[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by delphin

Anytime you have the unfortunate combination of the largest player in the market also having the sleaziest most anti-competitive business practices, then I think that is worth pointing out.

Only in your fevered imagination are they evil.


You mentioned the comparison to the Betamax/VHS and Nintendo/Sega wars.

I agree, Amazon clearly learned something from these . . .

They learned that since electronically marketed content over the Internet does not suffer from the stocking nightmares that plagued retailers of physical tapes and game cartridges, and that since text on the printed page has no natural 'format incompatibility' issues, then they had better dream up some crappy artificial restrictions really quick.

By locking users into effectively ONE artificially created "e-book cartridge" format, and creating players that can only play that "cartridge", they do indeed hope that they can play the same kind of "Big Guy Squashs the Competition" games in this challenging new Internet market, where normally the trend towards interchangeability of formats would not allow this.

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Sorry, but incompatible formats aren't Amazon's fault, as much as you seem to want to blame them for it while, say, absolving B&N, Apple, Kobo, etc.

Borders is one example of a victim of Amazons strategy. Not having a e-book reader of their own initially, it would have been natural for Borders to tap into the large base of Kindle owners by offering Kindle compatible titles as well as those for Sony or Kobo readers. But they couldn't sell "Kindle Cartrage" compatible books without getting sued by Amazon.


Now Borders is going through bankruptcy. So sad. I'm sure Amazon is heartbroken over that.

Borders did not declare bankruptcy because of e-books. They've been bleeding money for at least five years, with a large part of the problem being that so many of their stores are located within 1/2 mile of B&N's stores.

Thanks for pointing out this comparison.

Personally, when I saw the games Amazon was playing with the Kindle, it did cause me to take a closer look at ALL their business practices including -

- The "one click shopping" lawsuit which was utter garbage. Who are they kidding? The idea that keeping track of a few cookies to know that someone has already logged in is something so obvious a chimpanzee could come up with it (by way of comparison, fishing out termites with a stick is much LESS obvious).

This would be a better claim if Amazon hadn't won their suit. You may disagree with US patent law, but Amazon played by the rules.

- When dozens of states pointed out that maybe, just maybe, since Amazon had technically BEEN GUILTY OF VIOLATING THE LAW by not collecting taxes for quite some time, maybe, just perhaps, it might be nice if they would collect those taxes in the future (like B&N, Target.com, and virtually EVERY OTHER NATIONAL ONLINE RETAILER) AMAZON RESPONDED WITH THREATS AND EXTORTION, by threatening to shut down all affiliate Internet businesses in those states.

Of course, as a matter of constitutional law, Amazon is absolutely correct, as every court that has considered this matter has also found. You should do some basic factual research before making stuff up.

Amazon's excuse for this reprehensible behavior was that it wasn't really blackmail at all. No it was just that having affiliates who were unquestionably physically doing business in those states was making it so crystal-clear that Amazon was breaking the law that even paid-off conservative pro-business judges probably couldn't rescue them. So by just closing down those affiliates everything would be peachy keen again.

Not what happened.

The only problem with this argument is that our legal system isn't golf and doesn't generally give 'mulligans'. If you catch someone picking your pocket, they don't just get to give you back your wallet and call it even.

If I had been California or any of the other states, I would have simply replied, "That's fine Amazon, you do that, you go ahead with your threat to shut down all affiliates in our state, but since you ALREADY BROKE THE LAW by not collecting these taxes in the past, we are going to fine you, let's just say TEN TIMES THE AMOUNT OF THOSE PAST UNCOLLECTED TAXES. Or roughly speaking A FEW BILLION DOLLARS.

Except that they didn't break the law, as even cursory research would teach you. But, yes, that would take away from your quality Amazon-hatin' time.

Are you a former Border's employee?