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Amazon has a book piracy problem

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Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#101

Post by hellcow »

mountainb wrote: post #72
KerrAvon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What amazes me is that the FTC doesn't address the problem. You'd think they'd care. This has been going on for years; you really can't tell whether you're buying genuine products or not on Amazon anymore. I've stopped buying anything where I actually care about the provenance (like power tools and anything personal hygiene related) on Amazon.

The FTC does do some things, but below a certain threshold it doesn’t bother. There is lots and lots and lots of crime that does not get prosecuted or otherwise litigated.

Surely one of the largest businesses in America facilitating fraud en masse has to meet said threshold.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#102

Post by visarga »

plaguepilled wrote: post #94
ptero wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally. But then publishers got greedy ("greed is forever") and instead of a relatively short term of protection before becoming public domain we now have stupid multi-decade restrictions. Those prevent us from printing good out of print books and do not give any benefit to either publisher or the author.

I agree with this. It would be nice to have a reduced grace period for books before they're public domain - something like 40 years seems reasonable to me.

40 years seems excessive. I searched a bit for some reference

> We find that almost all books, regardless of category, peak in the first 15 weeks after publication

https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epj...

A graph with sales per week/week after publication

https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image...

Seems that 2 years after publication the number of copies sold per week declines by two orders of magnitude compared to the peak.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#103

Post by notpushkin »

__mharrison__ wrote: post #85
warkdarrior wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information just wants to be free, even if you call it "piracy."

I assume that you are a programmer and from your response you write only open source code ... for free.

This analogy doesn't really hold here – programmers are usually paid to write some code that doesn't yet exist. You can write it as open source, too – if your contract allows this (e. g. https://commonform.org/switchmode/switchmode/3.0.1; although more often it's an informal agreement that your employer will open source the work in question).

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#104

Post by notpushkin »

mkw2000 wrote: post #41

I recently purchased a book that I was really looking forward to from Amazon and received a counterfeit version with the correct cover but complete nonsense inside. It wasn't the book I purchased at all just a scam. It was super frustrating and I returned it and will not be purchasing books from Amazon ever again, but I wonder what was even the purpose of the scam? Isn't everyone just going to get annoyed and return…

If Amazon doesn't hold money in an escrow (which, apparently, is not the case), the scammers get a free loan and they can run away with the money at some point. Also, I think some % doesn't return counterfeit items, even the most garbage ones.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#105

Post by euphetar »

Amazon has a UI problem. Unless you have a kindle it's extremely hard to buy a book and just get the god damn epub file. It's so much harder than pirating the book that I am not surprised. A few times I had to do it too: I would buy the book in the store and then go download it from a pirate website because amazon UI is too much pain

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#106

Post by PufPufPuf »

euphetar wrote: post #105

Amazon has a UI problem. Unless you have a kindle it's extremely hard to buy a book and just get the god damn epub file. It's so much harder than pirating the book that I am not surprised. A few times I had to do it too: I would buy the book in the store and then go download it from a pirate website because amazon UI is too much pain

Amazon's UI is terrible for pretty much anything, and I'm surprised that it's the dominant store in so many countries. (Thankfully it's not in mine.)

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#107

Post by bmitc »

elcapitan wrote: post #4
codeslave13 wrote: post #2

Amazon has a piracy/counterfeit problem. And has for a very long time. I have basically stopped buying there as much as possible. My current trend is to use them as a search engine then got to the companies site. At this point you might as well shop alibaba as thats where half the crap is from anyway.

With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the right titles, to enter them 1:1 into Amazon search to get to the books. Context based discovery has become next to impossible (which I used it before a lot for). Something must have changed in their indexing algorithm a while ago. Also many results are flooded with garbage, like some ridiculous…

Yea, Amazon is absolutely terrible as a book seller. It's virtually impossible at times to distinguish between certain editions. The other day, I found an error in that clicking on a paperback edition took me to a completely different book. There's nowhere in the entire page to report that as wrong. And I have also found it increasingly hard to find books via their search. I have even had a few cases of the exact title of the book bringing up no search results, while I could perform the search in Google, and Google would find the Amazon listing for the book.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#108

Post by easrng »

zrobotics wrote: post #97
nerdponx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat of an aside about Target, but I've noticed that their inventory has moved significantly upmarket in the last 10 years or so. Their long-term strategy appears to be distinguishing themselves from the "bottom-of-the-barrel low-cost stuff" market and settling in a "low-cost but still decent stuff" niche.

Thing is, even Walmart vets their inventory. This problem has been going on long enough that I've been telling friends & family not to purchase anything that goes on or in your body from Amazon due to counterfeit issues. Whereas, with Walmart I am pretty well assured that if I buy a can of green giant corn it's actually produced by that company. Sure, it's definitely possible for counterfeits to sneak into their supp…

Note that Walmart.com does list 3rd party sellers.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#109

Post by zrobotics »

easrng wrote: post #108
zrobotics wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is, even Walmart vets their inventory. This problem has been going on long enough that I've been telling friends & family not to purchase anything that goes on or in your body from Amazon due to counterfeit issues. Whereas, with Walmart I am pretty well assured that if I buy a can of green giant corn it's actually produced by that company. Sure, it's definitely possible for counterfeits to sneak into their supp…

Note that Walmart.com does list 3rd party sellers.

Yep, and they also don't fulfill those orders fro Walmart stores. 3rd party seller orders are shipped outside of their logistics chain.

Id argue that the marketplace is still a strategic misstep, but I understand why they did it. Managers want to show they are keeping up with Amazon, and the only way to offer the selection they do is to allow 3rd party sellers.

However, for physical inventory in a Walmart, that is a different thing entirely. Plus, who shops at Walmart online? I have family who are enamored with their online ordering (physical store pickup) and they all have complained about the 3rd party sellers. To a person, they have all said 'if I want to have stuff shipped to me, why wouldn't I use Amazon?'

Amazon is currently banking on their generous return policy and favorable customer service. Most of what they sell is available on AliExpress, but good luck returning something ordered direct from Ali. I don't want to speculate on Amazon's downfall, since they have a dominant enough position to coast for decades, but it seems to me they are making fundamental business mistakes. Most of my peers treat them as a place to order cheap crap, I get the feeling that consumer sentiment is that stuff ordered fron Amazon is even lower quality than Walmart. But direct to door is convenient, and they have enough inertia to last a long time before failing.

Re: Amazon has a book piracy problem

#110

Post by plaguepilled »

visarga wrote: post #102
plaguepilled wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this. It would be nice to have a reduced grace period for books before they're public domain - something like 40 years seems reasonable to me.

40 years seems excessive. I searched a bit for some reference > We find that almost all books, regardless of category, peak in the first 15 weeks after publication https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epj... A graph with sales per week/week after publication https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image... Seems that 2 years after publication the number of copies sold per week decli…

I think I like that idea more. My lean to 40 years is just to satisfy the needs of some academic IPs. I suppose it wouldn't be difficult to categorise IP duration though
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