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France Moves To Protect Independent Booksellers From Amazon
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Tourists often marvel at the number of rich and varied bookstores along Paris streets. Right across from Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the city's most famous independent bookstores, Shakespeare and Company. Inside, every inch of space is crammed with books and readers. The city buys buildings in high-rent districts and tries to keep a core of 300 independent bookstore by offering booksellers leases at an affordable price. 'We have to keep our identity,' says Lynn Cohen-Solal, 'because if we don't, all the shops are exactly the same in Paris, in London, in New York, in New Delhi, everywhere.' Now Eleanor Beardsley reports at NPR that the French government has accused Amazon of trying to push the price of physical books too low and is limiting discounts on books to ensure the survival of its independent booksellers. France's lower house of parliament has unanimously voted to add an amendment to a law from 1981, known in France as the Lang Law which sets the value of new books at fixed prices and only allows retailers to lower books' set price by 5%, in an effort to regulate competition between booksellers and to promote reading. Guillaume Husson, spokesman for the SLF book retailers' union, says Amazon's practice of bundling a 5 percent discount with free delivery amounted to selling books at a loss, which was impossible for traditional book sellers of any size. 'Today, the competition is unfair,' says Husson. 'No other book retailer, whether a small or large book or even a chain, can allow itself to lose that much money,' referring to Amazon's alleged losses on free delivery. Amazon spent $2.8 billion on free shipping worldwide last year to gain a competitive advantage. The bill limiting Amazon's price reductions in France still has to pass the Senate to become law. In a statement, Amazon said any effort to raise the price of books diminishes the cultural choices of French consumers and penalizes both Internet users and small publishers who rely on Internet sales."
This does not fit into Amazons plans to take over the world by selling items at cost (or below cost as is the case with some Music, and I am sure some books).
Just like the French to try and protect literature.
The French seem to not be brainwashed by the propaganda machine enough to harm themselves as pro-WTO trade undermines careers in the global race to the bottom.
When the robots and software start to do significant damage worldwide to jobs (it's only just beginning and some are taking notice) the French will likely be the last holdout.
"Protectionism" is not viewed as bad everywhere; at least the marketing hasn't succeeded everywhere just yet.
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The French government already has agreements with Amazon to subsidize it each time it creates a new job (between 3400 and 5000 euros per job)...
http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2012/11/27/amazon-aide-publique-subvention-fisc-impots-france_n_2197220.html
Oh, and Amazon doesn't pay taxes in France, but in Luxemburg, contrary to the bookshops.
Actually, instead of adding yet another layer of regulation that will soon be circumvented, the governement should just:
1) stop subsidizing Amazon (they would open the logistics platform anyway, given their market share).
2) come up with a credible scheme for multinational Internet companies to pay their taxes.
Electronic books are extremely resource intensive and require a massive amount of well-maintained centralised infrastructure. It's a huge price to pay for the convenience of "being slightly lighter". I have no problem with people choosing to use an e-reader, but it'll be a dark day in civilisation when the written word is only recorded digitally.
What I'm most happy to see here is France understanding that the country is really a geographical area owned by a government on behalf of the people, with various rights and responsibilities assigned to inhabitants in a way which suits the people. I am required to respect private law merely as a result of being born, and there is even better reason to require me to respect public law.
Sure, people still read, but they read less serious literature than they used to. The entire West is becoming a post-literary culture. France, with its intelligentsia's concern with protecting high culture, is trying to resist that. Paris bookshops tend to stock genres like poetry and drama which are not making the transition to e-books like mass-market novels.
No, they aren't. If a book is out of print but under copyright (perhaps it is unclear who the rights belong to), it is not being digitized and made widely available to those with e-readers. A huge amount of publications, which would have its audience if it were brought back out of print, is being lost to the digital generation. I participate in the ebook filesharing scene, and for a lot of 20th-century literature, we the community have to undertake the digitization process by ourselves because no publisher wants to deal with the rights situation.
"in cafes and parks here in the US. What is disappearing are paper books."
On one hand, losing the ability to read without a hugh tad of supporting technology may be a problem on itself.
On the other, the problem exposed here is not paper versus electronic books but the risk of Amazon trying to become a de facto monopoly as the dumping practice, if it's true, would suggest.
Do you remember that one of the short list of things a government should do, even on the most liberalist wet dreams, is to put an eye on monopolies, right?
Electronic books are extremely resource intensive and require a massive amount of well-maintained centralised infrastructure. It's a huge price to pay for the convenience of "being slightly lighter".
It is not just slightly lighter, you can hold thousand kilograms worth of books in your pocket. The resource intensive and massive centralized infrastructure is only due to digital restriction management. DRM free book do not have this problem. Essentially, what you are saying is that electronic book are defective by design, but we can fix this and save paper in the process. Don't dismiss new technologies because of a few political glitch.
Because, like the FUCKING SUMMARY said, Amazon has very, VERY deep pockets. They are so big, they will do anything they can, legally, to capture the market (which is a nice way of saying "destroying competition").
Amazon can put a kiosk in the sidewalk in front of a physical store and give away the same books in the store. And keep doing that until the store goes out of business. This is basically what they do when they sell books at 90% discount with free shipping. No other bookstore can do that. This is what's called "unfairness".
But let's suppose you don't care for that. There's also the issue of amazon wanting to go all digital. Amazon is all for efficiency and they would just love to sell just kindle books, not physical ones. What will happen to all those paper books, which are too old, or are in a grey area of copyright? They will never scan and sell those. They will be lost forever, ending up with just a handful of copies scattered in a few libraries around the world. Very accesible, right?
And of course, let's not forget about all those "banned" books. Are there any banned books in France? I don't know. Will there be? With the growing muslim population there, YES.
Can I expect to be able to access my collection of e-books in 40 years?
Unless you're foolish enough to lock yourself into DRM, I don't see why not. Nearly 30 years on (well, 28) and Amiga software can be run in emulators from discs that have been format-shifted. And Amiga-specific files can and have easily been converted to new formats. Except for regular old text, because that still works fine. Or HTML, because that still works fine. Or BMP, because that still worms fine.
If a format works and does it's job, it'll stick around after many hardware and software changes. Calibre already makes it trivial to move between epub and mobipocket (and go to and from RTF, PDF, etc) so I don't see you suddenly being unable to read your library even in 40 years.
but the problem is it's not the right answer. It's not about brick and motar, it's about there being only 1 company you buy everything from. That's Amazon's long term goal, and they're not shy about pointing it out. It's why they have so many investors even though their profit margin is so bad. The investors are expecting Amazon to drive the competition out, jack up the prices (and their profits) and then there'll be nothing anyone can do about it.
So when you say they should go out of business, that's only true if you completely ignore what the people of France (and people in general) desire and what's in their best interests. That's fine if you're the sort who believes in dog eat dog, winner take all capitalism. For the rest of us we support the regional players anyway.
To put it in terms that fit your world view: it's kinda like what Chairman Mao did with crops: He told everyone to double plant. A bad idea that sounds good on paper, has good gut feeling and 'truthiness'. Instead of double the food you had famine. It's the same thing with Amazon. It sounds good on paper to let the weaker players die out. And on a gut level it seems like the right thing to do. But it blows up in our faces. Instead of a cornucopia of cheap goods you'll be struggling to come up with the money for basic necessities.
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