Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
This is a very silly discussion. Amazon are a private corporation; they are perfectly at liberty to choose to sell or not to sell any product they want, and certainly don't have to justify their decisions to anybody. Nobody has a "right" to have their book sold by Amazon.
|
Harry, I'm late to the discussion, but you are wrong in this instance. I agree that Amazon has a right to sell/not sell what it wants, but because it is so dominant in the marketplace, it has an obligation to be clear as to what it will/will not sell. If this was Borders making the decision, you would be 100% correct, but because it is Amazon, you are not.
Actually, censorship like this, like Amazon's recent lending program that automatically opts everyone in and was implemented secretly during the holidays when no one was watching, are excellent reasons why everyone should buy a Kindle and make Amazon even more arrogant.
In the end, the relationship between Amazon and its vendors is supposed to be governed by contractual terms that limit what each party can unilaterally do to affect the realtionship. From what I see, the terms are binding on everyone but Amazon and are so fluid at Amazon's whim that they are less contractual terms than terms of enslavement.