Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew H.
Only in your fevered imagination are they evil . . .
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Sorry, this isn't Fox news, you can't just call every embarrassing truth that a guest brings up a lie, then respond with 5 or 6 things that ARE outright lies, then cut to commercial.
Actually it's pretty clear that Amazon IS breaking the law.
It's true that there have always been constitutional challenges to taxing mail order transactions, but the settled law in the matter has long been that if a merchant actively does business within the state, then they are under that states legal jurisdiction as far as the requirement to collect sales taxes, and must do so, even if their headquarters is located elsewhere.
Aside from millions of Internet transactions, and aggressive television advertising in virtually every state, Amazons partnership with 'affiliates' unquestionably qualify them as 'doing business' within the geographical jurisdictions of the states seeking to enforce the collection of sales tax.
Recognizing the truth in this, Amazon did indeed commit extortion by threatening to shut down these affiliates, in fact
Hawaii's and California's taxation bills were vetoed by the states' governors who caved in to Amazon's extortion.
Here you can see the discussion on an Amazon affiliate blog about the smackdown
Fortunately, with the change in leadership in California at least, they are looking at this again.
So let me repeat my earlier point -
To the states considering action on this issue -
Don't play into Amazon's hands by trying to pass a law to clarify matters looking forward.
Some may feel that this is the reasonable thing to do perhaps, but Amazon has demonstrated by past actions that it has no interest in being fair or reasonable, so they in no way deserve this consideration.
The legislature or governor should just pass a resolution directing the state attorney general to look into this as a willful criminal infraction of your states EXISTING TAXATION STATUTES and move forward on that basis.
That way you can hit Amazon with 10x punitive damages on the taxes that they ALREADY HAVE FAILED TO COLLECT without creating ex post facto issues.
For what it's worth, I agree that Borders had other systemic problems, but their failure to make quicker inroads in the e-book field is often listed as one of the factors contributing to their failure, and their inability to sell into the Kindle market was a factor in this.
Of course why should Amazon have helped them by allowing Borders to sell into the Kindle market?
Why? - because that's the way the internet is
supposed to work.
Why? - because that's the way it
DOES work for everyone else.
Amazon's is willing to benefit from the open Internet in thousands of ways but doesn't seem to be willing to embrace open standards themselves.
How would Amazon like it if Target stores made it so all computers
they sold could never access amazon.com only target.com? Or Best Buy only allowing their PC's to shop bestbuy.com.
Shouldn't you need to buy a PC from Mark Zuckerberg to access facebook?
As to the fact that Kindle format is what is, so it's done, let's all just please get over it YADA, YADA, YADA.
FOR THE ONE MILLIONTH TIME - THIS IS NO EXCUSE WHATSOEVER.
Sony, did not have EPUB either, but now they do.
Google changed 3 MILLION BOOKS TO EPUB.
Barnes & Nobel changed to EPUB.
Kobo changed to EPUB.
So I'm guessing, that if Amazon wasn't intent on PLAYING SLEAZY ANTI-COMPETITIVE GAMES, then they probably would have supported the change to an open EPUB standard as well on the Kindle 3.