Thread: How to get around corporate greed at Amazon?
View Single Post
Old 10-01-2009, 01:24 PM   #19
=X=
Wizard
=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.=X= ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
=X='s Avatar
 
Posts: 3,671
Karma: 12205348
Join Date: Mar 2008
Device: Galaxy S, Nook w/CM7
Quote:
Originally Posted by hal_9000 View Post
no, true, nobody forced me to buy the amazon kindle. i "voluntarily" entered a monopoly, but that doesnt change the fact that its a monopoly. also, that's not the discussion as i understand it: it was in regard to the price of an ebook, not an edevice.

no, there is no law requiring i buy a ebook from amazon, but does there need to be such law for a monopoly? i'm no legal expert on monopoly, just a common consumer, but if there is only one entity that sells a particular product, how is that not a monopoly? could i, for example, open a website where i post downloadable software, such that the kindle can read epub files? no, why? because that would destroy amazon's file format monopoly. if you're right, and theres no monopoly, amazon would be perfectly fine with me doing that. sure, you're right, i could just buy the paperback or throw down another $300-400 for a sony ereader and commence to manually transfer ebooks into the device w/o whispernet, but then doesnt that defeat the purpose of the amazon edevice? wouldnt that be akin to not buying gas for my car anymore, and instead taking a bus (still gets me from point A to point B). i achieve the same result (get to read the book; get from point A to point B), but not the same means of achieving the result (via an amazon edevice; via car), which may or may not be critical to a consumer.

i'm not suggesting this is an amazon-only thing, its obviously a publisher thing too, but without amazon's exclusive file format, none of this would be an issue.
While one can argue that Amazon is a monopoly or not the example you give is just way off. You are confusing market control vs. close systems. There is no argument that the Kindle is closed but that does not make it a monopoly. By your definition SONY's LRX would be a monopoly, so would PS3, XBox are also monopolies because you cant play an XBox game on a PS3.

Now if you think Amazon is a monopoly on the book market I think your quite mistaken. You can walk into any book and buy any paperback the Kindle has to offer.

=X=
=X= is offline   Reply With Quote