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I would rather see my books get pirated than this

janefriedman.com

351–360 of 517 posts

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#351
post #44

I think this is the future of computers for people. they will open their phone and say "hey siri get this book or computer or car" and the browser will show them a bunch of made up products generated by an AI and they'll get the product drop shipped from china and it'll be a shitty counterfeit just like the $5 256GB USB drives. But they won't know because when you look for reviews, the review websites will also be ge…

Yeah, until someone creates a website that just ships the products they say they have, and people type in the URL for the site directly and shop there? If online shopping were truly such a terribly scammy UX in 100% of cases people would stop using it or shift to shopping from trusted sellers who recognize the tremendous amount of value they can capture by not scamming people.

I have already stopped using Amazon for specialized products.

I buy board games on sites that only sell board games.

I buy electronics/computer parts on sites that only sell that.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#352

>I did file a report with Amazon, complaining that these books were using my name and reputation without my consent. Amazon’s response: “Please provide us with any trademark registration numbers that relate to your claim.” When I replied that I did not have a trademark for my name, they closed the case and said the books would not be removed from sale. I see you had a typical customer service experience with Amazon.…

Impersonating a person is a crime, but all that they would need is to find a fake writer with the same name and some money for burying the small author in trial costs for ten years. Not a good perspective but mouth to mouth, or satire right can help.

She should have a personal web controlled entirely by her, show a list of her real books and mock-destroy the fake books from there with some dark humor or cynicism. Her job is to write after all. That could be even an opportunity to improve her brand.

Taken one to one small writers are easy fish. Should join and press for regulation change.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#354

Books are published - either by a publisher , or by the author . That's the equivalent of a 'checksum'. The author should be able to provide to Amazon/Goodreads a list of publishers for their book. Any publisher not on this list should be prevented from selling the title. If someone wants to impersonate an author, they'd have to also impersonate a publisher - a much bigger legal risk. Simple solution.

For many self published authors there is just one publisher: Amazon itself.

Perfect! So Amazon would be encouraged to police itself, which benefits everyone.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, until someone creates a website that just ships the products they say they have, and people type in the URL for the site directly and shop there? If online shopping were truly such a terribly scammy UX in 100% of cases people would stop using it or shift to shopping from trusted sellers who recognize the tremendous amount of value they can capture by not scamming people.

> Yeah, until someone creates a website that just ships the products they say they have, and people type in the URL for the site directly and shop there? This already happens over and over, and with AI it’s only going to be worse. Company makes a decent product, gains reputation, and then strip mines their good will for quick cash while quality plummets. After a while, you just distrust the whole online shopping expe…

And you can say "the lemons are ruining the whole market" in relation to software engineering jobs too.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#356
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re in a race to the bottom. There’s no way a company selling legitimate products will be able to compete or grow a customer base in the AI future, because we’ll be swimming in garbage.

This assumes that the only ways people have to find companies are search engines and other mediums that are prone to AI takeover. If everyone starts to realize that most of the surface internet is garbage, they would start communicating with humans they know about which places are not garbage. It was possible to find good businesses to interact with before Google existed. Obviously in a world where every online retai…

And the few, lone, honest online retailers get early discovered by online scammers who turn that honest retailer inside out, destroy them financially, and then take over their URL. I've seen it happen, and it nearly happened to me but I shut down rather than spiral down, unable to wage war on so many fronts.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step 1: go to amazon on a real computer and find book Step 2: click buy Step 3: in the post purchase confirmation it says "Want to start reading right away?" and a dropdown of your devices with a deliver button. It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally. The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't wa…

The only activities I do on the phone are browsing internet, chatting, and taking/viewing pictures. Anything that requires active involvement waits until I am in front of a PC. Mobile UIs are just insufficient for most activities.

Hard to haul my desktop onto the Tube just to read for 30 mins on my way to walk.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#358
I think this is yet another sign that a lot of the big tech companies business models don't actually scale like they thought.

There was a golden window, before the scammers caught up, when you could trust things not checked by humans ( whether that be news stories, social media posts or goods for sale ) - and that window appears to be closing.

If they lose trust - they are dead. The question is how much will maintaining that trust cost - and will they be able to keep their advantage over traditional retailers?

I'm not sure AI systems is the answer - you just end up in a never ending AI war between scammer and checker.

In the end, they may find they need the human handshake.

Re: I would rather see my books get pirated than this

#359
post #44

I think this is the future of computers for people. they will open their phone and say "hey siri get this book or computer or car" and the browser will show them a bunch of made up products generated by an AI and they'll get the product drop shipped from china and it'll be a shitty counterfeit just like the $5 256GB USB drives. But they won't know because when you look for reviews, the review websites will also be ge…

Many aspects of this problem doesn't sound hard to solve. But you need to involve cryptographic signing and reliable eIDs.

Any content from a known author needs to be verified to be from that author by letting that author sign the content.

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