I would rather see my books get pirated than this
janefriedman.com
janefriedman.com
But they won't know because when you look for reviews, the review websites will also be generated just for you, filled with AI-made reviews and users. The entire internet will just be a computer that guesses what you want and shows you its best guess as the truth. a little matrix-y.
Reading back I sound like T*d K but the next 100 years is going to be unimaginable in terms of what silicon is going to be able to do. It doesn't have to be perfect, just good enough most of the time. Like a mcdonalds drive thru.
Also, during the collapse of yahoo, it was a poorly kept secret that google had already mostly abandoned page rank, and had large manual curation teams.
To add insult to injury, in unbranded head to head tests, Yahoo search had better search result quality than google for many years before it was sold to Microsoft.
We already know what happens when piracy is the most convenient/highest quality option, but I’m guessing media distributors will need a reminder soon.
See "Parasocial interaction".
Parasocial interaction (PSI) refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms. Viewers or listeners come to consider media personalities as friends, despite having no or limited interactions with them. PSI is described as an illusory experience, such that media audiences interact with personas (e.g., talk show hosts, celebrities, fictional characters, social media influencers) as if they are engaged in a reciprocal relationship with them. The term was coined by Donald Horton and Richard Wohl in 1956.
Yes, and doubly so if they say something like "this is not sponsored".
if 90% of the market is bullshit, the key is to find the people you trust and want to be similar to.
"This is who I am, and who I'd like to be, and this is what they do and use".
And admittedly, a lot of these oft maligned influencers are actually trying on the makeup on camera, eating the food, etc. Not a random bot but a human.
We'll see if GPT and Midjourney are able to hack that, too.
Taking things off the net would be a huge step back for economy.
LLMs will cause a total collapse of trust online. This problem will be solved by a brand new online trust model (instead of the old one "has gained some followers by formulating text messages and forwarding gifs").
The trustees (bots/humans/orgs mixed) would probably need to sacrifice much more of their privacy. Not for the sake of orwellian Big Brother, but for re-establishing any trust whatsoever online.
I'll just ignore the internet instead. The internet cannot be trusted when it comes to privacy, so I'm not going to give up any in the first place.
Same with weight-loss or exercise programs, that's basically impossible to search for due to the amount of spam and garbage content.
Radio stations would get paid to make songs that weren't popular seem more popular than they were so people would blindly buy them. It's the same old snake oil just taken to mass media.
Since both behaviors revolve around profit, you can apply the same means to mediate them. Further, the open plan "user generated content" model has been dying for a while now, the wills of some well moneyed monopolies keep it alive. We will iterate to something much better anyways. Perhaps this is just a force that drives it.
Authenticity will be a valuable currency in the future.
Amazon would hate this, but make a deal with shopify to speed up spidering their sites. Then, spider all other retailors.
You put in a product id/name, and it only shows results from amazon, shopify sites, and vetted retailers.
The manual curation part, is vetting the retail site. Walmart would be a problem(for example), unless it was easy to tag 'sold by walmart'. Amazon's filter would only include shipped by amazon stuff.
So like 'hanes t-shirt', and you get 7 links, from 7 sites, all woth prices and shipping cost estimates.
Amazon has horrible pricing, bordering on predatory for some things. Maybe I'll do this, I'm bored this summer.
If online shopping were truly such a terribly scammy UX in 100% of cases people would stop using it or shift to shopping from trusted sellers who recognize the tremendous amount of value they can capture by not scamming people.
I’m surprised that places like Walmart or Target haven’t gotten burned by cross listings. They could drop the program and advertise as alternative to Amazon. If Amazon had “sold by Amazon” filter, it would be a lot more usable.
You’d have to duplicate this to take them on.
Very difficult to get a hold of someone when they lose a package even when they explicitly tell you “contact us”.
But if you stick to inconsequential items, it’s great. I needed a few USBC cables and charging cables the other day and got them next day at half the price. I checked the local stores and none had what I was after.
But yeah, I agree with your point
I realize that it’s apparently way worse in the US, but there supposedly are issues here as well, I just never encountered them (or the products are so well-faked that it’s a distinction without a difference).
Fast delivery, a lot of choices, both "Aliexpress but faster delivery for a price", but also EU products, and a customer service that does pretty much anything asked.
Obviously in a world where every online retailer is nearly useless, a guy who creates an online retailer that is not useless would immediately have anyone he personally tells about it as customers, and anyone they tell about it, and so on (since in this hypothetical, everyone is desperate for a good retailer).
Roost Stand
Accessories4less
Svsound
Plus they send you candy
Maybe Amazon brands will at least be predictable, but the non-Amazon brands on Amazon will be increasingly counterfeits and noise.
(A contributor to the current problem of eroding non-Amazon brands with counterfeits seems to be Amazon's commingling from different marketplace sellers of the "same ASIN". And the current mass-spam search DoS of random-name brands and near-identical products from overseas sellers is also a problem. Amazon can not only shield their own brands from both of those problems, but can also exercise more supply chain integrity control for its brands than is possible for the non-Amazon brands if Amazon doesn't cooperate.)
Of course, because that helps sell the Amazon brand goods.
They identify widely ordered products and source their own version to sell. Why is that a negative? Costco does the same. As long as they vet the quality (my experience with AmazonBasic products has been fine), seems like a win-win?
I don't know if we can say that a store with unlabeled aisles can be a source of curation.
Natural foods stores have much more stringent standards on things like artificial colors, animal treatment, and use of chemicals.
For example, Tide Original is banned in New York for having too much of a cancer-causing chemical. Costco sells it. Costco sells products with artificial colors linked to ADHD in children. Costco’s best organic eggs are visibly and nutritionally inferior to eggs from pasture-raised chickens.
The fact that Costco doesn’t sell low quality private label and discount brand items has more to do with customer demographic than trust and curation.
This is also the store that allows third-party companies’ representatives to harass customers about solar panels and DirecTV in the store. “Trustworthy.”
They’re really no different on “trust” than Walmart or Target, and I think people need to stop being a part of its retail cult and take it for what it is: a store with good prices on staple goods.
What they said is that Costco is upfront about what they're selling, rarely sells defective products, and offers a very generous return policy in the (rare) case you are dissatisfied with a purchase.
Those aren't that far off from Walmart or Target, because those are also generally reasonable retailers. I would say Costco offers better value on their products overall.
If you ask more of that from any retailer, good luck finding anyplace to purchase anything.
And speaking of convenience, it would be a big shame if we had to go back to physical stores for non-trivial purchases because we can't trust anything online.
In short, the store that serves what I want is usually the huge sell-everything store.
I mean you get scammed maybe twice by a company, then buy somewhere else. You quickly realize that it is better spending 3-4 times the amount of money for something that will last 10 years than buying stuff that do not work or keep breaking after a few months/years.
I am too poor to be able to afford buying cheap stuff.
Most people still just buy the cheapest version of an item they are looking for.
Also, I am not trying to hyper optimize my use of time, but rather I find the experience of huge selection, fake reviews mixed with sponsored listings to be very unpleasant. I have slightly more faith in quality control at a department store, or even a dedicated housewares store.
One of the depots used by DHL when they "can't find" my building (even though the place predates the formation of the Soviet Union, let alone its collapse) is about a mile away and I don't have a car. This is fine unless it rains, but it's not even conveniently on my way to anything interesting.
I bought a VOIP phone from the media store recently. When I was there looking at them, and feeling them etc, I was thinking how there is no way I could have picked the right one from an online shop. I might have never known there was something better, I guess. But being able to hold them helped me pick one I thought I would like.
at some point technology is going to stop being something that we interact with through a screen and a keyboard. Google maps will be there, where ever you go, all the time. No more getting lost or wondering where anything is located. You will just know. or at least, be told.
Something else to consider is the fallibility of human memory. As we generate more information we're gonna have to start abstracting and delegating some of those storage and retrieval tasks to the computer, trusting it completely. Today maybe you can remember things but what about your parents?
You don't need to be able to generate correct regexes to create a blogspam article about regexes that will go to the top of the search results.
I think this puts the blame in the wrong place; LLMs are too dumb to be useful, but it's the users who are too dumb to realise that, or too unethical to care.
That slide has already started. I can't buy stuff on Amazon anymore, because I don't trust the quality or that I'm not scammed. Unless I trust the author I'd question buying self published books. There's a number of Chinese website, like Wish, that I don't understand. Why bother shipping an item to a customer if you're running a scam? People order dress and get a plastic Christmas tree... Why even bother sending the tree? Why produce shitty products that break after first use, why not just straight up rob people, seem more genuine and with less environmental impact.
There are whole categories of products that can not longer be bought online and an even larger category that can only be purchased from trusted companies.
The level of scams have reached new heights in the past year and unless we do something to address "A.I." generated content the internet will drown in useless nonsense.
Costco bucks this trend though
Could be the same reasons Scam Contractors do "some work" if you hire someone to redo your bathroom, and they take the money and run, that is clear criminal fraud. If they take the money, so some amount of work, then run it becomes a civil contract dispute.
Plausible deniability.
"There seems to have been some..." looks up excuse for the day "... unfortunate mix-up with your order."
Lots of people will just not react, because it's not worth their money and at least they received something.
All you need is a system to authenticate reputable sellers. Instead of looking at the stars on a product and clicking “buy now,” folks just need so ask: do I know this seller? Is this the ACTUAL publisher selling me this book?
I’d rather go into a real shop anyway. Unless it’s buying some hard-to-find item there’s no excuse.
You’re assuming that scams don’t make their way into regular distributors as they try to cut corners and maintain competitiveness.
You already see established brands lower the quality of their products after the first round of reviews online. If found out, they just blame manufacturing. Sorry.
In most ways, buying from a brick-and-mortar establishment is a better choice than buying online.
In my mind we’re talking about what is a better solution to the problem, and it’s that companies WILL protect their IP. If someone buys fake Patagonia, Patagonia loses out on a sale.
Amazon doesn’t own much of anything IP-Wise on their marketplace in the grand scheme. And they don’t care who buys what as long as products are moving. It’s easier for them to just pay out returns than handle the actual problem.
And when you have a dispute with a seller that came through a marketplace, your dispute should be with the marketplace and it is then up to the marketplace to recover the value of the goods from the seller.
Scams are high, but not so high that you won't usually get what you asked for.
"How to verify any claim" has to become a formal subject like math and reading to be taught in stages over several years. It has to have real homework problems to practice different strategies. But in the end, do we come up with different ratings or logic categories to say this particular question is fifth degree hard to get right? Can we identify the elements that build trust? Does it help in poker if you know another player's family? Does it help in voting for student body president if they previously served as class president? Is it better to buy a blender from the same company that made your favorite dishwasher? Can you take a chance on a newcomer if they don't speak your language or have your accent? What if some claim hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed journal I recognize?
Because they have a warehouse full of ugly misprinted clothes and need to get rid of them. and those clothes still cost (some) money to make or acquire.
and as others have said, not sending anything is wire fraud, and outright scams will catch criminal charges; one more line on an Interpol indictment. Crappy or underperforming goods are a civil issue, and no one is launching an international lawsuit over a $100 item
This already happens over and over, and with AI it’s only going to be worse. Company makes a decent product, gains reputation, and then strip mines their good will for quick cash while quality plummets. After a while, you just distrust the whole online shopping experience. Even if someone is selling a good product, the lemons are ruining the whole market.
I buy board games on sites that only sell board games.
I buy electronics/computer parts on sites that only sell that.
Some people have. This is one of the main reasons why I stopped using Amazon years ago.
But lots of people won't. If people were that rational, then the thousands of straight-up obvious and traditional scams perpetrated every day wouldn't still work.
> As of July 20, 2023, the AI classifier is no longer available due to its low rate of accuracy.
https://openai.com/blog/new-ai-classifier-for-indicating-ai-...
Otherwise it's all downhill until the singularity.
Only half kidding, about both statements. Corporations also have rights. How terrible it will be when we have "companies" that are just AI programs. All human weakness, eliminated.
South Korea requires you to register with your national id if you want to access the internet there, which sounds like the wrong direction but might be necessary if we want to maintain some semblance of sanity on the internet or whatever it is going to become in the future.
Wouldn't it be elegant though if the new trust scheme applied the same to LLMs/bots as humans?
Assuming that LLMs are a polar opposite of humans seems short sighted. Or assuming that humans are sole heroes of the story. It will be a spectrum, soon. For example when you say "all human weakness, eliminated" it's a weird lens to use. Every relative weakness is a challenge, whether its origin is in human ancestral environment or not.
I'm curious whether the entirety of the system (I mean the current civilization) would morph itself into a pipeline disgorging specifically human "happiness". As of today, it's far from obvious!
I honestly don't care if a human augments their output with an LLM. What I care is that they act in good faith. As long as new identities can be spun up automatically with negligible effort, human or otherwise it's too easy to flood the zone with shit.
I want to be able to say "This post was made by an ID that is tied to a human being that has a history of acting in good faith, and I can see that history". Even if "I" am the owner of a crowdsourced-content site and I'm keeping that ID private. If the person who uses that ID is leveraging an LLM to create what looks like good-faith content, that's fine. The problem this solves is one person using LLMs to create a sockpuppet army that looks like a hundred thousand humans, not one person using an LLM to generate a flotilla of good content. Or even a flotilla of bad content but we still konw who's doing it.
A requirement like that would be the final death knell for the few remaining parts of the web that are actually good.
It all depends on how well you connect the dots on your way.
But the whole notion of "I just buy from one place and one place only without comparing anything at all ever again" is a bridge to far in my mind. So the whole "Siri send me whatever I tell you" I doubt will catch on with the majority of people. A niche maybe, sure. But not the majority of us.
"The entire internet will just be a computer that guesses what you want and shows you its best guess as the truth" - you just described Google Search, like, 5 years ago.
"the next 100 years is going to be unimaginable.." - not really. What we're capable of is not what happens. We only reach the minimum viable capability that meets a societal expectation. Once the expectation is reached, progress stagnates, until something exceptional changes the expectation. As a more specific example, regardless of how advanced hardware gets, software remains a gas that fills any container, so what we can actually do with the hardware is always limited by our horrible software.
People keep talking about AI like it's going to transform everything. It's actually more like colorized talking movies vs the black-and-white silent ones. Reshapes industries and changes expectations and experiences? For sure. But the films, plots, characters, actors, industry, viewers, their effect on society, etc remain the same. 3D didn't take hold, neither did smell-o-vision, drive-ins, and countless other "innovations", even though they were feasible. This is just one example, there are tens of thousands of other examples I could give. It's like a law of nature. We don't accomplish what we aren't motivated to.
Also, mcdonalds drive thrus work all the time, not just most of the time. The drive thru is the engine that generates most of the revenue; it's a conveyor belt for cash. A franchise would go out of business if the drive thru broke.
as for the rest of the post, the application is not limited to consumer products. Imagine the 2016 election season in 2056. or another covid pandemic.
In the 1918 Flu Pandemic, we had the technology and knowledge to end it quickly. But nations around the world chose to spread disinformation and cover-up the story, which made it much worse. A third of the world died because of how society chose to act.
And when we make a product that can do harm, we also make a product that can revert it, clean it up, or institute laws to restrict it. Now that we've seen things like Russian bot farms, we look for them and shut them down. Despite that we have good AI, we can also detect AI. Our ingenuity can almost always be surpassed by more ingenuity. As much as it can cause harm, it can also fix said harm.
AI is just a hammer in a toolbox, and it isn't any worse than any other hammer we've had. Don't worry about the hammer; worry about the person holding it.
Any content from a known author needs to be verified to be from that author by letting that author sign the content.
/s
dead internet theory -- the idea that the internet will eventually be mostly or entirely bots talking to bots
- Identify a problematic trend
- Extrapolate into infinity
- Assume nothing will be done to correct it
- Apocalypse!
It’s very popular among journalists and experts, despite the fact that this literally never happens, because it turns out people don’t just stand still and drown if they see a wave coming for them.
I see you had a typical customer service experience with Amazon.
Out of curiosity, how do intellectual property laws handle someone publishing a work under someone else's name? Is that a trademark violation?
>Similarly, personal names (actual names and pseudonyms) of individuals or groups function as marks only if they identify and distinguish the services recited and not merely the individual or group. In re Mancino, 219 USPQ 1047 (TTAB 1983) (holding that BOOM BOOM would be viewed by the public solely as applicant’s professional boxing nickname and not as an identifier of the service of conducting professional boxing exhibitions); In re Lee Trevino Enters., 182 USPQ 253 (TTAB 1974) (LEE TREVINO used merely to identify a famous professional golfer rather than as a mark to identify and distinguish any services rendered by him); In re Generation Gap Prods., Inc., 170 USPQ 423 (TTAB 1971) (GORDON ROSE used only to identify a particular individual and not as a service mark to identify the services of a singing group). The name of a character or person is registrable as a service mark if the record shows that it is used in a manner that would be perceived by purchasers as identifying the services in addition to the character or person. In re Fla. Cypress Gardens Inc., 208 USPQ 288 (TTAB 1980) (name CORKY THE CLOWN used on handbills found to function as a mark to identify live performances by a clown, where the mark was used to identify not just the character but also the act or entertainment service performed by the character); In re Carson, 197 USPQ 554 (TTAB 1977) (individual’s name held to function as mark, where specimen showed use of the name in conjunction with a reference to services and information as to the location and times of performances, costs of tickets, and places where tickets could be purchased); In re Ames, 160 USPQ 214 (TTAB 1968) (name of musical group functions as mark, where name was used on advertisements that prominently featured a photograph of the group and gave the name, address, and telephone number of the group’s booking agent); In re Folk, 160 USPQ 213 (TTAB 1968) (THE LOLLIPOP PRINCESS functions as a service mark for entertainment services, namely, telling children’s stories by radio broadcasting and personal appearances).
I assume in the same way they handle somebody else who actually has the same name publishing books... they do nothing. Unless perhaps they are associating themselves with you "By the author of Such and Such"
Jane's passion for writing and her deep understanding of the publishing industry have led her to empower countless aspiring authors to fulfill their writing dreams. Through her books, articles, and speaking engagements, she has provided invaluable guidance on crafting compelling content, navigating the publishing process, and maximizing the potential of eBooks.
[...]
Jane's dedication to helping authors succeed extends beyond her writing and consulting work. As a respected thought leader in the industry, she has contributed to numerous industry publications and served as a mentor to emerging writers. Her insights and advice have been sought after by authors at all stages of their careers.
[...]
It is apparent that the books are trying to trick people into believing this is the Jane Friedman who is now complaining about misattribution.
But it's not apparent that they're doing anything they're not supposed to be doing. It's obviously fine for the fake books to be written under the name Jane Friedman. I am not sure how common it is for fictional authors to have fictional biographical information printed on their books, but it seems hard to avoid for something like Naked Came the Stranger that was attributed to a single author without actually having one.
And even if we think a fictional biography is beyond the pale, most of the bio here isn't fraudulent. Everyone is free to say they are a renowned author and publishing expert regardless of the facts. ("Puffery.") There is a factual claim about having two decades of experience in the publishing industry, and a factual claim about having contributed to numerous industry publications.
And after all of that, if you thought you could make a case that the bio in the back made the book fraudulent, the injured party would be someone who had purchased the book, not the author being imitated.
-----
Jane Friedman (the real one) asked Amazon for the wrong remedy. There isn't a reason to remove the books from sale, and Amazon was right not to do that. She should have asked for Amazon to stop claiming that she had written the fake books, which is something Amazon is doing that they shouldn't be doing.
(And Amazon's problem there is not limited to books that are intentionally pretending to be written by the more well-known Jane Friedman. If you go to their page for "books by Jane Friedman", it is headed by The Business of Being a Writer, identifying the Jane Friedman in question, but it is mostly full of books that do not have a Jane Friedman listed as author or contributor of any kind, such as Atopic Dermatitis and Eczematous Disorders.)
That said, a quick poke at TESS shows a bunch of trademarks containing Friedman, including some personal names (Alan, Rivka, Angela).
Update: Yes, common law (unregistered) trademarks are a thing in some countries including the US, but they offer much less protection.
In the UK at least if you could show your name gave it some weight, and that you'd suffered some financial harm as a result of its use, then you'd have a case without it being registered.
Amazon itself is the entity attributing the book to the more famous Jane Friedman. This is a case where the "impersonator" appears to be legally fine and Amazon is on questionable ground.
Here's an example of a literary forgery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_forgery) where the author ended up in prison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries ... But it would probably take some digging to see what particular action he was had for.
It sounds like maybe this is not happening? If they are just appearing under the search for “AuthorName” I am not sure there really is a problem with Amazon’s system.
IANAL, perhaps Amazon still has some liability if an author is using a fraudulent pen name for books they submit.
For example, this is a blank notebook on Amazon Canada that a seller has stuck her all-lowercase name upon. If I click the author name on the listing, I'm taken to an author search page that intermingles it with her real books.[1]
That strongly implies Amazon asserting they're one and the same.
Knowing that in the reverse this does not hold tells me that this us probably an unconsidered edge-case and not intentional design. But still, Amazon is, in that search, saying "oh you're looking for more jane friedman (lowercase) here's Jane Friedman (title case)" which implies they're the same person.
I'd call that a software bug... but now that Friedman has informed them, they can't plead ignorance of the bug.
[1] https://www.amazon.ca/NOTEBOOK-Notebook-journal-jane-friedma...
> Showing 1-1 books for Dr Spock: > * Baby and Child Care > > Search instead for: > > * Mr Spock (10 albums)
Quite often, that link goes to the kindle version of an unrelated book.
Agreed it does seem like a bug.
Sort of. Publishing under a pseudonym is fine, but most US states have laws that prevent you from using someone else's name and likeness without their permission.
Of course the actual entity posting the fraudulent books are probably overseas somewhere and will disappear if anyone tries to contact them. Maybe if it happens to enough people a class-action lawsuit against Amazon would force them to do some due diligence when listing a book to make sure that the author is actually who they claim to be.
Then large language models utterly annihilated this as it becomes obvious that you just write spam books and hope people buy them, job done…
Kind of amazing to see thevalue collapse reaching a new phase, where the only reliable way to drive sales for garbage books is to try and parasitically leach reputation by pretending a real author who has a real reputation is the author of the garbage book.
In addition to being a professor with The Great Courses (How to Publish Your Book), she is the author of The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal.
Amazon is an international, but is certainly bound by the laws of the United States of America. At least the ones it can't buy itself out of.
"I didn't know" isn't an affirmative defense if your employees are on the record saying they know.
The (frustrating) argument Amazon would make here is that they weren't "aware", there was just an "accusation", and since the accuser didn't supply evidence...
I mean, really, you cannot lie about who authored books you’re selling. Especially if the author is well known and their reputation has value. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37043061 has a reasonable if blunt assessment. But, honestly, this is obvious to everyone who isn’t customer obsessed ;)
Depends on jurisdiction. There is a a lot of case law (precedent), rather than statute, and it’s up to the infringed party to make a case.
In many cases it is regulated by state law, rather than federal law.
It is basically a slam dunk, if she were to take them to court and if they weren't Amazon who can just grind her down with years of litigation and tricks.
I don't think I can permalink the USPTO TESS page.
She should have a personal web controlled entirely by her, show a list of her real books and mock-destroy the fake books from there with some dark humor or cynicism. Her job is to write after all. That could be even an opportunity to improve her brand.
Taken one to one small writers are easy fish. Should join and press for regulation change.
So what did they see that finally convinced them?
Would you hold the same opinion about stuff you'd eat such as supplements? What does `indistinguishable` mean in this context? Say lower quality fish oil which as it's a pill, you can't tell the difference? This would be the fortunate case, I wouldn't even want to bring up mislabeled vitamins or stuff which can actually cause harm that's hard to trace back.
A child’s account can’t buy books - you have to do it for them.
1. I open Amazon app on my iphone and find the book - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”.
2. I open Kindle app on my iphone and find the book there - “This app does not support purchasing of this content”.
3. Turns out - you can only buy a book by opening a web version of Amazon in Safari on the iphone. I open up Safari, go to Amazon, dodge and dismiss repeated prompts to open the Amazon app, find the book - it says “Kindle”, it says “Available instantly”, it says “$2.99”, but there’s no “Buy” button. Instead - “The Kindle title is not currently available for purchase.”
4. I find another book, I buy it. Now I need to find how to share it with my kid.
5. I open app Kindle app on my iphone, click on the book expecting some kind of “share” - nope, nowhere I look am I able to find share functionality in the app.
6. I google “how to share your kindle book with child account”, here’s the answer I get: “ On the Amazon webpage, click “Account and Lists”, then click “Manage content and devices” in the “Digital content and devices section of the page”. On the “Digital Content” page, click “Books”.
Delightful experience.
That only explains steps 1-2.
Okay, so Steps 1-2 can be explained by the closed ecosystem of the device. You don't get these hurdles if your device is not closed-off.
Step 3 can be explained by the retailer of that good complying with international IP laws.
Step 4 is just step 1 for everyone else.
Step 5 is a legitimate WTF moment.
Step 6 is once again the result of avoiding the open ecosystem (the web).
Of those 6 steps that the GP complained about:
1. 3 of them are self-inflicted because of his choice of device and usage,
2. 1 is due to legal issues,
3. 1 is not a valid complaint,
4. 1 is an actual and valid complaint about the lack of a feature in the app.
Since Amazon had been selling books on the Kindle app for a while, I assume they made more than 30% to be worth it, or pushed the cost to the publishers? Or probably worked out some deal with Google, which seems a bit unlikely.
So basically Google 3$, Amazon 4$, publisher 3$.
If you go to Amazon marketplace directly, Amazon gets 6$, publisher gets 4$.
Amazon complaining about predatory marketplace is rich.
I imagine that Amazon did the math here and decided that the 30% is more than the lost sales due to the obnoxious process involved, but I struggle to see how that's true.
Personally, I stick with paper books for kids, even books (and not picture books.)
EDIT: Added a missing closing parentheses. I'm a bad LISPer...
Opening amazon.com via Safari on an iphone is a throwback and a very odd experience - I haven’t needed to use a mobile version of amazon.com in ages - i use the app for all my Amazon shopping.
And one other thing - I can’t stand Musk, but given my experience with Amazon in a world where WeChat exists - perhaps Musk has a chance with his X super app plan after all.
This does not apply to physical goods. Which is why all the apps you mentioned are fine.
This is the same issue that has been talked about for years, the cause of Epic (Fortnite) vs Apple, etc.
However once you started on a browser, the rest of your story I would agree with.
> This does not apply to physical goods.
I don't really get this division other than "it's what Apple could get away with". As far as the payment processing is concerned, it seems like a distinction without a difference.
They provide no service, hopefully soon it will be illegal.
I genuinely don't understand how you can simultaneously post these stats and claim that Apple's business model is bad for people that develop apps for Apple's devices. As a collective they make BILLIONS of dollars per year more.
Far more egregious is that Google charge a similar fee and do basically nothing to moderate the platform at all. If anything is rent-seeking, it is that. Apple does a huge amount to moderate and review apps when they go out. It was a hassle, as an app developer, to have to go through that process. But the result is an ecosystem where people trust apps enough that they'll spend significant amounts of money on them. Who would spend anything on an Android app when you have no idea if it's actually good or if it just has a completely astroturfed review score?
Google also reviews apps using humans, and allows 3rd party app stores.
Interestingly they say their 15-30% fee pays for Android development. You'd think Apple's $400 profit per phone would pay for iOS development.
Apparently Google Play Store Kindle app has the same restrictions
The world we now live in is that all "apps and programs" can be either a one-off purchase like a physical good or a subscription. That subscription might be for the "app" or it may be packaged as a subscription to a "service" that the app is facilitating (the line between the two is very blurry). Additionally, all digital goods like books, music and movies may also be a one-off purchase or a "subscription" like audible, apple music, etc.
The line between all of those is blurry such that, any set of rules you write leaves it open to convert "app sales" to "services/subscriptions" or even to bundle access to your app or it's content as "digital goods" to avoid that 30% cut. People would (and do) switch their sales model to then avoid that cut.
I don't have a solution and I don't think Apple or the open webs way is specifically better in every aspect, but I do think it's interesting to think about the problem space.
I'm curious if giving books for free (eg Libby) is allowed, or if they've gotten a special exemption
...
> i use the app for all my Amazon shopping.
Because Apple allows it. It's their prerogative, after all, not Amazon's.
I mean, really, if your employer told you that the only way they can pay you is if you used their in-house payment system that took 75% of your pre-tax earnings as a commission, you'd go elsewhere too.
compare this with the piracy option: search for torrent or download link, click, wait for download to finish. Upload to device. Read and enjoy.
Have you considered accessing freely-licensed content instead, and supporting authors who believe in the freedom movement, such as Creative Commons?
How would you feel, if you were an author, and people openly advocated piracy, such that you were deprived of sales, and earning an honest living?
but the post above explain an arduous process for a purchase, and i would expect that there's not an insignificant number of people who would've given up in the middle.
So do you also feel that you need to make the same complaint of a lost sale to amazon? Why target pirates specifically? Whether they _consumed_ content or not, is irrelevant - in both scenarios, you would've "lost" a sale.
Here's the Creative Commons Search portal: https://search.creativecommons.org/
I tried Openverse and Europeana. Some of these appear to categorize eBooks as "images", or perhaps they are just promotional images for unfree books. Tens of thousands of results.
Here's a Google Books search. I was unable to find a "search for license" type thing, but you can search for "Fully viewable" or "Google eBooks only":
https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=-copyright&tbs...
My father loves HathiTrust, and so do many other people who love freedom: https://www.hathitrust.org/
Of course you know the Internet Archive and Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/
Wikisource hosts lots of freely-licensed text, in many, many languages; here's English: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Main_Page
Never forget the O.G. PD site, Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/
Also, while it is not the written word, it is based on awesome freely-available books, and perhaps you could consider adding to the library at LibriVox: https://librivox.org/search?primary_key=0&search_category=au...
My classmates at school ate this stuff up when I volunteered that there are sites where you can find awesome public domain reference material that's often better-quality than the paywalled stuff you pay for.
Don't forget the Open Textbooks and freely licensed academic materials. Community colleges and universities will direct you to those.
https://oercommons.org/hubs/open-textbooks https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
Don't forget niche uses and special interests. Want to overcome your addiction to porn? Download some free eBooks: https://www.covenanteyes.com/e-books/
What it does show is that innovative businesses will, over time, become like the dinosaurs they out-competed, and leave room for something new. Piracy will probably always be there, even when buying is not arduous.
Words have meaning. Arduous it ain't.
> Tiresome doesn't necessarily mean physically tired.
Not necessarily, no, not at all. I suggest a dictionary. Back in the day, people who cared about reading and the meaning of words would keep one handy, often next to the bed.
> a : hard to accomplish or achieve : difficult
~ https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arduous
Pretty sure this process qualifies as "hard" when compared to standard methods of purchasing digital goods.
Always fun when someone wants to argue about the definition of a word without actually using the definition of the word.
If you knew how to use a dictionary you wouldn’t have left out the helpful examples:
> 1a : hard to accomplish or achieve : DIFFICULT an arduous task years of arduous training
> b : marked by great labor or effort : STRENUOUS … a life of arduous toil. —A. C. Cole
> 2 : hard to climb : STEEP an arduous path arduously adverb arduousness noun
Life, years, climb. No, it does not count as arduous in the slightest. First world problems, is that in the dictionary, I wonder?
... right?
Anyway, you seem very confused with internet vernacular; everyone else was able to grasp the context. You appear to be the only individual experiencing difficulties. Just saying.
Inane, specious, and mendacious are other entries in the dictionary that come to mind. I also have no trouble comprehending the argument before me, it’s simply misdescribed. Can you not comprehend that? Apparently not.
> an arduous task
And let's take a look back to the post to which you originally replied!
> but the post above explain an arduous process
Wow, those look really similar, don't they? The quoted usage you find so objectionable is /nearly identical/ to the example you yourself copied. Galaxy brain.
Here's another definition you might want to study. It will really help reduce your confusion with internet interactions:
Hyperbole (noun) > extravagant exaggeration (such as "mile-high ice-cream cones")
I truly believe once you internalize this information you will grasp where you went wrong.
Beginning a back and forth over how to use a dictionary with someone who defines how to use a dictionary after the fact to help their point?
> Galaxy brain.
This is not Reddit or Twitter, please refrain from such petty, openly disrespectful and, shall we say arduous, slurs.
I'll take that as an admission you know you're wrong.
Here's some more advice for ya: Do your homework next time and come prepared. Or maybe, just maybe, don't try to play the pedantic card. It's clearly not your best game.
Honestly, I would have given up at the very first step. It clearly says that the content is available, but vendor is explicitly refusing to serve the content.
I mean, I support civil disobedience, and jury nullification, and such things, but those are generally personal matters, that one does not promote or encourage in public.
Absolutely remarkable that folks in this thread appear to hate freedom so much that I can't even recommend freely-licensed Creative Commons content.
Not every country has signed the Berne Convention, and of those that have signed a number are only bound by the minimum copyright and IP laws of their own country rather than the maximum protections that other countries might hold to.
No one gets a trial with which a jury could even choose to nullify the charges.
When you act coy with this stuff, they sneak around subverting it to the point that it no longer works. Did you see what happened to OWS ten years back?
Even if at this point they are a bit too excessive in some cases.
it's arguable that they are responsible. They help incentivize sure (at least in theory), but would the counterfactual world, in which there's no IP laws, be just as progressive?
And that’s only content creation patents and protection of trade secrets is another matter.
Commenter's point was that it's obviously easier to pirate. This is exactly the point; As an author, I'm upset that the system is like it is, I'm not upset at the many people who are undoubtedly going to pirate my work if it's difficult to get, whether it's right or wrong.
No Author finishes their work and declares, "Now, let me make this as difficult as possible to purchase." It's the PLATFORM.
IMO, the logical conclusion here is obvious: copyright should provide the author with the right to money, but not with the right to control actual distribution - we should be legally allowed to send the author $X in the mail and then torrent the thing.
This notion that the author should control the means of distribution? It's a historical artifact of old technology when publishing literally meant printing presses, and setting up a competing printing press without the author's authorization was an expensive choice that was inherently, obviously a means to rip off the author.
IMO, every ISBN should have the author's bank account number next to it and obtaining a copy of the ebook should be as simple as sending $X to that bank account, then finding a torrent by ISBN.
which is fine, except what happens if the author sold the rights to another company that then demand a different set of condition?
Or are you saying that the owner of said copyright does not have the right to decide such (for example, they would want to decide that the works is only available as part of something else sold)?
I hear 30-year old overpaid software engineers brainstorming how to cheat the ticket checks at the ski resort. I watch people at all-you-can-eat buffets piling more food on than they can eat and bring something with them for consuming later at home or by their family. People discussing tax loopholes. Or how to get train rides for free if nobody checks the ticket. All well-off folks. Cheating their way through life. It's sickening.
It makes me wonder whether religion may actually be a (partial) solution to this. An atheist myself, I can see value in brainwashing people into believing that they are constantly being watched by an almighty being which will ensure they go to hell if they steal or similar, even if nobody else is watching.
It's really sad that people can't just be decent.
I kid, they are payday loan services for authors.
Now, arguably this has even worse consequences on culture than the banning of copying ebooks. Still, it complicates the expected cost of a book significantly, so replacing current copyright with your proposal would require some alternative for this case as well.
It's not though. It's the trademark that prevents that. Copyright only prevents them from making a Spiderman movie based on a story that's already been written. Nothing prevents them from writing a new story about a guy that shoots sticky goo from his wrists, and making a movie out of that.
I guess that story wouldn't be considered canon. But canon also has nothing to do with copyright.
The vast majority of reputable studies on software/music/games piracy have found that piracy boosts sales, and significantly. This is why you seldom see these studies, because the powers that be don't want you to know that.
A few breakout songs in the early 00s wouldn't have even made the top 100 if it weren't for limewire (laffy taffy being a prime example) and there were a number of artists at the time who intentionally capitalized on this.
So yes in 20 years when I settle down and write a book about the rust community and my wild ride through the startup world, I'll probably upload the torrents myself because I know it will boost sales.
Just like Adobe was caught doing back in the early 2000s (though if you try to google it now the news articles are mysteriously scrubbed from the internet). That's right, there is a good chance at least one of the Photoshop CS4 torrents you downloaded as a wee lad was uploaded by a marketing team at Adobe. They were caught red-handed doing this and it wasn't just some rogue employee.
And if you think about it, it was absolutely brilliant. The script kiddies grow up using pirated photoshop, get into a work situation where they or their company can actually afford it, and presto now you have a customer with a lifetime of lock-in to your ecosystem and guilt for not paying for it all these years.
Cool - what do the studies on books show? I mean it might boost sales, I can definitely see how it might, but just because things that are very different from books get their sales boosted does not mean that books do.
Thanks, I’m more than fine with torrenting, especially when digital copying is not stealing, it has no material consequence. If someone downloads content illegally they wouldn’t have bought either way, the net sum of knowledge/pleasure increases in the world.
Perhaps authors could explore more consumer friendly ways of distributing their work? You paint a false dichotomy.
I think I'd feel pretty great if I were a perpetual monopolist and rent seeker. As a child I never really developed the reality warping field necessary to believe I can own bits and numbers.
I'd feel frustrated, to say the least! That's why I think people who pirate should make an effort to buy the book if it's fairly recently published. It's usually not expensive.
However, for older books I think pirating is fine. Usually the authors have passed away.
I'd feel like I need to start publishing on a non-user-hostile platform and, having been a writer for most of my life AND having used Amazon for over a decade, wouldn't be upset at people pirating my work.
Perhaps if things continue this way, more and more authors will seek alternatives to Amazon Kindle and a new platform will emerge. Unlike video content, hosting for ebooks really wouldn't be that expensive. I think competition is viable in this area.
1. search for book on kindle
2. press buy
3. wait for book to download directly onto kindle
4. read book
I'm not using kindle to find books mind you, generally I already know what I'm after. I get almost all of my recommendations from friends too, it pays to know people who read even more than you do and have similar taste.
Hope that you didn't click a sketchy ad that looks just like the download link, because the site didn't police any of its ads.
Let's not kid ourselves- these site runners are not Aaron Swartz.
That only happens once. Maybe twice. Most people learn.
> piracy is almost always a service issue and not a pricing issue
If the price doesn't outweigh the benefits of the service, people will not use the service.
Tap the share button to email the book to your Kindle email address.
If the Kindle has wifi on, the book automatically appears under another 10 seconds.
The whole process takes less than 30 seconds.
I buy Kindles specifically for this feature of being able to mail EPUBs to Kindle. When or if it is no longer possible, I stop buying Kindles.
https://www.reddit.com/r/zlibrary is full of warnings about scam websites.
My point is it's hardly easier, let alone safe, compared to Amazon.
Edit: Is it this? https://go-to-zlibrary.se/#telegram_bot_tab. Seems a bit risky, given the trail it creates vs anonymous downloads from some tor site.
I use ZLib since before it was popular. So there was near zero risks of scam sites.
Compared to a WisperNet download, that's actually a bit of a faff. Don't get me wrong, I use a hacked Kobo, but getting the books on the thing requires a computer and either to use a micro-USB cable or faffing about with a fileshare and WebDAV.
Kindle: attach book to Kindle email address, send.
I like to image, that jeff bezos dies a little inside whenever I do this.
It's a kids device they (and you) don't want your kid to be sent 50 shades of gray accidentally.
The other flow is buy book. Go to kindle, "sync and check for new items". But again, it's a kids book, don't want to pull your copy of "catcher in the rye" to their device accidentally.
edit: common question: what's a computer... it's a dying concept where you own the machine you bought instead of rent it, typically consisting of an open source os distribution, and the manufacturer doesn't take 30% of all transactions taking place on that hardware.
edit: I want to buy it on my phone: would you be ok paying 30% more than on a pc? Amazon doesn't think so. And giving 30% cut to apple / google would end up with amazon paying apple to sell the book. At that point why ?
What's a computer? /s
Thanks, I wouldn't have noticed
Microsoft was fined billions of dollars and went through years of litigation over something much less egregious.
Apple's (And Google's) digital tax is what you should be mad at.
I feel that you are being unreasonable: you willingly bought into a closed ecosystem, and now you're mad that other people are not part of that ecosystem.
What did you expect?
Anything that requires active involvement waits until I am in front of a PC.
Mobile UIs are just insufficient for most activities.
If you go to some authors discord and make small donation (often half of Amazon's price), they'll send you drm-free ebooks. That's what you should do if you really want to support author and dislike markup from marketplace monopolies.
It's just a book. I'd hope most parents would rejoice if their kid read well enough to get through that, or Mein Kamp.
And yes, as a parent it's part of my job, and my right, to pick and choose what I think my kid is ready for.
No offense taken - I'm not sure why you think that.
I suppose people do want to limit what books children read - I still think that's generally misguided - but your points on people actually wanting parental controls are well made.
I still think parents would be better off celebrating reading comprehension than censoring books (Now discussing books with your child is a different matter).
At any rate I guess the prevalence of trash/spam on Amazon is higher than your average library - so there's that...
What you were doing isn't "buying" anything, Amazon has on more than one occasion deleted books off of devices after they had been purchased.
On the subject of children's book, a few weeks ago I checked to see if there were retail versions of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books (there were, for Kindle!). Turns out, none of the "turn to page X" instructions are links, but also none of the pages have the original page numbers. $8/each, and you can't get a refund. The Amazon pages are full of 1-star reviews of people bitching about it.
As someone who enjoys reading on my Kindle and as an early Audible customer, the crap in app browsing and purchasing experience was one of the reasons I put off having an iPhone.
After years of complaints, now at least in app Audible books browsing and purchasing works on iPhone, sigh ...
Now having an iPhone, I have simply traded one set of bad experiences for another, as currently the set of bad experiences on an iPhone, is less important than the on an Android.
Perhaps a real book on real paper is an alternative?
The iPad is still an atrocious experience. I cannot tell if I'm simply aging out of being able to figure out new technology, or if none of the product managers at Apple have young children. But it's marginally better than the Kindle, and it runs Roblox.
Apple really want that 30% cut.
Stuff like your experience with Amazon, mine even just last night having to: find where I can buy something I want to stream (already a nightmare), buying it on the "new" Google TV app only to cast to the TV before playing it and getting "this content cannot be played on your TV", before starting it playing on my phone first and _then_ casting, after which it worked.
Here’s another mini-anecdote. On my iphone I have Amazon Prime app where it allows me to download episodes of Peppa Pig for my daughter to watch when we don’t have internet. Recently I wanted to cast these episodes on an AppleTV hooked up to a big TV in a hotel. It wouldn’t let me - because you are not allowed to use Screen Mirroring to show protected content, and AppleTV was connected to WiFi, but not internet - so it couldn’t verify licenses.
So bottom line - here I have content that I paid for, stored inside a protected from ground-up encrypted mainstream device, but I can’t play it on large TV in the same room, because there’s a bunch of likely complicated technology sitting there worrying about “what if i somehow got around it being licensed!”.
But even I did in fact circumvent their copy protection - has anyone stopped to think whether its worth getting in the way of millions of their customers lives streaming their legally purchased content just to stop this one guy who managed to jailbreak their iphone? Have they completely lost touch with reality?
All of this feels insane to me, especially being rather familiar with constant pompous rhethoric coming from Amazon and Apple about their customer-focused philosophies.
Amazon doesn't seem to curate their marketplace at all. It's full of fake products and no-name chinese vendors selling low-quality goods.
Amazon's delivery network is the biggest thing they have going for them.
"who cares what we deliver as long as it gets there quickly"
not quite as snappy as "Customer Obsession", but more honest
I'm an Amazon nightmare. They see my account going from ordering every other day 25 years ago, often big ticket items, and barrelling into Prime when it happened, to dropping Prime and gradually reduced to ordering every other year. Or maybe I'm a rounding error. But I'd rather go to the store than order from Amazon.
I still find stuff on there that I'm willing to gamble on, and it arrives very fast but it's usually small ticky tacky items (e.g. an adapter/mount for something on my bike etc).
There is a large population that's not us however, who simply want the cheapest thing that fits the bill and don't know about their FBA dishonesty.
- Google indexing and republishing all of their work for free on Google Books (finally resolved after a huge Class Action suit where the authors were awarded a few $$)
- List your book on Amazon for $20 and a "third party" reseller will immediately hijack your listing with a poorly printed knockoff copy for $19
- Widespread piracy of Kindle and other e-Books
- Not being paid fairly from programs like Amazon's Kindle Unlimited
Now AI-generated content makes these problems considerably worse. It's very difficult to make money writing books these days.
That's been true as long as the printing press existed. I know many authors, and none of them make money worth spit.
Now it's also made even more difficult by rampant fraud. That's not the same sort of thing at all.
One wonders if that few $$ was worth the bother for the authors. Especially when set against the free marketing that such exposure would get for them.
There are other reasons for writing books than making money selling them, such as enhancing your professional reputation, which can segue into a better paying job, more contract opportunities, ability to sell seminars, etc.
I have no idea how much Carrie Fisher made selling her books, but she did make a lot of money from a touring stage show based on the books, and also had a lucrative career as a "script doctor" in Hollywood that rescued boring and trite scripts.
And, of course, having book signings!
This isn't a thing that was ever offered, it was always full text search, get snippets of results.
> (finally resolved after a huge Class Action suit where the authors were awarded a few $$)
The two proposed class action settlements were rejected as overly advantageous to Google (probably for the best they were rejected, though it would have opened up orphaned works in a way that Congress will never ever bother to do).
Then the judge ruled that google books scanning and searching was fair use and dismissed the lawsuit, upheld by the second circuit. No one ever saw any money, few $$ or otherwise.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
It does not matter whether the lawsuit was dismissed or not, Google practices harmed authors and that's why the Authors Guild sued them.
Go read some autobiographies or memoirs and you'll find well-to-do authors and their lavish lifestyles.
The Author's Guild survey of 5,000+ authors[1], the largest such survey ever conducted, found an author's median earnings is $6,080 per year.
1. https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-dra...
I saw that one of the quotes wasn't actually from the series and asked the user if they'd actually used an LLM to generate it. They confirmed that they had. It would have been easy to miss that it wasn't real. Eventually their comments got flagged (not by me) and hidden, but probably only due to me calling it out.
It does make me a little concerned about the future.
I watch on from the outside, researching, reading and watching as I please (and yes, that means I am some kind of perma-pirate, I guess*), and all this kind of crap - waves hand in general direction of FAANG and co, and all the shit they've evolved society into, over the past 20 years - is Someone Else's Problem.
That Someone, being mainstream society, apparently. Well, some people say "vote with your wallet" - I say, vote with your lifestyle.
* don't get me wrong - I am happy to ethically self-justify, in terms of my lifetime holistic net inputs and outputs. And how many of us enjoy, for example, a video game emulation romset? - if so, then you're no different.
Already nobody was in charge, but now there's really nobody in charge.
But being socially ineffective = sometimes missing the mark, when it comes to conveying feelings, despite best efforts or intentions.
I'll take your read under advisement. :)
I like my IT shit, but my major life joys come from my kids and sports and writing / thinking. If FAANG went poof tomorrow (and maybe be if I was a praying person, I'd pray for this daily) my life joys would be almost entirely unaffected.
It's a good perspective.
I know an authors agent and they told me negotiating with the majors in digital publishing is a nightmare. They all miss the old world of paper a LOT.
Patreon and like says to me that direct connect is a strong tool in the right hands. Bands know this: the merch thing is huge. Not everyone can be Taylor swift making $mil per stadium. Again, the digital plays don't make the money, like for kindle its small cents per thousand plays, if you are lucky.
I went to tidal over the others because I'm told its at least partly owned by musicians. I am sure its big sharks feeding of smaller sharks, but at least its fish.
One which are just image/video links? Large amounts of it is bot-generated/reposted content.
Locality and specialised subs it's mostly humans, even if some of them are astroturfing for some brand.
- Book by her https://www.amazon.com/Business-Chicago-Writing-Editing-Publ... links to her Author profile https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Friedman/e/B004KHXQ0U/ref=dp_byl...
- Book by other person with same name https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CD8YW4PQ links to no Author profile and instead to a search for that name
Two people are allowed to have the same name and unless one of them trademarks it, I would expect Amazon to do something like this. After all, J K Rowling isn't her name either, and it could just as well be a name I picked. What makes it hers exclusively to use for this purpose is that she trademarked it. Otherwise, I could also have the pen name J K Rowling.
There was a golden window, before the scammers caught up, when you could trust things not checked by humans ( whether that be news stories, social media posts or goods for sale ) - and that window appears to be closing.
If they lose trust - they are dead. The question is how much will maintaining that trust cost - and will they be able to keep their advantage over traditional retailers?
I'm not sure AI systems is the answer - you just end up in a never ending AI war between scammer and checker.
In the end, they may find they need the human handshake.
Sadly, Amazon probably doesn't care and actual working authors will have to deal with this constantly.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Meteor-Josh-Robinson/dp/1...
Exactly my thought. There's an element of fraud here.
The modern structure pioneered by Amazon removes all that. The actual cost for a seller to make a listing is apparently half a cent per month. After the first 100,000 listings, that is, and only on SKUs without a sale in the last year.
Without any contract or compensation for me and my co-authors.
We were delighted! :)
The wide-open possibilities of a new technological domain are celebrated and given wide berth to "protect innovation", which openly invites abuse.
Abuse expands with successive waves of breaching trust. There are still some traditional strongholds left, like medical and financial matters, but the crypto "industry" shows how close we are.
The downward spiral continues until society pushes back really hard. Creating legal and moral fences against the new form of theft. This may or may not be a satisfactory solution (institutionalized theft is a thing) but is more stable.
What creates some hope is that despite the latent dehumanizing streak, we mostly derive fulfillment from interactions with other humans.
In a sense the advent of infinite verbatim copying possibilities (the zero marginal cost of reproduction) is now with algorithms expanded to a cloud of infinite near-verbatim copies.
A new balance will be found. To the degree we can help it it should not be a form of institutionalized theft.
The author should be able to provide to Amazon/Goodreads a list of publishers for their book. Any publisher not on this list should be prevented from selling the title.
If someone wants to impersonate an author, they'd have to also impersonate a publisher - a much bigger legal risk.
Simple solution.
As with all previous technological jumps we've got people that hate it and dont see the point in it.
I wasn't there when the microwave was unleashed on the world, but I'd imagine a lot of chefs thought it was the fucking rapture. Fast forward to today and even top chefs use a microwave occasionally.
I suspect the same will occur with AI. Hated by pros right now because every man and dog is now able to do things they couldn't before...eventually though AI will probably become a crucial part of a writers toolkit and along with their existing talent, they will ultimately create better content for people to consume, while the garbage generating will slow down as the cream rises to the top again....some writers will staunchly be against AI forever, some writers will appear that otherwise would never have been writers if not for AI...and the rest will adapt.
I've written multiple books and seen many types of piracy.
The most annoying is piracy that Amazon could prevent with the work of an intern. They've shown little interest in this.
Authors have little pull because Amazon is the only player for book selling. (I know there are other places to sell books, I've used them. Better to focus on Amazon for passive sales.)
Do tell. In the gigantic ocean that is Amazon's marketplace, what do you suppose a single intern could do that would not be immediately circumvented?
It seems more complicated than that - Publishers (representing more authors), pseudonyms (and pluri-pseudonyms) etc. - but not dramatically so. A battery of people (human level intelligence) will check to validate the "upload" process, and automation aided.
Already now: what checks that John is not selling Jack's work? The mechanism is similar.
This is an issue with a lot of sites and services nowadays; I get tons of recommendations on auto-generated Spotify lists (discover weekly, release radar) where someone just attaches $artist as one of the co-artists of their own mediocre hip-hop track. Maybe they use a sample from $artist, I don't know for sure, but I've gathered that it's a known trick to promote your own music on there and get /some/ listens at least, probably mostly accidental.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of those now are or will be AI generated, in a way so that it kinda sounds like $artist but isn't, and that legally it falls under "inspired by" or "a cover".
This seems like textbook unauthorized commercial use of likeness, where both the "author" and (now that they've been informed and refused to act - and their business processes don't even appear to allow them to recognize unauthorized commercial use of likeness) Amazon are involved.
Next step should be your lawyer sending Amazon legal department a polite "stop fucking doing that right now and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again now that I've brought this to your attention" piece of snailmail.
I'd suggest authors pile together with other authors in their state/country to hire a PR person or lawyer to draft letters specific to their region.
For extra giggles, have everyone send their demand letters to arrive in the same few days.
Here's a protip, folks:
Customer service reps are paid a fraction of what corporate lawyers are, are shielded by phone systems designed to make you waste your time / go away, and they have no obligation to respond or follow up to you. They're literally a "go away" droid army for the corporation.
Chances are the corporate legal folks are paid at least as much as you are, likely a lot more. And when you send them something, someone pretty much has* to read it. And if the letter ends with something along the lines of "I'd like to try to work this out without resorting to legal action", they've got to send at least some sort of response. Otherwise, you can file suit and say "gee judge, we tried to resolve this but they wouldn't even answer us"...and now they're already on the wrong foot with the judge for ignoring you, because judges really want people to at least attempt to work shit out before coming to court.
If you make an honest effort trying to resolve something (documenting all the way), stop wasting your time and hire a lawyer, or send the letter yourself. You merely need to be polite, state the problem and how you were harmed/damaged, and say something about desiring to resolve things without legal action.
* to head something off at the pass: yeah, it's probably a legal assistant or paralegal, not full blown counsel, at least in the early stages; still paid a lot more than a phone support droid. Also, the corporate lawyers might be an outside firm, and said firm might be getting paid a fixed contract price. You might not be running up the bill for BigCo, but every bit of BigFirmCo's time that you use, that's less profit for them, and increases the chances BigCo's contract goes up next year, or they get dropped as a client.
> Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers.
In a more typical scenario, a piece of knowledge maybe a name, an address and ssn and a message is a request for a loan from the bank. In this case a piece of knowledge is the name only, and the unauthenticated message is an AI gibberish.
And I already have ublock origin enabled so congrats on defeating its filters.
I see no indication that she's written a well-reviewed non-fiction book, or a moving memoir, or a slim volume of poetry. She publishes only on how to get published, which seems like a close cousin of people who offer drop-shipping classes and get their revenue through those classes rather than the drop-shipping that's supposed to be their expertise.
I think the thing she's really annoyed with is that apparently AIs are demonstrating that these days it's really easy to get published and perhaps her books aren't necessary.
A bot with a good reputation adds a listing at 1.27x the price of a worse-reputation listing. Another bot had a conflicting strategy: selling at 0.99x the price of the next cheapest.
The target of the scammers is someone browsing Amazon, who isn't going to know to look for an NFT. Someone familiar with the author is just going to check the author's website and see the list of books they've published.
It's also worth mentioning that the OP of this comment thread promised a solution that any author could implement without Amazon's involvement, presumably because Amazon is disinterested or disincentivized to care.
Or it might come with an NFT created by the scammer, which they might trick the reader into trusting with social engineering.