Slashdot Mirror
French Fine Amazon For Free Shipping
strech writes "Ars Technica reports that France is fining Amazon for offering free shipping on some orders. A French high court ruled in December that the practice violated a law preventing discounting the price of a book more than 5% off of the publisher's recommended price. Amazon has decided to pay the fine, rather than drop free shipping. The fine currently stands at €1,000 per day but is automatically reconsidered after 30 days, after which it could be raised dramatically."
How the hell does giving free shipping mean that the price of the book is discounted? The book is $7.99 or whatever regardless of the price of shipping, free or not.
Speedy thing goes in; speedy thing comes out.
I wish I could remember how to draw out the ASCII headache guy...suits this perfectly.
If you'd just do what we tell you and quit yer gripin' everything would be chocolate sprinkles and rainbows! -AC
What possible reason could France have for this law, besides being successfully bought by big business?
Quite sad really.
Stupid laws or Gallic protectionism?
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
By the time you've read TFA, they'll have probably surrendered.
Captcha: steaming (like a fine mug of frosty piss)
I'm trying hard to understand this. Looking at European governmental action, typically these governments act to protect the consumer. I do not immediately see how forcing a higher price on a commodity can be good for the consumer. But then I remember Wal-Mart; look at Wal-Mart by offering lower prices for so many years has hurt local economies, local goods providers who cannot compete with volume pricing... which is exactly what Amazon does as well. They can take a hit on shipping because they probably have cut rate contracts with delivery companies anyway that local French sellers cannot compete with! So, all I can think is that the French government has bothered to look beyond the obvious, oh we save them 8EU so we are obviously better for the consumer and realized that there is more to a healthy economy and healthy society than saving someone a buck or two...
...and it should be known by now
I can see the French point of view somewhat. Shipping is an accepted and expected part of the price of something and to offer that up for free is an indirect discount on the price. I'm sure we've all seen ebay auctions that do the opposite by selling some $2 gizmo and charging $10 for shipping. Of course these people do this for different motives (to save listing fees) but with this in mind would you say the gizmo cost $2 or $12? When I shop online I consider shipping costs on everything I buy because as far as I am concerned the shipping cost is part of the total cost of the item.
So wait, Amazon is offering free shipping on french fries now?
That shipping does add cost to the book however it doesn't help small bussiness at all. If people wanted to buy the book locally they would. It would cost the same, and it would be instant delivery. People are ordering the books off amazon with free shipping because it is more easy to do than to go down to a book store and find the book. I myself wouldn't mind paying the extra money to just be able to order a book online just for the fact it wont take me 10 years to locate it. Finding new books isn't hard but when you have to find a old one, it can be a pain to find. Its the small companys fault for not having a different system to make buying books more easy. Book stores in my expereience are horribly layed out and hard to find anything that you are looking for.
Yes. The law was enacted in 1981 to prevent the market from being flooded with only cheap, marked-down books (think of those strip mall "Discount Books" places, if you live in the US), and, as I'm sure you can guess, to keep competition, ummm, competitive. The law has been brought before the mighty French court before, both times being upheld, probably because it's even in its application; it's not like it applies to some sellers and not others. It's like a price control. This was all brought to light because the "French Bookseller's Union" sued Amazon to try and stop the free shipping and the court (in December) interpreted that as part of the book price. Other countries have similar laws actually, but France is the only one that has applied it to the shipping -- when shipping to France.
By refusing to comply and instead paying the fine each day, Amazon is increasing the chance of the fine being raised after the 30 days. Also, it's funny we're talking about the government being bought by big business...and yet, isn't Amazon big business? Touché!
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
Wal-mart and other big stores can cut prices dramatically not only from "cutting deals," but from simply offering certain items as what is called a "loss leader."
For instance, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and other big stores often get their music CDs for the same price that other, dedicated music stores would pay (say, for example, $10) but they actually price the CD for less than they paid for it (say $9) and intentionally lose money on the purchase. The idea of course is that a customer who comes in to buy that CD will pick up some other things that will make up the difference.
In theory if people walked into Best Buy and bought nothing but music CDs the company would hemorrhage money, but in practice of course their plan works out perfectly while the smaller music shops can't possibly compete on fair ground. (One owner of a local music shop near me routinely sends his employees to the big stores to buy stock for his shelves, because it's a better deal than he can get from his supplier. How screwed up is that?)
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"Because the court decided the price of the book was the total cost to the customer after the book cost itself AND ground shipping were taken into account. So if the book is $7.99 and ground shipping is $2, then the total cost to the customer is $9.99. By Amazon not charging the customer that $2 they have, in the eyes of the court, discounted the book by 20%."
So are they going to start fining bookstores for not charging shipping? After all, if the "consumer price" is $9.99, buying for $7.99 at the local bookstore is a deep discount.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Isn't this exactly the kind of nonsense that Nicolas Sarkozy wants to put an end to? Fining a business for doing something that BENEFITS consumers just because of pressure from some lazy brick-and-mortars (who would rather hide behind their union and the laws they've forced through than innovate and compete) seems insane.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Because the French have no word in their language for entrepreneur, they are not capable of understanding the American concept of laissez-faire.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Makes sense to me. 30k for a month while Amazon's BAs come up with a brib^H^H^H^H solution to the problem.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
French fine for free freight? Formidable.
What a great tag for this story. Fuck the French? Yes, that's descriptive ... I know some Americans seem to hate the French, but really, WTF, tags like this make slashdot look like myspace. Slashdot is really going down the shitter...
When the retards who only see the cost of their purchase in dollars destroy their local economy, they will go crying to goverment for help. Those of us who knew better will have to bail them out. Better to prevent the fools from dragging us all down. This is the same logic used for gun control, drug laws, seatbelt laws, child protection laws, etc...
Blar.
Is that France has a pile of protectionist laws screwing up their economy and this is just one of them.
Amazon isn't selling at a loss. They're just selling at a price that some stores don't want to compete with. And French law, instead of giving the consumer the right to buy where they can get something the cheapest, instead forces the consumer to pay more for a product than they need to.
You'd think it was pretty silly if the US had a federal law that said that you could only sell a product for no less than 5% of MSRP, wouldn't you? And you'd think it was ESPECIALLY silly if that law only applied to particular products?
Well, except agriculture, but there we just write checks to producers.
paintball
I completely agreed with your sentiment, however, on thinking about it for a minute, from a strictly accounting point of the view the French courts are completely correct.
The cost of the book to you is:
Cost of the Book + Cost of Shipping
Now the shipping is outside of Amazon's control because it goes through a third party (i.e. the postal service) and so they cannot offer free shipping (only the postal service can do that), but what they can do is reduce the cost of the book in order to offset the cost of the shipping - in which case the court is absolutely correct. The book is being sold at a discount - and if that's more than 5%, they're breaking the law.
Now on the other hand: for "The French Bookseller's Union" methinks read bunch of lazy bastards who don't want anyone ripping into their cushy cartel.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
and this is what they come up with - price fixing for dead trees.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
30,000 (about $44,070 as of this post) is pocket change for a company like Amazon.
I also don't know shit about the case, or the laws in France regarding this kind of thing. But if it's the French and it affects an American company negatively, then it must be bad!
It's insane because I, like you, know absofuckingloutely nothing about the situation!
In the same vein, this is not a fundamental justice issue. France determines the rules to trade in their country. If you don't like them, you don't have to trade there. Or, you can program in special exceptions (no free shipping) for French customers. We can argue about whether their rules are stupid or not (rejecting email based on legal MAIL FROM chars is stupid). But this isn't a case of oppression or murder.
Hmmm. In 20006 France passed the iPod law, which was covered here on Slashdot. However, parts of that law after it was passed were struck down. All governments have crazy laws, most of which are old and need to be updated. I disagree with the law, however it was put into place for an obvious reason. The problem is with the Internet, online sales and the general economy small mom and pop stores all over the world are being harmed. I do not think this law will save those stores anymore and as all old laws I'm sure this one will take years to get off the books.
Amazon should charge a penny or whatever is the lowest possible denomination in French currency, that way shipping is not free yet shipping charges is so cheap that it adds virtually nothing to the cost if the item purchased...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Adding the price of shipping to the book and prohibiting discounts is a funny idea. Let's see: If you have to add the price of shipping to a book sold by an online seller you have to add other costs as well, e.g. the costs of your book shop. So if you are selling a book for the standard price and your bookshop is nicer than the one across the street you are giving an illegal discount. The same would be true if your bookshop has more employees or better qualified employees than the average bookshop. We should therefore call for legislation defining the "standard bookshop" - just to make sure there isn't any evil competition at all.
Let them eat cake!
fuck the french
The price of socialism is that getting a good deal is a crime. If you aren't paying full price someone isn't getting paid full price. The U.S. was like this once. Under FDR a farmer could get fined for growing wheat for the sole purpose of feeding to his family because, hypothetically, if every farmer did this it would impact the market for wheat. See Wickard v. Filburn. Imagine what this logic would mean if it was applied to technology.
Why have 1 person driving a backhoe when you could employ 20 with shovels?
...I believe this is not a French-exclusive sort of deal. I would say it's generally continental/European.
In my experience in Germany at least, the prices of books are entirely fixed by a cartel BY LAW and it's illegal to sell them below that cartel's set prices. Pretty sad in a country that values learning so highly.
-Styopa
This is a horrible article, is false/misleading, and missing some information. How much was Amazon selling this book for? How much was the publisher's recommended price? What does the price of shipping have to do with anything? I mean, would Amazon be compliant with French law if they sold the book for the publisher's recommended price, and didn't charge shipping?
According to the article, they claim that the courts found against Amazon because of their free shipping, and then go off on a tangent, referring to a law that doesn't seem to even mention shipping. Do brick and mortar stores have to charge shipping too?
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
There are many French laws aimed at preserving the neighborhood stores (small bakeries, book stores, etc.) Of course, the intention is nice, but the result is that the book is more or less a luxury item. Which is somehow consistent with the mainstream French public demand, because there are very few second-hand book shops, too, and from what I've seen relatively few people buy used books. The bookstores are indeed adapted to this, and are concentrating on selling expensive books and albums in small quantities, as well as blockbusters (LOTR, Harry Potty, etc.) Their problem is that Amazon.fr is gradually changing the entire organization of the market. The book is no longer a luxury product, and instead of buying a nice, expensive book per month, you can buy maybe 3 paperbacks, maybe some English-language books, etc. Thus, small bookstores are losing ground.
I'm with Amazon on this. While I understand the need for proximity stores for food and clothes, I don't see why a standardized product such as books, DVDs, a.s.o. needs to be protected. Anyway, it's produced industrially, and there's no fitting to be done on them. However, I didn't see the message of Jeff Bezos (which the article claims to have been sent to all Amazon.fr customers).
That way Amazon can charge what they want, and it will be so much more than MSRP that free shipping will be no problem. :)
The French govt did not impose a cap on VCR imports. That would be mean.
Instead they ruled that the official VCR import customs inspections would be done at Pied en Merde, a lovely country village in the mountains. There they built a customs shack, at the top of the highest hill in town, with a very nice stone stairway to it. In the shack, experienced customs inspector Pierre La Douche-Tableau, age 78, would cheerfully inspect each and every VCR. Every ten minutes or so he'd finish his inspection of yet another foreign VCR. Thorough, that Pierre.
Europe has very strong anti-dumping laws generally. This could be considered dumping; somebody has to pay for the shipping after all. If the publisher recommends that it be sold for a certain price that you may not be more than 5% off of, you can betcha that the thing isn't sold to the stores for any less than 5% off of the recommended price (and that in low-supply areas, the stores put 10% on top of that price). I don't mean to defend it, I think it's old-fashioned and awkward; I'm just trying to explain it. In theory, Amazon could try to push everyone off the market by offering books for a few cents for a few years. Where do you draw the line ? I know the taxman will draw a line at a certain point at least.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
It never gets old. Signed: a Cheese-eating Baguette-eating Beret-wearing Marxo-Socialist Hairy Dirty Hot-Women-Fucking Surrendering *RUDE* *JEWISH and MUSLIM* Anti-Iraq-War Anti-American Anti-* Renault-driving (haha the joke) Monkey with a 19th-century-mindset! (* oh shit, that could be American).
If you want to do business in a country, you follow the laws by that country. How hard is that to understand?
If you do not want to do that, you do not do business in that country.
Wether this is an American company in France, A Belgian company in Spain or a Russian one in the USofA.
I am sure that I will be fined selling alcohol to people under the age of 21 in the USofA, no matter what my opinion is of that law, or the fact that the country of my headoffice allows this. I am sure both Heineken and InBev would agree.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
/. needs a new tag called readitontheregisteryesterday
How does one know one is on a US web site. Response :
It's France; whining is what they do best. is modded insightful +3
I expect that soon the "surrender" joke will be numerous for this article.
I guess it is easier to insult than to try to understand.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Guess it's status quao for the French Government more worried about the French rich then the French consumer.
"freedomfries" is an interesting replacement for "f-the french," though I must say I didn't know that slashdot was really concerned about communications decency.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
funnily enough may in an extreme case violate the EU free market laws, because, in order to sell in France, a foreign publisher is forced to a price threshold, which favours the internal market which grew up on it - the costs associated with establishing this threshold and imposing it upon publishers is nationalist not competitive
but i guess they're treating domestic and foreign books in the same way...
food for thought (and my EU lectures)
The law is not protectionist. Protectionism means that you do not allow foreign goods onto a local market. Since a French company, Alapage got in trouble for doing the same thing, you cannot classify this as protectionism.
And the agricultural policy is not French, it is a competence of the EU. The US does the same thing with its farm subsidies. Make no mistake, without regulation, the free market does not magically make agricultural production better, it impoverishes farmers and leads to huge fluctuations in prices and chronic shortages. The EU and the US (two of the world's most free-market oriented organizations) have subsidies for farmers because history has proven their necessity over and over.
By the way, the anti-dumping laws (this means selling products below price) in French laws are a result of the transposition of EU directives into national laws. Such directives exist to ensure the free market can prosper and they are the same across Europe. Given the nature of the European economy right now (hint: it's really good compared to everybody else), such initiatives must be doing something right.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
www.bookdepository.com
and
www.play.com
that being said, the law is the law and everybody is supposed to abide by it. in canada, for instance, some laws are different in quebec and ontario (two different provinces, like -- for the americans -- two different states) so, if you live in ottawa (the capital city of canada), in ontario, you can only buy alcoholic drinks in authorized stores and until 9 pm, whereas if you cross the ottawa river into quebec (a 1 minute drive) you can buy alcoholic drinks at any convenience store and until 11 pm. also, gas is more expensive in quebec that in ontario a.s.o. and nobody sues anybody about that because different laws apply on each side of the river and canadians have no problem with that. so why would the ceo of amazon.com expect another country to change its laws for him?
Let me try to summarise the vast majority of comments:
- French is bad, USA is good and the rest is whatever.
- USA companies extending their businesses abroad must only answer to USA rules.
- As long as the company is USA based, any foreign national law should be ignored, and failure to comply, leading to a $1000 fine for a company making 10 billions per year, may be blamed on the French.
Yay, masters of the world !
Funny How other vendors can do this but then they don't free ship one Item (You have a minimum order value before you get free shipping). See FNAC for exemple. You want to trade in France then you have to abide by the Laws.
Your statement makes the presumptuous assumption that cheap books provide more societal benefit than local book stores. The laws of France (as well as every other Western country, in varying degrees) obviously assume that in some cases protectionism benefits society. I'm sure once they figure out that they're silly they're change their ways, or wait, did you actually have some argument you forgot to give?
Unlike the holy Americans who have never had their laws abused by corporate interests in all of history.
Logically, that proves why Americans rule the world and the French are absolute losers beyond any hope.
But... the future refused to change.
Not only do they stock a nice wide range at reasonable prices, you stick it in the eye to the taxman because they are based on Jersey, and you don't pay VAT for small imports.
I'm sorry, but I always thought of the book as a product, and delivery as a service. So my interpretation of this ruling is that the judge is saying that he can value the service?
I am French I lived in Germany, russia, a few month in the US. By now , nearly more than I lived in France.
People COMPLAIN and WHINE every-freaking-where. Fenchmen are not more or less complaining than anywhere else.
This is the same type of prejudice than "american are lazy fat ass jerk, ignorant on any other country culture" I sometimes hear. It as bad, as stupid, and certainly not INSIGHTFUL +3.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
> With an organ trade, one carefully define the regulatory framework surrounding it.
I don't know how that would be considered a free market then.
Obviously there can easily be a lot of misunderstanding what people mean with "free market", but I think those opposing it mostly think the kind that means only the richest 30% will get any organs ever at all, and even in emergencies you will only be treated if there isn't someone who is willing to pay more (even if the richer person's problem is not important in a medical sense).
I'd be interested if you are part of the faction to whom free market means something else or part of those who think it will work out even in those cases or something entirely different.
> Never underestimate the free market; the only illusion that people like you are operating on is that you can control it through government action.
Well, I believe that there are an insane amount of stupid laws, some of which are entirely pointless (esp. those that make outsourcing to other countries harder - in the long term everyone will win when things are done where they make most sense to do (are cheapest), though sure this means we will have to find other things to do here).
But there are also places where I think control makes sense (and I think that is the same for almost everyone - there are few people who oppose any kind of law altogether).
The hard question is: where is the border? And people who say things like "I believe in the free market" (note here it was "tend to believe" which I admit could be quite different in meaning) behave as if it would be trivial to know and see this border, and I think they are doing everyone a disfavour with that. Though I admit I know it is often said just because treating the subject in its full complexity is a bit much in the situation.
Though I wonder if a statement like "I think this is a good example where the free(r) market would work so much better" wouldn't still be the better choice.
etymology ftw!
How is mandating price-fixing something that "causes competition"? If everyone is legally required to sell at more or less the same price, how will that benefit the consumer?
I can see anti-dumping laws, but prohibiting price variation entirely is not very similar.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
exactly. this would actually support the argument that amazon's lower prices would not affect these local bookstores that sell "hard to find" books. of course, that's not what the french government is trying to do. they're trying to protect all french bookstores at the expense of the average french consumer.
I find it fascinating that everyone here is discussing the ethicality and/or economic rationality of the French decision to fine Amazon, but nobody has taken up the issue of Amazon's deciding to pay the fine rather than obey the law. Is it seriously the view of every single slashdot reader that the purpose of the law is to raise money, and the sole reason for obeying the law is to avoid paying fines? Does the message that the French are sending—we do not want you to do this in our country—mean nothing?
I have long thought that the core problem with US culture, beyond even the diminishing influence of science, is that the ideal of the Rule of Law got lost at some point. While the evidence is indirect, this may be the starkest example I have seen in a long time.
Please, someone prove me wrong, and agree with me that Amazon is putting itself in a very bad light by ignoring this decision, whatever you may think of the reasoning behind it!
Because the French have no word in their language for entrepreneur, they are not capable of understanding the American concept of laissez-faire.
This is the funniest thing I have ever seen on Slashdot. I'd +1 but you're already 5.
Because "free shipping" is always a lie. TANSTAAFL. They are not selling a book for $7.99. They are selling a book+shipping bundle for $7.99.
It sounds like a despicable law, but it's clearly being violated, too.
I think Amazon should take a cue from the US government and rename it. Stop calling it "free shipping" and call it "French shipping."
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
When reading the title I thought someone was shipping fine french amazons free. I know you can get mail-order brides from Thailand, but not from France.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
You are incorrect. There is no free market in any item where one competitor can have another arrested and imprisoned for selling the product. If I sell illegal drugs, or I sell my vote in congress, I will receive a different price than I would under a free market. Free markets require transparent pricing, and you can't advertise illegal goods that effectively. Try putting your congressional vote, or illegal goods on e-bay, and you'll see what I mean.
Many free market purists reject copyright and patents for exactly that reason.
The Net Book Agreement was not a law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Book_Agreement), it was a collusion between publishers and sellers to keep book prices artificially high.
It ended when such collusion was ruled to be illegal. If smaller shops disappeared, it's because they had previously only existed by unfairly exploiting the consumer.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
There are specialist book stores, and second hand bookstores who have books that haven't been in print for 50 years. You won't find those on Amazon.
You sure will. The last two books I purchased on Amazon are obscure Aerospace Engineering books that have been out of print for a great many years. Amazon does stock used books via third parties.
Care to post something to back up your position?
I find being offended by me offensive.
This is why the french are so screwed up. I thought Sarko was supposed to fix things but instead his is jet setting with his super model.
How about charging 0.01 EUR for delivery. Then if someone buys a book for 10EUR, the total they pay will be 10.01EUR will a clear indication of where the money is divided: 10EUR = book cost, 0.01EUR is delivery charge. Can the French then complain?
And a thriving used marketplace for used books.
Just say what you really mean - the French law, like a lot of other French laws, is attempting to protect an economically inefficient, but subjectively "better" way of doing things. Nothing wrong with that, if you are willing to pay for the luxury.
Eventually France is going to be the last place on Earth, dammit, where everyone sits around eating Carl's Jr and drinking Brawndo all day. Good for them.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
In fact, Soundtraks' Stamford, too, has taken to shopping at the big-boxes for music-but not for his own listening pleasure.
"I'll tell you a secret," says Stamford. "Independent record stores go to big chains and buy releases. On a normal basis I will go to Circuit City and buy DVDs. There's always something there for $13.99 plus tax; I bring them back here and sell them for my normal price, which is $24.99, as opposed to buying it wholesale at $21." source
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But I'm not seeing that happening, so methinks people want to have their cake and eat it too.
"Dumping" is the practice of selling products at a large loss. The classic dumping strategy (that caused the passage of anti-dumping laws) is for a large company with deep pockets to lose large amounts of money basically giving products away for nearly nothing for long enough that their competitors go bankrupt, then raise the prices back up when they successfully bankrupt them.
If you were to take gasoline, for example, an anti-dumping law would say that if your production cost is $2/gallon, and you're selling for $1/gallon, and a competitor who sues can show that you're selling it for a loss for predatory purposes, then what you're doing is illegal. But saying "everyone must sell gasoline for exactly $3.25 a gallon" or "everyone must sell gasoline for between $3.22 and $3.29 a gallon" is not an anti-dumping law, nor even close to it. That's just a price-fixing law---the sort of thing that would actually be illegal if oil companies got together and agreed to do it. That's more or less what's going on here---book sellers have price-fixed, only the government's blessed that arrangement, and indeed enforces it.
I can see why rhetorically you'd want to link them, but this has very little to do with anti-dumping laws; mandatory minimum pricing is a completely different beast from selling at huge losses in order to purposely bankrupt a competitor.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Your French spelling is really the least of your worries.
What an anticapitalistic law. Suppose there is a small independent bookshop and the owner once made the mistake to carry some books from a publisher listing them at $5000 apiece. After they remain unsold for a decade, the owner finally decides to get rid of them to make some space for new books, and not wanting to throw them away for nothing they decide to sell them at a more reasonable $50 apiece. Bingo, the bookshop owner is now a criminal. A criminal for trying to offer some potentially useful product to society at a reasonable price.
They are not even following the spirit of the law. If they where they would have some how increased the price for the customer, instead of fining amazon.
All the environmental laws that prevent businesses from dumping...say...lead and mercury into our water increase the cost of business and therefore increase prices. Nobody dumps near me, why should I be forced to subsidize this artificially higher price when the poison water won't harm me or my children? Oh right, because it would harm other people and I'm a good person, not a self-centered greedy ass.
I think you are being short sighted....only looking at the monetary cost of a particular good or service. Things aren't always black/white.
Blar.
Sometimes we must increase the cost of doing business if it helps the greater good. Businesses would have kept dumping lead and mercury into our water and air if laws had not been passed.
Bad argument you say....I think Galbraith had you pegged when he wrote "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. "
Blar.
As a publisher I can tell you the breakdown is roughly something like the 25% for printing, 25% for the author/publisher, 50% for the distributor.
Here is the dilemma. I want to pay for creative work but not for dead obsolete technology. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to buy Clarke-Baxter's Firstborn or wait until I can pirate it. The hardcover from Amazon costs $17 plus $10 for international shipping. Now thanks to you I can estimate that less than 1/7 of the price I pay would go to the authors and their editor, the remaining 6/7 supporting businesses I do not want to support (postal system, retailer, printing house, brick and mortar logistics).
Do you have the same estimate regarding e-books? If I pay $17 for an e-book, how much of that do the authors and their editor get?
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
Unless you're claiming you're not part of any kind of society, your arguments are totally meaningless. Go study some more philosophy. Start with the difference between morality and ethics. Or, better still, lift your nose from the books and spend some time in the society you're part of. Maybe you'll see that the old saying is true, the devil IS in the details.
Best of luck.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
The only difference is that there's a law like that in France. There's no such law in USA, but the reality is not different at all. My friend runs a small retail store that sells stuff for R/C hobbyists. There are many such small stores in our area. The prices for the stuff they sell are set by the distributor (who most of the time has an exclusive agreement with the manufacturer and so holds the monopoly on distributing the goods among all USA retailers). The retailers are required to sell the goods at the presribed price or above, but not below. Any retailer that will try to sell below the required price will be immediately reported by the competitors to the distributor, which will punish the retailer by terminating their relationsip. Retailers are allowed to have a fixed number of sales per year (normally, one), when the price can be dropped, but not below a pre-determined percentage. Retailers are allowed to have one "grand opening" sale when they start their business. Aside from that, once again, there's a floor on the prices below which the ratailers are not allowed to go.
Its is not a law in place to keep tobacconists in business the way the French law is supposed to keep book stores in business.
Maybe the French law isn't about keeping book stores in business at all. Maybe it's about discouraging French citizens from reading.
Fortunately, French citizens can still learn how to surrender on television.
paintball
The EU and the US (two of the world's most free-market oriented organizations) have subsidies for farmers because history has proven their necessity over and over.
In the US at least, we have subsidies for farmers because rural agricultural states have disproportionate representation in our government.
paintball
but nobody has taken up the issue of Amazon's deciding to pay the fine rather than obey the law.
Paying the fine IS obeying the law.
*NOT* paying the fine would be disobeying the law.
paintball
I think Amazon should take a cue from the US government and rename it. Stop calling it "free shipping" and call it "French shipping."
They should just make them pay for shipping but give them as many bonus points as cents (or whatever their least significant decimal denomination is called) they spend on shipping to use on their next order, one 'cent' per point.
That way they still get effective free shipping and keep coming back. Until the French government starts to understand markets.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
It's enough to make me want to hit them.
Give 'em an extra smack for me too.
No, but we quite happily steal words from other languages when they're useful(part of the reason english is a linguistic mess), and their campaign against words like 'EMail' is seen as one more insult.
Screw it, we efficiently incorporate any new word and get on with doing interesting things while they spend their time dreaming up new words for jingoistic reasons. After we invent the next big thing (because they were too distracted) they can buy it from us and call it whatever they want.
GOTO 1
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This law allowed small bookstores to stay alive.
:)
They do alot of shipping in France? Here most book stores have traditionally sold locally.*
In the US, on the other hand, the big stores are healthy, but finding something which is not mainstream is rather hard, especially outside the big cities.
Not so. I just got to Amazon and get it with Free Shipping.
Not entirely true, most of the out of print books I get go through the Amazon marketplace and are sourced from small bookstores, which now do quite a bit of shipping - thanks to Amazon.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
If america's media stopped promoting the anti-French sentiment so much then maybe Americans might stop hating the French for pointless reasons and start to want some of the good things from France for themselves. Namely it's world class health care system, an excellent school system (which Sarkozy seems to want to destroy since a dumb population = an easy to population to control) and strong unions that actually fight for workers rights rather than keeling over. There are some bad things about France as well, Algeria being the first thing to pop into my head and then of course Haiti, but America shares the blame in that one.
If you live live outside the US, Amazon continue to offer you "Free Super Saver Shipping" all over it's webpages, even though it knows where you live and that that offer only applies to the US.
There are many countries (like Australia here) where there is no "local" Amazon. So if you want to buy a book from amazon.com, you get all sorts of crap thrown in your face that is an outright lie, with Amazon's full knowledge.
Not only that, but the shipping costs are ridiculously high, and the shipping time estimates are ALWAYS optimistic, usually by weeks, even for items that are "in stock". In stock items that take 4 weeks by airmail? Get stuffed.
Screw them.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
Certainly it has its benefits, but I'm not sure that the increased efficiency in material resources justifies the problems that come with more efficient use of human resources. Of course this is a difficult thing to call.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Well, I would hope that you have kick-ass insurance, right? I suppose if you keep full coverage so that your risky behavior isn't paid for by society in emergency room visits or expensive end-of-life care, then your argument has merit. If your insurance runs out and you're still suffering from health issues due to over indulging in smoking or drinking, or car accidents, or repeated physical injuries due to physical hobbies, your behavior has cost society. I smoke and drink and drive fast, but I buy into a very well covered plan. Many people don't do this.
Blar.
Yes, Amazon may not stock "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" or whatever your European Jew-hating self may be looking for, that I am sure your local Muslim^H^H^H^H Non-Buddhist bookstore stocks, but for most in-print books Amazon is fantastic.
And in the US at least their secondary seller market (i.e. books offered via the Amazon site but sold through a third party) keeps many small bookshops in business. Amazon didn't run the small guys out of business. It gave them an international market.
This is just typical Anti-US European behaviour. You see this more and more often in France. Anytime a big name (deep pockets) US business out-competes a French business, the government steps in and hampers the US business.
In the mean time France's population gets older and older, has fewer and fewer kids (replacement workers), and more and more car burning riots from Muslims^H^H^H^H Non-Buddhists.
The future of Europe is a brown hand pulling a white life-support plug from the wall.
Pardon my French, but C'est juste stupide merde! How stupid can someone be. Offering free shipping is not discounting a book. If you walk into a book store to buy a book, they do not charge you shipping on top of the cover price. So free shipping is NOT giving any additional discounts.