Reasons not to buy from Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Reasons not to buy from Amazon

stallman.org

73 pointsdenzil_correa77 comments

Most of these are problems with any large company, not Amazon per se.

Yes, companies want to kill competition by any means and do all sorts of bad-for-the-consumer and bad-for-workers things. We didn't just wake up yesterday into the industrial era. That's all of capitalism. Amazon isn't special, just high-profile.

> if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights.

Amazon isn't in the business of granting rights.

If you don't like any of the things included in Stallman's list, don't expect change to come from Amazon or some boycott thereof. The change should come from us by way of better governance.

I feel like Stallman missed a good time to make a positive point on why we need better governance and perhaps regulation to reign in the much uglier parts of corporations/capitalism/behavior that we might as a society not like. He could have been inspiring and spoken to a much wider audience than the paranoia crowd.

Instead he wanted to make a negative piece about Amazon. It made the top of HN, where we'll talk aboutit for 15 hours, and then nobody else will listen.

More generally I think its safe to say that people will not listen to a boycott that inconveniences them. They might listen to a positive message on the reasons we should support and enact laws upholding digital freedoms, worker rights, and things to stop anti-competitive practices.

There are a lot of digital freedom causes worth championing, but I'm always disappointed by Stallman. It's easy to hate. We need more positive people that can frame causes like this more effectively.

> don't expect change to come from Amazon or some boycott thereof. The change should come from us by way of better governance.

Devil's advocate: Rights are inherent, and an external authority (government, etc.) cannot by definition grant them; it can only restrict them (though whether it should is separate).

It's a subtle point, but I bring this up because it's more in line with the way Stallman thinks, so to miss that point (for any other readers) is to misunderstand Stallman.

I don't get your point, can external authorities not protect your rights? What is the course of action that you are getting at?

To be honest, I'm having a hard time way to express this concisely enough for an HN comment, but the gist is that, while the government can protect rights, rights must exist even if no single authority is responsible for protecting them. Otherwise, they are privileges.

This isn't quite the same thing, but look up the arguments for why Internet access is not a human right[1]. I can't find the article I'm thinking of that explains it well, but the idea is that, if someone lacks Internet access on a desert island, it's not necessarily because someone is actively infringing on their right. If someone is a slave to another, someone is actively infringing on their human rights under Article 4 of the UDHR.

[1] Contrast 'human right' with 'civil right' and you'll see why the concept of 'rights' is so complex.

Think of it this way:

The GPL grants you the right of access to source code for software distributed to you by denying the author his right to keep it from you.

So the GPL, like the state, doesn't grant rights per se, so much as it restricts others' ability to take action that would infringe on said rights.

That's an ivory tower political philosophy concept, merely a new mask put on the religious concept that certain inalienable rights are given to us by God.

Of the rights we have in the United States, most we have because of long western European (and particularly British) tradition (which incorporates religious doctrine, particularly Christianity), and some we have because we fought a war of independence against England to win those extra rights.

The constitutions of the U.S. and its component States try to minimize infringements into individual liberty, by defaulting to individual liberty, but society has become so complex that that fail-liberal ideal has been lost in practice. Individual liberty ends up affecting other people too much to be ignored. Few people want to take the heat for defending the negative aspects of individual liberty, so the erosion continues.

"Positive rights" vs "negative rights", "rights" vs "privileges": I don't think any of that philosophical wrangling does anything to change the reality of the situation.

Individual freedom is not inherent inside a political body. If we want rights, we have to defend them, and if we want rights we don't have, we have to fight (politically speaking) to obtain them.

Rights are something we made up. In fact, I dare you to find a difference between a right to [free speech|health care] and an entitlement to [free speech|health care].

Don't get me wrong, I'm staunchly in favor of human rights. But claiming they're inherent won't do you any good when you're looking at the barrel of a gun, regardless of who holds it. Rights are created and defended in the culture first, and may or may not percolate through to government and law.

> Rights are created and defended in the culture first, and may or may not percolate through to government and law.

In case you missed it, that was the point of my original comment. An 'inherent' right can (and should) be defended by the culture, regardless of whether or not any government exists to respect it.

> Most of these are problems with any large company, not Amazon per se.

Agreed! We won't get Amazon or any of these large corporations to change by boycotting their services (w/ no success). Instead we need to push for tech savy people to make it high up in Washington and European Union so that they protect customer interests instead of granting corporations all the power.

Let me rephrase that more accurately:

Instead we need to push for tech savvy people to make it high up in Washington and European Union so that they preempt consumers' choices about who to do business with, instead of letting free individuals make decisions for themselves.

    The change should come from us by way of better governance.

If this more an issue of the "lazy masses"? I don't believe for a second that a well organized boycott would not get Amazon's attention and action on a given issue. The problem is that a boycott is much harder to implement than getting someone to vote on issue X.

"If you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights" is a silly statement. It is a privilege to do business with Amazon and either party has the ability to severe that. You do not have a right to use a server that Amazon provides.

Rights are not granted by anything. They describe the extent of government power. That is all.

> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedom (PDF[1] or html[2]).

This is real. There is something wrong with the way Amazon deals with ebooks, and it is sad to see people backing it up.

---

[1]: http://stallman.org/articles/ebooks.pdf

[2]: http://gnu.org/philosophy/the-danger-of-ebooks.html

Can you elaborate what's the problem with DRM?

When I buy something, I like to know it's mine, rather than just 'in my possession with permission to use'.

For example, depending on the EULA (and also jurisdiction), if you declare bankruptcy, you have to delete all your local copies of DRM-ed media, because you no longer have the permission to use them, even though you already paid for it.

> depending on the EULA (and also jurisdiction), if you declare bankruptcy, you have to delete all your local copies of DRM-ed media

What? If ever a citation was needed, it's now.

I don't know what kind of a 'citation' you're looking for. It's possible to write language like that into a license for use; whether or not that's enforceable is a function of several variables, such as how the license is written, which jurisdiction we're talking about, and which legal authority happens to comment on it. Say I provide some lawyer or judge who confirms this, and you find another who disagrees. There's no conflict there; my whole point is that this is a matter of legal opinion, and therefore a possibility.

Contrast to sale of a physical good, where the first-sale doctrine means that such restrictions on subsequent sale and use can't exist. (The implication is that the same would apply to DRM-free media, because a lack of DRM means that they can't enforce any such restrictions, either through practical means or through legal channels).

This is a pretty easy one. EULAs are generally public information linked to on the internet.

Just link to the EULA that contains language that may indicate you need to delete your ebooks on declaring bankrupcy.

If its 50 pages long, it might be helpful to provide a quote or two. Or link to someone elese who has done that analysis like say groklaw.

So what I'm hearing is that you basically made this up.

>It's possible to write language like that into a license for use

It's possible to write anything into the license. An MP3 license agreement could say that you have to eat a pound of chalk every time you play the song. That doesn't make it legally enforceable.

Your hypothetical "bankruptcy clause" seems like it fits in this same category. Why would a judge ever agree that this is enforceable when it's so pointless and arbitrary?

> When I buy something, I like to know it's mine, rather than just 'in my possession with permission to use'.

What license do you use for software that you write?

Please explain why that's at all remotely relevant to the issue of Amazon's DRM vs. DRM-free ebooks, and not just an excuse to start yet another HN GPL vs. BSD flamewar.

That's a poor and incorrect assumption of what I'm arguing. Do you always counter someone's question with an assumption of what they're going to say? I hate people that do that with a fiery passion, particularly when bucketed into a group that I'm not even representing.

My point is, you say "when [you] buy something, [you] want to know it's yours", the corollary being that you dislike software licenses entirely. Any software with a license is DRM-protected, including GPL and BSD software or software with a EULA. The operating system that you are currently using is licensed to you. There's probably nothing on your computer that you own aside from things you have created yourself.

You have purchased or downloaded the software, yes, but the author has licensed it to you under specific terms. It is not yours. That is DRM. Anybody who hates DRM and continues to enforce a software license on their work, GPL or not, is experiencing cognitive dissonance (Richard Stallman included). GPL is actually one of the worst of the bunch because it mandates how you can redistribute things you build with "what is yours".

Is this an ideal world? No. Is it the world we live in right now? Yes. I will not assume what your response will be, to your respect.

I'm sorry you hate me with a fiery passion. I can assure you the feeling is not mutual.

I don't see the contradiction. Stallman would agree that the GPL isn't ideal; he'd say it's a hack designed to twist our broken legal system into respecting our fundamental freedoms. The GPL is almost an anti-license, since it exists solely to do the exact opposite of what copyright laws and licenses are intended to do (restrict freedoms).

Put another way: yes, it's using the system, but any attempt to change the system from within is, by definition, 'using the system'.

If our laws deemed proprietary software licenses to be non-enforceable, I doubt anybody (Stallman included) would see the need for the GPL.

> The GPL is almost an anti-license, since it exists solely to do the exact opposite of what copyright laws and licenses are intended to do (restrict freedoms).

And yet it restricts my freedom to do what I wish with derivatives. Almost an anti-license, indeed.

I appreciate you side-stepping my point so deftly. Allow me to reiterate it:

- You cannot be an enemy of DRM and support software licenses. They are mutually exclusive positions.

I also hate this pervasive idea that our legal system is "broken". Copyright, just like patents, have been historically important to innovation and we'd be in a much different situation today were it not for both. Every generation always comes along and deems principles of antiquity "broken" because they don't bother to grok the historical context. If you were to say something like "in need of reform," I'm right there with you.

> You cannot be an enemy of DRM and support software licenses. They are mutually exclusive positions.

Who said anything about "supporting" software licenses?

Since you keep ignoring my question about licenses, as you have since the very first time I asked it, I am forced to assume your answer.

I don't see the word "broken" (needs to be fixed) as a synonym for "totaled" (needs to be replaced), but if it makes you happy, we can use the word "reform".

Since you keep conveniently missing my point about doing what you can within a system that you recognize needs reform, I'm forced to assume my original assumption was correct as well, since the only point you seem to disagree with me on is the issue of copylefting ('And yet it restricts my freedom to do what I wish with derivatives.').

How does Amazon deal with eBooks any differently than any other eBook seller?

And "wrong" means "so evil they should be boycotted utterly"?

There are many things I don't like about how Amazon deals with ebooks, but there are many things that are good about it as well, and I prefer to not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Well then someone should make the open Kindle. I love my kindle and haven't bought a dead tree book since I got it.

The problem is not the hardware: the hardware will read Free books just fine. The problem is that Amazon wants to sell you books that will only work on their platform, since those books subsidize their hardware. (Oddly, not much stops you from buying books from other stores, except that those stores all use different DRM. It's like heard immunity or something.)

Publishers are also hesitant to offer their books in DRM-free format because book piracy would otherwise be rampant. (The fact that there's a torrent for every Kindle book ever just goes to show you how effective DRM is. Once again, it's another DRM scheme that only hurts legitimate users and publishers, but the lawyers tell everyone otherwise and so everyone is happy. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.)

There are some publishers that just offer ebooks as PDFs that you download from their website. My book is like that (though it has a PDF password that your reader can just ignore), and some other books I've bought are like that. "Programming in Scala" is just a pure PDF download after you give them your money. It's a nice system and the rest of the industry will catch on soon. For now, publishers seem to enjoy working with middlemen that take a 30% cut of the author's revenue, but people are getting tired of the middlemen and with that, DRM will slowly fade away and open ebook platforms will be the norm. Just give it ten years.

I by DRM-free books from O'Reilly. I wonder if they're profitable, or if O'Reilly does it for the good of mankind, or to make some other point. Or maybe they're just profitable.

Whatever, I have no reluctance at all to buy an O'Reilly ebook. DRM books make me nervous. What happens to them when I die? The "Rights" in DRM refer to the sellers or publishers rights, not mine.

I'm sure they're profitable. People were pirating O'Reilly books long before "ebook" was even a word. Didn't stop the authors from being reasonably compensated.

Also, there is a Kindle app for the iPad and I presume there is one for Android devices as well. Nook app too, FWIW.

Re-reading this a day later, ouch. "heard immunity"?

It should read "herd immunity".

I use a Kobo and it supports more formats, open formats, plus DRM formats. They've been out for a couple years and are more popular in Canada than the Kindle from what I've been told. Only issue I've ever come across is that the response time of the touch screen seems to be a little slower after some firmware updates. They quickly make changes though to resolve those problems.

Says the man who charges to have his photograph taken by fans

Independent bookstores are nice, but they fail to account for the long tail, that's where Amazon shines.

And for the "common books" the big chains do an ok job. E.g. Harry Potter

(Still, physical B&N stores seem to be going away, Borders is history already)

Says the man who charges to have his photograph taken by fans

What does that have to do with any of the things he mentioned in the post?

Nothing. It's a typical ad hominem attack and the parent comment either 1) doesn't understand that this does nothing to invalidate an argument or 2) doesn't care.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypocrisy

Basically, it's ok for him to charge for his right of image, it's ok for the GPL to place limits on IP, but it's not ok for others to charge for other rights like IP or limit the ways their IP can be used (Right of image is not IP, it's a Personality right, still - and I agree with the GPL)

So you'd criticize him for speaking against any limits?

The split personality in the HN community is interesting.

On one hand, you have things like "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good; better to have a product that works than to get everything right".

On the other, you have things like "Amazon puts DRM on their ebooks and terminated Wikileaks. Boycott everything they do."

Amazon is innovative enough and has benefited my life enough that I'm willing to sacrifice some freedoms for that convenience. Richard Stallman, however, cannot be happy if you make that decision on your own. Eventually, you have to ask yourself if you want to spend your life obeying what an influential person tells you to do (and sacrifice conveniences to hold the world to a higher standard which will never be realized), or realize that ships sail and you'd rather be on the ship than yelling at it with clenched fist from the harbor.

I'm sure there's a helluva lot more opinions than those two among the readers of Hacker News. The best communities are diverse.

Reasons to buy from Amazon:

* Cheap

* Consistent

* Fast shipping

* Good product availability

* Good return policies

* Vendor and item ratings

Agreed. And buyer protection + great customer service. (Zappos level)

Yes, when it's a matter of convenience vs ethical soundness convenience will win every time.

I don't remember who it was, but someone said "the thing that we are most afraid of, is inconvenience"

Convenience is an ethical soundness, it just isn't usually taken that way.

Shifting commerce to digital and personal, just-in-time shipping, and customer-centric are good. Ugly business practices, creepy data mining, and DRM are bad. If you want to wave your hand at "conveniences", why wouldn't I wave my hand at "philosophical quibbles"?

Amazon is a mixed bag. For me, it's more good than bad. Putting your blinders on to the good for the sake of argument is not convincing.

I think I'm not understanding what you're trying to say. Maybe it's that small wins for large number of individuals outweighs large losses for small numbers of individual?

The OP pointed out a number of good things about Amazon. I took you to imply that these reasons are sellouts, and ethical issues are on a different plane than commercial considerations.

My take on this is that it's early in the conversation to downplay these wins as small (after all, why do people die of starvation today? Not shortages or money: distribution, which is a keystone problem for Amazon).

I also hope we will think of improving commerce as a moral issue. Assuming that it boils down to worthless materialism or Mammon is not a fair picture.

You're right in that it's not fair to write off the improvements to commerce. These will have a large, unforeseeable impact. That being said, from a North American perspective it seems that commerce is steadily improving while economic equality and working conditions are worsening. We're at the point in society where technology may have permanently made large swathes of people essentially redundant.

Is it really unethical to buy a DRMed ebook? Seems to me I only hurt myself with it - unless you count the bigger picture that I am contributing to a future where everything is DRMed. But I think the latter might be overblown. Even if people buy DRMed books, free books still exist.

Not sure about the sweatshop story, but at least with ebooks the workers have to sweat only once, when they ship the kindle.

Plus, Amazon's DRM is pretty trivial to strip off.

I literally just bought a book of Amazon three minutes ago. I couldn't find it anywhere else. A local author and the book was only available in hardcover. I guess I'm just a sucker for convenience.

What about reasons not to listen to Stallman? There are other ethical views than just his.

In addition to being practical, it's morally good for individual programmers to work on commercial products solely for their own long-term gain, and that doing so doesn't come at the expense of others. Others are free to buy those products if they wish. The fact that so many people choose to do so is evidence of the tremendous value that paid developers and companies provide.

A complex subject. Stallman makes valid points, we do need fair laws that keep corporations from bad behavior while otherwise staying out of their way to do business.

I vote with my wallet at two extremes. Locally, I enjoy spending money at the small businesses in my neighborhood that I really hope stay in business and make a fair profit. At the other end of the business-size spectrum, I love the convenience of Amazon for ordering physical goods and having them delivered to my home in the mountains.

I understand the negative aspects of DRM but I really like the Kindle platform. It is true that I may not always have access in the distant future to what I have bought, but in most cases I won't want a lot of what I buy to read in 10 years (and it will probably be available for as long as I live anyway). I pay a lot less (usually) for Kindle format books and they are available on all of my devices, with automatic syncing to furthest location read. Also, my study/home office is already filled to capacity with bookshelves - now I just buy really special books (on Go, Chess, Art books, some classic computer science, etc.) as physical books and enjoy otherwise saving the space on my bookshelves.

Seems unfair for Stallman to criticize the fact that they stopped funding ALEC after many people asked them too. It's kind of like taking hostages, having all your demands met, and then killing all the hostages anyway. Why will Amazon change if we criticize them for doing something we asked them to do?

Interesting article. When you make an alternative to Amazon which has a similar selection and shipping time I will consider it.

I do not have a local book shop. My supermarket which is strangling farmers, killing off grocers, butchers, video game shops etc only have the best sellers list.

I have yet to find an alternative which is consistently cheap and delivers next day or the day after with free shipping..

To your points.

> Amazon publishes ebooks designed to attack your freedom

This is no different from music. I could choose to buy a physical book but sometimes I feel that my kindle could get it faster and I could save space in my house which already is littered with large books.

> Amazon's on-line music "sales" have some of the same problems as the ebooks

This is the same as a number of other music retailers. If I want to avoid this I will get a DVD. Just because Amazon offers you a convenient option doesn't mean you have to take it. I would rather save space in my house and save the environment by purchasing digital music than buy a CD which will be scanned onto my computer once then left on a shelf.

> Amazon's shipping in the US is done in a sweatshop

Oh well.. this is something state officials should look into. I have seen the UK distribution center a number of times on the news and it looks alright.

> Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks

Oh well.. it is Amazon's service. Wikileaks can use another. I use a service and I cut people off fairly often due to the content they post. They broke my terms -> They go. The end. They can build their own software. Or in Wikileaks case.. find another host / make their own.

> Amazon squeezes small publishers.

Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. Sometimes people get trodden on. If Amazon won't do you an agreeable deal go elsewhere. Make an organization with similar companies and reject any deals which you cannot agree to. Throw your weight behind a different ebook reader.

> Amazon doesn't just compete with independent book stores, it arrogantly seeks to destroy them.

Please.. there are app's like this which compare prices all over the place. Again. Amazon looks to give the best deal possible to the customer. When I buy from a bookshop I know I am paying more. That is fine because I can see the book, touch the book and take it home then and there. Most people know this.

Sometimes a local book store cannot sell a book even remotely competitively. An app which told me this would be nice. I don't mind paying a few pounds more in a store. When it is £5-10 there is a problem with the shop.

> Amazon appears to treat self-published authors well, but it can unilaterally cut the price of their books. And when it does, the authors are the ones who lose.

It is an authors choice whether they use the publishing platform or not. I wouldn't after hearing how Amazon auto-discounted an authors book and the author got screwed.

> Amazon censored an ebook that exposed how ebook bestseller lists can be manipulated (and therefore are meaningless).

Is this so unexpected? Guy tries to publish book on Amazon about how to game the Amazon review and ranking system...

> Amazon was a member of ALEC.

Oh well.

Amazon isn't a saint. They are responsible for putting a number of small businesses out of business. They damage the high street. However.. look at any major superstore. Its just the evolution of business. I will not be boycotting Amazon any time soon.

We live in a world of either severe inconvenience or reluctant acceptance of the mega-corp.

But I don't understand apologists and defenders like yourself.

The only legitimate reason I can think of to not order off of Amazon is because sometimes you end up paying for express shipping when they would have got the item out to you in the same amount of time anyway.

I don't find a single one of these "reasons" even remotely compelling as cause not to do business with Amazon. Were I to run Amazon tomorrow, I would change not one of these policies.

UPS and robots do shipping now. That article he cited is old.

This is true, Amazon is moving toward more automated shipping. It will lower prices and improve conditions for workers that remain. One evil cured, eh?

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/19/amazon-acquires-online-fulf...

That could be a negative since you removed a bunch of jobs. Also working in 100 degree warehouse isn't that bad, i spent many summers working on a farm in a lot worse conditions(heat, sun and ankle deep in pig manure). Using the same logic we should stop eating.

I don't see how jobs for the sake of jobs is of real benefit to society. Just as programmers tend to automate away humans with small shells scripts (costs go down, reliability increases), a robot automating away inventory picking is a good thing (lower cost, vastly decreased chance of injuries, possibility of "dark" warehouses, 24-hour operation, etc)

Maybe I'm being very 1% here (despite not being even remotely near that income bracket), but I'd be perfectly happy to see machines replace humans in nearly all unskilled labor situations. If Amazon is ahead of the curve here, good for them - it's one of the reasons I own [a tiny amount of] AMZN stock. Getting people doing something that requires thinking because we've eliminated mindless work is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. That won't require everyone in the world have a four-year formal education; there are plenty of opportunities that don't require years of specialized training where you're not likely to be replaced by a couple of servos or a few lines of bash.

The number 1 reason is the practice of letting you click all the way to "ship to address" screen before telling you that they cannot ship the selected item to your location.

This is extremely frustrating! Why are they advertising products they are not willing to sell? (This problem is rampant in Finland, probably not applicable to USA)

A lot of people are bringing up the consumer issues related to using Amazon. But also consider the implications for publishers.

...and they charge sales tax now :-(

Technically, your state government charges sales tax. Amazon just helps them enforce it, instead of trusting that you'll be honest and pay it yourself.

What is Amazon's current stance on ebook DRM? Did they abandon it yet?

But it's cheaper!!! ;-)

This is a free market, Amazon wins, the other loses. End of story. Just ordered another book ON AMAZON. Free shipping, no sales tax!!

Gentle reminder: unless your state doesn't have sales tax, you probably still have to pay use tax.

A lot of Stallman's points are nonsense, but the one about ALEC is particularly stupid and misinformed. ALEC, which is basically a think tank, has been the subject of a campaign of demonization by the totalitarian left, which has unfortunately been very effective in getting some of their contributors to cut off funding. If you don't like ALEC's solutions to problems, then by all means you should start your own damn foundation and promote out your own set of "model bills" and position papers, instead of trying silence ALEC's.

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