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What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

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Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#81

Post by 6510 »

ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #60

Great! You currently have just one other comment pointing out that Bezos is no longer CEO, as if that were a piece of information that would make even the slightest difference in this matter. Unfortunately, my comment isn't any more sympathetic either. These people couldn't care less whether you can continue reading the digital books you've already purchased on your existing device or not. And yet you insist on payin…

It's a fascinating bit of biology to see a species collectively sacrifice its well being for the benefit of one man almost entirely without getting something in return.

Not to argue rich people never did anything useful for humanity. The pun is that one may be promoted to great status for doing great things but after that there is no obligation to continue doing great things.

We are in an endless war against the great void and we've appointed many generals who at best couldn't care less about the war and at worse joined the dark side.

You've paid the man and now you get to see books you like fly into the great nothingness. Funny as hell! He showed non of the kindness and generosity he is known for?

You should give him more money, maybe something different happens next time.

haha

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#83

Post by mekoka »

joe_mamba wrote: post #22
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #4

> Well, from now on the workflow will be: > - Find the book I want on Amazon. > - Buy it. > - Find the same book on a torrent site. > - Download it. > - Physically copy it onto the Kindle via a USB cable. Wait a second... you're rewarding Amazon and the publisher for their bad behavior by continuing to buy from Amazon? Nothing about this plan is discouraging the problem. Cut out the middlemen. Torrent it and send the…

>Cut out the middlemen. Torrent it and send the author some money. If this is the ideal model, why don't authors skip the middleman themselves and just put the .pdf/.epub on their website directly in exchange for donations? On the same note, why do game devs need to give Steam 30% of their money and not just sell to the public directly and pocket the 30%? Maybe because those middlemen platforms provide a combination…

> If this is the ideal model, why don't authors skip the middleman themselves and just put the .pdf/.epub on their website directly in exchange for donations?

> On the same note, why do game devs need to give Steam 30% of their money and not just sell to the public directly and pocket the 30%?

We're needlessly making this into a general problem. Why hastily discuss ideal models? The current model is fine and the issue isn't generalized. We're talking about having the option to skip asshole middlemen, or to be more specific, Amazon. A company so big that solving this special case on its own leaps us a huge portion of the way into solving the problem at large.

Is the general sentiment that Steam is also an asshole?

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#84

Post by shinycode »

rzzzt wrote: post #51
shinycode wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually if authors could sell directly I’ll gladly buy from them each and every time and cut off the middle man.

What is making it complex for authors to sell directly? Edit: hah, only 15 minutes late with my attempt at Socratic spiel: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48810056

Also unfortunately the problem lies when the platform has too much power and makes this relationship with the author disproportionate. At first such a platform seems like a good deal for everyone, except when it stops being one

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#85

Post by rickdeckard »

Everybody, get up, we're leaving. Jailbreak your kindles and move to epub. It's not that difficult.

Buy books at Kobo or bookshop.org

There are so many functional kindles out there, this could be the event that changes the power dynamic and puts the author-reader relationship back in the center instead of the publisher/distributor.

It's what's slowly happening in the Movie industry now: The studios learn that they can't create sustainable value by just spending money and adding stars to a production. But directors create value. So they are suddenly put front and center and actively promoted.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#86

Post by rickdeckard »

mmmlinux wrote: post #72
rickdeckard wrote: post #55

It's an exceptionally odd decision, but planned for approx. a year now. - First they stopped allowing download of purchased books for cable-transfer to kindle in 2025. - Then they amped up their effort to avoid jailbreaking by suddenly releasing more firmware updates than before. - Now they stopped supporting a wide range of kindles. Amazon obviously assumes that they sufficiently killed the competition so they don't…

Too bad, I remember when kindles came with a free 3g connection and web browser.

funny enough, just noticed on jailbreak that my kindle touch web-browser never lost its "beta" label, in all those years :)

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#87

Post by Aarostotle »

ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #77
Aarostotle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very simple. They purchased the right to distribute the books on their terms. You don’t like the terms, so you call them predatory. You want the product, so you just take it on your own terms. Morally, that’s no different than your employer just deciding to pay you less than your contract states, because he decides he doesn’t like the terms of the agreement anymore. You don’t gain a right to take things just bec…

It's even simpler than that: Genuine rights cannot be transferred. Everything else is just an attempt to somehow determine who is allowed to make money from what. You shouldn’t take this too seriously, and certainly shouldn’t turn it into a fetish. You should treat it like traffic rules: if no one is watching and it’s obvious that no one can get hurt, then you can basically do whatever you want. It’s very important t…

Your argument isn’t simple, it’s word salad.

You can easily transfer a right of ownership. You can bake a cake and I can buy it from you; once that happens, it is theft for you to take the cake and eat it.

Both of these are expressions of an inalienable right to property.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#88

Post by Marsymars »

Aarostotle wrote: post #87
ahf8Aithaex7Nai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even simpler than that: Genuine rights cannot be transferred. Everything else is just an attempt to somehow determine who is allowed to make money from what. You shouldn’t take this too seriously, and certainly shouldn’t turn it into a fetish. You should treat it like traffic rules: if no one is watching and it’s obvious that no one can get hurt, then you can basically do whatever you want. It’s very important t…

Your argument isn’t simple, it’s word salad. You can easily transfer a right of ownership. You can bake a cake and I can buy it from you; once that happens, it is theft for you to take the cake and eat it. Both of these are expressions of an inalienable right to property.

You could have strong property rights for physical goods while simultaneously having no intellectual property rights - there's nothing that makes the latter instrinsically follow from the former.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#89

Post by Aarostotle »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #48
Aarostotle wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very simple. They purchased the right to distribute the books on their terms. You don’t like the terms, so you call them predatory. You want the product, so you just take it on your own terms. Morally, that’s no different than your employer just deciding to pay you less than your contract states, because he decides he doesn’t like the terms of the agreement anymore. You don’t gain a right to take things just bec…

Your morality is pretty strange if it equates ignoring some of the more odious terms in a hundred-page click-through EULA to knowingly engaging in wage theft. I would honestly like to hear you explain that further.

The moral principle here is just property rights.

One case is more complex than the other, but that does not change the fundamental.

Two cases: 1) Two parties agree to a trade under certain terms, one party decides he does not like the terms, and decides he wants to take the benefit without complying with the agreement. 2) One party decides he does not like the offered terms, does not accept the agreement, but takes the benefit anyway.

With that said, I think you have a point that the current way EULAs work are questionable under contract law. They're specifically designed to be unreadable and to encourage people not to read them, not to keep up with updates, and generally to be unaware of terms they've agreed to. I'd be interested in some smart legislative reform here and I'm hoping you can point me to some people doing good work in this area.

There's a live issue here, but the fact that contract law has flaws does not give anyone the right to defraud or steal.

Re: What does Jeff Bezos think is going to happen?

#90

Post by Marsymars »

SoftTalker wrote: post #75
trencedamp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to kobo when my Kindle told me if would no longer work. Now I don't buy anything from Amazon

I have a kobo. I use it to check out books from the library via Libby/Overdrive. I have never purchased an e-book.

I find that integration near-useless. Even obscure books (if available) tend to have a multi-month wait at my library. Since the wait times seem to be semi-random, it's basically impossible to queue up books in a way that syncs up to my pace of reading.

(I guess if I really wanted to, at my rough reading pace of one book per week, I could place a hold on two books per week, and on average every week I'd get two books available, pick one to read, and just cycle the other back into the hold queue.)

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