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Carl

I'll gladly pay $12 more to not buy it at Amazon!

There's a huge list of other online booksellers at noamazon.

Given that many people still boycott Amazon for their stance on software patents, I guess that they won't be shedding many tears.

One could argue something about watching out for who your bed-partners are! Bear in mind that a company that has such a disregard for even their affiliates has to have a pretty poor respect for anyone else out there! Caveat emptor!

Carl

Don't buy it from Amazon. Hey, the boycott is still on. I'm honoring it. There's good news in the fight but it's not over yet.

And, for those of us who are still boycotting Amazon.com for the abuse of their "one-click" ordering patent - here is a link to find books, movies and music at other retailers BESIDES Amazon: http://www.noamazon.com/

Frankly, who cares that they can be "distinguished"? This is my site... I don't want them there at all!

But would that block the end-user's fair-use rights to the page?

Gotta watch that "fair-use" stuff... it's extremely limited and does not refer to modification at all. You have the right to quote small snippets in a academic context, parody, and a couple of other small things, but it does not extend to arbitrary modification.

Both systems would be an end-user activity that adds value, in the user's mind, to the information already present in the website.

First, there is no "right" to add value to somebody else's copyrighted work. If your use isn't covered under the extremely limited fair-use clauses and you don't have permission, you are legally out of luck.

Second... a subtle but crucial point, there is a major difference between a "translator" and the described service. In theory, a translator does not in fact add value. In theory, the translated page is identical to the original page: Same links, same expression, same content. In reality it doesn't quite work that way, but there's no real benefit in whaling on the translation services because of that (and copyright law is all about issues of "benefit").

On the other hand, a page that is processed against the copyright-owner's will with these "smart tags" does have real content change. Links are suddenly present that previously did not exist and were in no way created or approved by the page copyright owner.

Even this simple change can have very real consequences to a site's message. Consider how the NoAmazon.com site might look through this feature... it's a good guess Amazon will be one of the featured services (they need the help), so now NoAmazon.com is plastered with links to Amazon whereever they mention Amazon (frequently), or products Amazon sells (look in the sidebar). Joy! Yes, that's maintaining the integrity of the site.

And commercially, of course, Microsoft-approved sites will do more business then the non-Microsoft approved sites that have the links automatically added to the MS-approved sites, who don't suffer from that disadvantage.

My big beef with this would be if the links looked like my own, or if they replaced my own links with links that the system thought were "better."

Get beefing, because they are. They are replacing your lack of links with links of their own. Lack of linkage can carry messages to, like the way NoAmazon.com doesn't link to Amazon (or at least not much; I'm not combing their site for counter-examples), or the perceived initial slighting of the web by Old Media when their articles never included links, even when writing about the Web.

Furthermore, bear in mind that if it's OK for Microsoft to do this, then it's OK for Microsoft to do other things, too. Not all of those other things may be so harmless. Expand your thinking a bit. Esp. from the point of view of copyright violation, if Microsoft is allowed to modify the intended output of the webpage in this fashion, there is no reason to believe that they won't be able to do anything else they wanted. And if Microsoft can do it, so can anyone else.

In fact, there's no practical difference between this and censorware, either; with the power of page modification in the hands of anyone who has the technical ability, and by saying that it's legal to do this, you are granting anybody with the power to modify pages the power to censor as they see fit. There's just no difference between that and what Microsoft's doing, it's just that Microsoft is proposing a weak use of that power.

Consider the consequences!

Just say No Amazon

It's really not that hard to find examples of information that are at least relatively hard to come by... whether this is the fault of search engines not finding them or the actual lack of content is hard to tell, but I regularly come across things you'd think would be easy to find on the web, but can't. Having a micro-payment based site doesn't make it any easier to find the stuff, unfortunately.

Just as a for-instance, I've just spent a fairly fruitless hour trying to find a simple TCP/IP server with source implemented as a Windows NT Service. Aside from Apache, which is a little big a quick read, I didn't come up with much at all.

For what it's worth, I am in favour of micropayments in the tip-jar analogy, but probably not in the mini-subscription sense. The only thing annoying me about Amazon's Honour System is that (a) they take 15% [or whatever fairly large amount it is] and (b) as a result Amazon of all people get 15% of my donation.

Because they patent stupid things like one-click shopping and we are all supposed to go to noamazon.com instead.

I haven't yet felt the need to order movies online, but if I did, I'd go to noamazon.com and pick out one of the vendors there.

--

Really, it's that good. Even the often-critical Slashdot reviews found it to be "Outstanding". If you have even a passing interest in cryptography, I'd highly recommend picking up this book. Just don't buy it from Amazon, please :).

Alex Bischoff
---

If amazon.com is hurting for money so much, you'd think they'd come up with a better ploy for making revenue. This sounds like a glorified version of the salami technique where they slice off fractions of a penny from back transactions.

Apparently, they aren't making as much money off of their patent fiasco as they thought they would.

--

Check out www.noamazon.com for information about stopping Amazon, and links to other online bookstores which have better privacy policies.

Alex Bischoff
Interested in building a roof over your cubicle?
---

And, if you're interested in finding that
Tim Berners-Lee book without violating the
Amazon boycot you could try Fatbrain:
Weaving the Web

By all means, www.noamazon.com...and it's a good memoir, no matter where you get it. He tells the story of meeting a child who claimed to have seen Star Wars 100 times or something...I quote inaccurately, from memory, but it's in the memoir (entitled My Name Escapes Me, in case you want to find a copy):
Guinness: "Can you make me a promise?"
child: "YES!" (glad to help out Obi Wan)
Guinness: "Can you promise me that you will never again watch that film?"

The parent of the child apparently didn't appreciate this.

That's already happened. If you're talking about loosing the hype surrounding e-Commerce, just check the stock histories of eBay, eToys, Amazon and most other so called e-tailers. Guess what, they're all way down compared to where they were. I think they e-tailing hype has already worn off, at least in the eyes of investors.

kwsNI

If you check out their Affiliate page (doesn't Amazon (that link is to noamazon.com, by the way (I just love parentheses)) have a patent on that?) then you'd see that the did license Google's search technology.

You can't fall for the little guy spin Bezos is using.

It is how one reacts to the pressures of life that shows the real person underneath. Everyone is the best CEO, the best husband, or the best mother when there isn't any stress around - it's easy to bat a thousand when you're hitting lobbed softballs. Turn up the heat in some one's existance and how they handle it will tell you more about that person then knowing him a lifetime. _How a person reacts under stress is how they are_.

If you pound on your wife, but only after a bad day, you're still a wife beater on the good days.

If you yell at your employees, but only when they make a mistake, then you're still a shitty boss the rest of the time.

If you sue other people for patent infringment, but only when they are trying to crush you, then you're still slimy scumbag.

You can never excuse behavior because of after-the-fact spin. If you do, then you discount reality at the expense of someone's smooth words. Reality is the rule - is Amazon patenting obvious mechanisms and using it hurt other companies? If so, then that is who they are - a bully (a bully among bullys, but still a bully).

Think about this: imagine the shit Amazon will start to pull in the second quarter when the money from their IPO and their upcoming European bond sale runs out. You don't think they'll be lashing out at everyone? Sueing everybody in a deparate attempt to buy more doors for desks?

->Jeff
www.noamazon.com

http://buecher.de/
http://www.buchhandel.de/
http://buchkatalog.de/
http://buch.de/
http://www.libri.de/
http://bol.de/

Some additional links for Europe can be found at http://noamazon.com/.

- Stephan.

Came across this link at www.noamazon.com

C.

-Legion

Look at www.noamazon.com and find other merchants, and you'll do well as a consumer.

Thanks Amazon! :-)

PS. Can't help with the neural nets, sorry...

www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com

Sorry for the repetition. Just thought it might be helpful to get the attention...

kwsNI

www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com

Sorry for the repetition. Just thought it might be helpful to get the attention...

kwsNI

www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com

Sorry for the repetition. Just thought it might be helpful to get the attention...

kwsNI

www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com
www.noamazon.com

Sorry for the repetition. Just thought it might be helpful to get the attention...

kwsNI

No money is made whatsoever on noamazon.com. Technically, it looses $30 bucks a month to Pair for hosting it .

The only reason we run the site is because of Amazon's patent madness.

Funny sidenote: 7% of noamazon.com's traffic comes from www.amazon.com.

What's up next? Hasn't IBM already patented eCommerce or will Amazon try to patent that also. How about .Com? Oh wait, Sun has that... WWW? Maybe they'll just patent accepting credit card orders.

How about getting the patent on their "Comments" section where other people can post comments about the item? Hmm, maybe they could make Slashdot stop using comments then. Then where would all the trolls go?

How about enforcing their Amazon name and make Brazil rename that damned forest? Would that be asking too much? After all, they've gotten away with patenting the obvious so far...

www.noamazon.com

Sorry, I'm really cynical and bitter tonight :)

kwsNI

We would also like to make it clear that we do not accept kickbacks, advertising money, or bribes. This site is about freedom from bogus software patents and harmful litigation, not money. None of the sites on our list of links paid us, nor will we allow anyone to pay us for a link in the future. We will, however, listen to all of you when chosing sites as alternatives to patent-happy companies. Send your favorite honest Internet commerce site to us at links@noamazon.com.

...and start typing www.noamazon.com instead.

This seems like a worthwhile time to call attention to the efforts of one of my office pals. Visit http://www.noamazon.com for some excellent links to alternative sites for the merchandise purveyed by Amazon.

We've tried to get Slashdot to mention this site as a "quickie" news item, but apparently they are an (ahem) Amazon affiliate themselves. :-)

Yes, but aren't most of us boycotting Amazon?

We share everyone's concern over the completely bogus Amazon patent.

One of the problems in switching from Amazon is that everyone is so used to simply typing Amazom.com.

To help with this weaning-off process, we've setup up an alternate website that links to other retail sites that don't use patents as a cowardly business strategy.

Instead of "amazon.com", now just use "noamazon.com".

We have listed alternatives to Amazon for all of the types of products that Amazon currently sells. We intend to keep it up to date for whatever products you normally buy from Amazon.

Note that we gain nothing from the NOamazon.com website - we just do it as a service to help everyone get off Amazon.

Jeff Roberts
Casey Muratori

Stallman is a relative latecomer to the Amazon-boycotting scene. Check out NoAmazon.Com.

Man's unique agony as a species consists in his perpetual conflict between the desire to stand out and the need to blend in.

A handy list of alternatives to Amazon can be found here . There is an article on technocrat.net discussing this, but it's down right now.

I do not have a credit card, so I wouldn't purchase from them anyway, but I do use them to decide if it's time to pile in a bus and visit my bookstore. I suppose taking page impressions away is part of the deal, so I'll try elsewhere for now at least, been meaning to check out the others anyway.

I think the patent is quite silly, but I still wonder if a boycott action is useful here. How may other silly patents are being muscled right now, and should we boycott all products from any such company? Is Amazon the most evil company deserving our attention? If we take multinational corporate ties into account, that could get to be a *long* list of products.

Most telling, I wonder if Amazon would or could drop their suit as a result. If the result is a suit by the shareholders for negligence w.r. to their intellectual property they haven't gained much.

Perhaps our lobbying and action should directed be towards those making patent law, and overseeing the patent office instead. If a corporation has a legal means to expand its marketshare or create licensing profit it is almost required by current law to exploit it. Just reducing the length of software patents from decades to years would greatly improve the situation and it's mildly realistic to hope it could be done.

We share everyone's concern over this completly bogus patent.

One of the problems in switching from Amazon is that everyone is so used to simply typing Amazom.com.

To help with this weaning-off process, we've setup up an alternate website that links to other retail sites that don't use patents as a cowardly business strategy.

Instead of "amazon.com", now just use "noamazon.com".

We have listed alternatives to Amazon for all of the types of products that Amazon currently sells. We intend to keep it up to date for whatever products you normally buy from Amazon.

Note that we gain nothing from the NOamazon.com website - we just do it as a service to help everyone get off Amazon.

Jeff Roberts
Casey Muratori