Finance guys are so cute. They're convinced that just because it has finance on the title, and the boss spends loads of money on legal shit, everything is more legal and complicated then anything anyone else does. The problem with this post in particular is that you're conflating a bunch of different finance databases into a single database.
For example a retail bank needs two tables in it's accounts database. One for the account, a second to record the transactions. The database may be queried by other databases (ie: the guy approving loans), but it is not actually a part of those databases. If you're gonna include it in your bank-database-frontend system then you also have to include every database HealthCare.gov queries in it's complexity. That includes the entire Social Security system, and the IRS, so HealthCare.gov still kicks your ass because your entire tax form is queried by the database when it verifies your income.
You could probably convince a bunch of PHB-English Majors your database is more complicated because you have six different, totally unrelated databases in the same file, but don't try that shit in front of engineers.
BTW, this bit of your post is actually less ridiculous then your claim finance databases have to be complicated due to complying with state law. To an extent that's true, but given that the Feds have had over-arching regulation of the finance industry for decades and state laws have tended to become more uniform over the period, and they've had practical influence over health insurance for five months, it doesn't prove your legal compliance problems are more complex then HealthCarte.gov's.
Keep in mind that I'm a fan of Baen books. Prior to Amazon Baen sold eBooks for $6. Since Amazon they're all $10. So please don't imply that Amazon would actually cut prices if they got a bigger chunk of the revenue from Hachette. Maybe before last quarter's results, when they were appeasing Wall Street by crushing everyone else's market share, but right now they're trying appease Wall Street by making money.
More importantly an author's pay is a fraction of the price his publisher receives. In eBooks it's 25% of what the publisher gets. Since that's 70%, authors receive 17.5% of the list price of their books. If Amazon cuts Hachette's fraction to 50%, author's income goes down to 25% of that, which would be 12.5%.
As for "parasite," I just don't agree with your use of the word. Yes publishers can't function without authors, and are making money off the author's work; but that doesn't make them parasites. They do all kinds of things authors clearly don't want to do (ie: arrange book tours, editing, etc.), and most authors pretty clearly don't mind letting them take their 75-80%. If they did they would self-publish as soon as they got enough fans.
I personally know a lot of people who have self-published books. If you're an established author with a few thousand fans who would buy a new book every year, you could easily start your own publisher selling exclusively through Amazon and probably increase your own income significantly. You'd lose potential exposure to new fans, and probably a bunch of sales in places like BN's physical stores, but going from 25% of your eBook's price to 70% would make up for a lot of lost sales.
Over 3 million lines of bugs for what is essentially a database frontend.
That's a huge oversimplification. It's kinda like calling an Abrams Tank a bulldozer with a rifle bolted on the front.
HealthCare.gov does a lot of actual calculations itself. Once it knows your location it has to ask several other databases for your income level, at which point it compares that income level to the poverty rate. This is step one of determining your subsidy. Step 2 is to query a second database for a list of plans in your area. The second lowest cost silver plan is the "Base Plan" which is the second number used to calculate your subsidy. That's not just a database query, it's executable code.
Moreover the database front-end is probably the most complicated database front-end in actual production anywhere. It's not just querying a somewhat secure SQL database to show your friends your blog posts, it's querying multiple completely different databases, most of whom weren't designed to be compatible with each-other. It all needs damn-near-perfect security. It needs to deal with complex legal questions such as what happens when Louisiana decides some insurer has been cheating a bit on some legal requirement? Is the desired result under Louisiana law different then Ohio?
Because it looks right and the only other possible estimate we have (500 million) is clearly ridiculous BS an idiot made up as a sound-byte.
As an engineer that's probably not enough certainty for you to believe it, but public policy isn't engineering. Most decisions have to be based on incomplete information, (generally half-remembered overheard BS), so you kinda have to go with the Least Stupid Guess option.
If you think the word "need" is part of my argument I haven't been very clear at all. My argument is that publishers are useful to authors in ways other content creation companies (particularly record companies) simply aren't. And I think if you re-read my posts, you'll find that I have not implied that every author will always need a publisher. I've said that a lot of authors are much better served by having a publisher, but not that they actually need one.
As for Amazon reviews, you do realize that Amazon is acting as the publisher for self-published eBooks? It's brand does a lot of marketing, it chooses who gets blurbs, etc.
The universe where dozens of independent publishing houses are replaced by Jeff Bezos isn't necessarily a universe where it's easier (or more lucrative) for an author to make it. After all if Jeff Bezos has a monopoly and he decides to cut your royalty rate you don't really get an appeal. And if he'll do that shit to JK fucking Rowling what are the odds he won't try to do it to you? And unlike traditional publishers, you won't be able to sue him for breach of contract, and then sell your next book to the dude across the street.
The problem is a lot of people'll pay extra for the convenience of having it on your Kindle, but the softcover they buy at the airport has to be under $10 or they'll say "fuck it" and just read The Economist cover to cover.
I like Baen, but they don't seem to be adding new novels to their free library at the same rate they used to, and the CDs with every damn thing they'd ever published also seem to be a thing of the past. I suspect it's a combination of Jim Baen not being around to be ornery, and everyone else figuring "If Tor gets away with that shit, why shouldn't we?"
One of the things I like about publishers is they allow authors to simply be authors.
Self-published authors are entrepreneurs, which means they have to spend lots of time on BS that isn;t writing cool books.
More importantly, if self-publishing ever takes the place of publishing-publishing, it's gonna be much harder for non-rich people to break in. They won;t be able to pay their own editor $10k, and then have some independent firm come up with a $50k marketing plan. Some will still manage it via free marketing, but not as many as currently.
Publishers are wrong a lot. That's why there are dozens of them. Most authors who get officially published try more then one before they get their book published.
As you mention it's currently possible to sell your book to the masses directly. IIRC 50 Shades of Gray actually started out on this track.
The problem is figuring out which bits of the masses would actually read your book, and then convincing them to try. As an author you probably have no talent for that stuff, and as an independent writer you have no budget for it. So unless you get 50 Shades lucky you ain't selling squat. A publisher, OTOH, has the budget. He has professionals who've done this before. Thus, despite the theoretical ability of anyone to be the best-known author ever without using a publisher every author you actually know the name of has at least one publisher.
More importantly a lot of potential authors don't have a couple thousand dollars lying around to spend on independent editing.
Classic troll. You lose on every point, so you bring up previous points. I am not continuing this debate because I take your intellect seriously, but because it gives me numerous opportunities to call you stupid.
First off if you think "monopoly" has the legal meaning of "one supplier" you are a fucking moron. Seriously. That's the dumbest thing I have ever read on Slashdot, and I've dealt with idiots who admitted they were trolling me. If Monopoly meant one supplier IBM would not have been a monopoly, Microsoft would not have been a monopoly. Their lawyers tried really hard to get off scot-free by pointing to Apple, but that shit simply does not work in a court of law.
As for the restraint of trade argument, I already told you why your reasoning is ridonkulous crap. I already told you antitrust rules do not apply to non-monopolies. i already told you there is no strict legal standard of what a monopoly is. It's not quite an "I know it when I see it," but it's damn close. It has to do with a company's ability to distort the market. Note that, by definition, market distortion can be either consumer-side (higher prices), or supplier side. A monopoly that artificially reduces the supply of a product to keep prices low, margins high, and competition out of the field has helped consumers by most economics textbooks definitions of those terms; but it's still fucking illegal.
Yes. Ideally writers would eliminate publishers and Amazon, and sell direct to their readers. But that's hard to do when most readers want a central location where they can find new books to buy.
The funny part is that the publishers could have created that location with their own online store years ago, but, instead, they let Amazon do it.
And then how do you find good authors?
More importantly, how do you find good authors who have been edited well?
I'm not in college anymore. I don't have time to waste figuring out this series is poorly edited, and would suck even if it was well-edited.
OTOH if Amazon dies I have the money and time to search BN.com, the iBookstore, and whatever interesting new thing appears.
In the super-long term I suspect publisher's share of revenue will go down, but they aren't going to disappear.
By driving down the unit revenue, Amazon makes it really hard for publishers—who are a proxy for authors—to turn a profit.
Publishers a proxy for authors? As if their interests were the same or something? He just wants to conflate them so we sympathize with the poor downtrodden corporations. Protip: There is no good guy here.
And why would he want us to sympathize with the poor downtrodden corporations if he didn't think that the interests of said corporation were a proxy for the interests of authors?
And the reason he thinks that way is that when he has an idea that sounds really good in his head, but is actually stupid, the person who gently lets him down is his editor. The people who help him do all the things he can't to sell his books are at his publisher. And without that publisher he makes virtually no money, because he's not JK fucking Rowling and he doesn't have millions of fans who will buy his next book even if it's hard to find. He sent them a manuscript, they liked it, and now they do marketing so he can focus on his work. His publisher is his friend.
It's much different from the music industry. A musician typically collaborates with other musicians in the band, so his dumb ideas all get vetoed by the drummer. They make money by live shows at which fans give it to them directly. They clearly know marketing, distribution, etc. themselves already because you don;t get discovered if you can;t become a major act in your region. It's extremely common that the suits at the label will show up, tell them some totally stupid plan that obviously won't work, condescend to all their objections, and it's far from unknown for said suits to try to bully the prettiest girl in the group into sexual favors.
I'm somewhat neutral in this dispute, but I tend to lean towards Hachette for the simple reason that I can understand how I'd find good books from new authors with minimal work if Amazon died, but i can't understand how I'd pull that shit off if publishers like Baen disappeared.
The interesting thing in that quote? It's in French. Legal concepts like "fraud" can vary significantly between jurisdictions even when there isn't a language barrier, so I'm fairly skeptical of any translation that hasn't been vetted by a fully bilingual lawyer.
From what I can see he was convicted of something vaguely fraud-like in France prior to 2005 (his blog post describing the experience was made in '06, says it happened in his "youth," and he says the investigation took more then a year), but he got a slap on the wrist, and a couple years after that post (2009) he moved to Japan.
It's an interesting data point, and the fact he described his crime as something he did it as a thrill-seeking is important; but just as important to me is that his critics are implying that he fled France to Japan as a way to avoid prosecution. That's clearly false, and fairly stupid (he would have been extradited back to France in a heartbeat); which indicates precisely how rational they're being when they weigh the evidence.
Still it increases the odd he did it, IMO slightly. Not much, because you generally expect a gradual escalation; rather then a tiny little crime that led to no jail time followed a few years later by the most brazen heist of the century.
Madoff had some very good reasons to stay in the states. Notably he had family who would suffer quite a bit if he fled. Moreover he didn't actually have the money he was alleged to have stolen (the whole point of a Ponzi scheme is you don't actually have the money, you just have a bunch of fools you've convinced to send you more money to pay the last round of fools off). If he'd left he would simply have sent his sons to jail, and starved himself to death.
The Silk Road guy didn't know he'd been made. If he'd fled to Russia he would have needed a more cash (Moscow is actually more expensive then SanFran), and he would have needed lots of contacts underground. Contacts who would have been willing to sell him out. OTOH in the US he had a cover story, and he could blend in with the masses easily. If he figured out he'd been made he should have fled to some convenient bolthole, but he didn't know that.
OTOH if Karpeles actually has the money it's gonna be found out real soon. Moreover if he has the money he can afford to leave, and he can afford the truly toothsome bribes neccesary to not be extradited to Japan from some small African state.
There's evidence a bunch of BTC advocates with excessively high IQs (and the corresponding total lack of common sense) are extremely convinced Karpeles stole the money, and have figured out how he could do it. But anyone who pisses off a bunch of high IQ people is gonna quickly be informed that they clearly are the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin, as proven in this extremely convincing 47-page manifesto, which can only be understood by people eligible for Mensa membership.
Oh boohoo. How is this more convincing than the farmer who claims "lightning is perfectly safe, as I've never been struck by it"? It may get you accepted by the boyz 'n the hood, but in the real world an argument from ignorance only serves to undermine your own position.
This is the perfect example of the kind of BS you get when you're dealing with high IQ/low common sense people motivated to prove a point.
I'm not making an argument from ignorance (in this case that would literally be something along the lines of "we can't know whether he's guilty, therefore we must assume he is innocent") I'm arguing that in crimes there is a high correlation between certain behaviors and guilt. And Karpeles ain't doing any of them.
OTOH, in there are certain behaviors strongly associated with colossal fuck-ups. Karpeles is doing all of those in spades.
Yes, it could all be part of some elaborate cover-up; but the odds of that are well under 50%.
"programmers with no experience in security, totally fucked up the security," is a significantly more believable scenario then "programmers with no experience in security, and no history of fraud, purposefully designed a security flaw into our system specifically so they could exploit it."
Huh? Why would anyone running their own software have to "purposefully design a security flaw" in order to exploit it?
Goddamn you really have no common sense whatsoever. I mean none. At all.
Your entire argument is based on the plausibility Karpeles being an evil master-mind who is lying to the world and getting away with it. If he's a mastermind who doesn't want to get caught hew clearly has to include (or more likely, simply refuse to fix) some major security flaw. Then when some other guy hears about said flaw he can exploit it, and blame it all on Evil hackers.
OTOH if his security is perfect he's the only who can possibly be blamed.
I think the US government is genuinely confused. They aren't sure if these guys are more like Wall-Streeters that committed fraud on a massive scale thereby enriching themselves with billions, or common thugs who rob banks with guns. If it's the former, they're safe: too big to jail and one of the boys. If it's the latter, well, here comes pound-me-in-the-ass prison for life.
If only they would have made it simpler by either stealing a lot more, or a lot less.
The problem with this argument is there's no evidence that Mt. Gox actually stole the money itself.
There's evidence a bunch of BTC advocates with excessively high IQs (and the corresponding total lack of common sense) are extremely convinced Karpeles stole the money, and have figured out how he could do it. But anyone who pisses off a bunch of high IQ people is gonna quickly be informed that they clearly are the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin, as proven in this extremely convincing 47-page manifesto, which can only be understood by people eligible for Mensa membership. So the fact that BTC guys think they have evidence he stole the money is not terribly convincing.
What is convincing is the fact we know where Karpeles is, and he's in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy Judge will have a good idea of Karpeles financial situation, which means that if he's spending like a millionaire and claiming his company has no money he's going to jail in Japan. Which in turn means if he stole hundreds of millions he'd have fled someplace under an assumed name.
What's more convincing is his story. "programmers with no experience in security, totally fucked up the security," is a significantly more believable scenario then "programmers with no experience in security, and no history of fraud, purposefully designed a security flaw into our system specifically so they could exploit it." The fact he found a hundred million or so in BTC under his couch further increases the first story's credibility, because if you're good at security you don't do that shit.
But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."
Amazon refusing to sell one particular business's product is not a meaningful reduction in consumer choice. Amazon is not the sole seller of books, or of books online. They have no "effective monopoly" outside of their own Amazon marketplace - and even then others can compete against Amazon, by selling products on Amazon.
If you read JK Rowling it is a very meaningful reduction in consumer choice.
And consumers aren't the only people with rights. Hachette and it's authors also have rights. And one of those rights is the right not to be forced to reduce their incomes by Amazon.
1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.
Wiki blurb on Anti-Trust Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"[13]
So has Amazon monopolized book sales? No, there are still retail bookstores who can continue to sell the books.
Is Amazon trying to monopolize online book sales? Not particularly - other competitors exist, and they're not trying to force a publisher to only sell through them. They are trying to get a better contract, but that's normal business negotiation.
Dude,
If you're arguing a legal point you don't go to a summary page.
You wanna know why? Because this is section 1: "Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."
By making it impossible for most eBook buyers to acquire Hachette products they are restraining commerce.
Which means your entire legal argument is literally like saying OJ didn't murder Nicole because he intended to kill her, and then quoting the statute on Second Degree Murder.
The only way you can call Amazon a monopoly is by using a nonsensical definition that does not fall under the language of this act. (Hint: If your definition makes every business a monopoly, your use of the word monopoly becomes useless)
2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.
When Amazon isn't allowed to negotiate what it sells in its own online store, you've effectively taken over ownership of Amazon. Who are you giving that ownership to, and what are you planning to do to compensate Amazon's owners?
Do you know the publisher in question was accused of being a part of a price-fixing cartel with Apple? They were t
No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:
"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"
"Lowest cost seller of everything" is not a monopoly. Monopolies involve markets for specific goods. A monopoly on "everything" is impossible, because of the sheer number of goods and methods of distribution involved. If a company can figure out how to do that without use of government force - they deserve to be the "monopoly".
You also completely missed the point - which was that this so-called monopoly scenario ends up providing the lowest cost goods to the customers - maximizing value to them.
So you've read economics textbooks.
But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."
I'm pretty sure you're a troll, because if you actually read economics textbooks they're pretty clear that a market where people can only by a Lada sucks, even if prices are low.
The rights of a monopolist are red herring.
You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.
/facepalm
1. Amazon is not a monopolist.
2. Amazon doesn't own the Internet.
3. The only "monopoly" Amazon has is the right to sell things on Amazon. You seem to be suggesting that everyone has a right to sell things on Amazon on their own terms, and that Amazon isn't allowed to negotiated the terms of that business contract.
1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.
2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.
3. And how many posts did it take you to understand my argument? Four?
I'm accusing Amazon of hurting consumers by making it really hard for them to get their hands on a specific set of books.
As a marketplace they by definition have monopoly power over themselves. If their overall market-power extends so far that Hachette must surrender or go under then they are by definition abusing that monopoly power.
If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.
So did buggy whip manufacturers. That's not evidence of a problem or a monopoly situation. Think, for crying out loud.
A free market is not "status quo forever".
Just because their industry was shrinking that doesn't mean that it's legal for a monopoly to crush one particular buggy whip maker.
And publisher's industry is definitely not shrinking. It's changing, and I sincerely doubt they'll be able to hold onto 52.5% of their eBook revenue (Amazon gets 30% of list price, the author gets a quarter of the remaining 70% or 17.5%), but I also doubt that Amazon deserves more then their current 30% cut. They don't add any real value to a book, they just have a big old database of eBooks, a credit card machine, and some bandwidth
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.
Monopoly is not defined as "power to `hurt' customers" or "customer faces a reduced number of choices", so all the rest of your post is a red herring.
No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago: "So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"
We can engage in a 10th-grade level grammar debate over whether "Monopolized" only means "the act of being a monopoly," or it can also mean "having monopoly power," or you can respond to my post on reality with something besides theory.
Hachette books does not have an innate right to use Amazon to sell their wares. If they don't like the level of service provided by Amazon, Amazon can do NOTHING to stop Hachette from creating an online store for their readers and shipping books by their choice of USPS, UPS, or FedEx. They could even sell their readers ebooks and not deal with the logistics of killing trees and moving them around.
The rights of a monopolist are red herring.
You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.
Or if that's too much work for Hachette, there a myriad of other online retailers who will gladly work with them to sell their wares.
The very idea of "muscling" in the online realm is ridiculous. Amazon can take their ball and go home but they can't force anyone else to use their ball.
If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.
You have a lot of very solid logic, backed by wonderful theory, that makes perfect sense. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the reasoning you used, or the facts upon which said reasoning is based.
That doesn't mean it's not BS. Like all theories a single data point that doesn't fit with the theory totally destroys it, no matter how tight the logic.
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.
I don't know if this will work for Amazon in the long-term, or the government will quash it, or maybe the market will start creating web pages listing back-ordered products by publisher so Amazon can't pull this trick again. Or hell, maybe you can prove that Amazon isn't quite big enough to fall under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
But the simple fact is Amazon has a bunch of consumers who search for products on Amazon first. That means Amazon has a myriad of opportunities to convince them to buy something else. Some are ethical (ie: an ad saying "try this instead"), others are quite sketchy. If it's true Amazon has been delaying deliveries for one specific publisher that's a problem. There are almost certainly others which could be hidden (ie: tweaking search algorithms, emails falsely implying that a product you paid for is not available and would you prefer this substitute and a portion of your money back, etc.). Which means Amazon can screw businesses selling on it's site, which in turn means Amazon can screw consumers by reducing the number of choices available in the marketplace.
Amazon will sell you her book. It'll just take weeks and weeks to get to your House. That's what Hachette is complaining about. Amazon makes it really inconvenient to buy Hachette books, which Hachette's authors say is reducing their sales.
I suspect what's gonna happen is that Amazon will cave immediately to avoid further bad PR, which will mean the DoJ will conclude there's nothing to investigate.
Keep in mind that most anti-trust violations are only anti-trust violations if a company with real market power does them. It was an anti-trust issue for IBM to write the Operating System on it's first PC, but it wasn't an anti-trust issue when Apple/Commodore/Osborn/etc. all did the same damn thing. Later on Apple bundling Safari with Mac OS, but not including any other options by default; was legally fine. But in Europe Microsoft gets into a whole hell of a lot of trouble if it doesn't offer people the option of installing non-IE browsers.
So anti-trust cops have to judge two things in this case, neither of which is an easy call:
1) Is Amazon so fucking big that it can crush it's business partners, and therefore should be subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act?
2) If so, does artificially reducing a publisher's sales by refusing to ship his products in a timely manner count as reducing competition.
Under anti-trust law market-leaders have a lot of responsibilities normal companies don't have. Which means your analogy to the local store is irrelevant. Local book stores don't have to deal with the Sherman Antitrust Act*.
If you're a company like Amazon, and your policy is to stock damn near everything, including no less then 19 books by Hitler, you're not supposed to use your market power to screw anyone. You can use your power to a certain extent, but you can't abuse it. And yes, I'm fully aware that abuse is a relative term. That's kinda the point. If it wasn't, then a company could hack it's way around the objective definition very easily.
Keep in mind that if anti-trust law did not exist nobody would be able to read Slashdot unless they used Windows and IE, and that nobody would even have a computer running an open source OS because IBM would just have slapped IBM-OS on the original PC and Linus would never have been able to buy a machine capable of running a kernel he wrote himself.
*Internet factoid of the day: this is not named after the Civil War General, but after his brother, who became a Senator in 1861. He started as a Congressman, and almost became Speaker, but South Carolina managed to block him right before seceding, so he moved to the Senate. At the time William Tecumseh Sherman was known mostly as being Senator Sherman's brother. The loser third Sherman brother was Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.
Slashdot Mirror
Finance guys are so cute. They're convinced that just because it has finance on the title, and the boss spends loads of money on legal shit, everything is more legal and complicated then anything anyone else does. The problem with this post in particular is that you're conflating a bunch of different finance databases into a single database.
For example a retail bank needs two tables in it's accounts database. One for the account, a second to record the transactions. The database may be queried by other databases (ie: the guy approving loans), but it is not actually a part of those databases. If you're gonna include it in your bank-database-frontend system then you also have to include every database HealthCare.gov queries in it's complexity. That includes the entire Social Security system, and the IRS, so HealthCare.gov still kicks your ass because your entire tax form is queried by the database when it verifies your income.
You could probably convince a bunch of PHB-English Majors your database is more complicated because you have six different, totally unrelated databases in the same file, but don't try that shit in front of engineers.
BTW, this bit of your post is actually less ridiculous then your claim finance databases have to be complicated due to complying with state law. To an extent that's true, but given that the Feds have had over-arching regulation of the finance industry for decades and state laws have tended to become more uniform over the period, and they've had practical influence over health insurance for five months, it doesn't prove your legal compliance problems are more complex then HealthCarte.gov's.
Keep in mind that I'm a fan of Baen books. Prior to Amazon Baen sold eBooks for $6. Since Amazon they're all $10. So please don't imply that Amazon would actually cut prices if they got a bigger chunk of the revenue from Hachette. Maybe before last quarter's results, when they were appeasing Wall Street by crushing everyone else's market share, but right now they're trying appease Wall Street by making money.
More importantly an author's pay is a fraction of the price his publisher receives. In eBooks it's 25% of what the publisher gets. Since that's 70%, authors receive 17.5% of the list price of their books. If Amazon cuts Hachette's fraction to 50%, author's income goes down to 25% of that, which would be 12.5%.
As for "parasite," I just don't agree with your use of the word. Yes publishers can't function without authors, and are making money off the author's work; but that doesn't make them parasites. They do all kinds of things authors clearly don't want to do (ie: arrange book tours, editing, etc.), and most authors pretty clearly don't mind letting them take their 75-80%. If they did they would self-publish as soon as they got enough fans.
I personally know a lot of people who have self-published books. If you're an established author with a few thousand fans who would buy a new book every year, you could easily start your own publisher selling exclusively through Amazon and probably increase your own income significantly. You'd lose potential exposure to new fans, and probably a bunch of sales in places like BN's physical stores, but going from 25% of your eBook's price to 70% would make up for a lot of lost sales.
Over 3 million lines of bugs for what is essentially a database frontend.
That's a huge oversimplification. It's kinda like calling an Abrams Tank a bulldozer with a rifle bolted on the front.
HealthCare.gov does a lot of actual calculations itself. Once it knows your location it has to ask several other databases for your income level, at which point it compares that income level to the poverty rate. This is step one of determining your subsidy. Step 2 is to query a second database for a list of plans in your area. The second lowest cost silver plan is the "Base Plan" which is the second number used to calculate your subsidy. That's not just a database query, it's executable code.
Moreover the database front-end is probably the most complicated database front-end in actual production anywhere. It's not just querying a somewhat secure SQL database to show your friends your blog posts, it's querying multiple completely different databases, most of whom weren't designed to be compatible with each-other. It all needs damn-near-perfect security. It needs to deal with complex legal questions such as what happens when Louisiana decides some insurer has been cheating a bit on some legal requirement? Is the desired result under Louisiana law different then Ohio?
Because it looks right and the only other possible estimate we have (500 million) is clearly ridiculous BS an idiot made up as a sound-byte.
As an engineer that's probably not enough certainty for you to believe it, but public policy isn't engineering. Most decisions have to be based on incomplete information, (generally half-remembered overheard BS), so you kinda have to go with the Least Stupid Guess option.
Goddamn I thought I typed that link right. But this is the source for $319 million:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Where do you get $1.2 Billion?
As of December it was $319 million or so. And that includes a lot of non-technical stuff.
If you think the word "need" is part of my argument I haven't been very clear at all. My argument is that publishers are useful to authors in ways other content creation companies (particularly record companies) simply aren't. And I think if you re-read my posts, you'll find that I have not implied that every author will always need a publisher. I've said that a lot of authors are much better served by having a publisher, but not that they actually need one.
As for Amazon reviews, you do realize that Amazon is acting as the publisher for self-published eBooks? It's brand does a lot of marketing, it chooses who gets blurbs, etc.
The universe where dozens of independent publishing houses are replaced by Jeff Bezos isn't necessarily a universe where it's easier (or more lucrative) for an author to make it. After all if Jeff Bezos has a monopoly and he decides to cut your royalty rate you don't really get an appeal. And if he'll do that shit to JK fucking Rowling what are the odds he won't try to do it to you? And unlike traditional publishers, you won't be able to sue him for breach of contract, and then sell your next book to the dude across the street.
The problem is a lot of people'll pay extra for the convenience of having it on your Kindle, but the softcover they buy at the airport has to be under $10 or they'll say "fuck it" and just read The Economist cover to cover.
I like Baen, but they don't seem to be adding new novels to their free library at the same rate they used to, and the CDs with every damn thing they'd ever published also seem to be a thing of the past. I suspect it's a combination of Jim Baen not being around to be ornery, and everyone else figuring "If Tor gets away with that shit, why shouldn't we?"
One of the things I like about publishers is they allow authors to simply be authors.
Self-published authors are entrepreneurs, which means they have to spend lots of time on BS that isn;t writing cool books.
More importantly, if self-publishing ever takes the place of publishing-publishing, it's gonna be much harder for non-rich people to break in. They won;t be able to pay their own editor $10k, and then have some independent firm come up with a $50k marketing plan. Some will still manage it via free marketing, but not as many as currently.
Publishers are wrong a lot. That's why there are dozens of them. Most authors who get officially published try more then one before they get their book published.
As you mention it's currently possible to sell your book to the masses directly. IIRC 50 Shades of Gray actually started out on this track.
The problem is figuring out which bits of the masses would actually read your book, and then convincing them to try. As an author you probably have no talent for that stuff, and as an independent writer you have no budget for it. So unless you get 50 Shades lucky you ain't selling squat. A publisher, OTOH, has the budget. He has professionals who've done this before. Thus, despite the theoretical ability of anyone to be the best-known author ever without using a publisher every author you actually know the name of has at least one publisher.
More importantly a lot of potential authors don't have a couple thousand dollars lying around to spend on independent editing.
Classic troll. You lose on every point, so you bring up previous points. I am not continuing this debate because I take your intellect seriously, but because it gives me numerous opportunities to call you stupid.
First off if you think "monopoly" has the legal meaning of "one supplier" you are a fucking moron. Seriously. That's the dumbest thing I have ever read on Slashdot, and I've dealt with idiots who admitted they were trolling me. If Monopoly meant one supplier IBM would not have been a monopoly, Microsoft would not have been a monopoly. Their lawyers tried really hard to get off scot-free by pointing to Apple, but that shit simply does not work in a court of law.
As for the restraint of trade argument, I already told you why your reasoning is ridonkulous crap. I already told you antitrust rules do not apply to non-monopolies. i already told you there is no strict legal standard of what a monopoly is. It's not quite an "I know it when I see it," but it's damn close. It has to do with a company's ability to distort the market. Note that, by definition, market distortion can be either consumer-side (higher prices), or supplier side. A monopoly that artificially reduces the supply of a product to keep prices low, margins high, and competition out of the field has helped consumers by most economics textbooks definitions of those terms; but it's still fucking illegal.
Protip: There is no good guy here.
Yes. Ideally writers would eliminate publishers and Amazon, and sell direct to their readers. But that's hard to do when most readers want a central location where they can find new books to buy.
The funny part is that the publishers could have created that location with their own online store years ago, but, instead, they let Amazon do it.
And then how do you find good authors?
More importantly, how do you find good authors who have been edited well?
I'm not in college anymore. I don't have time to waste figuring out this series is poorly edited, and would suck even if it was well-edited.
OTOH if Amazon dies I have the money and time to search BN.com, the iBookstore, and whatever interesting new thing appears.
In the super-long term I suspect publisher's share of revenue will go down, but they aren't going to disappear.
By driving down the unit revenue, Amazon makes it really hard for publishers—who are a proxy for authors—to turn a profit.
Publishers a proxy for authors? As if their interests were the same or something?
He just wants to conflate them so we sympathize with the poor downtrodden corporations.
Protip: There is no good guy here.
And why would he want us to sympathize with the poor downtrodden corporations if he didn't think that the interests of said corporation were a proxy for the interests of authors?
And the reason he thinks that way is that when he has an idea that sounds really good in his head, but is actually stupid, the person who gently lets him down is his editor. The people who help him do all the things he can't to sell his books are at his publisher. And without that publisher he makes virtually no money, because he's not JK fucking Rowling and he doesn't have millions of fans who will buy his next book even if it's hard to find. He sent them a manuscript, they liked it, and now they do marketing so he can focus on his work. His publisher is his friend.
It's much different from the music industry. A musician typically collaborates with other musicians in the band, so his dumb ideas all get vetoed by the drummer. They make money by live shows at which fans give it to them directly. They clearly know marketing, distribution, etc. themselves already because you don;t get discovered if you can;t become a major act in your region. It's extremely common that the suits at the label will show up, tell them some totally stupid plan that obviously won't work, condescend to all their objections, and it's far from unknown for said suits to try to bully the prettiest girl in the group into sexual favors.
I'm somewhat neutral in this dispute, but I tend to lean towards Hachette for the simple reason that I can understand how I'd find good books from new authors with minimal work if Amazon died, but i can't understand how I'd pull that shit off if publishers like Baen disappeared.
The interesting thing in that quote? It's in French. Legal concepts like "fraud" can vary significantly between jurisdictions even when there isn't a language barrier, so I'm fairly skeptical of any translation that hasn't been vetted by a fully bilingual lawyer.
From what I can see he was convicted of something vaguely fraud-like in France prior to 2005 (his blog post describing the experience was made in '06, says it happened in his "youth," and he says the investigation took more then a year), but he got a slap on the wrist, and a couple years after that post (2009) he moved to Japan.
It's an interesting data point, and the fact he described his crime as something he did it as a thrill-seeking is important; but just as important to me is that his critics are implying that he fled France to Japan as a way to avoid prosecution. That's clearly false, and fairly stupid (he would have been extradited back to France in a heartbeat); which indicates precisely how rational they're being when they weigh the evidence.
Still it increases the odd he did it, IMO slightly. Not much, because you generally expect a gradual escalation; rather then a tiny little crime that led to no jail time followed a few years later by the most brazen heist of the century.
Madoff had some very good reasons to stay in the states. Notably he had family who would suffer quite a bit if he fled. Moreover he didn't actually have the money he was alleged to have stolen (the whole point of a Ponzi scheme is you don't actually have the money, you just have a bunch of fools you've convinced to send you more money to pay the last round of fools off). If he'd left he would simply have sent his sons to jail, and starved himself to death.
The Silk Road guy didn't know he'd been made. If he'd fled to Russia he would have needed a more cash (Moscow is actually more expensive then SanFran), and he would have needed lots of contacts underground. Contacts who would have been willing to sell him out. OTOH in the US he had a cover story, and he could blend in with the masses easily. If he figured out he'd been made he should have fled to some convenient bolthole, but he didn't know that.
OTOH if Karpeles actually has the money it's gonna be found out real soon. Moreover if he has the money he can afford to leave, and he can afford the truly toothsome bribes neccesary to not be extradited to Japan from some small African state.
There's evidence a bunch of BTC advocates with excessively high IQs (and the corresponding total lack of common sense) are extremely convinced Karpeles stole the money, and have figured out how he could do it. But anyone who pisses off a bunch of high IQ people is gonna quickly be informed that they clearly are the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin, as proven in this extremely convincing 47-page manifesto, which can only be understood by people eligible for Mensa membership.
Oh boohoo. How is this more convincing than the farmer who claims "lightning is perfectly safe, as I've never been struck by it"? It may get you accepted by the boyz 'n the hood, but in the real world an argument from ignorance only serves to undermine your own position.
This is the perfect example of the kind of BS you get when you're dealing with high IQ/low common sense people motivated to prove a point.
I'm not making an argument from ignorance (in this case that would literally be something along the lines of "we can't know whether he's guilty, therefore we must assume he is innocent") I'm arguing that in crimes there is a high correlation between certain behaviors and guilt. And Karpeles ain't doing any of them.
OTOH, in there are certain behaviors strongly associated with colossal fuck-ups. Karpeles is doing all of those in spades.
Yes, it could all be part of some elaborate cover-up; but the odds of that are well under 50%.
"programmers with no experience in security, totally fucked up the security," is a significantly more believable scenario then "programmers with no experience in security, and no history of fraud, purposefully designed a security flaw into our system specifically so they could exploit it."
Huh? Why would anyone running their own software have to "purposefully design a security flaw" in order to exploit it?
Goddamn you really have no common sense whatsoever. I mean none. At all.
Your entire argument is based on the plausibility Karpeles being an evil master-mind who is lying to the world and getting away with it. If he's a mastermind who doesn't want to get caught hew clearly has to include (or more likely, simply refuse to fix) some major security flaw. Then when some other guy hears about said flaw he can exploit it, and blame it all on Evil hackers.
OTOH if his security is perfect he's the only who can possibly be blamed.
I think the US government is genuinely confused. They aren't sure if these guys are more like Wall-Streeters that committed fraud on a massive scale thereby enriching themselves with billions, or common thugs who rob banks with guns. If it's the former, they're safe: too big to jail and one of the boys. If it's the latter, well, here comes pound-me-in-the-ass prison for life.
If only they would have made it simpler by either stealing a lot more, or a lot less.
The problem with this argument is there's no evidence that Mt. Gox actually stole the money itself.
There's evidence a bunch of BTC advocates with excessively high IQs (and the corresponding total lack of common sense) are extremely convinced Karpeles stole the money, and have figured out how he could do it. But anyone who pisses off a bunch of high IQ people is gonna quickly be informed that they clearly are the reincarnation of Hitler and Stalin, as proven in this extremely convincing 47-page manifesto, which can only be understood by people eligible for Mensa membership. So the fact that BTC guys think they have evidence he stole the money is not terribly convincing.
What is convincing is the fact we know where Karpeles is, and he's in bankruptcy. The bankruptcy Judge will have a good idea of Karpeles financial situation, which means that if he's spending like a millionaire and claiming his company has no money he's going to jail in Japan. Which in turn means if he stole hundreds of millions he'd have fled someplace under an assumed name.
What's more convincing is his story. "programmers with no experience in security, totally fucked up the security," is a significantly more believable scenario then "programmers with no experience in security, and no history of fraud, purposefully designed a security flaw into our system specifically so they could exploit it." The fact he found a hundred million or so in BTC under his couch further increases the first story's credibility, because if you're good at security you don't do that shit.
But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."
Amazon refusing to sell one particular business's product is not a meaningful reduction in consumer choice. Amazon is not the sole seller of books, or of books online. They have no "effective monopoly" outside of their own Amazon marketplace - and even then others can compete against Amazon, by selling products on Amazon.
If you read JK Rowling it is a very meaningful reduction in consumer choice.
And consumers aren't the only people with rights. Hachette and it's authors also have rights. And one of those rights is the right not to be forced to reduce their incomes by Amazon.
1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.
Wiki blurb on Anti-Trust Act: "Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony [. . . ]"[13]
So has Amazon monopolized book sales? No, there are still retail bookstores who can continue to sell the books.
Is Amazon trying to monopolize online book sales? Not particularly - other competitors exist, and they're not trying to force a publisher to only sell through them. They are trying to get a better contract, but that's normal business negotiation.
Dude,
If you're arguing a legal point you don't go to a summary page.
You wanna know why? Because this is section 1:
"Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $10,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $350,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding three years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court."
By making it impossible for most eBook buyers to acquire Hachette products they are restraining commerce.
Which means your entire legal argument is literally like saying OJ didn't murder Nicole because he intended to kill her, and then quoting the statute on Second Degree Murder.
The only way you can call Amazon a monopoly is by using a nonsensical definition that does not fall under the language of this act. (Hint: If your definition makes every business a monopoly, your use of the word monopoly becomes useless)
2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.
When Amazon isn't allowed to negotiate what it sells in its own online store, you've effectively taken over ownership of Amazon. Who are you giving that ownership to, and what are you planning to do to compensate Amazon's owners?
Do you know the publisher in question was accused of being a part of a price-fixing cartel with Apple? They were t
No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:
"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"
"Lowest cost seller of everything" is not a monopoly. Monopolies involve markets for specific goods. A monopoly on "everything" is impossible, because of the sheer number of goods and methods of distribution involved. If a company can figure out how to do that without use of government force - they deserve to be the "monopoly".
You also completely missed the point - which was that this so-called monopoly scenario ends up providing the lowest cost goods to the customers - maximizing value to them.
So you've read economics textbooks.
But you apparently have not read anything I wrote, because I just said exactly how a low-cost retailer could hurt consumers. I kinda assumed that you would be smart enough to make the leap from "Nick is bitching about Amazon reducing consumer choice," to "Nick is arguing that monopoly's like Amazon's are dangerous because they reduce consumer choice."
I'm pretty sure you're a troll, because if you actually read economics textbooks they're pretty clear that a market where people can only by a Lada sucks, even if prices are low.
The rights of a monopolist are red herring.
You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.
1. Amazon is not a monopolist.
2. Amazon doesn't own the Internet.
3. The only "monopoly" Amazon has is the right to sell things on Amazon. You seem to be suggesting that everyone has a right to sell things on Amazon on their own terms, and that Amazon isn't allowed to negotiated the terms of that business contract.
1. Prove it. Seriously. I'm making a legal case, under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, so to actually prove this you'll have to read the United States Code, not an Economics Textbook. Good luck proving this one either way. As far as I can tell Amazon is the definition of a "gray area" when it comes to antitrust law.
2. Irrelevant. Amazon is a marketplace. It has a monopoly on itself. If it's marketplace is large enough that it can make or break publishers then it can, by definition, engage in anti-competitive behavior under the terms of the law. And it does not have the legal right to do that, no matter what your economic textbooks say.
3. And how many posts did it take you to understand my argument? Four?
I'm accusing Amazon of hurting consumers by making it really hard for them to get their hands on a specific set of books.
As a marketplace they by definition have monopoly power over themselves. If their overall market-power extends so far that Hachette must surrender or go under then they are by definition abusing that monopoly power.
If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.
So did buggy whip manufacturers. That's not evidence of a problem or a monopoly situation. Think, for crying out loud.
A free market is not "status quo forever".
Just because their industry was shrinking that doesn't mean that it's legal for a monopoly to crush one particular buggy whip maker.
And publisher's industry is definitely not shrinking. It's changing, and I sincerely doubt they'll be able to hold onto 52.5% of their eBook revenue (Amazon gets 30% of list price, the author gets a quarter of the remaining 70% or 17.5%), but I also doubt that Amazon deserves more then their current 30% cut. They don't add any real value to a book, they just have a big old database of eBooks, a credit card machine, and some bandwidth
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.
Monopoly is not defined as "power to `hurt' customers" or "customer faces a reduced number of choices", so all the rest of your post is a red herring.
No "monopoly" is not defined that way, but monopoly power is. You in fact defined it that way an entire two posts ago:
"So in this scenario, they become lowest cost seller of everything? And this is harmful to customers, how?"
We can engage in a 10th-grade level grammar debate over whether "Monopolized" only means "the act of being a monopoly," or it can also mean "having monopoly power," or you can respond to my post on reality with something besides theory.
Hachette books does not have an innate right to use Amazon to sell their wares. If they don't like the level of service provided by Amazon, Amazon can do NOTHING to stop Hachette from creating an online store for their readers and shipping books by their choice of USPS, UPS, or FedEx. They could even sell their readers ebooks and not deal with the logistics of killing trees and moving them around.
The rights of a monopolist are red herring.
You do not the right to force IBM to sell you a computer that can run several different operating systems. You do not have the right to force Microsoft to sell you a computer with a browser that can access non-MS-approved websites. But it happened.
Or if that's too much work for Hachette, there a myriad of other online retailers who will gladly work with them to sell their wares.
The very idea of "muscling" in the online realm is ridiculous. Amazon can take their ball and go home but they can't force anyone else to use their ball.
If that was true Hachette wouldn't be losing sales.
You have a lot of very solid logic, backed by wonderful theory, that makes perfect sense. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the reasoning you used, or the facts upon which said reasoning is based.
That doesn't mean it's not BS. Like all theories a single data point that doesn't fit with the theory totally destroys it, no matter how tight the logic.
And this article is that fact. Consumers are hurt when they lose choices. Amazon took away the choice to have Hachette books delivered in a timely manner. Since nobody noticed for months your wonderful theory that online retail can't be monopolized was proven wrong.
I don't know if this will work for Amazon in the long-term, or the government will quash it, or maybe the market will start creating web pages listing back-ordered products by publisher so Amazon can't pull this trick again. Or hell, maybe you can prove that Amazon isn't quite big enough to fall under the Sherman Antitrust Act.
But the simple fact is Amazon has a bunch of consumers who search for products on Amazon first. That means Amazon has a myriad of opportunities to convince them to buy something else. Some are ethical (ie: an ad saying "try this instead"), others are quite sketchy. If it's true Amazon has been delaying deliveries for one specific publisher that's a problem. There are almost certainly others which could be hidden (ie: tweaking search algorithms, emails falsely implying that a product you paid for is not available and would you prefer this substitute and a portion of your money back, etc.). Which means Amazon can screw businesses selling on it's site, which in turn means Amazon can screw consumers by reducing the number of choices available in the marketplace.
Amazon will sell you her book. It'll just take weeks and weeks to get to your House. That's what Hachette is complaining about. Amazon makes it really inconvenient to buy Hachette books, which Hachette's authors say is reducing their sales.
I suspect what's gonna happen is that Amazon will cave immediately to avoid further bad PR, which will mean the DoJ will conclude there's nothing to investigate.
Keep in mind that most anti-trust violations are only anti-trust violations if a company with real market power does them. It was an anti-trust issue for IBM to write the Operating System on it's first PC, but it wasn't an anti-trust issue when Apple/Commodore/Osborn/etc. all did the same damn thing. Later on Apple bundling Safari with Mac OS, but not including any other options by default; was legally fine. But in Europe Microsoft gets into a whole hell of a lot of trouble if it doesn't offer people the option of installing non-IE browsers.
So anti-trust cops have to judge two things in this case, neither of which is an easy call:
1) Is Amazon so fucking big that it can crush it's business partners, and therefore should be subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act?
2) If so, does artificially reducing a publisher's sales by refusing to ship his products in a timely manner count as reducing competition.
Two links, both to paywalled articles.
Fantastic.
Weird. Both Times articles opened fine for me. I'm in the US, and I don't have an NYT subscription.
You get a couple (5, IIRC) free articles A month.
They enforce it via cookie, so it's pretty trivial to work around.
Under anti-trust law market-leaders have a lot of responsibilities normal companies don't have. Which means your analogy to the local store is irrelevant. Local book stores don't have to deal with the Sherman Antitrust Act*.
If you're a company like Amazon, and your policy is to stock damn near everything, including no less then 19 books by Hitler, you're not supposed to use your market power to screw anyone. You can use your power to a certain extent, but you can't abuse it. And yes, I'm fully aware that abuse is a relative term. That's kinda the point. If it wasn't, then a company could hack it's way around the objective definition very easily.
Keep in mind that if anti-trust law did not exist nobody would be able to read Slashdot unless they used Windows and IE, and that nobody would even have a computer running an open source OS because IBM would just have slapped IBM-OS on the original PC and Linus would never have been able to buy a machine capable of running a kernel he wrote himself.
*Internet factoid of the day: this is not named after the Civil War General, but after his brother, who became a Senator in 1861. He started as a Congressman, and almost became Speaker, but South Carolina managed to block him right before seceding, so he moved to the Senate. At the time William Tecumseh Sherman was known mostly as being Senator Sherman's brother. The loser third Sherman brother was Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court.