Ingram Content Group, a multinational print distribution company based in Nashville.
Like other sites, it had responded to Thorne's request for a takedown, but would say nothing about how this had happened, who was responsible and how many books might have changed hands.
Then there are the lingering listings that now advertise his stolen thesis as out of stock or not available.
"I've got a book proposal underway working in the evenings or whenever I have spare time," said Thorne.
He feared the stolen work will haunt him, harm his reputation and give reputable publishers second thoughts when he sends them his book proposal.
"They're gonna Google me and the first thing they're gonna see 'oh, he already published it, why would we publish it', and that is a concern."
After several approaches to Ingram, Fair Go heard from its chief commercial officer Phil Ollila who said the business has an extensive content piracy and bad actor effort and will gladly work on any aspect that it finds is in need of fixing.
Fair Go asked whether it's possible to issue a global undo order, to ask sites to expunge the thesis and scrub the listings via the same distribution feeds that spread them.
Ingram spokesperson Kristin Palmer replied.
"Ingram Content Group is dedicated to the book industry. When it comes to copyright violations, stolen content, or harmful content as defined by the law, we are opposed to the distribution of these books and have extensive methods for excluding such content from our catalogs. We take these issues very seriously and have a whole team dedicated to reviewing content on a regular basis. If we learn of the presence of such content in our database through feedback from our customers, and internal controls, we investigate and take action immediately."
The statement added that Thorne is now getting that serious attention.
"In regard to the title in question, we are in contact with the author directly about this matter."
Thorne just hopes it heads off any damage to his reputation, especially so early in his academic career.
"Bizarre.. it's been a bizarre few weeks."
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