stories about: "amazon"
Kindle Spam Is A Filter Issue, Not A Spam Issue
from the filter-away dept
Via Slashdot, we learn that spammers have discovered the ability to publish cheap "ebooks":Thousands of digital books, called ebooks, are being published through Amazon’s self-publishing system each month. Many are not written in the traditional sense.The article makes it sound like this is a big problem, calling it "the dark side" of self-publishing, but I don't get it. Assuming no one wants this crap, then it seems likely that Amazon will start to filter it out of any search results or top lists.
Instead, they are built using something known as Private Label Rights, or PLR content, which is information that can be bought very cheaply online then reformatted into a digital book.
These ebooks are listed for sale – often at 99 cents – alongside more traditional books on Amazon’s website, forcing readers to plow through many more titles to find what they want.
There is some slightly more legitimate concern about outright plagiarism, where some of these "spammers" are merely copying other books and then re-branding them and selling them as ebooks. But, once again, this seems like a filter problem more than anything else. In fact, I'm a bit surprised that Amazon doesn't do a basic check to make sure the content of an ebook hasn't already been offered by someone else, and do a further investigation if that's the case. Others have suggested that Amazon charge a small fee to upload a book, as that might prevent spammers from going crazy with such copies, and that could make sense as well. I just have trouble believing that this is such a serious "problem" that it can't easily be stopped.
Jeff Bezos On Innovation: Stubborn On Vision; Flexible On Details
from the nicely-done dept
For years, I've been fascinated by Jeff Bezos' ability to make big risky decisions for Amazon and stand up to intense investor pressure to go in a different direction. While everything may seem rosy at Amazon these days, for years, it was amazing to see just how much investor animosity there was towards some of Bezos' moves. For years -- quite by design -- the company focused on growth and expansion over profitability, earning complaints from investors. Then Amazon focused on expanding its free shipping program, which drew the ire of investors who thought it was costing the company too much. But Amazon stuck with these efforts and became the dominant player in the field. More recently, it's done things that left some investors scratching their heads, such as the whole Amazon Web Services effort, and even the early Kindle effort -- and yet both have proven to be quite successful.Geekwire notes that at the latest Amazon shareholder meeting, Bezos got almost the exact opposite question from those he used to get concerning these sorts of things, from Evan Jacobs, questioning if Amazon wasn't taking enough risks. Bezos' answer is fantastic for anyone who thinks about innovation these days, and wants to make big bets, rather than go for the quick flip:
In a way, that is like the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten. First of all, I think we have gotten pretty lucky recently. You should anticipate a certain amount of failure. Our two big initiatives, AWS and Kindle — two big, clean-sheet initiatives — have worked out very well. Ninety-plus percent of the innovation at Amazon is incremental and critical and much less risky. We know how to open new product categories. We know how to open new geographies. That doesn’t mean that these things are guaranteed to work, but we have a lot of expertise and a lot of knowledge. We know how to open new fulfillment centers, whether to open one, where to locate it, how big to make it. All of these things based on our operating history are things that we can analyze quantitatively rather than to have to make intuitive judgments.That idea of willing to be misunderstood for a long time really has been the key to Amazon's success, and Bezos' ability to stand up to investors who regularly called for changes in strategy and to focus on the long-term has really paid off. In this age when "pivot" has become a buzzword in the startup community (there's even a whole conference on the subject), where companies completely shift strategies on whims, perhaps there's something to be said for seeing the long term game plan better than others, and sticking to it. Obviously, this doesn't mean being totally pigheaded if an idea isn't working, but Bezos' point is to be flexible on the details, but stay true to the ultimate vision you believe in. That's really, really tough for a lot of entrepreneurs to do, but it's a really important lesson to learn.
When you look at something like, go back in time when we started working on Kindle almost seven years ago…. There you just have to place a bet. If you place enough of those bets, and if you place them early enough, none of them are ever betting the company. By the time you are betting the company, it means you haven’t invented for too long.
If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company. AWS also started about six or seven years ago. We are planting more seeds right now, and it is too early to talk about them, but we are going to continue to plant seeds. And I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work. And, I am never concerned about that…. We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.
But. if you get to a point where you look at it and you say look, we are continuing invest a lot of money in this, and it’s not working and we have a bunch of other good businesses, and this is a hypothetical scenario, and we are going to give up on this. On the day you decide to give up on it, what happens? Your operating margins go up because you stopped investing in something that wasn’t working. Is that really such a bad day?
So, my mind never lets me get in a place where I think we can’t afford to take these bets, because the bad case never seems that bad to me. And, I think to have that point of view, requires a corporate culture that does a few things. I don’t think every company can do that, can take that point of view. A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, is that we are willing to invent. We are willing to think long-term. We start with the customer and work backwards. And, very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
I believe if you don’t have that set of things in your corporate culture, then you can’t do large-scale invention. You can do incremental invention, which is critically important for any company. But it is very difficult — if you are not willing to be misunderstood. People will misunderstand you.
Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?
But if you hold back and you say, ‘No, we believe in this vision,’ then you just stay heads down, stay focused and you build out your vision.
Filed Under: details, innovation, jeff bezos, risks, vision
Companies: amazon
Court: Buying A Personal Name As A Keyword For Advertising Is Not A Publicity Rights Violation
from the good-result,-bad-ruling dept
We've covered tons of lawsuits where companies were sued over claimed trademark infringement for buying ads based on trademarked keywords. While there are still some such lawsuits under way, for the most part, the courts have made it clear that just buying ads on a trademarked keyword is not a trademark violation. However, in the ever changing world of so-called "intellectual property" laws, things change all the time. We've been noting the dangerous rise of a hodgepodge of questionable state laws that create "publicity rights" for individuals, and now we've got a case where someone was sued for buying keyword advertising based on someone's name, with the plaintiff claiming that this was a privacy rights violation. The good news: the court didn't buy it and dismissed the lawsuit. The bad news, the court seemed confused and the reasoning isn't great. Eric Goldman explains:The legal novelty of the ruling makes it an important early precedent, but the opinion is not especially persuasive. To me, the judge seemed overwhelmed by both the challenging legal doctrines and technology at issue in this case. In response, the judge issued one of the most citation-free opinions of its length that I have ever seen. This is not a scholarly opinion, and that makes less likely to influence other courts. It also means that an appellate court will likely give this opinion relatively low deference.I'm sure we'll start to see more such lawsuits pretty soon, and hopefully some better, clearer rulings in response.
The fact that the court dismissed the lawsuit is, on its face, good news for both search engines and advertisers. However, I thought the judge's arguments were questionable and, at least at one crucial juncture, internally inconsistent. The ruling turned on a specific word in the Wisconsin publicity rights statute, and courts applying other statutes can easily distinguish this opinion if they want to rule for the plaintiffs. Therefore, this ruling could morph from a defense win into a plaintiff's friend depending on how future courts rely on and interpret it.
Filed Under: ads, keywords, publicity rights
Companies: amazon
We're Missing The Point Of The Cloud: It's Not Supposed To Be Locked To A Single Service
from the where-are-my-apis? dept
In the last few months now, we've had the launch of Amazon's, Google's and now Apple's "music locker" services. There are some key differences there, but all of them involve storing music collections in the so-called "cloud." But here's the thing: none of these actually match the promise of what "the cloud" is supposed to be. Rather, each involves online storage and lock-in to a particular vendor. I made this point back when Amazon launched its offering. I already back up all my (yes, legal and authorized) music via a mountable "cloud" drive using S3. Then I can access all of that music using any music player I want. With Amazon's and Google's offerings, the streaming only can occur via its own streaming service. In fact, the ultimate in ridiculousness was that I had to re-upload some songs to Amazon's music locker, rather than just point it at my S3 drive -- which is run by Amazon as well! At least with Apple's the focus seems to be syncing the music on various devices, but with Apple's control over the platform, it seems likely that for most people this still will effectively restrict usage to Apple applications.I absolutely understand why this is happening, and am sure that the labels would positively freak out if someone had offered a cloud service that you could point any application to. But, really, when we're talking about "the cloud" and it involves this kind of lockup, it's important to remember that we're really not seeing some of the key features that the whole concept of "the cloud" is supposed to enable. Yes, we're seeing the remote storage and the access from anywhere type features, but not the ability to access information and data with different services. And, of course, once you could access such info with different services, you could see some real innovation start to occur around that information, including unique services for sharing and combining playlists, and making music a lot more social. At some point that will come, but, until then, these offerings are nice, yet hardly demonstrate what the technology really could do if it were unshackled.
Filed Under: cloud, innovation, music, technology
Companies: amazon, apple, google
Bezos: Attempts To Collect State Sales Tax On Amazon Sales Is Unconstitutional
from the won't-stop-'em dept
For quite some time now, we've covered how various states have tried to avoid laws that say mail order companies don't need to collect sales tax in states where they have no staff (while individuals are supposed to self-declare and pay that tax, almost none do). The main target has been Amazon, with various states pushing to get Amazon to pay taxes anyway. Amazon has taken a hardline with many of these states, even announcing plans to move subsidiaries out of Texas if it kept on trying to collect sales tax because of those subsidiaries. The latest, found via Slashdot, is that Jeff Bezos is claiming that such attempts to collect sales tax are unconstitutional without Congressional approval:And in the U.S., the Constitution prohibits states from interfering in interstate commerce. And there was a Supreme Court case decades ago that clarified that businesses — it was mail-order at that time because the Internet did not exist — that mail-order companies could not be required to collect sales tax in states where they didn’t have what’s called “nexus.”This is, of course, entirely accurate. Of course, Bezos also points out that Amazon would be perfectly happy with Congress stepping in and creating a sales tax system that works across states. There's been an ongoing effort for years, called the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative, which tries to align all of the states and their sales tax practices, to avoid every company from having to follow 50 different sales tax laws. Bezos notes that Amazon would support such an initiative:
And that’s a very clear decision.
Our point of view on this is that we should simplify the sales tax system, and we’ve been consistent on this for about 10 years. It’s called the Streamlined Sales Tax Initiative. I think 22 or 23 states have signed onto it. Because the right way to fix this is with federal legislation. That’s where it can be fixed properly.This is actually a pretty big issue. It makes sense that companies shouldn't have to collect sales tax in states where they have no employees. Not only does it create a massive bureaucratic nightmare (especially for smaller e-commerce players), but it actually acts as disincentive to sell into those states. On top of that, the point of the sales tax is supposed to be about supporting the local infrastructure for those retailers (roads, and such). But if you have no local presence, there's a much weaker argument that such taxation is needed. Still, I have no doubt that eventually sales tax will be standardized at the federal level in some format or another, just because the government can't resist a chance to tax -- especially a tax that can be seen as regressive, like a sales tax.
Sales tax collection is very complicated. And, you know, we’re no different from big chains of retailers — they don’t collect sales taxes in states where they don’t have nexus, either. So everybody is following the same rules. And I don’t think our customers would say, “Why don’t you just optionally collect the tax? I know you’re not required to do it, but aw, go ahead.”
Filed Under: interstate commerce, jeff bezos, sales tax, states
Companies: amazon
Amazon Uses Steve Jobs Words Against Him In App Store Dispute
from the app-store-me dept
You may recall that Apple has been trying to convince the world that there can be only one "app store," first by suggesting it really means Apple Store and then by suing Amazon for its own app store. Amazon has now responded to the lawsuit by using Steve Jobs own words against him:In 2008 Apple launched its app store, which allows a consumer to view and instantly download apps for their Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and iPod. In press releases, Apple has claimed that its app store is "the largest application store in the world." In October 2010, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs called Apple's app store "the easiest-to-use, largest app store in the world, preloaded on every iPhone."That certainly sounds like Apple and Jobs admitting that the term is generic. To further support its own position, Amazon notes to some linguists as well:
The American Dialect Society, a leading group of U.S. linguists, recently voted "app" as the "Word of the Year" for 2010, noting that although the word "has been around for ages," it "really exploded in the last 12 months" with the "arrival of 'app stores' for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers." Indeed, the words "app store" are commonly used among many businesses competing in the app store market.It certainly looks like Apple may have a difficult job convincing anyone that app store is not generic.
Filed Under: app store, steve jobs, trademark
Companies: amazon, apple
Amazon Insists No Licenses Needed For Cloud Player, Google Thinking Of Skipping Licenses As Well
from the floodgates,-openning dept
When Amazon launched its cloud music streaming service a few weeks ago, the big question concerned whether or not it needed licenses to do so. It certainly did not have them. And there's a strong argument that it doesn't need them. After all, it was just letting people take music files they already had, and allowing them to store and stream them from the internet. Why should it require an extra license to let people listen to music they already have? However, we did worry that Amazon would simply cave in, rather than fight, as it wanted to remain on good terms with the record labels.Perhaps that's not the case, however. Amazon has sent a letter to the record labels, once again reiterating that it does not believe it needs licenses. On top of that, it points out that, so far, the Cloud Drive appears to be driving more sales of MP3s.
Cloud Drive is a general online storage service for all digital files, not unlike Google Docs, Microsoft SkyDrive and any number of other internet file back-up services. It’s your external hard-drive in the cloud. It requires a license from content owners no more than those other internet file back-up services do and no more than makers of external hard drives for PCs do.Nice to see Amazon taking a stand here. Hopefully it keeps up.
Cloud Player is a media management and play-back application not unlike Windows Media Player and any number of other media management applications that let customers manage and play their music. It requires a license from content owners no more than those applications do.
It really is that simple.
At the same time, it appears that Google may be inspired by Amazon's decision here to stand up against the idea that licenses are needed for digital lockers. While it had been trying to negotiate licenses, rumors are coming out that it's fed up with ridiculous demands from the labels and ready to follow Amazon's lead in just offering up the service without any licenses.
Not surprisingly, the report names Warner Music as being the party that has been the worst to deal with in these negotiations. That fits with what we've heard from other negotiations, where Warner Music puts absolutely ridiculous deal terms on the table and refuses to budge. It would be nice if Google follows Amazon's lead and calls the labels' bluff on the idea that licenses are needed for this kind of service.
Filed Under: cloud, copyright, licenses
Companies: amazon, google
Phone That Can Search The Internet & Display Ads Patented; Everyone Sued
from the oh-come-on dept
Looks like it may be time to update our patent thicket graphic. Another company that's not actually doing anything in the space is suing everyone who is. A company named H-W Technology apparently holds a patent (7,525,955) on an "Internet protocol (IP) phone with search and advertising capability" and has sued Apple, RIM, Google, Amazon, eBay, HTC, LG, Smasung, Microsoft, Nokia, Verizon and others for violating it. Because, you know, I'm sure no one possibly could have figured out how to put search and ads on a phone without this patent.Filed Under: internet, patents, phones
Companies: amazon, apple, ebay, google, h-w, htc, lg, microsoft, nokia, rim, verizon
Will Amazon Cave In And Get Licenses For Its Streaming Player?
from the probably dept
When Amazon recently launched its streaming cloud music player, which let people upload their own tracks and then stream them back, one of the big questions was how would the record labels react. That's because Amazon didn't secure licenses for this, and it's somewhat in dispute whether or not it needs to. Of course, many of us think the law is pretty clear that no such licenses are needed at all. The music is already in the possession of the person who is streaming it. There is no additional fee that needs to be paid to listen to music you already have. Adding in a new license is just something the industry is making up because it wants more money. So, now the real question is whether or not the labels will sue... or will Amazon just cave in and pay for some made up licenses it doesn't need.It's beginning to sound like the latter option is the most likely. Amazon doesn't want to piss off the labels who it already works with for music sales (both downloads and CDs), and so it may find that it's best just to pay up to avoid a lawsuit and other relationship problems. It might also pay up to enable other kinds of features (such as limited music sharing for people who both have the same songs in their collections).
While I can certainly understand the business reasons for avoiding a legal fight, it really would be too bad. It would be nice to see someone with the bank account to take on a serious fight really take this issue through the courts and have it shown that the major labels are simply making up a license right that doesn't exist. Of course, the flip side of that argument is that if Amazon really did win such a fight, how long would it be until the RIAA ramps up its lobbying efforts to get Congress to change copyright law to explicitly add such a bogus "right to listen to your own music if it's stored on a different computer."
Filed Under: copyright, licenses, music, streaming
Companies: amazon
