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In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

nytimes.com

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Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#21

Post by paxys »

memmcgee wrote: post #10
thekyle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would Amazon being broken up stop people from selling illegitimate copies of books?

If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace, they'd be more inclined to actually maintain it in a working manner. Not to mention it'd be easier for publishers to sue them to compel compliance.

> If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace

Who else is responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace?

The "break them up" argument works if there is an inherent conflict of interest that would get resolved if they were separate entities, but that isn't true in this case.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#22

Post by TylerE »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #16
TheCycoONE wrote: post #14

Conflating reviews of different editions is the straw that makes it impossible for the shopper. I was looking to buy a translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. Some reviews warned of scams, some spoke positively of the quality of the translation, but they were the same reviews on every translation and every edition. I gave up. That much seems like a simple change too... simpler than conflating them. The only explanation I…

At least the good news is with 1001 Arabian Nights is you don't have to buy it. Project Gutenberg has at least one good version.

This is a complicated issue.

Modern translations (written in the last 30 years, say) are way way better than the public domain editions, not least because they don't have puritanical Victorians editing out all the "scandalous" bits.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#23

Post by cannonedhamster »

paxys wrote: post #21
memmcgee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace, they'd be more inclined to actually maintain it in a working manner. Not to mention it'd be easier for publishers to sue them to compel compliance.

> If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace Who else is responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace? The "break them up" argument works if there is an inherent conflict of interest that would get resolved if they were separate entities, but that isn't true in this case.

Amazon claims that the opaque sellers on their platforms are liable for what's sold on their platform, yet does no real verification on sellers, doesn't eliminate outright fraud, and allows known counterfeiters on their platform. Amazon provides no legal redress for harms caused by their platform and doesn't give you an address to go after since they comingled all the items that claim to be a single SKU. Amazon claims that they are completely unable to be held accountable for anything sold on their platform and has maintained this in court cases.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#24

Post by cannonedhamster »

dmix wrote: post #13
memmcgee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace, they'd be more inclined to actually maintain it in a working manner. Not to mention it'd be easier for publishers to sue them to compel compliance.

How would this actually work in practice? Do you expect regulators to break out just the book store from the other ecommerce stuff? Would the whole shipping network, fulfilment, and distribution centers be repeated across all of these companies or would that be a separate company? What about the vendor marketplace and ecommerce code and massive analytics systems they built? Plus customers will have to go to multiple…

Amazon is both a bookseller and a book publishing platform. Those should be split. Just because it's inconvenient for Amazon doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. That's kind of the whole point of antitrust law. The market is not necessarily better when it's efficient because it's controlled by a single entity. Do you all imagine yourselves as future robber barons with mustaches to twirl?

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#25

Post by cannonedhamster »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #19
Dylan16807 wrote: post #17

> What unites all these books is that none of them paid the author anything He's dead. None of the copies do that. I understand that the main point here is about counterfeiting, but perhaps copyright shouldn't last more than 50 years either...

People have a way of believing that the law -- whatever it might be -- makes terrible ideas into good ideas. From the bottom of https://www.kansas.com/news/state/article234237337.html : > Last year, a Chinese national who was a research professor at Kansas State University was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for stealing valuable American rice seeds — a trade secret — that can be used to treat ga…

This is a different thing than copyright and is ironically far shorter in time limited for anyone to use.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#26

Post by dmix »

cannonedhamster wrote: post #24
dmix wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would this actually work in practice? Do you expect regulators to break out just the book store from the other ecommerce stuff? Would the whole shipping network, fulfilment, and distribution centers be repeated across all of these companies or would that be a separate company? What about the vendor marketplace and ecommerce code and massive analytics systems they built? Plus customers will have to go to multiple…

Amazon is both a bookseller and a book publishing platform. Those should be split. Just because it's inconvenient for Amazon doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. That's kind of the whole point of antitrust law. The market is not necessarily better when it's efficient because it's controlled by a single entity. Do you all imagine yourselves as future robber barons with mustaches to twirl?

It's not about what's inconvenient. It's about what still makes sense as a single business...

Amazon's publishing platform is only a relatively small part of their wider business and doesn't answer any of my questions.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#27

Post by jandrese »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
TheCycoONE wrote: post #14

Conflating reviews of different editions is the straw that makes it impossible for the shopper. I was looking to buy a translation of 1001 Arabian Nights. Some reviews warned of scams, some spoke positively of the quality of the translation, but they were the same reviews on every translation and every edition. I gave up. That much seems like a simple change too... simpler than conflating them. The only explanation I…

It's not just the reviews. They conflate the different editions themselves (making it "logical" that there's only one set of reviews -- after all, there's only one product!), which usually gives absurd results when you go to view the kindle version of a book that exists in more than one edition. I'm not sure who's supposed to benefit from this. Fudging the editions seems like you're going to a lot of extra trouble ju…

This annoys me on Prime Video reviews when you see people rating a title poorly because the DVD comes in a cheap case or lacks extras.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#28

Post by jandrese »

mffnbs wrote: post #20
akeck wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be fine with them simply being made directly liable for all piracy and counterfeiting on any of their platforms.

Why isn't this considered more seriously? The pirate bay wasn't selling torrents ffs, but they were targeted to hell and back.

The Pirate Bay wasn't run by the worlds richest man. Bezos could fully fund any primary challenger he wanted.

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#29

Post by lonelappde »

TylerE wrote: post #22
not_a_cop75 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the good news is with 1001 Arabian Nights is you don't have to buy it. Project Gutenberg has at least one good version.

This is a complicated issue. Modern translations (written in the last 30 years, say) are way way better than the public domain editions, not least because they don't have puritanical Victorians editing out all the "scandalous" bits.

Were Victorians Puritan?

Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite

#30

Post by lonelappde »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #19
Dylan16807 wrote: post #17

> What unites all these books is that none of them paid the author anything He's dead. None of the copies do that. I understand that the main point here is about counterfeiting, but perhaps copyright shouldn't last more than 50 years either...

People have a way of believing that the law -- whatever it might be -- makes terrible ideas into good ideas. From the bottom of https://www.kansas.com/news/state/article234237337.html : > Last year, a Chinese national who was a research professor at Kansas State University was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for stealing valuable American rice seeds — a trade secret — that can be used to treat ga…

Paying people for their work incentivizes them to do work. You can read about in the US Constitution.
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