Amazon and the dystopian future of book censorship | Hacker News Reader

Amazon and the dystopian future of book censorship

sprovoost.nl

50 pointssprovoost26 comments

> The whitepaper was included with the rest of the source code, which was released with the MIT license, see e.g. this archive.

It doesn't? The archive he links to includes a copy of the whitepaper, but this repo is one archivist's collection of files, not an official distribution. The whitepaper is not in the nov08 distribution or the bitcoin-0.1.0.tgz, and the document doesn't include a license statement. I'd believe it's MIT licensed, but this post doesn't establish that fact or sound like he presented more compelling support of the idea to Amazon.

As a practical matter, it's vanishingly unlikely that Satoshi Nakamoto is going to file suit. But as a legal matter, he hasn't shown that the whitepaper was released under a license permitting redistribution or that he has permission from the author. Amazon gave him several options and opportunities, then declined to participate in apparent copyright infringement.

Amazon has a huge problem with people republishing others' books via KDP and their marketplace, even getting fake versions added to or replacing authentic listings. This process seems like it might be a pretty good way of addressing that. The inconvenience comes from not wanting to give the well-practiced scammers a guide to defeating the process, which is a common tradeoff.

If Amazon wanted more detailed proof, they could just ask for that. There's no limit to how pedantic one can be in evaluating evidence. Maybe they need a physical wet signature from a specific bureaucrat at the US copyright office, sent by courier. Without knowing what constitutes evidence in their eyes, there's simply too many permutations of things they might want to see. I tried a few of those permutations and then gave up.

> The whitepaper is not in the nov08 distribution or the bitcoin-0.1.0.tgz,

How do you know this? The original link in Satoshi's email points to a file that no longer exists and afaik he didn't publish a checksum. So maybe it WAS in there. But is that what the Amazon robot was worried about? Probably not...

Also, unless you were on the mailinglist yourself at the time, you can't even know that the email archive is real.

It's not even that the evidence isn't good enough, or that the archive appears inauthentic, it's that the evidence you've supplied doesn't even attempt to support your claim. Nothing in the archive you linked implies the whitepaper is under MIT.

(And: if you think this archive may be inauthentic, perhaps you should've chosen another for your evidence.)

Ah, I see your point.

Here's a January 6, 2009 snapshot from the Way Back Machine. This was before he publicly released the code. The entire project is MIT licensed and only contained one file: the whitepaper. https://web.archive.org/web/20090106201347/http://sourceforg...

I should have linked to that.

> if you think this archive may be inauthentic

I don't think it's inauthentic. I'm saying Amazon could think it's inauthentic, and not tell me.

So in this dystopian future, the OP had to deal with shitty customer service from a discount publisher for a while and then went with a competitor as a result? And the competitor was still able to distribute copies via Amazon?

I'm just not seeing anything remotely like censorship here.

Yes, because Amazon doesn't scan paper books, this route still works. But there aren't that many companies that can print books. It's a matter of time before they all scan the content before printing. At least, in the dystopian scenario.

Book printers should be an easier choke point than social media companies, given that they have far less content to screen. It's just that no western government or advocacy group has bother to do the choking, as they are too busy pressuring social media companies to moderate content.

Why would they scan paper books to proactively look for copyright violations? Have you ever heard of a bookstore doing that?

There's a different standard of due diligence if you publish a book vs just selling copies of it.

I did not say: "They will all scan physical books"

I said: "It's a matter of time before they all scan the content before printing."

I think the distinction between printer and publisher is being lost here. KDP is a publisher, and a very cost-conscious one at that. You would have a very different experience with the editorial process of a different publisher, as most don't use Amazon-level automation.

I wouldn't even call them a publisher. They're a printer, drop-shipper and a book store. I am both the writer and the publisher and I hired my own editor. A lot of companies call themselves "publisher" but really aren't.

Indeed the experience with other printers has been better. Same with e-books (so far). In fact at this point I'm quite happy I didn't use Amazon.

Really no different than a flesh-and-blood editor questioning copyright. This is not the dystopian future you're looking for...

> no different

Did you read the article? It's absolutely different. An editor would tell you about the work whose copyright you supposedly violated.

Unlike KDP, an editor is not a hyper-discount service provider, so they can afford a more time consuming customer engagement process.

You're confused about the roles here. An editor is someone who works either directly for the author or they work for the publisher. In any case they don't work for the printer / distributor, which is KDP.

An editor or "professional" publisher may be able to explain the author what the problem is, but if they upload the book to KDP, they'll the exact same information I do. Unless there's some old boys network of course.

There may also be publishers that have an in house printing service. But then you lose the distribution advantage Amazon offers, because they can get a book from the printing press to the customer much faster (without inventory).

As I pointed out in the blog, it takes Amazon about 3-4 days from their printer in Poland to my home in Utrecht, and that includes 1 day in some sort of intermediary Amazon delivery warehouse in Rotterdam. IngramSpark needs two weeks to get book into the EU, but even in the US - when a customer orders from Amazon - they seem to need about a week. Old school publishers are probably even slower, if they can do print on demand at all.

My only experience in the field is working for an "old school" publisher, where copyright concerns like the one described in the blog post would be the responsibility of the acquisitions editor (an employee of the publisher). Our printers were a separate company, who, like you say, had no editorial responsibilities. "Old school" publishers do typically coordinate distribution, though. There are also some that support print-on-demand (for example, Manning).

I think it's instructive here that KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing, not Kindle Direct Printing.

I think their name is deceptive, see my other reply :-)

> Just know that there are other options too. For now.

Author baselessly predicts all other publishers will die out and Amazon will be the only option. Ironically, their article supports the opposite: presumably other publishers will continue to be successful specifically because of issues like this with Amazon KDP.

Not exactly the hard hitting content I expected from the title.

Nowhere do I predict Amazon to become a monopoly. The prediction is that all other publishers will start following their model of screening content. Perhaps against some global blacklist, more or less following the model social media companies use.

This really another case of someone crying "censorship" when an automated process fails.

Maybe I was not clear enough on this: I'm not claiming my book was censored, at least not in the traditional political sense of the word.

What I'm saying is that the way the book got blocked, is a harbinger of what future physical book censorship could look like. Once the techniques developed for social media moderation make their way into physical book publishing. Amazon happens to be ahead of the curve there, whereas other printer companies are probably still a bit old fashioned (which is good news).

> I'm not claiming my book was censored

https://i0.wp.com/sprovoost.nl/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/de...

You take everything literally I assume?

TLDR: Amazon thinks his book has a copyright violation but refuses to reveal the details.

I guess Hackernews doesn't render the tl&dr I wrote: <meta name="description" content="How a KDP infringement claim led to kafkaesq dialogues with support. I could not speak to a human and was never told what the offence was."/>

You decided to self-publish and got what you wanted. If you wanted a real person to take the time to sort it out with you, you should have found a real publisher willing to take you on.

So you're saying that Amazon will communicate their requirement to a "real" publisher, but not to fake publisher like me? Some sort of old boys network I should just pay to join?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com