7 ms·

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if th

Amazon should own up and pay. They have effectively stolen from this author. No, we can't guarantee that those people would have bought it for free, but if these were physical books, the law would require that they pay the author. The agreement wasn't that they get to change the price any time they like. The agreement was that they get to match competitors. They violated that.

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p0ckets 15y ago
I'm sure their agreement had more than one clause. It could very well contain a set of clauses that limits amazon's liability to whatever it collects from customers (in this case, $0).
- adamc 15y ago
  Let's not confuse what's right with the law. The two are only occasionally related.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Maybe, but lets be honest the price they would have to pay for this is what a few seconds profit? Compared to the risk of losing the next great author because they get scared away that is a very small price to pay. Not to mention that he may have a case for piracy for commercial gain, in which case Amazon is liable for $300000 a copy (which, at 6000, is more money than most authors will ever see).
toyg 15y ago
"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss, the damage is hardly quantifiable (it might actually turn out to be a net positive in the end, given all this free publicity). The digital world is funny like that. EDIT: this is not to say that Amazon shouldn't be held accountable for their mistake, if there is a breach of contract involved; just that it doesn't matter whether there were 6000 downloads or 60.
- derefr 15y ago
  If this is true, then content piracy should also be legal. (Amazon effectively did the same thing as a pirate posting the file to a torrent tracker: they satisfied some of their potential customers with a free copy, invalidating them as real customers.) Conversely, if piracy should be illegal, then this is false, and Amazon is in trouble.
  - toyg 15y ago
    Content piracy is unauthorized distribution. Amazon here was authorized to distribute the material; they are in trouble if and only if the authorization was somehow revoked when the price reached zero. My point that there was no real loss is tangential to the actual case.
    - nknight 15y ago
      They were authorized to distribute the content according to the terms of the contract. It appears they distributed the content outside of those terms. I'm sure there's language to ensure they won't get hit with damages, but they should be.
      - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
        And the same contract says that they are not liable for damages in the event of an error. The contract does not support a claim for money, that case is a moral one rather than a legal one.
        wisty 15y ago
        He can still seek legal advice. Just because a contract says "we can't be held responsible for anything" doesn't mean it's always going to hold up in court. It just wouldn't be fair, and lawyers would lose too much business. What matters is the disputed amount ($13,000), whether the author wants to play hardball, and whether Amazon would rather pay him to go away or squash him like a bug (to set an example). Because even if he wins (and I've no idea if he can), it wouldn't be fun if Amazon got nasty. I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't seen the contract in question, so I have no real idea, but it's not as clear cut as "you agreed not to sue us". It could very well be a bluff by Amazon.
ycsucks 15y ago
And you should go fuck yourself, you self-entitled bastard. You have effectively stolen from everyone with your belief in the ownership of expression. You and your buddy, PG, can go fuck yourselves.
- deleted 15y ago
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ck2 15y ago
Actually, if you go by RIAA settlements and court verdicts, non-physical items are actually worth exponentially more than physical.
- kevinpet 15y ago
  A set with two data points cannot imply exponential growth. The phrase you are looking for is "orders of magnitude more". Please, let's keep exponential around as a word with meaning. It conveys something useful.
- awj 15y ago
  Part of the reasoning there is in calculating the impact of redistribution. When someone tosses an mp3 up on a torrent the RIAA doesn't just lose the immediate (potential) sales for those who downloaded it, but also for anyone that that network shares the files with. Mind you, I don't agree with the specific numbers they're citing, but the general logic works. It's kind of like the Drake equation, everyone can agree on the general format, but you can plug in specific values to make it mean whatever you want.
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    No, the model doesn't work. If the RIAA gets their huge multiple from one person they aren't going to consider downloads later in the sequence as covered. They would gladly go after a torrent swarm and charge each member based on the total number of copies. If they only went after the initial seeder, I could understand. But that's completely counterfactual.
mindstab 15y ago
Funny too since Amazon has the ability to revoke books and they did so last year over some issue when a big company was involved, and it pissed off a lot of customers. But now, not only will they not pay the little guy, they won't revoke the erroneously given away books.

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p0ckets 15y ago

I'm sure their agreement had more than one clause. It could very well contain a set of clauses that limits amazon's liability to whatever it collects from customers (in this case, $0).

adamc 15y ago
Let's not confuse what's right with the law. The two are only occasionally related.
tomjen3 15y ago
Maybe, but lets be honest the price they would have to pay for this is what a few seconds profit? Compared to the risk of losing the next great author because they get scared away that is a very small price to pay. Not to mention that he may have a case for piracy for commercial gain, in which case Amazon is liable for $300000 a copy (which, at 6000, is more money than most authors will ever see).

toyg 15y ago

"If these were physical books", there would be a material loss involved: Publisher A paid to produce X books, the distributor lost part of them, and now the Publisher cannot sell them anymore, suffering a direct and quantifiable economic loss. Here, it's more like the distributor left their books around in a library, and some people got to read them for free. The publisher can still sell them. There is no direct loss, the damage is hardly quantifiable (it might actually turn out to be a net positive in the end, given all this free publicity). The digital world is funny like that. EDIT: this is not to say that Amazon shouldn't be held accountable for their mistake, if there is a breach of contract involved; just that it doesn't matter whether there were 6000 downloads or 60.

derefr 15y ago
If this is true, then content piracy should also be legal. (Amazon effectively did the same thing as a pirate posting the file to a torrent tracker: they satisfied some of their potential customers with a free copy, invalidating them as real customers.) Conversely, if piracy should be illegal, then this is false, and Amazon is in trouble.
- toyg 15y ago
  Content piracy is unauthorized distribution. Amazon here was authorized to distribute the material; they are in trouble if and only if the authorization was somehow revoked when the price reached zero. My point that there was no real loss is tangential to the actual case.
  - nknight 15y ago
    They were authorized to distribute the content according to the terms of the contract. It appears they distributed the content outside of those terms. I'm sure there's language to ensure they won't get hit with damages, but they should be.
    - Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
      And the same contract says that they are not liable for damages in the event of an error. The contract does not support a claim for money, that case is a moral one rather than a legal one.
      - wisty 15y ago
        He can still seek legal advice. Just because a contract says "we can't be held responsible for anything" doesn't mean it's always going to hold up in court. It just wouldn't be fair, and lawyers would lose too much business. What matters is the disputed amount ($13,000), whether the author wants to play hardball, and whether Amazon would rather pay him to go away or squash him like a bug (to set an example). Because even if he wins (and I've no idea if he can), it wouldn't be fun if Amazon got nasty. I'm not a lawyer, and I haven't seen the contract in question, so I have no real idea, but it's not as clear cut as "you agreed not to sue us". It could very well be a bluff by Amazon.

ycsucks 15y ago

And you should go fuck yourself, you self-entitled bastard. You have effectively stolen from everyone with your belief in the ownership of expression. You and your buddy, PG, can go fuck yourselves.

deleted 15y ago
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ck2 15y ago

Actually, if you go by RIAA settlements and court verdicts, non-physical items are actually worth exponentially more than physical.

kevinpet 15y ago
A set with two data points cannot imply exponential growth. The phrase you are looking for is "orders of magnitude more". Please, let's keep exponential around as a word with meaning. It conveys something useful.
awj 15y ago
Part of the reasoning there is in calculating the impact of redistribution. When someone tosses an mp3 up on a torrent the RIAA doesn't just lose the immediate (potential) sales for those who downloaded it, but also for anyone that that network shares the files with. Mind you, I don't agree with the specific numbers they're citing, but the general logic works. It's kind of like the Drake equation, everyone can agree on the general format, but you can plug in specific values to make it mean whatever you want.
- Dylan16807 15y ago
  No, the model doesn't work. If the RIAA gets their huge multiple from one person they aren't going to consider downloads later in the sequence as covered. They would gladly go after a torrent swarm and charge each member based on the total number of copies. If they only went after the initial seeder, I could understand. But that's completely counterfactual.

mindstab 15y ago

Funny too since Amazon has the ability to revoke books and they did so last year over some issue when a big company was involved, and it pissed off a lot of customers. But now, not only will they not pay the little guy, they won't revoke the erroneously given away books.