Reasons not to buy from Amazon
stallman.org
stallman.org
I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too. Funny that.
> "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events."
Replace 'Swindle' with 'Kindle' then with any ebook reader ever. I doubt there is anything about the Kindle in particular, over other ereaders, that causes people to remember less. This is attacking Amazon with everything and hoping some of it sticks.
I'm trying not to defend Amazon but RMS's arguments are painfully bad at times.
But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!
That's a really interesting argument. One could argue that the GPL is like the snake eating it's tail on the far side of liberalness. I'm sure this is not a new argument, but I'd never considered that the "polluting" of code with the GPL actually decreases individual liberty for the sake of communal liberty.
Again, not making a judgement one way or the other, but the world is nothing if not a series of bad compromises, and I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that the GPL and OSS in general is included in "the world" :)
Of "open source" licenses perhaps. In the grand scheme of software licenses, it is pretty fucking permissive. Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code, and don't let you redistribute or share the software.
Are there any software licenses where the source code is provided but you are prohibited to view or modify it?
Software licenses which allow you to view the code but not to modify it are fairly common.
Typically, software licenses grant none of these rights.
Microsoft is in the habit of letting development partners view their source but not publish or modify it, and then there's software like UW Pico that have licenses that allow viewing by the general public but not modification.
Restrictive in that it controls how you must license derivative works and release source code. It imposes an ideology on others.
> This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
No, really, it's absolutely nothing like saying that, and if you care about free software (however defined, but in particular along the lines RMS endorses), you should stop using such a fantastically stupid analogy.
If I had to guess, I would suspect that your real issue is that you do not find the things being restricted to be comparable (i.e., human life/will vs. the use of software), rather than believing that the comparison is somehow invalid for other reasons.
Second of all, it is highly debated wheter the restrictions imposed by the GPL are a worthwhile tradeoff; while noone in their right mind claims anybody has a right to own slaves...
And lastly, by comparing the GPL to laws against slavery you are trying to evoke certain associations, much like stallman uses the word swindle instead of kindle -- those are just cheap tricks that distract and make fruitful discussions hard.
(Incidentally, this is comparable to restricting the freedom to enslave; it is a restriction on restriction.)
If you think the GPL somehow "imposes an ideology on others" but literally any other license does not, I am curious as to how. (Hint: a license cannot "impose an ideology"; if you do not agree, you are free to avoid it and stick with BSD code, or whatever else might suit your fancy.)
Your options are at least as:
1) acquire a licence of some commercial library, 2) use library with different open source licence, 3) develop your own library.
Your options there are similar, acquire a license for a commercial book (that you like), hit Project Gutenberg for an open source book, or write your own book...
You lose your rights to your code if any of your code includes GPL code. Many people who write code necessarily avoid the GPL because of this.
We need a hotkey for that one.
That actually isn't true.
> You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to anyone who comes into possession of a copy.
You are required to distribute it under GPL v3. I don't know enough legalese to determine if distributing the modifications alone as a parallel license is allowed.
Distributing binaries with mixed sources is where it gets hairy.
They do. Because at current, corporations (aka private prisons) are allowed to own slaves, but I as an individual am not. We can either increase freedom by banning anyone from owning slaves or increase freedom by allowing anyone to own slaves.
Instead of talking about the post, we're doing the lazy "and what's up with the GPL?" comedy bit.
The only difference for me, is that at the time (when I participated in these on /.) I was young, full of energy to spend on idealisms, and thought everything was black or white. Nowadays, I just chuckle reading how people get their panties in a bunch (for some reason, I like this English phrase) instead of using the tools that comply with whatever license they like.
About the second quote: > "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." Yes, I also see this as a weak argument, but to be fear he is saying "I think issues like this are less important than the injustice of the Swindle." pointing to a pdf titled ebooks.pdf which is not Swindle specific.
If I go outside, I lose all my rights! I can't kill anyone, steal from people, or fire a weapon intro crowds. I am not even allowed to wave a knife around, or stab anyone. Its completely unfair, and people have the gall to claim that I live in a free country. Its the most restrictive country out there!
And parks. They have the most restrictions I know. I can't put it on fire, use it as a garbage dump, or as a dumping ground for my killing sprees. How dare the government spend tax money on parks and claim its for public use. Public use?!? I just happen to walk in there and I get all this restrictions put on me.
(I think "one of the most restrictive licenses out there" is a tad over-exaggerated, but then, anyone is allowed to their view about restrictions...)
Restricting and Shafting Customers: I have never had a problem with my kindle or any other media from Amazon. If I ever do I'm sure I can find an alternative source in a matter of minutes.
Censorship: They are Amazon's servers and it is their right to enforce their rules on them. If Wikileaks believes that they were unlawfully cut off then they should take Amazon to court.
Exploiting workers mercilessly: good luck finding a retailer that has not done this at some point. This is an unfortunate reality as far as I am concerned and while I support fighting for better worker's conditions, I see no reason that refusing to buy through Amazon helps the problem.
Shafting others in the publishing world: I'm not a publisher, their industry is none of my concern. If Amazon is so bad for them then I'm sure there is another way they can sell their books.
Dodging Taxes: The government should close tax loopholes. I don't blame Amazon for being competitive. If it's legal it's fair as far as I'm concerned.
Other reasons: These all seem to be trivial to me though I don't feel like typing out the reasons why.
I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me.
"I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me."
I had a problem with Amazon once, they repeatedly messed up a delivery. I emailed Jeff Bezos, got a call the next day from his office and my problem was solved.
In ten years Stallman will be telling us not to buy from Amazon because they use robots instead of human labor.
Even then, they're cutting staff by increasing the number of self-checkout lanes. You still have to have somebody supervising, but you can just have one person watching 6-8 lanes.
At my local Walmart, the self-checkout is far more convenient than the regular lanes. They have more self-checkout lanes open than regular lanes, and people tend to scan their stuff and get out much faster than the cashiers would (seriously, the regular lanes move so slow...). I never use the regular lanes anymore, because they're always so busy compared to the self-checkouts.
I think the main thing holding Walmart back from further mechanization is that their aisles still have to be human-traversable. Amazon can use really efficient layouts when converting their warehouses to 100% machine-stocked because then there will be no reason for a human to ever walk down the aisles. At Walmart, customers still have to make their way through the aisles, and they have to be laid out to a) allow humans to walk through and take stuff off the shelves and b) arrange items in order to maximize purchases (e.g. put the milk in the back, impulse items at the checkouts, etc.).
and you're back. Just because somebody picks abrasive plays-on-words doesn't make their rhetoric any less rational. Unpalatable and annoying, yes, but that's got nothing to do with the argument structure and statements themselves.
...Frankly, I'd prefer more rationality from Richard Trollman. ;-)
Made-up names can be done with a wink-and-a-nod when punching up for great effect ("We had particular issues integrating with a vendor who we won't name but are a bit fruity--we'll call them Orange for the sake of comparison"), but usually it's done by people who aren't particularly bright.
At the same time, there is kind of an open question as to how much power a name has. If we only ever use the proper trademarks for these folks, are we not always granting them a certain amount of legitimacy and respect?
Amazon and Kindle are legitimate whether Stallman likes them or not. And I don't think—given the tone of the rest of the article—that anyone would confuse using the proper name of the product in question as respect.
Your expectations of Stallman are far too high...
Or are you saying that although many of the points are interesting, point 37 is irrational, therefore the entire thing--points 1 though n--is tainted?
- Non-ethical corporate compliance with surveillance activities.
- Pay-for-placement allegations. (Especially interesting given recent lawsuit for ratings spam.)
- Warehouse worker treatment.
- Monopolistic pricing power, particularly against small publishers. (Also ironic, as Amazon has given self-publishers a great platform.)
Note that this is just a list of allegations: this isn't a particularly investigative piece. (Though several have been linked and/or published elsewhere.)
Less valid arguments/rhetoric include:
- Calling the Kindle a Swindle. (Cute, but I can't take your argument as a serious, objective view.)
- Broad "freedom" arguments about file formats (PDF, MP3) and rights associated with same not originating with Amazon.
- Auto-update as a "back-door".
- Hosted content vs. owned content and the pros and cons therein.
- Workers "walk all day under the orders of a computer". (Like Uber drivers drive all day under the orders of a computer?)
- General competitiveness against bookstores and differences in business models.
So I'm saying that Stallman makes N interesting points (albeit without much in the way of reasoning), another N points I find to be logically unsound, and that combination of factors lead to an overall "article" that isn't very impactful.
The interesting points are still interesting.
My conjecture is that if you are inclined to agree with someone’s negative point of view, rhetorical tricks like insulting nicknames will be well-received and will help frame the idea emotionally. But if you already disagree with someone, you’ll be even more annoyed by arguments that aren’t really arguments at all.
My guess is that his nicknames won’t pay well to this audience, and also that they do better in some places than others. For example, blog post titles are usually so bad that people have very low expectations.
“The Great Kindle Swindle” would probably fly as a post title, while calling the device an Amazon Swindle repeatedly might not.
There's no double standard in my view. Calling it that in a persuasive essay about why you should avoid the TRS-80 is similarly childish and imprudent.
> My conjecture is that if you are inclined to agree with someone’s negative point of view, rhetorical tricks like insulting nicknames will be well-received and will help frame the idea emotionally.
Almost certainly so. But this is clearly framed as a persuasive essay.
Edit: In much the same way that closed source software denies freedom. What I mean to say, is he has a reputation that might make things like rational argument more difficult.
All of the tech giants (Apple/Google/MS/Facebook/etc.) are as shady as the Amazon described here on a regular basis even when it's completely unnecessary, unfortunately. Amazon has drawn a lot of bad publicity to itself due to the poor treatment of its blue collar workforce (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641184 ), but I can't imagine the rest of the big players being any better... Only difference is that due to the nature of its operation, Amazon is forced to operate its sweatshops in U.S. soil.
And he is correct: for instance, if you replace the names for things that your audience uses with your own hostile epithets that insert the conclusion of your arguments into the names you use for the things they refer to, you will have no debate at all, because the only audience that will bother to pay attention to you is the audience that already agreed with your conclusion when they encountered your argument.
> Stallman's limitation in this regard is that he's not a marketing genius, and lacks the funds to hire one, so he's forced to resort to clunky puns like 'Swindle'.
If the FSF can't afford to hire someone even modestly capable in the realm of communication and advocacy to advise its public faces, including its President, on their public advocacy efforts, maybe it ought to close up shop as an advocacy organization.
Facebook slightly relaxed its policy of requiring accounts to carry people's real names, under pressure from cross-dressers. The company feared they would leave the site, and then it would be unable to do drag net surveillance.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.html
I sometimes make a point of saying "copy prevention" rather than "copy protection," or "digital restrictions management" rather than "digital rights management," but I don't go for stuff like "Swindle" or "Losedows."
SaaSS and SaaS: "... the term “Software as a Service” doesn't explain why the practice is bad. So we coined the term “Service as a Software Substitute”, which defines the bad practice more clearly and says what is bad about it"
Bare in mind the FSF is poor, it doesn't have a marketing department behind.
If he wants me to use GPL3 I'll take it under advisement. If he wants to tell me where to buy toothpaste I won't.
I'm a fan of outsiders, the 60s, the whole deal. I love the whole idea of Stallman. I want more Stallmans! I also disagree with nearly everything he says while agreeing almost completely with the results he seeks to achieve.
But posts like this pain me regardless of the source.
And as for Amazon reducing the price of books from publishers, this quantitatively has shown they will sell more and make more money despite the lower price tag.
Yeah RMS is already considerably crazy for most readers, adding clearly false claims as references doesn't help.
If they actually thought it was tampered with it seems like the correct approach would have been to keep quiet and then do a forensic tear down of the entire thing to find it. There are plenty of people who would be more than willing to take a look at what could potentially be a real TAO intercept device.
Reminds me of #BadBIOS
Edit: That said, I think posts like these are necessary so that consumers can make the sort of informed decisions they need to make regarding whom they purchase from.
reminds me of this College Humor video:
Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms.
I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google:
* Distributes books with restrictive licenses (Google Play Books)
* Sells online music with restrictive terms (Google Play Music)
* Can remotely delete content (Yes, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Andr... )
* Can force auto updates (Yes you can disable updates to chrome, but not the google update client https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies )
* Google's cloud is even more restrictive than Amazon's on content, and their TOS gives you no recourse.
Apple likewise does much the same thing (except they don't have a public cloud offering).
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...
> "Amazon quit ALEC after public pressure in May 2012, but I am sure it still supports the same nasty policies and is waiting for a new tool to achieve them."
Seriously? Come on.
Corporate membership in an organization whose purpose is to impose market and private mechanisms on whole populations by writing these into state and local law (this is precisely what ALEC does) should be interpreted as an irrevocable announcement that the management of the corporation does in fact endorse imposing its interests on whole populations using state and local law.
Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time, so its leaving can't be construed as a change of perspective on the imposition of legislation as a business strategy. At most you can say that Amazon's execs decided that the costs of openly associating with those aims were high enough to end open association.
ALEC isn't some super nefarious group, but I do understand it was the target of three minutes of internet hate, so people seem to ascribe some super evil to its intents.
That's a ridiculous reading of what I wrote. I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon. This fairly suggests the same people still support the aims and work of the group, which is to spam state laws and impose market and private structures on entire populations.
You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group.
Silly.
> "Amazon left ALEC but did not also replace its leadership at the same time"
Amazon's leadership includes Jeff Bezos. Apple's leadership included Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
In fact, what you said first mirrors what you just said:
> "I said, effectively, that the same people who joined Amazon to ALEC are the same people who still run Amazon."
The leadership of Apple is still mainly in place as well. Should they all be gotten rid of? Or is there just a specific list of people who should be dumped?
> "You also ridiculously scoff at the idea that ALEC membership presents any problems or costs, even though Amazon itself left the group."
No, I didn't in any way say that. I just said they weren't "super nefarious". Amazon left ALEC precisely because they determined it was presenting a problem.
> "Then you completely ignored ALEC's purpose as I accurately described it."
In what way? By saying their weren't "super nefarious"? I guess you think they are "super nefarious", but I just think they're sub-optimal.
Let me help: I indicated that a corporate culture exists that openly accepted and endorsed what ALEC does, which necessarily indicates that said culture is capable of accepting and endorsing the imposition of private and market structures on entire populations by writing and passing state laws to do so. That is exactly what ALEC does.
Amazon's reversal of a decision to join ALEC without a concomitant reversal or update of that same corporate culture should not be read as a repudiation of that organization's aims and goals.
I think you're scoffing in the wrong direction: Amazon conducts itself repeatedly as antagonistic to regulation and taxation in every way and just about as intensely as a corporation can. The idea that they really don't want their business aims written into state law just because they backed away from ALEC fails every test of plausibility. They're the same boardroom. They act in their own interest exclusively. It's far more plausible that they saw that being an ALEC member (and taking the public relations costs associated with that) wasn't necessary to benefit from what ALEC does on behalf of business interests generally.
Take some random person and say they use to be a member of some bad organization. Let's pick the WBC (but you can pick many others). Now, say they quit, not because of a change of heart, but because of political pressure that was costing them money. Is this someone you would consider a decent person? I wouldn't.
And the WBC? Come on. ALEC is nothing like that.
Substitute any group where you feelings for them approaches Stallman's feelings about ALEC. The actual group picked is irrelevant to the argument.
You should probably mention that it was (Tor dev) Jacob Appelbaum's laptop, and that even he thinks it stopped there to be "fitted".
You only need to make a good point once. Adding additional lesser points just weakens it. A fair few dubious and ridiculous claims here, same sort of claims can be made about any multi-national. No smoking gun here.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...
it's nothing corporations haven't been doing since the idea of legally protected business groups posing as faux individuals was invented. But it still doesn't make it not a really bad idea for any half-hearted attempt at a representative democracy.
It doesn't take a genius to realize the impact that tax dollars returned to your community be it town, state or country, have at a least a chance of having a positive impact on your life. Of course, the devil's advocate would say that getting consumer goods for less has a direct positive impact on my life. That's probably pretty debatable though.
Pretty sure there's bigger fish to fry, which makes me wonder what personal agenda the author is pursuing here.
I find this amusing, music CDs don't give you a whole lot of freedom, considering the CD itself will eventually stop working (whether due to time or scratches) and they employ copy protection methods.
Lesser evil?
So to answer your question, if RMS was a staunch anti-terrorist advocate, and it was guaranteed that a percentage of organic farmers were terrorists, then it would be perfectly reasonable to pose that question.
I'm not sure B&N is so much better. I haven't heard anything either way. I usually look up books and review on Amazon, then buy them elsewhere.
I do like that they are trying to make all e-books cost less than $10.
People will always drive cars because convenience has a higher priority then polluting the world.
People will always buy from amazon because of convenience.
There's no point in justifying it. Most people just don't care...