How many of you guys pay a cable company or Dish/Direct for television programming? But most of you can put up an antenna and get at least your local TV stations for free.
(Type your address into
www.antennaweb.org to see a list)
Amazon is like the cable/sat companies. They package and DELIVER content created by other people in a easy-to-use package.
Want to know something? Amazon shows different prices for the same item to different people based on if you have an account or not. When you try to find a specific item - the one from the vendor you see is NOT the lowest price.
Example: I was looking for some nighttime allergy pills and Amazon showed me a 3-box pack for $22. I then started searching on Amazon starting with Tylenol and getting more specific to "nighttime" and "allergy" and found a different merchant selling the same thing for $18. But I had to come at Amazon with vague searches to narrow down to what I want.
What was going on? The merchant selling the item for $22 was probably offering Amazon $0.50 for the link and the merchant with the lower price offered something less.
Nothing illegal or wrong, just the business model.