Amazon Dispute Now Making Movies Harder To Order

trazom28 writes: Hachette books aren't the only products that are now harder to order on Amazon — the online retailer is going after movies, too. Amazon has turned off the preorder function for DVDs of prominent Warner Bros. films as it seeks to raise pressure on the company during negotiations. The Lego Movie, for example, is listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon. Set for release in the home video marketplace on June 17, there is no option to place a preorder."

Comments

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[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.

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[mugetsu37]

It does say right in the story (provided by money.cnn.com) that "Warner is owned by Time Warner (TWX), the parent company of CNNMoney." At least somebody's being upfront about their propaganda.

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[ZombieBraintrust]

To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.

Is there a link to that story. Not finding anything in Google.

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[DarkOx]

There is nothing shady about managing your suppliers. Every well run business does it. The only thing different is Amazon's suppliers are used to having monopoly power and getting any terms they want. Amazon is pushing back! Its a good for the consumer and I think ultimately will be good for the talent.

On the book side the job publishers actually do is shrinking (doubly so if we are talking e-books). Everyone I know that has ever had anything published or tried recently, tells me they are expected to provide manuscript in very very specific formats, already largely edited. At that point the only value adds pretty much come down to bundling it into the e-book container (they could do that themselves but for DRM signing etc) and access to the distribution channel (which Amazon could pretty easily provide them with directly), and some fancy name with authority behind it to slap on the work.

Amazon thinks they don't deserve such a big cut for all that lack of actual work; and I agree. The publishing industry does not have to be the gatekeepers anymore unless you want a large run of dead tree, where someone needs to put up real capital. A quick look at interest rates these days ought to give you an idea of what the real value of that is too.

The movie world is still a little different, the talent isn't in a position to produce a feature film, although that isn't necessarily the case with an animated work like "Lego Movie"; and if you look the gulf between what really talented folks can do in their basement vs. what Hollywood cranks out is for the most part narrowing too. So value the 'Studios' are providing is declining not matter what fantastic sums of money they manage to blow on the production. I am all for Amazon putting the squeeze on these guys too.

Amazon *IS* the market, the market should set prices. If Amazons history is any guide at all they will use any cost to compete, so as consumers we cant expect to see some of it passed on to use in the form of lower prices. I also can't think of well anything other than Amazon's own products Kindle etc, that are exclusive to them, so I am not worried about Amazon being a monopoly yet; someday it might be a concern but not now.

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[NotDrWho]

At least it's not prefaced with Anderson Cooper feigning faux-outrage as he tells us that he's not going to show some video that his network has been showing all day.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Largely I think publishers just don't give a fuck about quality anymore. If I judged publishers solely by the piss-poor print-to-e-book conversion jobs they've been doing I have to say they're fucking worthless. I'm reading one book right now on my kindle that makes it painfully clear no one at Bantam bothered to even edit the e-book format. There are so many word fuckups from the OCR process it's not even funny.

I've actually had similar experiences with Dune. It's just sad that they don't even bother checking the content after running it through OCR software and then they have the gaul to charge nearly $10 for what amounts to a fucking PDF.

Pisses me off to no end.

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[fistfullast33l]

While I agree in principle that publisher's are a bit superfluous to the publishing equation, acting solely as a middle man, you did leave out one major point regarding their value add. They provide substantial marketing muscle that it's not clear Amazon would provide to an individual author alone. They arrange book and media tours as well, especially for up and coming authors. Established authors obviously have their own agents or PR people who could help with this, but new authors have neither the resources nor the experience to participate in this critical marketing tool.

As a corollary - look at the Apple or Android app stores. Obviously the larger apps have marketing muscle behind them (in the form of publishers, of course), but the day that the individual could make a lot of money is few and far between. I would argue that the window for indie developer success lasted about 6 months after the app store launched. After that, you were just one person shouting in a crowd and had no chance to break even without marketing saavy or dumb luck.

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[t551]

Charles de Gaulle, or Asterix?

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[meustrus]

The old, big content publishers may be stagnant and evil, but that doesn't mean Amazon will be any better. I for one do not welcome our new hipster overlords.

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[Anonymous Coward]

A search for "amazon lego movie bluray preorder cancelled" pulls up several pages explaining the issue. I don't know of any news stories that have run with it, but there is enough evidence of the standard 3d blu ray being last minute cut by WB and then the new "special" $40 one being its replacement. Amazon actually gave people a $10 credit if their preorder was cancelled.

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[rsborg]

Largely I think publishers just don't give a fuck about quality anymore. If I judged publishers solely by the piss-poor print-to-e-book conversion jobs they've been doing I have to say they're fucking worthless. I'm reading one book right now on my kindle that makes it painfully clear no one at Bantam bothered to even edit the e-book format. There are so many word fuckups from the OCR process it's not even funny.

Is it the case that the original publisher is also doing the e-book? I know sometimes authors retain rights to the e-book that the publisher doesn't get, and they may have chosen a bad e-book publishing model.

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[mcgrew]

I think Amazon is getting arrogant and stupid, and think they own the market and have no competition. My books aren't affected, they're available at Amazon. But they're cheaper from Barnes & Noble, and B&N listed them in their catalog two days before Amazon did (I'm my own publisher, no hatchets are war nerd brothers).

I think it's dumb, B&N will eat their lunch. Want a WB movie or Hatchette book? B&N. And probably a hundred other places.

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[MyNicknameSucks]

I know a bunch of independent filmmakers -- no, none of them can make the Lego movie. They can make low-budget rom-coms. They can make cute animated shorts. And they can make some superb docs ...

But they don't have the render farm required to make an animated 3d movie (even outsourced, I am thinking that kind of processing power and the pipes required to move the data won't come cheap). They don't have the money to get quality voice actors. They don't have the marketing and negotiating chops to land a serious IP. And artists don't come cheap. The gulf here is rather large.

FWIW, basement sound producers are still having trouble making music sound as good as music (played by musicians on instruments, at least) recorded in a studio with an a-list crew.

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[kaatochacha]

The only reservaton I have is the idea that one gigantic business is somehow going to treat me better than another gigantic business. Giant Douche versus Shit Sandwich comes to mind...

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[epiccollision]

piratebay still works if they want to make it a cock waving contest nobody is interested in seeing

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[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure I can find some videos of cock waving contests on the piratebay as well.

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[tlhIngan]

I think Amazon is getting arrogant and stupid, and think they own the market and have no competition. My books aren't affected, they're available at Amazon. But they're cheaper from Barnes & Noble, and B&N listed them in their catalog two days before Amazon did (I'm my own publisher, no hatchets are war nerd brothers).

I think it's dumb, B&N will eat their lunch. Want a WB movie or Hatchette book? B&N. And probably a hundred other places.

Amazon DOES own the market. The first place most people go to for a book or movie or any other thing online? Amazon. I know people who rarely spend a dollar outside of Amazon as Amazon has practically everything in one place. (Or if it's not available from Amazon, they send a nasty letter to the manufacturer asking them why it's not on Amazon).

B&N is a poor comparison - they are circling the drain. So they have to lower prices to compete. But few people shop at B&N, and even fewer have ebooks there (I've run across many that are Amazon only, annoyingly).

And with the DoJ putting the smackdown on the Apple Agency model of selling e-books, coupled with Amazon's practical monopoly over ebooks, well, Amazon will soon be the only place. Nook's in trouble, too. When the DoJ as part of the Apple thing hacked up all the contracts, well, Amazon picked up the pieces and benefitted, while everyone else started dying. Other than Nook, there's no real other source of ebooks, and Nook's in trouble.

Basically, Amazon's become the Wal-Mart of the online world.

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[CODiNE]

When you have a Gauls working for you... you charge whatever you want.

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[nogginthenog]

Bought a Kindle book that was terribly formatted. There were no spaces between paragraphs so it was confusing as hell. Complained and Amazon refunded me immediately. +1 to Amazon.

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[Anonymous Coward]

"There are so many word fuckups from the OCR process it's not even funny."

What really kills me is I would hazard a guess that 99% of all materiel today arrives at the publisher in electronic form. It should be easy to get a ebook formatted correctly, with no weird screw ups.

I can only guess they receive the book, print it then scan it back in to make sure ebook readers are as pissed off as possible.

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[0123456]

While I agree in principle that publisher's are a bit superfluous to the publishing equation, acting solely as a middle man, you did leave out one major point regarding their value add. They provide substantial marketing muscle that it's not clear Amazon would provide to an individual author alone.

Sure, if you're Stephen King. Not if you're Joe Newbie who just sold them his new book for a $5,000 advance.

How much marketing do you think they're going to throw at a book if they're only willing to pay the author $5,000?

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[0123456]

The only reservaton I have is the idea that one gigantic business is somehow going to treat me better than another gigantic business. Giant Douche versus Shit Sandwich comes to mind...

Except Amazon has great customer service, while Big Movie regards customers as an annoyance.

That might change, but, right now, I'll take Amazon over any big movie company any day.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't an author deal with Amazon to publish the book and then separately hire an agency to promote it? Why is the agency even involved in the pricing? It seems like the author should set the price of the book with Amazon taking a % cut for hosting/distributing. If the author wants to have enough to hire a promotion agency, price the book high enough to pay for that.

BUT -- Amazon is NOT the market. Amazon should not be setting prices either. That should be the author based on customer feedback and trying to out-compete other books.

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[0123456]

Is it the case that the original publisher is also doing the e-book? I know sometimes authors retain rights to the e-book that the publisher doesn't get, and they may have chosen a bad e-book publishing model.

Most of the really badly fomatted ebooks I've seen come from trade publishers just OCR-ing the paper book and uploading it without further editing. I've seen a few badly formatted backlist ebooks from authors, but most take a lot more pride in their books than their publisher would.

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[Charliemopps]

To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.

They aren't to blame for the Hatchet fiasco either. Hatchet was found guity of price fixing against Amazon.There is nothing wrong with Amazon putting the screws to them.

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[Em Adespoton]

This is why I sometimes download third party copies of an eBook after I've purchased it -- not only is there no DRM, but the "scene" guys get their reputation based on the quality of their releases, so the eBooks are usually properly formatted and proofed.

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[Assmasher]

Ye Gods and little boarlets...

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[Fear the Clam]

Largely I think publishers just don't give a fuck about quality anymore.

It's not just the ebook conversion. Book publishers and packagers have been cutting down on editors and the whole revision for the last couple of decades. "Fuck it," they say, "nobody will notice. And even if they do, they already bought the book. What are they gonna do, buy the next 'Shades of Gray' from another publisher next time?"

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[Maxo-Texas]

They can't afford it any more.

Quality staff and full time editors cost money.

Be nice if we could crowd-source corrections tho.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon's listings is just as powerful a marketing tool as anything the publisher's produce. Pretty much nobody goes to book tours (A few hundred per location?), media tours for authors are pretty much a joke, etc.

It's like getting a game to the front page of steam.

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[radarskiy]

"How much marketing do you think they're going to throw at a book if they're only willing to pay the author $5,000?"

More than the author is capable of on his own if he was willing to accept a $5,000 advance..

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[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled that. You meant "Shades of Grey" Are you a publisher?

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[I'm New Around Here]

No, he's talking about a sequel to "The Picture of Dorian Gray", which is based around his ghost. The pluralization becomes apparent during the storyline.

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[Anonymous Coward]

>More than the author is capable of on his own if he was willing to accept a $5,000 advance..

I think you underestimate what a motivated author and a grassroots effort can do.

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[0123456]

More than the author is capable of on his own if he was willing to accept a $5,000 advance..

So, where are the TV ads for Joe Newbie's book? Where are the newspaper ads? Where are the billboards?

They're not there, because the publisher won't spend a cent advertising his book to readers, if they think it's only going to make $5,000.

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[houghi]

You know you as a custiomer have lost when you need to choose between Amazon and the MPAA partners.

What you are saying that Amazon is the better choice is like saying they can cut of your left pinky, because you are right handed.

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[radarskiy]

The same place as the TV ad, newspaper ads, and billboards are for Joe Self-published's book: in your fevered imagination.

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[Anonymous Coward]

I work in the publishing industry.

Most publishers - even the very large ones - outsource eBook conversion. There's a huge host of companies that provide this service; most of them are located in India, South Korea, and the Phillipines for some reason.

A few publishers have in-house solutions; Random House for instance, and I believe Penguin, but most, even the huge names, outsource it, often to a very small company.

Not that this excuses the poor conversions at all - the responsiblity to find a good contractor, and to do QA on that contractor's work, still lies on the publisher. But there's no "editing" to speak of, mainly this is automated work.

By the way, unless the book was published before 1990 or so, there's very little OCR going on as digital formats of one kind or another already exist. Still, there's lots of places for faults in format translation to occur.

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[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, what do you expect from an ego centric ass. I guess he figures he'll be the next Walter Cronkite, someone who shies away from showing grotesque video of tragedy, disasters, ect.. Unless of course he shows up with his scripted cast to fake rescues or actual danger he and his safety crew try to pull off to make himself look like he can understand what its like for the victim.

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[Anonymous Coward]

If you think "Big Buck Bunny" is equivalent to a Pixar movie, you are delusional and sadly mistaken. Basement produced video content isn't going to advance much beyond the Pewdiepie stage of development. It requires heaps of capital and tons of revenue to support video production at quality levels the consumer will accept. You are never going to get Game of Thrones from somebody's basement.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Either way he should leave the French out of this. Still, he noticed English spelling errors as a second language, so they must be pretty bad.

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[rvw]

When you have a Gauls working for you... you charge whatever you want.

Relax - he OCRd his answer. Nothing wrong with that!

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[Lennie]

"Amazon *IS* the market, the market should set prices."

That is a great idea, until Amazon really is the only supplier.

Then they will really set their prices (read: high)

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[Anonymous Coward]

So it follows the publisher is adding nothing. Hence, why they're shitting bricks over alternative routes to market for creative people, and are clearly in the middle of a concerted FUD campaign.

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[NotDrWho]

My favorite is when he goes on location to pretend he's in real danger--with his large security team told to stay off camera, of course.

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[rochrist]

None of those are ways that publishers actually advertise books in the real world.

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[rochrist]

Actually, they weren't.

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[mcgrew]

All that is true, but monopolies like Amazon's often don't last. Look at Microsoft, they had the browser market and OS market sewn up fifteen years ago, now more people are on iOS and Android than Windows. MS can hardly sell a phone or tablet. Or look at IBM, who owned the computer market in 1985.

B&N remind me of the old ads for Avis rent-a-car, "we're #2, we try harder". Any publisher or manufacturer who gets a nasty note "why isn't [product] at Amazon?" would likely send a polite reply that "we are sorry, but we cannot force a retailer to carry our product, but you can obtain it at [list of Amazon's competitors]." At least, that's what I'd do if I got a note like that (although my books are at Amazon so I have no worries about that). Me, if I can't find it at Amazon, I figure "so what?" I can always get it elsewhere. I wouldn't be annoyed at the publisher or manufacturer, I would be annoyed at Amazon (but yeah, I agree that most people are irrational and emotional).

I won't order anything but books and movies from Amazon since I bought a replacement battery for my laptop and had to return it; it was the wrong battery. I got the right one directly from Acer, which is what I should have done in the first place.

I read a library copy of Andy Weir's The Martian. The only versions available at Amazon are ebook and audiobook, at B&N all versions are there, so it must be a publisher that Amazon is fighting with. I hope Baen isn't on Amazon's blacklist, I'm going to try to get them to publish my next book, self-publishing a hardcover is a whole lot of work and expensive for both writer and reader. It's a real PITA.

IINM, ebooks that are Amazon Only are usually if not always ebook-only books that Amazon itself publishes.

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[Anonymous Coward]

There is nothing shady about managing your suppliers. Every well run business does it. The only thing different is Amazon's suppliers are used to having monopoly power and getting any terms they want. Amazon is pushing back! Its a good for the consumer and I think ultimately will be good for the talent.

On the book side the job publishers actually do is shrinking (doubly so if we are talking e-books). Everyone I know that has ever had anything published or tried recently, tells me they are expected to provide manuscript in very very specific formats, already largely edited. At that point the only value adds pretty much come down to bundling it into the e-book container (they could do that themselves but for DRM signing etc) and access to the distribution channel (which Amazon could pretty easily provide them with directly), and some fancy name with authority behind it to slap on the work.

Amazon thinks they don't deserve such a big cut for all that lack of actual work; and I agree. The publishing industry does not have to be the gatekeepers anymore unless you want a large run of dead tree, where someone needs to put up real capital. A quick look at interest rates these days ought to give you an idea of what the real value of that is too.

The movie world is still a little different, the talent isn't in a position to produce a feature film, although that isn't necessarily the case with an animated work like "Lego Movie"; and if you look the gulf between what really talented folks can do in their basement vs. what Hollywood cranks out is for the most part narrowing too. So value the 'Studios' are providing is declining not matter what fantastic sums of money they manage to blow on the production. I am all for Amazon putting the squeeze on these guys too.

Amazon *IS* the market, the market should set prices. If Amazons history is any guide at all they will use any cost to compete, so as consumers we cant expect to see some of it passed on to use in the form of lower prices. I also can't think of well anything other than Amazon's own products Kindle etc, that are exclusive to them, so I am not worried about Amazon being a monopoly yet; someday it might be a concern but not now.

Creators of products want to let Amazon sell them for '$x'. Amazon doesn't make enough money to afford it. Any real store would simply not carry the product and apologize to it's customers. They wouldn't hang signs for the product in their store, and then tell people they can't order it.

Seriously, fuck Amazon. This is beyond shady. All this accomplishes is putting more money in Amazon's coffers under a thin veneer of 'saving you money'.

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[Anonymous Coward]

It will double piss you off when you consider that you are already in possession of the requisite hardware to flag errors on your copy, have them sent to the publisher for review, and have a fixed version made available to all current and future customers. The odds of this happening are effectively zero, making most e-books degraded copies instead of cutting-edge information distribution. What a waste.

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[Anonymous Coward]

The only reservaton I have is the idea that one gigantic business is somehow going to treat me better than another gigantic business. Giant Douche versus Shit Sandwich comes to mind...

Except Amazon has great customer service, while Big Movie regards customers as an annoyance.

That might change, but, right now, I'll take Amazon over any big movie company any day.

You aren't even comparing companies in the same industry. I don't know what kind of customer service Best Buy has, for example, because I've never had an issue buying something from Best Buy.

The sooner you divest yourself of the idea that Amazon is a boon to you, the better off society will be overall.

Available in Amazon UK

[Sven-Erik]

I see that I can preorder The Lego Movie in the Amazon UK website, with a release date on July 21, so looks like this is limited to the US market.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[bhlowe]

What price is it listed as? Doesn't it make sense that Amazon US and Warner Brothers would have to come to a legal agreement with price and markup before they can accept pre-orders?

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Sven-Erik]

It is listed at 10 pounds. The listing is here.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[thetoadwarrior]

The EU is more likely to punish them that's why. The US loves corporate bullies.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[harrkev]

It is listed at 10 pounds.

Wow. Shipping for that DVD must be VERY expensive. They are only an ounce or two here in the USA.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[PopeRatzo]

It is listed at 10 pounds. The listing is here.

Ten pounds. Let's see... how much is that in nummus aureus?

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Anonymous Coward]

10 pounds is the price in British pounds sterling, which is about $17 US at the current exchange rate. :-)

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot cheaper than one or two ounces (of gold).

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[mythosaz]

Your currency is very heavy.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[fizzer06]

Also available for preorder at Walmart http://www.walmart.com/cp/LEGO-Movie/1166827/

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Killall -9 Bash]

-1: informative

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Anonymous Coward]

While physical currency certainly has mass and weight, the use of the word "pound" here is used to describe monetary value only. "Pound" (unit of weight) and "pound" (British currency) are homonyms. Although spelled and pronounced the same, they are different words that mean different things. This is, of course, very confusing for non-native English speakers.

See the second definition here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pound

This is similar to the use of the word "ton" to describe the capacity of an air conditioner. A "ton" (air conditioner capacity) means 12,000 BTUs per hour, and does not describe force, weight, or mass.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[I'm New Around Here]

Thank you Captain Obvious.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[kimvette]

whoosh!!

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Anonymous Coward]

> I see that I can preorder The Lego Movie in the Amazon UK website, with a release date on July 21, so looks like this is limited to the US market.

I downloaded the full original bluray of the movie last week. For free.
Watched it, deleted it and barely even remember the movie anymore.
I do remember thinking it was clever while I was watching it.
Just sayin.

Re:Available in Amazon UK

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linux.slashdot.org/comm...

Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[gurps_npc]

For both books and movies.

Just saying....

;-)

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Z00L00K]

This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[gurps_npc]

So you are saying "Fight the Power, Buy a Nook"?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[pla]

"This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold" ...

... You said, in response to someone pointing out that a COMPETITOR of Amazon will still gladly take your money in exchange for goods and services.


/ I do not think it means what you think it means

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[roc97007]

Very good point. This is why it's important to have competition.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[bwcbwc]

Walmart used to do (and probably still does) this to their suppliers. The only difference is the consumer never knew their was a coercive price negotiation going on because the product simply never appeared on store shelves, and usually there was a substitute from another vendor.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[roc97007]

"This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold" ... ... You said, in response to someone pointing out that a COMPETITOR of Amazon will still gladly take your money in exchange for goods and services.

/ I do not think it means what you think it means

I think he phrased it badly. I took this to mean, we have to be very careful about monopolies developing for exactly this reason. In other words, not saying that Amazon is a monopoly, but that their behavior is the reason a monopoly would be bad.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[NotDrWho]

Does Barnes and Noble give me free 2-day shipping and a huge library of free streaming movies and TV shows for $40 a year?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, who is the content creator to dictate the terms of Amazon's store? Who are you to dictate what services Amazon chooses to provide?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

The comment doesn't say anything about Amazon being a monopoly. GP (rightly) suggests that this illustrates the danger of allowing Amazon to become that monopoly, as they are plainly trying to do based on their history of conduct and the basic pressure that a near-zero margin business requires constant growth to stay afloat, until it cannot sustain that growth and must then begin to raise margins.

Amazon's MO is to undercut competition just enough to drive users away from competitors and to use that accumulated critical mass to outlast anyone who tries to compete with them. At that point, Amazon will be able to (and may need to) raise prices beyond that level, enjoying monopoly profits as long as they stay just below the price at which it becomes cost effective for a small business to compete. It's a market failure with a long tail, but it's inevitable if Amazon continues to expand at the expense of competitors.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[jedidiah]

A company does not have to stand completely alone in the marketplace in order to have a dire impact on things. The usual villain here is Walmart. They have been abusing suppliers long before Amazon got in the act.

The fact that I can choose one titan over another doesn't alter the fact that either can distort the market to a degree that's dangerous for the free market in general.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[TubeSteak]

This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold.

I would question the characterization of one company deciding not to allow pre-orders being equivalent to "one player dictates what can be purchased and sold."

You can still buy the movie.
Sellers can still sell the movie.
Just not on Amazon until it is available in retail channels.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual, to be classified a monopoly does not require complete control of the market. Being a publicly mandated monopoly by the government might, but a monopoly outside of government intervention does not usually own as much as 'corner' the market. Amazon is a monopoly for specific channels and markets. The fact it isn't 100% is an absurd limited definition, especially since they clearly are trying to take over almost all retail markets for all consumer products.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon is hardly a monopoly in this situation. There are a lot of places that you can buy from online. Often times, those places are cheaper. Heck, in the case of this example, Warner also sells the Lego Movie directly.

Personally, I'm often onboard for Amazon bashing (they have almost as good a reputation as Google and they've gradually been sneaking the bad stuff in). But this is one of those things that could work for them, but might not.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[rwv]

The usual villain here is Walmart. They have been abusing suppliers long before Amazon got in the act.

Point of consideration that Walmart bullies around smaller suppliers while Amazon is taking a stand against one of the major publishers with Hachette and Warner Bros which is operated by Time Warner who is currently seeking Anti-Trust approval to merge with Comcast.

If anything, Amazon's ability to stand up to Big Media seems to be in the best interest of consumers. Big Media is where the evil monopolies seem to be. Amazon's power over online sales relies on convenience, their customer supplied rating/feedback system, and their pricing policies. Amazon wants to charge small for high quality because cheap crap will be rated as such on Amazon and nobody will buy it. Meanwhile Walmart wants to charge small for low quality because who cares about customers and suppliers if they can earn 20% of half a Trillion bucks each year (http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wmt/financials).

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[PRMan]

No. But apparently they give you The Lego Movie.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[ZombieBraintrust]

Sure but in this specifc market is the opposite of a monopoly. Any consumer can purchase this product. Consumers have lots of choices for this product. They can get good prices and good service. You can get it online from serveral retailers. You can get it locally from Walmart, BestBuy, or Target. And consumers use those choices. Walmart isn't a niche place to buy dvds from. Amazon can only sell products like this if they have the low prices. No one would purchase from Amazon if they can get the same thing cheaper from Walmart. Price comparison takes a few minutes.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[cdrudge]

Which monopoly does Amazon have again?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Golddess]

Does Barnes and Noble give me free 2-day shipping and a huge library of free streaming movies and TV shows for $40 a year?

Since TFS is about Amazon, one would expect that the unnamed company you are referring to there would be Amazon. But since Amazon Prime is $99, I have to ask, what other company are you talking about?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

I already own 2 nooks.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold.

Amazon is trying to lower prices and somehow they're the bad guy? Boy, I sure would like to have your and the people who agree with you as my customers.

Re: Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Teranolist]

The hairy kind?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the one called "Amazon" that charges students $40 a year for Amazon Prime accounts.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[kaatochacha]

Pretty much all of them. Star Wars Monopoly, Battlestar Galactica Monopoly, My First Monopoly....

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[roc97007]

> Point of consideration that Walmart bullies around smaller suppliers while Amazon is taking a stand against one of the major publishers with Hachette and Warner Bros which is operated by Time Warner who is currently seeking Anti-Trust approval to merge with Comcast.

Indeed. This is where I get conflicted. Amazon using their clout to push Time Warner around is like seeing a bully getting a beat-down by another bully. The winner might push you around next, but while the fight is occurring, it's fun to watch.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[geekoid]

Except in this case, they're terms are being dictated to WB; and the customer will win.

And there can't be a monopoly on digital goods.
WB could sell it from their own site, as an example.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[geekoid]

You don't get free 2 day shipping from Amazon.
You pay 40 dollars a year.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Dragonslicer]

This Amazon circus just shows us the dangers with a monopoly where one player dictates what can be purchased and sold.

This statement works equally well with either side of the circus being the "one player".

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Golddess]

If you're gonna be rude, you might want to check your facts first. Amazon Prime for students is $49 per year.

But perhaps NotDrWho simply mistyped the price. I hope not though. I was hoping to learn about other alternatives to Amazon Prime.

Re: Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[I'm New Around Here]

No, those are Crannys.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Bite The Pillow]

Meanwhile, if I forget something past the preorder date, I never really wanted it.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

All this drama - how everyone has bought the marketeering BS... wait a while. hey, it may evenbe an opportunity to teachyour kids some patience in our instant world. By the time Christmas rolls around you will be able to walk into any retailer and pick up the DVD or BluRay for 1/2 of the currently overhyped "cost". Wake up sheeple, use your noggins and vote with your wallets.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

> If anything, Amazon's ability to stand up to Big Media seems to be in the best interest of consumers.

Probably, but only within the limited context of Amazon maintaining their role as middleman.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

Time Warner Cable is not part of Time Warner anymore. They were spun off a while back.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're gonna be rude, you might want to check your facts first. Amazon Prime for students is $49 per year.

And if you're going to be an idiot, you might want to check YOUR facts first. Existing student Prime members still pay $40 a year. The $49 is just for new members after their recent pirce increase.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[gurps_npc]

Does Amazon offer you: 1) Stores where you can pick up your purchase instantly - for no addtional money 2) Free wifi in the store. 3) The ability to read books for free - both physical and on your nook in the store. 4) Free, instant servicing for your kindle in that store?

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you're going to be an idiot, you might want to check YOUR facts first. Existing student Prime members still pay $40 a year. The $49 is just for new members after their recent pirce increase.

If you have an existing paid annual Amazon Student Prime membership, you'll be automatically renewed at a membership rate of $49.

Learn to troll better.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[david_thornley]

Thing is, I have books that I bought from Amazon, books from B&N, books from Uncle Hugo's, that I've recently bought. You can't tell the difference from looking at them. I've also got eBooks from B&N and a small place I can't remember recently. I can tell by what I have to do to read them.

Amazon has a monopoly on eBooks that are really easy to read on the Kindle, and that's a problem, because a whole lot of people have Kindles.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[david_thornley]

The free two-day shipping (along with other discounts) is cheaper, but it doesn't come with streaming video.

Re:Barnes and Nobles still lets you preorder

[ZombieBraintrust]

This conversation is about physical Blue-Ray movies not ebooks. Amazon does not have any sort of lock in or monopoly on physical disks.

Pissing off customers, much?

[FuegoFuerte]

This may be a reasonable as a negotiating tactic, but one of the things that has lead Amazon to a position of prominence is that it seemed like just about anything a person wanted was available for purchase. If this ceases to be true, Amazon risks alienating customers. There may not be a good online one-stop-shop alternative now, but the more they distance their customers the more they open up the possibility for others to come in and fill the void.

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[digitig]

Actually, there is a good online one-stop-shop available: Google (other search engines are available). If I want a book, DVD or pretty much anything else I Google to see who has it available and at what price. If Amazon don't, hey, I probably won't even notice; I'll be busy comparing price and delivery options for the companies that do.

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be a reasonable as a negotiating tactic, but one of the things that has lead Amazon to a position of prominence is that it seemed like just about anything a person wanted was available for purchase. If this ceases to be true, Amazon risks alienating customers. There may not be a good online one-stop-shop alternative now, but the more they distance their customers the more they open up the possibility for others to come in and fill the void.

Gotta agree. Squeezing out a book publisher here and there is one thing. Taking the god damn Warner Bros. out of your selection is a hole in inventory that more than a few people are going to notice. Also, its not like the good old WB relies on amazon for exposure or something the way smaller sellers would, Warner is one of the most recognized names in movies out there. Finally Amazons dominant market position opens it up to regulatory scrutiny. I think If I was WB, my opening offer would imply that my second offer can easily include a lawsuit for unfair trade practices, or whatever else people who abuse dominant market positions get hit with, and wouldn't it be a shame if all the extra money you hope to squeeze out of me goes to the lawyers.

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[Trepidity]

I use Google Product Search now and then, but I find it's a lot higher-effort. They don't really do any vetting on whether the stores they include are legit, so you have to look up reviews and try to figure out whether the company is the kind that's going to ship you defective merchandise and then claim they didn't. Particularly around electronics and cameras, the search results are full of fly-by-night online stores.

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[PRMan]

Amazon combined with the PriceBlink plugin which tells me when someone else has it cheaper.

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the author of this: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5269455&cid=47216443

Re:Pissing off customers, much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is absolutely fitting. Instead of browsing the local store then buying it on Amazon, he browses Amazon then buys it elsewhere.

Backlash coming, Amazons.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking with the availability of Hollywood merchandise is a fool's errand.

Re:Backlash coming, Amazons.

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet WalMart has done this for decades.

And Apple...

[Anonymous Coward]

And Apple was the one investigated and convicted of anticompetitive behaviour...

Yeah. Amazon has some big ones...

Egad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noes! How shall I be entertained!

Re:Fuck Amazon

[cdrudge]

Evil, vile company.

As oppose to book publishers that want you to pay the same for an ebook as a hard copy?

It's easier to just go through life when you realize that ALL companies are evil, vile companies and they are all out to maximize THEIR profits at the expense of others.

If publishers and distributors don't want to deal with Amazon, don't do business with them. Amazon's not the only ecommerce site on the internet. Yes you may lose sales from people who want to buy it on Amazon but can't. But Amazon also loses the sale. And if people want your product, if you make it easy for them to get it elsewhere they'll still get it. If I REALLY wanted to go buy The Lego Movie and Wal-Mart didn't have it, I'd go to Best Buy. Or Target. Or some other store. This is no different.

I have preordered the torrent

[chmilar]

Fortunately, torrents are not subject to contract disputes.

Amazon, Warner, Hachette and others seem determined to drive everyone to torrents.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[gnasher719]

Amazon, Warner, Hachette and others seem determined to drive everyone to torrents.

What is your complaint about Warner and Hachette in this case?

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

That they're not giving it to him for free. Don't they realize he's entitled to a free copy of their movie? Who does that hurt?

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[chmilar]

The point is that all of this squabbling is making the torrent the easiest, quickest, most convenient, and most reliable way to obtain the product. (Not to mention the torrent file will not be crippled with DRM.)

If the legitimate vendors hope to compete with torrents, they have to beat torrents at everything. On top of that, the price has to be something that seems "reasonable" to the purchaser. Failure to achieve this makes torrents more attractive to more people.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

What is your complaint about Warner and Hachette in this case?

Probably that he wants to watch it now, but for whatever reason WB has decided to not make it available for another 5 weeks.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[jxander]

They're simply guilty by association.

Amazon is causing a ruckus with Warner/Hatchette. That ruckus is driving people to alternative (and less legal means)

Perhaps Warner should be looking into alternative distribution methods. They're a big enough company that if Amazon wants to play hardball, Warner should be able to play right back. Threaten to pull all movies from Amazon, create and promote a new partnership with (for example) Overstock.com or create their own direct distribution branch. Fire off a few commercials like "For all your Warner Brothers needs, go to WB.com" It might cost them money in the short term, but it would prevent people from pirating their movies, drive up traffic on their website, and probably save money in the long run by leveraging a better negotiating position with Amazon (or moving on to greener pastures with o.co, or whomever)

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and if I'm out and about and see something I like then the easiest, quickest, most convenient, and most reliable way to obtain the product is to take it and run. No, copyright infringement isn't the same as physical theft but, yes, these excuses to attempt to justify copyright infringement are as weak as they'd be if they were excuses for theft. Buying a physical product is always going to be less convenient than a digital copy -- whether or not it's illegal -- but that's not a justification for your copyright infringement.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually torrented old movies and video games that I've purchased, primarily because of the DRM issues. I had one CD game that I couldn't install on a new PC because the label with the activation code had fallen off the box.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[0123456]

Threaten to pull all movies from Amazon, create and promote a new partnership with (for example) Overstock.com or create their own direct distribution branch.

Ha-ha. You're funny.

If WB pull their movies off Amazon, I just stop buying WB movies. Few people are going to set up a separate account for every movie company, they just want to buy all their crap from one site with one account.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Torrents are quick and easy. And The Lego Movie, due to be released June 17th, has been on the torrents for at least the past month.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[L4t3r4lu5]

For the first time in a long time, last night I downloaded a game from the swarm. The last time I made use of torrenting for something other than fully / freely licensed media was probably within the first year of the tech being released.

I loaded up the game and... Began playing. No account sign in; no unskippable advertising at every boot for the a graphics card manufacturer, the publisher, and everyone else; no DLC to download. It just worked.

I'm not saying that I'm going to stop buying games, but I might just change where I get them from.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[david_thornley]

Thing is, if I shoplift a DVD, I wind up with the exact same product as if I paid for it. If I torrent a DVD, I often wind up with a higher-quality product. I've bought stuff and then torrented it (if any prosecutors ask, I'm calling it fair use) because I couldn't get the legit version to work.

Seriously, nobody who torrents consistently even sees those FBI warnings that are only inflicted on the law-abiding.

Now, if I get in the habit of buying stuff and then torrenting it (potentially illegally) to get the better product, it's going to get awfully tempting sometime to skip the purchase part of the process.

Re:I have preordered the torrent

[jxander]

Because Amazon is the *only* place you buy things online? Really?

I used overstock.com as an example, but WB could work up a deal with Apple, NewEgg, Think Geek, Bestbuy.com, or any other website. The fact that we immediately associate Amazon.com with the ONE AND ONLY online shopping solution is the whole reason for the current situation. We've given Amazon too much leverage with which to pull this crap.

Already Preordered?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd preordered The LEGO Movie from Amazon a while back, and they haven't yet canceled it. Makes me wonder if I'm gonna get screwed next Tuesday...

Already on Amazon Instant Video

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that too about the Lego movie DVD, and was wondering if it was because the film is already available to buy on Amazon Instant Video. Maybe they are just pushing people to buy it there (by not allowing DVD pre-orders)? And I'm sure there are people willing to pay the $14.99 to have it NOW who will then end up getting a physical copy later (maybe the deluxe edition that comes with a Lego minifigure...)

$17.99 from best buy

[alen]

for the 2 disc blu ray with the Ultraviolet digital copy
you can even pre-order it but the shipping is a little slower. or just stop by store during lunch or after work

Really?

[ArcadeMan]

People still buy movies on plastic discs? How wasteful.

Re:Really?

[danomac]

Not everybody has a 25-40 mbit connection for good quality video streaming.

Re:Really?

[alen]

what happens if your internet goes out?
what if i don't want to turn on my macbook or PC to stream movies to my apple TV all the time
what if i don't want to buy a SAN and spend time ripping movies and paying the electric bill for it being on all the time
what if i want to see the best quality on my HD TV

Re:Really?

[Morpeth]

Love the childish condescending tone. Some of us actually like to OWN what we buy. If I like a movie I will get in DVD/blu-ray because I don't have to worry about the cloud, licensing, proprietary this or that, some clause on the 37th page on the EULA etc. Shockers... I even still buy CDs for music for the same reason.

Re:Really?

[PRMan]

Yeah, those jerks must like quality or something.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing we are talking about torrents.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if electricity goes out?
What if your house burns down?
What if I don't want to waste space on boxes and boxes full of dvds?
Also you can download the best quality for your HD tv.
You can just turn off the computer to save electricity.
My PC boots up to the login prompt before my screen is done detecting its inputs.

Re:Really?

[laffer1]

what happens if your internet goes out? - Except for occasional phone home, you can play content offline that is stored on your Mac or PC from iTunes.

what if i don't want to turn on my macbook or PC to stream movies to my apple TV all the time -- You don't have to. The Apple TV can stream TV and Movies from your device directly. If you have iTunes match, the same is true for music.

For me it's about avoiding the storage space of physical media. I have a lot of DVDs and some blu-ray (mostly for 3d content) and it's getting to be a hassle to save space. I saw the big reduction with ebooks and it just makes sense to store everything on an external hard drive now. I can download most of it again from iTunes and I also have a backup on a second hard drive through Time Machine.

Re:Really?

[TapeCutter]

I grew up the days where most kids would be down the record store every saturday to pick up that weeks "top 40" leaflet and spend their pocket money on singles. At one time I had a couple of hundred vinyl albums and a stack of singles, then everything went digital and I collected 100 or so CD's. Once the CD's took over it became almost impossible to buy needles for my turntable so there was some overlap in the CD/Vinyl titles. I love music more than most people my age but I haven't bought a single track this century, I mainly listen to radio/CD when in the car, and my old vinyls via a "full album" search on youtube when at home.

Personally I've never seen the point in owning a movie, once I've seen it I normally have no urge to see it again for another decade or so. Most movies that I have bought or been given in the past I've simply given to someone else after having watched it. I know that sharing physical media is an anti-capitalist thing to do but somehow I just can't feel ashamed about doing it.

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooh, can I play too?

what happens if the bluray shop burns down
what if i dont want to keep getting up to swap bits of plastic that need to be stuck in other bits of plastic all the time
what if i dont want to buy a bluray playing appliance that only does one thing
what if i dont want to have to drive to the store and pay for fuel and parking

PS - knob end

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Both sides are being jerks in this. Torrent the movie instead, then no one is happy.

Re:Solution

[hypergreatthing]

I'm fairly sure the customer is.

cut amazon off completely

[thetoadwarrior]

if they had any sense about them they'd pull all the digital content out of amazon and quit shipping to them and then run an advertising campaign saying their stuff is available everywhere except amazon. Amazon is not the be all and end all of online shopping and on their own they're nothing so they need to stick it to amazon and put them in their place.

Re:cut amazon off completely

[Anonymous Coward]

if they had any sense about them they'd pull all the digital content out of amazon and quit shipping to them and then run an advertising campaign saying their stuff is available everywhere except amazon. Amazon is not the be all and end all of online shopping and on their own they're nothing so they need to stick it to amazon and put them in their place.

The next biggest retailer is Wal-mart. How do you think *that* is going to work out differently for the publishers? L O L

Go Amazon!

One thing Best Buy is still good for..

[TigerPlish]

..is for picking up freshly-released movies. Don't have to wait for the postman. Just drive up, park in the mostly empty parking lot, go into the mostly-empty store, pay your monies, go home, stick in player, relax.

With all that empty, though, I can't think BB will be around much longer..

Re:One thing Best Buy is still good for..

[Anonymous Coward]

..is for picking up freshly-released movies. Don't have to wait for the postman. Just drive up, park in the mostly empty parking lot, go into the mostly-empty store, pay your monies, go home, stick in player, relax.

With all that empty, though, I can't think BB will be around much longer..

Wait for the postman...? You have a flipping job, right? Amazon has the stuff to me on release day and "waiting for the postman" beats driving across the city. Video games (the stuff I typically pre-order) and presumably movies are on my doorstep, usually by the time I get home for lunch.

Re:Fuck Amazon

[PRMan]

The more evil they are, the more I punish them by lack of patronage. If everyone did this, all corporations would be good.

Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

https://www.stallman.org/amazo...

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't care what the toe cheese eater says about amazon.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

That doesn't really make me want to boycott Amazon as a whole. His arguments against avoiding Kindle and other digital "purchases" through Amazon are sound, but otherwise his criticisms are mostly just politically motivated disagreements. Although, some of the criticisms relating to anti-competitive practices may gain more weight if Amazon does eventually become an effective monopoly in book sales.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

Clearly, you did not read this entry carefully. Many Slashdotters have issues with reading. I do not know why. Too much 'quick-scanning' and not enough comprehension. As if you are looking for a bug in a piece of text instead of trying to figure out the meaning of things. Here is a link Stallman prioritizes: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... Do me a favor and please try to cogitate.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

No, I read and comprehended. That doesn't mean that I must agree with the author's position.

If you have some specific point you think I'm not weighing heavily enough or want to expand on your argument, please elaborate. Otherwise, do me a favor and recognize that someone may be informed and intelligent and still disagree with your conclusions.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

Go work for Amazon.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

Okay, I think I might apply for this position: Senior Product Design Engineer

What I'm saying here is that the labor market decides the pay of each job based on the availability of qualified applicants and what pay level those applicants will accept. If the pay were really unsatisfactory to the people in those low level warehouse positions, they would leave and find another that pays better. If there are no better paying positions available to them, they can continue working there while learning a skill that has more value to employers than unskilled manual labor. If they are unwilling* to learn that new skill, it means they are satisfied with where they are in life and don't want to improve their situation.

*I say "unwilling" because short of a severe mental handicap (which is an exceptional case) everyone can learn to do something. There are a vast number of free resources available and all one needs to do is show up and make use of them.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

For you it seems that as long as your ass is covered, everyone else can be oppressed. If a company exploits workers, they must not be supported. A business model that incorporates sustainability is what we need to aim for. There is a long list of companies that exploit workers, the environment, people's freedoms, human rights and they should be avoided. Just because you or your family is guarded in a gated community and privileged does not make exploitation acceptable. Amazon, on so many levels, offers a damaging economic model that harms society. If you have a heart, don't support them. Perhaps someone like you has no qualms with dealing with the likes of Amazon, Apple, or probably even 1930's-era IBM. Your way of thinking is unsustainable and alrady the cause of much of the world's problems. Stop hurting our society and put some accountability in your life to those around you.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

How exactly are Amazon warehouse workers he oppressed? They entered into a an employment contract of their own free will and are free to end that at any time. Are the employer and employee on equal footing in negotiations? Of course not, but that's just the reality of how the job market works, not exploitation.

The problem with your way of thinking is that if you had your way and everyone was given a comfortable wage (whether or not their job produced value greater than that). For one, why would a company keep that person employed, if they represent a net loss? They wouldn't and those jobs would no longer exist and more people would be pushed out of the workforce. That's one of the reasons that the labor force participation rate is the lowest it has been in my lifetime. Instead I'd rather the people at the bottom were given the tools and opportunity to become productive members of society. That way the whole economy grows and everyone is better off. If this makes me "heartless", then fine I'll gladly accept that title.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

Here is one informative piece on what working for Amazon is like: http://www.theguardian.com/tec... and one on Apple http://www.aljazeera.com/progr... Essentially, these companies make massive profit and can easily afford to pay a decent wage without hindering their bottom line. What is appalling is that these companies do not do so. A lot of these jobs are dead-end without the opportunity for advancement. Getting decent pay for labour is a constant struggle as are decent working conditions. Historically, companies try to exploit labour and need to be called out. Also, we have cases like Intel where manufacturing is built on stolen land and in violation of UN treaties such as their factories on occupied Palestine. Only when consumers put pressure on these companies and workers organize will companies concede proper working conditions. You or your children could wind up working in these places, perhaps even a summer. They need a safe work place with decent pay, especially when the company is flush. I am an entrepreneur myself and have clients all over the world who buy my products. I know that an adequately paid work force will be able to afford what I sell. I also manufacture locally (Canada) which costs more than off shore, but is worth it for the higher end products I put out. And since we are talking about Amazon, I detest the fact that their (Amazon Canada) shipping rates are subsidized and the rest of us entrepreneurs in Canada have to pay full price. Why should they get special treatment? Us small business owners pay way more taxes than Amazon. You bet my elected representative is put on notice for this.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

I read that first link when you posted it earlier. The second is a propaganda piece so I didn't watch the video, but I have read a few articles about the conditions in some of the factories in China. Conditions there may be deplorable by western standards, but remember that the factories in the west were similarly bad at the same stage of economic development. That doesn't make it acceptable to us now, but it is a transition stage that must occur before things like OSHA can be put into place. Ultimately, it will take the people themselves demanding safer work environments for developing countries to catch up to western standards. We can only help persuade them.

By the way, the Foxcon issue is one of the many reasons I don't buy Apple products. But there's a difference between exposing workers to dangerous chemicals and safety hazards without informing them vs. just low pay (by your standard). The first is immoral, but the second isn't as long as the employer does not monopolize the job pool or use coercive tactics to prevent employees from moving up into a higher payed talent pool. As far as I can tell, Amazon is not doing either of those, thus my decision not to boycott them. Of course, I'm always looking for new information and will revise that if I see something that is truly a violation of labor laws or human rights (and how they handle the situation when one of those stories shows up).

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

Great, I volunteer your children to work at both places. Have a nice day!

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

That's not an argument. Please defend your position with a substantive point.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

It is, you just have to think a little. Troublesome, I know.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

No it isn't. You can't "volunteer" anyone else to do anything. Besides, it doesn't matter whether the people involved are family or strangers.

Again an actual argument for your position would be appreciated, but if you have no salient points to make I see no reason to continue this discussion.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[ikhider]

Think a little harder. Let me give you a hint, treat others as you would like to be treated. If it is not good enough for you and your family, then it is not good enough for others. Even if they're poor and ethnic.

Re:Stallman on boycotting Amazon.com

[slinches]

Yeah, I got that. Hence the mention that that family vs. stranger is irrelevant. This is about people being allowed to make decisions for themselves. As long as they enter into an employment contract fully informed, where's the unfairness?

I think Amazon's trying to extend its reach ...

[MyNicknameSucks]

With Hachette, I think Amazon is trying to ... crush is not the right word ... but marginalize marginalize traditional publishers. Amazon already has a jumbo-sized self-publishing business for small and independent writers, but less well known is Amazon's publishing business, http://www.apub.com/ . The tin-foil hat wearing me says that Amazon might be squeezing the publisher in order to get at the writers, either for self-publishing or to build up APub. I.e., Amazon might be trying to eliminate the middle man in a play to get at all the revenue in the book trade, save that which goes to writers and printers (for dead tree versions).

The full on conspiracy theorist side of me says that the scary thing is that, if Amazon does become something like a traditional publisher with a stable of writers, other retailers will have to buy stock from their largest competitor.

That's the bit that sends shivers up my spine.

With Warner, it seems different. I don't think Amazon wants to make blockbusters; something else is at play. It could be that Amazon senses blood in the water since the physical media business, while lucrative, is slipping away. Maybe, just maybe, Amazon is trying to squeeze Warner on physical media in order to get favourable terms on streaming or digital sales. 48 hours of availability ahead of iTunes? 2 weeks of availability ahead of Netflix?

My life is ruined

[wcrowe]

Dear God! I can't get in my preorder for the Lego movie? Oh, the humanities!

The fact that this is a problem says a lot more about our society than it does about either Amazon or Warner Brothers.

 

Google Shopping Express

[rsborg]

Actually, there is a good online one-stop-shop available: Google (other search engines are available). If I want a book, DVD or pretty much anything else I Google to see who has it available and at what price. If Amazon don't, hey, I probably won't even notice; I'll be busy comparing price and delivery options for the companies that do.

Even better - get same-day delivery if you happen to be in a GSX market. Even more limited supply than Amazon, but same-day has resulted in some pretty awesome results when it comes to almost-forgotten last-minute birthday/anniversary gifts :)

Already on piratebay so uh yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

but buy it anyway, its a great movie

Let them eat cake!

[afgun]

Sure, but it's Amazon's right to try and get better prices for their consumers. And Hachette has a right to tell Amazon to get bent. And it's equally the rights of the consumer to tell Amazon to get bent, stop the Wal-Mart style strong-arming of suppliers and buy from more respecting shops. But this is America where people are only concerned about the almighty dollar and instant gratification, so they will instead continue to buy from Amazon and Wal-Mart who ultimately decimate the local economy. (full disclosure: I buy from Amazon occasionally, but more often shop at my local brick and mortar book stores)

Re:Let them eat cake!

[kaatochacha]

I try to do the same thing, as I'm getting very tired of everything closing down. Who wants to live in a town with no stores ( other than a few restaurants and liquor stores)?

Re:Let them eat cake!

[david_thornley]

There's not that many brick-and-mortar bookstores around any more. B&N and Borders drove most of them out of business. (Thing is, it doesn't really bother me. I used to shop at the smaller and quirkier ones, and they weren't as good at having stuff I wanted as B&N was.)

Re:Fuck Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of the book is presumably the content.

Since I wait 6-12 months... not feeling the impact

[Maxo-Texas]

Movies, books, boardgames, etc. are usually 50%-75% off by then. Sometimes more.

I might pop forward to present time for a very few select items.

But I stopped buying DVD's every week when they came out back around 2002.

And why...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you want something you can get digitally, something that will NEVER run out of stock?

Emperor Walmartine and Amazon Skywalker

[RevWaldo]

Yesss...yesss...feel the power of the Dark Side flowing through you...hate those who would defy you...squeeze your suppliers, force them to cut costs, wages and benefits in order to remain profitable. Make them in turn go to even cheaper sources for low-quality parts and materials. Soon you will join me by my side and together we will rule both retail and online and crush any so-called worldwide labor movement!

.

When I want to buy, I buy - w/wo Bezos

[EngineeringStudent]

I don't need Amazon. When I want to buy it - I go as far upstream as I can.
No need to have more hands touching the product, adding actual if not communicated costs.
Why isn't this a losing strategy for Amazon in this bullying?

Violation of RICO Act

[Anonymous Coward]

This to me, is a borderline violation of the racketeering act.

Let's see if the politicians and lawyers get bought out on this one.

Intentional misprints?

[dfsmith]

Have you examined the pattern of misprints? Maybe they're there to uniquely identify your copy of the e-book. That way, if the text pops up on a torrent stream, you can expect a knockin'-at-the-door.

Re:Intentional misprints?

[dcollins117]

Have you examined the pattern of misprints? Maybe they're there to uniquely identify your copy of the e-book.

I think mostly people are talking about obvious OCR errors. Like a lower case L (l) turning into a numeral one (1) or an exclaimation point (!)

More interesting to me are the questions "If you purchase an eBook and what you receive is not a faithful representaion of the printed copy, what exactly have you purchased?" "Was that money well spent?"

I believe I would ask for my money back if my KIng James Bible eBook quoted God as saying "Let there be light: and there was blight."

Re:Intentional misprints?

[mindwhip]

So you aren't a 7th day advent hopist then?

"Faith, Hop and Charity, and the greatest of these is Hop."

Re:Intentional misprints?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blight"? Umm sounds about par for the course for the 'Loving' God of the old testament Or the American father of Jeebus.

Re:Fuck Amazon

[geekoid]

It's even easier when you realize no company is evil. or good.
They are companies.

Re:Fuck Amazon

[Calydor]

Then why are paperbacks usually cheaper than hardbacks? Of the same story, I mean.

Re:Fuck Amazon

[sixsixtysix]

And other things, like resale value and secondary markets. If you remove that sort of stuff, the price should drop accordingly. The same is also true of other media.

WB just lost $25

[TiggertheMad]

To be fair, WB is the one who put amazon in a crap situation in this one. They had a pre-order for a blue ray, for like $25....The move did exceptionally better than they anticipated, so WB decided NOT to produce the cheaper blu ray, and then put out a new $40 one. Amazon then had to cancel all the other cheaper pre orders, and deal with the legitimately pissed off customers. Amazon is doing some shady things, but they certainly aren't alone in it.

...Good to know. Hey WB, if you have canceled my Amazon pre order of TLM just to hike the price, I'm not reordering it. I just going to STEAL it online. Fuck you.

Re:WB just lost $25

[rtb61]

Just a reminder, you do not steal stuff online unless you attempt to purposefully defraud someone. You download content from the internet based upon the claim by the website providing the content that they are entitled to do so. You participate in marketing exercises provided by that web site just as you do with free to air television. You are not the police, you are not the courts, it is not up to you to legally confirm who is and is not entitled to make that content available to you, that is the purview of the civil courts during the trial process. The only assumption you can ever make is who ever makes that content available to download is legally entitled to do so until such time as it is proven in court that they were are not entitled to do so.

Is that reasonable, well, let's put it this was, the internet provides billions, yes billions of bits of copyrighted content available, from web sites, to stories, to images, to music and of course video content, literally billions of specifically copyrightable works, from hundreds of millions of sources. What individual is going to be capable of validating the correct legally valid source for that content, what sound just court can claim that as fair and reasonable.

Not to forget there is a world of difference between uploading content and downloading it. Technically you can steal content online but that implies denying the copyright holders access to it and not downloading a copy of it, this has been down numerous times, most specifically by false DMCA claims, which are currently not prosecuted under law as they should be.

post-Wild West internet

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Seems like we've moved beyond the Wild West days on the net, and now we're in the Robber Barron stage...

Re:Fuck Amazon

[Dragonslicer]

The more evil they are, the more I punish them by lack of patronage. If everyone did this, all corporations would be good.

s/all corporations would be good/nobody would ever be able to buy anything/

Stealing is wrong umkay?

[Anonymous Coward]

*SIGH* You're going to INFRINGE THEIR COPYRIGHT. I would like to see someone steal it online though. How do you fit inside those tiny tubes?

Formatting from hell

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a teensy bit of experience simply writing little stories I send to friends. Word processing: I've used Wordperfect, MS Word of various versions, and now use Open Office. Pretty much they are all pretty good with what-you-see-is-what-you-get. I'm old enough to have used a TRS-80 with their word processing program. How would you like only being able to see 1/3 of the screen width and have to move the screen cursor left and right to read anything.
Back to the modern era. You would think that moving an MS Word or Open Office document back and forth would be simple. Nope. Changes are made. Or, cutting and pasting into gmail or yahoo mail and sending it. Nope, changes are made (gmail loves to double a blank line into to two blank lines when have a blank line at the end a chunk of text, for some reason). Fonts, font sizes, colors, and don't get me started on automated correction.

I've investigated self publishing, Lulu is the big simple one. There are quite a few that will host your fiction on their site. Alert! Read the fine print; on a lot of those sites you could end up giving away ownership, or publishing rights etc.* Anyway, investigation into those also show a lot of hinky things come up. Basically, you would think that with text, it would/should be so easy to send then a document, or a pdf, and what you send is what you get. But, the technology and software seems to butt up with proprietary issues, or maybe just bad or hunky software somewhere.
I figure, I have put in my 10,000 hours becoming good at writing. Now, do I have to put in 10,000 hours becoming good at doing what publishers used to do? And, of course, Lulu and a many of the other self publishing sites will sell you packages, programs to help you along, or you can pay an editor...

This has been going on for ages. Several times in the 70's and 80's I submitted stories to what looked like legit site, and what I got was advertising brochures about the products they sold to help you break into being a published author. I was smart enough to only fall for that twice!

New business model: the new internet age publisher, who does all that for the writers (not really).
I think what it comes down to is automation is wonderful, if the tech is mature, and if it is "broad" enough to encompass everything thrown at. We aren't there yet.

* Not to mention auto-correct, --sometimes I want to invent a word, or use the English (UK) spelling for a colour vs color, censoring issues, etc.; some have been written about here on /.

Re:Fuck Amazon

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention how they treat their authors - often, the author gets only a nominally higher rate on eBook sales than on print, despite the near-total elimination of printing and distribution costs. It's common for the author to see 10% on hardcover, 8% on paperback, and between 15% and 25% on eBook. You NEVER see higher rates (outside of small publishers who actually care about their authors). And don't get me started on textbook authors, who see a few pennies for every copy of a $100 - $300 textbook sold.

Ironically, some authors are speaking up in defense of their publishers, and calling Amazon a bully. Unironically, it's the big name authors - the ones who're actually making a living off their writing, and have a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome as a result.

Why OCR?

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

I'm just curious, why have such publishers chosen to OCR the already printed book rather convert the electronic document used in the editing/layout of the book (I'm assuming the publisher is using equipment more sophisticated than a typewriter and letter press). Any modern book should have gone through some electronic process even those whose original manuscripts are written in longhand. Conversion from those electronic formats should be a bit more flawless than brute-force OCR.

Currently unavailable

[Anonymous Coward]

I solved *that* problem long time ago. I just don't buy amazon. Something unavailable there? I couldn't care less.

Now Wait - Indeed

[cyclomedia]

Talk about first world problems, people can buy it on release day if they're so impatient

That is good news!

[Craefter]

I welcome this change by Amazon. I was getting sick of the sheer amount of titles I "could" buy in the future instead of offering me recommendations of stuff I can have right now.

Good...

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets hope movies become impossible to order, then we'll all have to get up off our asses and visit the damn cinema again if, as impossible as it may seem at present,, the USA media industry actually makes something watchable .. other than Family Guy that is :)

Re:Good...

[david_thornley]

Actually, I saw the Lego Movie last Saturday in a really nice theater. Hardly great cinematography, but it was fun.

My life is ruined

[Anonymous Coward]

(y)

Re:Fuck Amazon

[david_thornley]

Because you can buy the hardcover when it comes out, or you can save money and buy the paperback later. It's a way of extracting more money from those who want to read the book ASAP while still getting money from those who are willing to wait for a cheaper price. Having the distinct physical difference makes it seem like you're getting a higher-quality product with the hardcover, and makes the early purchasers feel better than if the bookstores just dropped the price over time (even if they sometimes then sell the leftover hardcovers at paperback prices).