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> "Amazon cut off service to Wikileaks, claiming that whistleblowing violates its terms of service. It had no need to go to court to prove this, because if you rent a server from Amazon, you have no rights."
I find it highly amusing that RMS doesn't seem to agree with Amazon's restrictive ToS agreement but his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there. If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too. Funny that.
> "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events."
Replace 'Swindle' with 'Kindle' then with any ebook reader ever. I doubt there is anything about the Kindle in particular, over other ereaders, that causes people to remember less. This is attacking Amazon with everything and hoping some of it sticks.
I'm trying not to defend Amazon but RMS's arguments are painfully bad at times.
> "his GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there."
Of "open source" licenses perhaps. In the grand scheme of software licenses, it is pretty fucking permissive. Most software licenses don't let you anywhere near the source, don't let you modify the code, and don't let you redistribute or share the software.
Restrictive in that it prevents you from fucking people over. This is like saying laws against slavery restrict freedom (freedom to own slaves).
Sweet fucking Jesus, do we need to talk about the GPL here? It's an utter derail here, and the way comments are ranked here means that the top pages of this thread are going to be the same hashing out of pros and cons and it's incredibly tedious.
"GNU software license is one of the most restrictive licenses out there"
But those restrictions are in place to protect your freedom!
You'd have to go to court to actually enforce that though. If the law didn't give you the right to license your software that way, there's nothing you could do about it. Amazon gets to make up their own rules and enforce them on their own hardware, even if there's no law against what you're doing.
"If I include a GNU licensed library I accidentally lose all my rights too" That's not true. You can't lose a right that you never had. You could argue the GNU license it's not fear, then write an article titled "Reasons why not to use GNU license".
GNU restriction is in favor of the end user, to make them free to know what they are executing(oversimplifying). RSM's point is always about the freedom of the end user.
About the second quote: > "A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events." Yes, I also see this as a weak argument, but to be fear he is saying "I think issues like this are less important than the injustice of the Swindle." pointing to a pdf titled ebooks.pdf which is not Swindle specific.
Your thinking is short-sighted and selfish. Tell us what it says about the GPL that GNU tools are still actively used and maintained decades later?
lose all my rights? Now lets follow that logic a bit.
If I go outside, I lose all my rights! I can't kill anyone, steal from people, or fire a weapon intro crowds. I am not even allowed to wave a knife around, or stab anyone. Its completely unfair, and people have the gall to claim that I live in a free country. Its the most restrictive country out there!
And parks. They have the most restrictions I know. I can't put it on fire, use it as a garbage dump, or as a dumping ground for my killing sprees. How dare the government spend tax money on parks and claim its for public use. Public use?!? I just happen to walk in there and I get all this restrictions put on me.
(I think "one of the most restrictive licenses out there" is a tad over-exaggerated, but then, anyone is allowed to their view about restrictions...)
And this is why nobody takes anti-GPL zealots seriously.
Sabotaging Customers: I have no reason to believe that they would ever sabotage me.
Restricting and Shafting Customers: I have never had a problem with my kindle or any other media from Amazon. If I ever do I'm sure I can find an alternative source in a matter of minutes.
Censorship: They are Amazon's servers and it is their right to enforce their rules on them. If Wikileaks believes that they were unlawfully cut off then they should take Amazon to court.
Exploiting workers mercilessly: good luck finding a retailer that has not done this at some point. This is an unfortunate reality as far as I am concerned and while I support fighting for better worker's conditions, I see no reason that refusing to buy through Amazon helps the problem.
Shafting others in the publishing world: I'm not a publisher, their industry is none of my concern. If Amazon is so bad for them then I'm sure there is another way they can sell their books.
Dodging Taxes: The government should close tax loopholes. I don't blame Amazon for being competitive. If it's legal it's fair as far as I'm concerned.
Other reasons: These all seem to be trivial to me though I don't feel like typing out the reasons why.
I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me.
"Sabotaging Customers:"
"I've never had a problem with Amazon particularly and this article seems rather strange to me."
I had a problem with Amazon once, they repeatedly messed up a delivery. I emailed Jeff Bezos, got a call the next day from his office and my problem was solved.
Further, Amazon's solution to workers is going to be robotics: the elimination of as many manual labor jobs as possible. This is something Walmart will not be able to pull off easily because their workers are out front, higher profile; Amazon's workers can disappear through firings and few will notice. At a minimum Amazon is going to leverage robotics to drastically stretch (reduce) how many workers they have per dollar of sales.
In ten years Stallman will be telling us not to buy from Amazon because they use robots instead of human labor.
Stallman raises some interesting points, but calling the Kindle a "Swindle" doesn't make for a very rational argument.
It's very childish, which is sadly a recurring occurrence with Stallman at times.
All of the tech giants (Apple/Google/MS/Facebook/etc.) are as shady as the Amazon described here on a regular basis even when it's completely unnecessary, unfortunately. Amazon has drawn a lot of bad publicity to itself due to the poor treatment of its blue collar workforce (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3641184 ), but I can't imagine the rest of the big players being any better... Only difference is that due to the nature of its operation, Amazon is forced to operate its sweatshops in U.S. soil.
Classic RMS: going out of his way to alienate people who might've ended up allies if not for his godawful tone, and then pitching a hissy fit about how the public isn't following him.
So, are you saying that Stallman makes points 1, 2, 3, ... n, and many are interesting, but point 37 is irrational?
Or are you saying that although many of the points are interesting, point 37 is irrational, therefore the entire thing--points 1 though n--is tainted?
I think it's counterproductive, but this page explains his rationale:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.html
I sometimes make a point of saying "copy prevention" rather than "copy protection," or "digital restrictions management" rather than "digital rights management," but I don't go for stuff like "Swindle" or "Losedows."
Stallman strongly believes that the language you use in large part frames the debate you have. This belief is supported by a century of marketing research. Stallman's limitation in this regard is that he's not a marketing genius, and lacks the funds to hire one, so he's forced to resort to clunky puns like 'Swindle'.
s/Swindle/Kindle/g
and you're back. Just because somebody picks abrasive plays-on-words doesn't make their rhetoric any less rational. Unpalatable and annoying, yes, but that's got nothing to do with the argument structure and statements themselves.
Reminds me https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
SaaSS and SaaS: "... the term “Software as a Service” doesn't explain why the practice is bad. So we coined the term “Service as a Software Substitute”, which defines the bad practice more clearly and says what is bad about it"
Bare in mind the FSF is poor, it doesn't have a marketing department behind.
Just being Stallman doesn't make for a rational argument.
Edit: In much the same way that closed source software denies freedom. What I mean to say, is he has a reputation that might make things like rational argument more difficult.
I've only seen rants of this tone, format and length from bona-fide crazy people. There's a line here and I hope stays on the side where I can continue to respect him.
If he wants me to use GPL3 I'll take it under advisement. If he wants to tell me where to buy toothpaste I won't.
I'm a fan of outsiders, the 60s, the whole deal. I love the whole idea of Stallman. I want more Stallmans! I also disagree with nearly everything he says while agreeing almost completely with the results he seeks to achieve.
But posts like this pain me regardless of the source.
That whole thing about the tor keyboard intercept by nsa was never proven afaik. The common conclusion is that they wouldn't be so stupid as to let the customer tracking show the keyboard passing through them so they can bug it.
And as for Amazon reducing the price of books from publishers, this quantitatively has shown they will sell more and make more money despite the lower price tag.
I'm finding there are a growing number of very good reasons to never buy anything from anybody. Some companies I boycott myself, for some of those reasons, but I can't fault anybody on their choices of whether or not to participate in any boycotts.
Edit: That said, I think posts like these are necessary so that consumers can make the sort of informed decisions they need to make regarding whom they purchase from.
Amazon in all honesty likely had zero choice but to comply with the NSA. Also it might not even be the one complying, but rather the shipping carrier.
Actually a lot of what Stallman is complaining about boils down to Amazon is a company that complies with US based court orders, and sells things on publisher terms.
I really don't see much that doesn't apply to say Google:
* Distributes books with restrictive licenses (Google Play Books)
* Sells online music with restrictive terms (Google Play Music)
* Can remotely delete content (Yes, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-Google-Applications-Andr... )
* Can force auto updates (Yes you can disable updates to chrome, but not the google update client https://support.google.com/installer/answer/146164#Policies )
* Google's cloud is even more restrictive than Amazon's on content, and their TOS gives you no recourse.
Apple likewise does much the same thing (except they don't have a public cloud offering).
So when will RMS have all of his titles pulled from Amazon?
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dst...
> "Amazon was a member of ALEC...."
> "Amazon quit ALEC after public pressure in May 2012, but I am sure it still supports the same nasty policies and is waiting for a new tool to achieve them."
Seriously? Come on.
Regarding the keyboard and "NSA" --- recall, NSA's entire involvement in this story is a shipment tracker that showed a package traversing Alexandria, VA --- here's the previous thread:
"A study found that people who read novels on the Amazon Swindle remember less of the events."
You only need to make a good point once. Adding additional lesser points just weakens it. A fair few dubious and ridiculous claims here, same sort of claims can be made about any multi-national. No smoking gun here.
Amazon is charging sales tax in more and more states as they expand their services. They're currently collecting sales taxes in 24 states [0].
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...
Small point: tax avoidance is legal and sensible. Would anyone or any company seek to maximize its tax bill bar bizarre circumstances? Rather, the reverse. If there's a devastating avoidance loophole it's the job of government to redraft the regulations or let the courts decide.
Putting in "Swindle" instead of "Kindle" is painfully childish.
I find the tax evasion argument the most damning. But it's not just Amazon, it's any sizable American corporation in 2015. You'd be irresponsible to your shareholders for not setting up a tax haven corp in Ireland or some other mostly legal country and funnel your profits through there.
it's nothing corporations haven't been doing since the idea of legally protected business groups posing as faux individuals was invented. But it still doesn't make it not a really bad idea for any half-hearted attempt at a representative democracy.
It doesn't take a genius to realize the impact that tax dollars returned to your community be it town, state or country, have at a least a chance of having a positive impact on your life. Of course, the devil's advocate would say that getting consumer goods for less has a direct positive impact on my life. That's probably pretty debatable though.
This is not exactly nuanced. It reads like he disliked Amazon for some reason and then went out and googled around for a while to come up with more reasons to support that belief. Personally, I like Amazon... so of course I'm just looking for reasons to dismiss his arguments without considering their merit. Ha!
Man, that guy is a curmudgeon. But I love that he exists even though I don't really worry about any of that stuff (who has the time or energy?).
The villain of the times is a company that delivers books to me better than any company ever has?
Pretty sure there's bigger fish to fry, which makes me wonder what personal agenda the author is pursuing here.
> "Amazon's on-line music "sales" have some of the same problems as the ebooks: users are required to identify themselves and sign a contract that denies them the freedoms they would have with a CD."
I find this amusing, music CDs don't give you a whole lot of freedom, considering the CD itself will eventually stop working (whether due to time or scratches) and they employ copy protection methods.
Lesser evil?
It's awfully convenient, though.
RMS is supporting buying the book directly from the publisher. But what if they are running IIS on the server, or Flash on their front-end? Doesn't this mean that he is recommending the use of proprietary software?
Some of these arguments are just kind of weird, but I did read the study by the undercover worker about working conditions at their distribution plants. They claimed that they are given an impossible workload, are routinely verbally abused, they get fired for almost any infraction, and they are paid poorly for the privilege.
I'm not sure B&N is so much better. I haven't heard anything either way. I usually look up books and review on Amazon, then buy them elsewhere.
I do like that they are trying to make all e-books cost less than $10.
most of what he is saying... could apply to any corporation. If the government wants to inspect mail and possibly install malware, for instance, that could happen with any vendor, amazon or manufacturer, as they wont have a choice presented to them. the purpose of the corporation is to make money at the expense of the customer, vendors and anyone else... why pick of amazon alone?
Don't drive cars because they pollute the world.
People will always drive cars because convenience has a higher priority then polluting the world.
People will always buy from amazon because of convenience.
There's no point in justifying it. Most people just don't care...
I'm looking forward to how his, "Reasons not to use Uber, Sidecar, and Lyft" will be received around here.
Some of those publishers deserve to be bullied by Amazon.