10 ms·

Reasons not to buy from Amazon

88 points by pykello 12y ago

Zikes 12y ago
I'm finding there are a growing number of very good reasons to never buy anything from anybody. Some companies I boycott myself, for some of those reasons, but I can't fault anybody on their choices of whether or not to participate in any boycotts. Edit: That said, I think posts like these are necessary so that consumers can make the sort of informed decisions they need to make regarding whom they purchase from.
- bsimpson 12y ago
  > never buy anything from anybody reminds me of this College Humor video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqevO_zrxsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqevO_zrxsA
strictnein 12y ago
> "Amazon was a member of ALEC...." > "Amazon quit ALEC after public pressure in May 2012, but I am sure it still supports the same nasty policies and is waiting for a new tool to achieve them." Seriously? Come on.
- harrumph 12y ago
  I think RMS is correct here. Corporate membership in an organization whose purpose is to impose market and private mechanisms on whole populations by writing these into state and local law (this is precisely what ALEC does) should be interpreted as an irrevocable announcement that the management of the corporation does in fact endorse imposing its interests on whole populations using state and local law. Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time, so its leaving can't be construed as a change of perspective on the imposition of legislation as a business strategy. At most you can say that Amazon's execs decided that the costs of openly associating with those aims were high enough to end open association.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    Large corporations are members of many groups. The idea that the entire leadership of Amazon should be replaced because Amazon was a member of ALEC is nonsensical. Jeff Bezos should step down because Amazon was a member of ALEC? Really? What about Steve Jobs and Apple? They were a member too. ALEC isn't some super nefarious group, but I do understand it was the target of three minutes of internet hate, so people seem to ascribe some super evil to its intents.
    - harrumph 12y ago
      >The idea that the entire leadership of Amazon should be replaced because Amazon was a member of ALEC is nonsensical. That's a ridiculous reading of what I wrote. I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon. This fairly suggests the same people still support the aims and work of the group, which is to spam state laws and impose market and private structures on entire populations. You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group. Silly.
    - strictnein 12y ago
      I really don't understand how it's ridiculous reading of what you wrote: > "Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time" Amazon's leadership includes Jeff Bezos. Apple's leadership included Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. In fact, what you said first mirrors what you just said: > "I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon." The leadership of Apple is still mainly in place as well. Should they all be gotten rid of? Or is there just a specific list of people who should be dumped? > "You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group." No, I didn't in any way say that. I just said they weren't "super nefarious". Amazon left ALEC precisely because they determined it was presenting a problem. > "Then you completely ignored ALEC's purpose as I accurately described it." In what way? By saying their weren't "super nefarious"? I guess you think they are "super nefarious", but I just think they're sub-optimal.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  That is probably one of the most reasonable disagreements that can be made. Take some random person and say they use to be a member of some bad organization. Let's pick the WBC (but you can pick many others). Now, say they quit, not because of a change of heart, but because of political pressure that was costing them money. Is this someone you would consider a decent person? I wouldn't.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    I was mainly objecting to the weird conspiratorial bit about them waiting for a new tool to complete their nefarious goals. And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that.
    - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
      >And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that. Substitute any group where you feelings for them approaches Stallman's feelings about ALEC. The actual group picked is irrelevant to the argument.
basseq 12y ago
Stallman raises some interesting points, but calling the Kindle a "Swindle" doesn't make for a very rational argument.
- angersock 12y ago
  s/Swindle/Kindle/g and you're back. Just because somebody picks abrasive plays-on-words doesn't make their rhetoric any less rational. Unpalatable and annoying, yes, but that's got nothing to do with the argument structure and statements themselves.
  - doodpants 12y ago
    When people revert to name-calling it really rubs me the wrong way, and makes me less likely to take their objections seriously. Like when people write "Micro$oft", "Microshaft", "CrApple", etc. If you have rational objections to something, you don't need to resort to such childish tactics. ...Frankly, I'd prefer more rationality from Richard Trollman. ;-)
    - angersock 12y ago
      Oh, I absolutely agree about picking childish names! It's not particularly effective, and it does tend to lose your audience. Made-up names can be done with a wink-and-a-nod when punching up for great effect ("We had particular issues integrating with a vendor who we won't name but are a bit fruity--we'll call them Orange for the sake of comparison"), but usually it's done by people who aren't particularly bright. At the same time, there is kind of an open question as to how much power a name has. If we only ever use the proper trademarks for these folks, are we not always granting them a certain amount of legitimacy and respect?
    - basseq 12y ago
      I think legitimacy and respect go along with making a strong argument. If you resort to name-calling, the rest of your argument must not be strong enough—that's the perception, anyway. Amazon and Kindle are legitimate whether Stallman likes them or not. And I don't think—given the tone of the rest of the article—that anyone would confuse using the proper name of the product in question as respect.
butwhy 12y ago
That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. The common conclusion is that they wouldn't be so stupid as to let the customer tracking show the keyboard passing through them so they can bug it. And as for Amazon reducing the price of books from publishers, this quantitatively has shown they will sell more and make more money despite the lower price tag.
- hurin 12y ago
  > That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. Yeah RMS is already considerably crazy for most readers, adding clearly false claims as references doesn't help.
- Eridrus 12y ago
  The Tor develop made it practically impossible to verify by complaining about it on twitter. If they actually thought it was tampered with it seems like the correct approach would have been to keep quiet and then do a forensic tear down of the entire thing to find it. There are plenty of people who would be more than willing to take a look at what could potentially be a real TAO intercept device. Reminds me of #BadBIOS
strictnein 12y ago
Amazon is charging sales tax in more and more states as they expand their services. They're currently collecting sales taxes in 24 states [0]. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - pbreit 12y ago
    The laws are/were vague at best. It's arguable that it is now charging sales tax when it does not need to by law.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    Not quite sure what your point is. I was referring to one of Stallman's points which was basically that they are "dodging taxes" in the US. They're not and are increasingly collecting sales taxes as they are opening facilities in more and more states as they expand their offerings, just as the law dictates.
    - Zikes 12y ago
      Walmart's political action committee is vigorously campaigning for laws to enforce sales taxes on all online sales, seemingly as a direct result of Amazon. I would imagine if Amazon were doing anything overtly dodgy in that regard, Walmart would likely be fairly vocal about it.
      - strictnein 12y ago
        Amazon is on board for online sales taxes, and have been since 2012 [0]. They rightly see it now as a obstacle to future competition, as collecting sales taxes for the thousands of jurisdictions in the US is very difficult. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/carney-amazon-joins-walmart-in-push-for-online-sales-tax/article/2503738 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/carney-amazon-joins-walmar...
coherentpony 12y ago
It's awfully convenient, though.
- Fice 12y ago
  Yes. And it's a shame that in the modern world convenience appears to be more important than ethics.
specialk 12y ago
> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too. Funny that. > "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." Replace 'Swindle' with 'Kindle' then with any ebook reader ever. I doubt there is anything about the Kindle in particular, over other ereaders, that causes people to remember less. This is attacking Amazon with everything and hoping some of it sticks. I'm trying not to defend Amazon but RMS's arguments are painfully bad at times.
- ucaetano 12y ago
  "GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there" But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!
  - andrewguenther 12y ago
    So its like the Patriot Act of licenses? Everything you do must be done in the open for the sake of freedom!
    - dman 12y ago
      In all seriousness - do you see an equivalence between the Patriot act and the GPL?
      - secstate 12y ago
        Playing devil's advocate here, as I whole-heartedly support OSS and the myriad license under which it is distributed, including the GPL. But ... That's a really interesting argument. One could argue that the GPL is like the snake eating it's tail on the far side of liberalness. I'm sure this is not a new argument, but I'd never considered that the "polluting" of code with the GPL actually decreases individual liberty for the sake of communal liberty. Again, not making a judgement one way or the other, but the world is nothing if not a series of bad compromises, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the GPL and OSS in general is included in "the world" :)
codewithcheese 12y ago
"A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." You only need to make a good point once. Adding additional lesser points just weakens it. A fair few dubious and ridiculous claims here, same sort of claims can be made about any multi-national. No smoking gun here.
- scrumper 12y ago
  This does ring true; I'm sure I remember a study of retention of read material comparing paper books with e-readers which supports that point. I think it was something to do with not having an easy way to intuit position in a book with e-readers.
  - bougiefever 12y ago
    I think it sounds ridiculous. I read both hard-copy and electronic books on a variety of devices. The only device this would hold true for (sample size of one here) is on the computer. The angle of my eyes is wrong, and I need to hold it in my hands. Once I get immersed in the plot, I don't care what is serving it up.
    - scrumper 12y ago
      I meant 'ring true' as in 'I vaguely remember some research which supports the point.'
  - geoelectric 12y ago
    Regardless of whether it's true, Amazon is hardly the only company to sell an e-reader, nor did they invent the concept. It's a silly inclusion on a list of otherwise ethics-related arguments.
tacos 12y ago
I've only seen rants of this tone, format and length from bona-fide crazy people. There's a line here and I hope stays on the side where I can continue to respect him. If he wants me to use GPL3 I'll take it under advisement. If he wants to tell me where to buy toothpaste I won't. I'm a fan of outsiders, the 60s, the whole deal. I love the whole idea of Stallman. I want more Stallmans! I also disagree with nearly everything he says while agreeing almost completely with the results he seeks to achieve. But posts like this pain me regardless of the source.
- jarin 12y ago
  People like Stallman (and whoever would be his polar opposite) need to exist in order to establish the boundaries and give us a framework to finding a balance between egalitarianism and greed.
gesman 12y ago
Amazon is like a naughty girl next door. She might be bad and not that pretty, but very conveniently close.
- alecandzoe 12y ago
  fair
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  What the fuck. Why would you post this kind of thing.
  - gesman 12y ago
    This is an analogy to explain why many people are willing to sacrifice many things for sake of convenience. Granted, a bit of a spicy analogy for some.
    - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
      It's 2015. You don't do that anymore. Get with the program.
theVirginian 12y ago
Sabotaging Customers: I have no reason to believe that they would ever sabotage me. Restricting and Shafting Customers: I have never had a problem with my kindle or any other media from Amazon. If I ever do I'm sure I can find an alternative source in a matter of minutes. Censorship: They are Amazon's servers and it is their right to enforce their rules on them. If Wikileaks believes that they were unlawfully cut off then they should take Amazon to court. Exploiting workers mercilessly: good luck finding a retailer that has not done this at some point. This is an unfortunate reality as far as I am concerned and while I support fighting for better worker's conditions, I see no reason that refusing to buy through Amazon helps the problem. Shafting others in the publishing world: I'm not a publisher, their industry is none of my concern. If Amazon is so bad for them then I'm sure there is another way they can sell their books. Dodging Taxes: The government should close tax loopholes. I don't blame Amazon for being competitive. If it's legal it's fair as far as I'm concerned. Other reasons: These all seem to be trivial to me though I don't feel like typing out the reasons why. I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me.
- ucaetano 12y ago
  "Sabotaging Customers:" "I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me." I had a problem with Amazon once, they repeatedly messed up a delivery. I emailed Jeff Bezos, got a call the next day from his office and my problem was solved.
- adventured 12y ago
  Further, Amazon's solution to workers is going to be robotics: the elimination of as many manual labor jobs as possible. This is something Walmart will not be able to pull off easily because their workers are out front, higher profile; Amazon's workers can disappear through firings and few will notice. At a minimum Amazon is going to leverage robotics to drastically stretch (reduce) how many workers they have per dollar of sales. In ten years Stallman will be telling us not to buy from Amazon because they use robots instead of human labor.
  - jarin 12y ago
zyxley 12y ago
Putting in "Swindle" instead of "Kindle" is painfully childish.
- alecandzoe 12y ago
  lal
pbreit 12y ago
Man, that guy is a curmudgeon. But I love that he exists even though I don't really worry about any of that stuff (who has the time or energy?).
gopher2 12y ago
This is not exactly nuanced. It reads like he disliked Amazon for some reason and then went out and googled around for a while to come up with more reasons to support that belief. Personally, I like Amazon... so of course I'm just looking for reasons to dismiss his arguments without considering their merit. Ha!
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  It's kind of hard to imagine Stallman googling for anything.
  - amyjess 12y ago
    OK, so he used a script to wget duckduckgo for a while and then email the results to himself.
    - eva1984 12y ago
      ！！Sounds hilarious to me though
alecandzoe 12y ago
how did this get up here
tptacek 12y ago
Regarding the keyboard and "NSA" --- recall, NSA's entire involvement in this story is a shipment tracker that showed a package traversing Alexandria, VA --- here's the previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7126754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7126754
- anonbanker 12y ago
  Way to downplay, tom. You should probably mention that it was (Tor dev) Jacob Appelbaum's laptop, and that even he thinks it stopped there to be "fitted".
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
alexashka 12y ago
The villain of the times is a company that delivers books to me better than any company ever has? Pretty sure there's bigger fish to fry, which makes me wonder what personal agenda the author is pursuing here.
eonw 12y ago
most of what he is saying... could apply to any corporation. If the government wants to inspect mail and possibly install malware, for instance, that could happen with any vendor, amazon or manufacturer, as they wont have a choice presented to them. the purpose of the corporation is to make money at the expense of the customer, vendors and anyone else... why pick of amazon alone?
ereckers 12y ago
I'm looking forward to how his, "Reasons not to use Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft" will be received around here.
vixen99 12y ago
Small point: tax avoidance is legal and sensible. Would anyone or any company seek to maximize its tax bill bar bizarre circumstances? Rather, the reverse. If there's a devastating avoidance loophole it's the job of government to redraft the regulations or let the courts decide.
- harrumph 12y ago
  This is a fair assignment of responsibility only in a world where corporate representation does not extend to that regulatory sphere. But it absolutely does. There is a free market for political results and favorable tax code edits are the deliverables in this cash market.
yasth 12y ago
Amazon in all honesty likely had zero choice but to comply with the NSA. Also it might not even be the one complying, but rather the shipping carrier. Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms. I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google: * Distributes books with restrictive licenses (Google Play Books) * Sells online music with restrictive terms (Google Play Music) * Can remotely delete content (Yes, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Android-Apps,news-7216.html http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Andr... ) * Can force auto updates (Yes you can disable updates to chrome, but not the google update client https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies ) * Google's cloud is even more restrictive than Amazon's on content, and their TOS gives you no recourse. Apple likewise does much the same thing (except they don't have a public cloud offering).
- reaktivo 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure he's equally againts Apple and Google, as Amazon.
bdcravens 12y ago
RMS is supporting buying the book directly from the publisher. But what if they are running IIS on the server, or Flash on their front-end? Doesn't this mean that he is recommending the use of proprietary software?
- teddyh 12y ago
  Suppose that RMS supported something like buying organic food directly from farmers. Would you then pose the question “What if a farmer is a mass murderer or a terrorist? Would that mean that RMS is supporting terrorism?”
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    I think what you miss is that RMS has argued against other things on the exact kind of indirect support for non-free software argument as was directed at his recommendation to buy directly from publishers; it rests on RMS's use of that criticism rather than the assumption that the criticism is valid.
    - teddyh 11y ago
      The argument as you descibe it sounds silly, and to believe that RMS used it I would have to see a citation. Even so, if he used it, he would be wrong. I argued against the argument as presented, I can’t be expected to know whether it was subtle sarcasm or not.
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    RMS has been pretty cut-and-dry about proprietary software. For instance, he won't use document types that encourage proprietary software use (even when free alternatives exist). So to answer your question, if RMS was a staunch anti-terrorist advocate, and it was guaranteed that a percentage of organic farmers were terrorists, then it would be perfectly reasonable to pose that question.
    - teddyh 11y ago
bougiefever 12y ago
Some of these arguments are just kind of weird, but I did read the study by the undercover worker about working conditions at their distribution plants. They claimed that they are given an impossible workload, are routinely verbally abused, they get fired for almost any infraction, and they are paid poorly for the privilege. I'm not sure B&N is so much better. I haven't heard anything either way. I usually look up books and review on Amazon, then buy them elsewhere. I do like that they are trying to make all e-books cost less than $10.
mpeg 12y ago
> "Amazon's on-line music "sales" have some of the same problems as the ebooks: users are required to identify themselves and sign a contract that denies them the freedoms they would have with a CD." I find this amusing, music CDs don't give you a whole lot of freedom, considering the CD itself will eventually stop working (whether due to time or scratches) and they employ copy protection methods. Lesser evil?
bougiefever 12y ago
Some of those publishers deserve to be bullied by Amazon.
crimsonalucard 12y ago
Don't drive cars because they pollute the world. People will always drive cars because convenience has a higher priority then polluting the world. People will always buy from amazon because of convenience. There's no point in justifying it. Most people just don't care...
bdcravens 12y ago
So when will RMS have all of his titles pulled from Amazon? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=richard+stallman&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Arichard+stallman http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...
secstate 12y ago
I find the tax evasion argument the most damning. But it's not just Amazon, it's any sizable American corporation in 2015. You'd be irresponsible to your shareholders for not setting up a tax haven corp in Ireland or some other mostly legal country and funnel your profits through there. it's nothing corporations haven't been doing since the idea of legally protected business groups posing as faux individuals was invented. But it still doesn't make it not a really bad idea for any half-hearted attempt at a representative democracy. It doesn't take a genius to realize the impact that tax dollars returned to your community be it town, state or country, have at a least a chance of having a positive impact on your life. Of course, the devil's advocate would say that getting consumer goods for less has a direct positive impact on my life. That's probably pretty debatable though.

88 points by pykello 12y ago

Zikes 12y ago

I'm finding there are a growing number of very good reasons to never buy anything from anybody. Some companies I boycott myself, for some of those reasons, but I can't fault anybody on their choices of whether or not to participate in any boycotts. Edit: That said, I think posts like these are necessary so that consumers can make the sort of informed decisions they need to make regarding whom they purchase from.

bsimpson 12y ago
> never buy anything from anybody reminds me of this College Humor video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqevO_zrxsA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqevO_zrxsA

strictnein 12y ago

> "Amazon was a member of ALEC...." > "Amazon quit ALEC after public pressure in May 2012, but I am sure it still supports the same nasty policies and is waiting for a new tool to achieve them." Seriously? Come on.

harrumph 12y ago
I think RMS is correct here. Corporate membership in an organization whose purpose is to impose market and private mechanisms on whole populations by writing these into state and local law (this is precisely what ALEC does) should be interpreted as an irrevocable announcement that the management of the corporation does in fact endorse imposing its interests on whole populations using state and local law. Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time, so its leaving can't be construed as a change of perspective on the imposition of legislation as a business strategy. At most you can say that Amazon's execs decided that the costs of openly associating with those aims were high enough to end open association.
- strictnein 12y ago
  Large corporations are members of many groups. The idea that the entire leadership of Amazon should be replaced because Amazon was a member of ALEC is nonsensical. Jeff Bezos should step down because Amazon was a member of ALEC? Really? What about Steve Jobs and Apple? They were a member too. ALEC isn't some super nefarious group, but I do understand it was the target of three minutes of internet hate, so people seem to ascribe some super evil to its intents.
  - harrumph 12y ago
    >The idea that the entire leadership of Amazon should be replaced because Amazon was a member of ALEC is nonsensical. That's a ridiculous reading of what I wrote. I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon. This fairly suggests the same people still support the aims and work of the group, which is to spam state laws and impose market and private structures on entire populations. You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group. Silly.
  - strictnein 12y ago
    I really don't understand how it's ridiculous reading of what you wrote: > "Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time" Amazon's leadership includes Jeff Bezos. Apple's leadership included Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. In fact, what you said first mirrors what you just said: > "I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon." The leadership of Apple is still mainly in place as well. Should they all be gotten rid of? Or is there just a specific list of people who should be dumped? > "You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group." No, I didn't in any way say that. I just said they weren't "super nefarious". Amazon left ALEC precisely because they determined it was presenting a problem. > "Then you completely ignored ALEC's purpose as I accurately described it." In what way? By saying their weren't "super nefarious"? I guess you think they are "super nefarious", but I just think they're sub-optimal.
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
That is probably one of the most reasonable disagreements that can be made. Take some random person and say they use to be a member of some bad organization. Let's pick the WBC (but you can pick many others). Now, say they quit, not because of a change of heart, but because of political pressure that was costing them money. Is this someone you would consider a decent person? I wouldn't.
- strictnein 12y ago
  I was mainly objecting to the weird conspiratorial bit about them waiting for a new tool to complete their nefarious goals. And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that.
  - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    >And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that. Substitute any group where you feelings for them approaches Stallman's feelings about ALEC. The actual group picked is irrelevant to the argument.

basseq 12y ago

Stallman raises some interesting points, but calling the Kindle a "Swindle" doesn't make for a very rational argument.

angersock 12y ago
s/Swindle/Kindle/g and you're back. Just because somebody picks abrasive plays-on-words doesn't make their rhetoric any less rational. Unpalatable and annoying, yes, but that's got nothing to do with the argument structure and statements themselves.
- doodpants 12y ago
  When people revert to name-calling it really rubs me the wrong way, and makes me less likely to take their objections seriously. Like when people write "Micro$oft", "Microshaft", "CrApple", etc. If you have rational objections to something, you don't need to resort to such childish tactics. ...Frankly, I'd prefer more rationality from Richard Trollman. ;-)
  - angersock 12y ago
    Oh, I absolutely agree about picking childish names! It's not particularly effective, and it does tend to lose your audience. Made-up names can be done with a wink-and-a-nod when punching up for great effect ("We had particular issues integrating with a vendor who we won't name but are a bit fruity--we'll call them Orange for the sake of comparison"), but usually it's done by people who aren't particularly bright. At the same time, there is kind of an open question as to how much power a name has. If we only ever use the proper trademarks for these folks, are we not always granting them a certain amount of legitimacy and respect?
  - basseq 12y ago
    I think legitimacy and respect go along with making a strong argument. If you resort to name-calling, the rest of your argument must not be strong enough—that's the perception, anyway. Amazon and Kindle are legitimate whether Stallman likes them or not. And I don't think—given the tone of the rest of the article—that anyone would confuse using the proper name of the product in question as respect.

butwhy 12y ago

That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. The common conclusion is that they wouldn't be so stupid as to let the customer tracking show the keyboard passing through them so they can bug it. And as for Amazon reducing the price of books from publishers, this quantitatively has shown they will sell more and make more money despite the lower price tag.

hurin 12y ago
> That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. Yeah RMS is already considerably crazy for most readers, adding clearly false claims as references doesn't help.
Eridrus 12y ago
The Tor develop made it practically impossible to verify by complaining about it on twitter. If they actually thought it was tampered with it seems like the correct approach would have been to keep quiet and then do a forensic tear down of the entire thing to find it. There are plenty of people who would be more than willing to take a look at what could potentially be a real TAO intercept device. Reminds me of #BadBIOS

strictnein 12y ago

Amazon is charging sales tax in more and more states as they expand their services. They're currently collecting sales taxes in 24 states [0]. http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- pbreit 12y ago
  The laws are/were vague at best. It's arguable that it is now charging sales tax when it does not need to by law.
- strictnein 12y ago
  Not quite sure what your point is. I was referring to one of Stallman's points which was basically that they are "dodging taxes" in the US. They're not and are increasingly collecting sales taxes as they are opening facilities in more and more states as they expand their offerings, just as the law dictates.
  - Zikes 12y ago
    Walmart's political action committee is vigorously campaigning for laws to enforce sales taxes on all online sales, seemingly as a direct result of Amazon. I would imagine if Amazon were doing anything overtly dodgy in that regard, Walmart would likely be fairly vocal about it.
    - strictnein 12y ago
      Amazon is on board for online sales taxes, and have been since 2012 [0]. They rightly see it now as a obstacle to future competition, as collecting sales taxes for the thousands of jurisdictions in the US is very difficult. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/carney-amazon-joins-walmart-in-push-for-online-sales-tax/article/2503738 http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/carney-amazon-joins-walmar...

coherentpony 12y ago

It's awfully convenient, though.

Fice 12y ago
Yes. And it's a shame that in the modern world convenience appears to be more important than ethics.

specialk 12y ago

> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights." I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too. Funny that. > "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." Replace 'Swindle' with 'Kindle' then with any ebook reader ever. I doubt there is anything about the Kindle in particular, over other ereaders, that causes people to remember less. This is attacking Amazon with everything and hoping some of it sticks. I'm trying not to defend Amazon but RMS's arguments are painfully bad at times.

ucaetano 12y ago
"GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there" But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!
- andrewguenther 12y ago
  So its like the Patriot Act of licenses? Everything you do must be done in the open for the sake of freedom!
  - dman 12y ago
    In all seriousness - do you see an equivalence between the Patriot act and the GPL?
    - secstate 12y ago
      Playing devil's advocate here, as I whole-heartedly support OSS and the myriad license under which it is distributed, including the GPL. But ... That's a really interesting argument. One could argue that the GPL is like the snake eating it's tail on the far side of liberalness. I'm sure this is not a new argument, but I'd never considered that the "polluting" of code with the GPL actually decreases individual liberty for the sake of communal liberty. Again, not making a judgement one way or the other, but the world is nothing if not a series of bad compromises, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the GPL and OSS in general is included in "the world" :)

codewithcheese 12y ago

"A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." You only need to make a good point once. Adding additional lesser points just weakens it. A fair few dubious and ridiculous claims here, same sort of claims can be made about any multi-national. No smoking gun here.

scrumper 12y ago
This does ring true; I'm sure I remember a study of retention of read material comparing paper books with e-readers which supports that point. I think it was something to do with not having an easy way to intuit position in a book with e-readers.
- bougiefever 12y ago
  I think it sounds ridiculous. I read both hard-copy and electronic books on a variety of devices. The only device this would hold true for (sample size of one here) is on the computer. The angle of my eyes is wrong, and I need to hold it in my hands. Once I get immersed in the plot, I don't care what is serving it up.
  - scrumper 12y ago
    I meant 'ring true' as in 'I vaguely remember some research which supports the point.'
- geoelectric 12y ago
  Regardless of whether it's true, Amazon is hardly the only company to sell an e-reader, nor did they invent the concept. It's a silly inclusion on a list of otherwise ethics-related arguments.

tacos 12y ago

I've only seen rants of this tone, format and length from bona-fide crazy people. There's a line here and I hope stays on the side where I can continue to respect him. If he wants me to use GPL3 I'll take it under advisement. If he wants to tell me where to buy toothpaste I won't. I'm a fan of outsiders, the 60s, the whole deal. I love the whole idea of Stallman. I want more Stallmans! I also disagree with nearly everything he says while agreeing almost completely with the results he seeks to achieve. But posts like this pain me regardless of the source.

jarin 12y ago
People like Stallman (and whoever would be his polar opposite) need to exist in order to establish the boundaries and give us a framework to finding a balance between egalitarianism and greed.

gesman 12y ago

Amazon is like a naughty girl next door. She might be bad and not that pretty, but very conveniently close.

alecandzoe 12y ago
fair
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
What the fuck. Why would you post this kind of thing.
- gesman 12y ago
  This is an analogy to explain why many people are willing to sacrifice many things for sake of convenience. Granted, a bit of a spicy analogy for some.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    It's 2015. You don't do that anymore. Get with the program.

theVirginian 12y ago

Sabotaging Customers: I have no reason to believe that they would ever sabotage me. Restricting and Shafting Customers: I have never had a problem with my kindle or any other media from Amazon. If I ever do I'm sure I can find an alternative source in a matter of minutes. Censorship: They are Amazon's servers and it is their right to enforce their rules on them. If Wikileaks believes that they were unlawfully cut off then they should take Amazon to court. Exploiting workers mercilessly: good luck finding a retailer that has not done this at some point. This is an unfortunate reality as far as I am concerned and while I support fighting for better worker's conditions, I see no reason that refusing to buy through Amazon helps the problem. Shafting others in the publishing world: I'm not a publisher, their industry is none of my concern. If Amazon is so bad for them then I'm sure there is another way they can sell their books. Dodging Taxes: The government should close tax loopholes. I don't blame Amazon for being competitive. If it's legal it's fair as far as I'm concerned. Other reasons: These all seem to be trivial to me though I don't feel like typing out the reasons why. I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me.

ucaetano 12y ago
"Sabotaging Customers:" "I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me." I had a problem with Amazon once, they repeatedly messed up a delivery. I emailed Jeff Bezos, got a call the next day from his office and my problem was solved.
adventured 12y ago
Further, Amazon's solution to workers is going to be robotics: the elimination of as many manual labor jobs as possible. This is something Walmart will not be able to pull off easily because their workers are out front, higher profile; Amazon's workers can disappear through firings and few will notice. At a minimum Amazon is going to leverage robotics to drastically stretch (reduce) how many workers they have per dollar of sales. In ten years Stallman will be telling us not to buy from Amazon because they use robots instead of human labor.
- jarin 12y ago

zyxley 12y ago

Putting in "Swindle" instead of "Kindle" is painfully childish.

alecandzoe 12y ago
lal

pbreit 12y ago

Man, that guy is a curmudgeon. But I love that he exists even though I don't really worry about any of that stuff (who has the time or energy?).

gopher2 12y ago

This is not exactly nuanced. It reads like he disliked Amazon for some reason and then went out and googled around for a while to come up with more reasons to support that belief. Personally, I like Amazon... so of course I'm just looking for reasons to dismiss his arguments without considering their merit. Ha!

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
It's kind of hard to imagine Stallman googling for anything.
- amyjess 12y ago
  OK, so he used a script to wget duckduckgo for a while and then email the results to himself.
  - eva1984 12y ago
    ！！Sounds hilarious to me though

alecandzoe 12y ago

how did this get up here

tptacek 12y ago

Regarding the keyboard and "NSA" --- recall, NSA's entire involvement in this story is a shipment tracker that showed a package traversing Alexandria, VA --- here's the previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7126754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7126754

anonbanker 12y ago
Way to downplay, tom. You should probably mention that it was (Tor dev) Jacob Appelbaum's laptop, and that even he thinks it stopped there to be "fitted".

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

alexashka 12y ago

The villain of the times is a company that delivers books to me better than any company ever has? Pretty sure there's bigger fish to fry, which makes me wonder what personal agenda the author is pursuing here.

eonw 12y ago

most of what he is saying... could apply to any corporation. If the government wants to inspect mail and possibly install malware, for instance, that could happen with any vendor, amazon or manufacturer, as they wont have a choice presented to them. the purpose of the corporation is to make money at the expense of the customer, vendors and anyone else... why pick of amazon alone?

ereckers 12y ago

I'm looking forward to how his, "Reasons not to use Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft" will be received around here.

vixen99 12y ago

Small point: tax avoidance is legal and sensible. Would anyone or any company seek to maximize its tax bill bar bizarre circumstances? Rather, the reverse. If there's a devastating avoidance loophole it's the job of government to redraft the regulations or let the courts decide.

harrumph 12y ago
This is a fair assignment of responsibility only in a world where corporate representation does not extend to that regulatory sphere. But it absolutely does. There is a free market for political results and favorable tax code edits are the deliverables in this cash market.

yasth 12y ago

Amazon in all honesty likely had zero choice but to comply with the NSA. Also it might not even be the one complying, but rather the shipping carrier. Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms. I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google: * Distributes books with restrictive licenses (Google Play Books) * Sells online music with restrictive terms (Google Play Music) * Can remotely delete content (Yes, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Android-Apps,news-7216.html http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Andr... ) * Can force auto updates (Yes you can disable updates to chrome, but not the google update client https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies ) * Google's cloud is even more restrictive than Amazon's on content, and their TOS gives you no recourse. Apple likewise does much the same thing (except they don't have a public cloud offering).

reaktivo 12y ago
I'm pretty sure he's equally againts Apple and Google, as Amazon.

bdcravens 12y ago

RMS is supporting buying the book directly from the publisher. But what if they are running IIS on the server, or Flash on their front-end? Doesn't this mean that he is recommending the use of proprietary software?

teddyh 12y ago
Suppose that RMS supported something like buying organic food directly from farmers. Would you then pose the question “What if a farmer is a mass murderer or a terrorist? Would that mean that RMS is supporting terrorism?”
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  I think what you miss is that RMS has argued against other things on the exact kind of indirect support for non-free software argument as was directed at his recommendation to buy directly from publishers; it rests on RMS's use of that criticism rather than the assumption that the criticism is valid.
  - teddyh 11y ago
    The argument as you descibe it sounds silly, and to believe that RMS used it I would have to see a citation. Even so, if he used it, he would be wrong. I argued against the argument as presented, I can’t be expected to know whether it was subtle sarcasm or not.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  RMS has been pretty cut-and-dry about proprietary software. For instance, he won't use document types that encourage proprietary software use (even when free alternatives exist). So to answer your question, if RMS was a staunch anti-terrorist advocate, and it was guaranteed that a percentage of organic farmers were terrorists, then it would be perfectly reasonable to pose that question.
  - teddyh 11y ago

bougiefever 12y ago

Some of these arguments are just kind of weird, but I did read the study by the undercover worker about working conditions at their distribution plants. They claimed that they are given an impossible workload, are routinely verbally abused, they get fired for almost any infraction, and they are paid poorly for the privilege. I'm not sure B&N is so much better. I haven't heard anything either way. I usually look up books and review on Amazon, then buy them elsewhere. I do like that they are trying to make all e-books cost less than $10.

mpeg 12y ago

> "Amazon's on-line music "sales" have some of the same problems as the ebooks: users are required to identify themselves and sign a contract that denies them the freedoms they would have with a CD." I find this amusing, music CDs don't give you a whole lot of freedom, considering the CD itself will eventually stop working (whether due to time or scratches) and they employ copy protection methods. Lesser evil?

bougiefever 12y ago

Some of those publishers deserve to be bullied by Amazon.

crimsonalucard 12y ago

Don't drive cars because they pollute the world. People will always drive cars because convenience has a higher priority then polluting the world. People will always buy from amazon because of convenience. There's no point in justifying it. Most people just don't care...

bdcravens 12y ago

So when will RMS have all of his titles pulled from Amazon? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=richard+stallman&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Arichard+stallman http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...

secstate 12y ago

I find the tax evasion argument the most damning. But it's not just Amazon, it's any sizable American corporation in 2015. You'd be irresponsible to your shareholders for not setting up a tax haven corp in Ireland or some other mostly legal country and funnel your profits through there. it's nothing corporations haven't been doing since the idea of legally protected business groups posing as faux individuals was invented. But it still doesn't make it not a really bad idea for any half-hearted attempt at a representative democracy. It doesn't take a genius to realize the impact that tax dollars returned to your community be it town, state or country, have at a least a chance of having a positive impact on your life. Of course, the devil's advocate would say that getting consumer goods for less has a direct positive impact on my life. That's probably pretty debatable though.