TuneCore, Amazon Team Up To Make It Even Easier & Cheaper For Bands To Sell CDs

from the label?-what-for? dept

Continuing the theme of this week about the new ecosystem of companies out there making it ever and ever easier for musicians to do everything a label used to do for them, comes the news (submitted by zealeus) that Amazon and TuneCore have teamed up to make it incredibly easy and cheap to sell CDs on demand. TuneCore is a very popular service with indie bands, helping them get their content onto various music services -- and now they're adding the ability to do incredibly cheap CDs-on-demand via Amazon. The whole thing costs a grand total of $31/year. Wired does some math, and recognizes that at a price point of $8.98 for the CD, a band only needs to sell nine CDs a year to break even. Nine. While some may say the CD market is dying, if you can offer it at almost no cost to the band, why not have it as an option?

Filed Under: business models, cds, music, print on demand
Companies: amazon, tunecore

Amazon Connects The Cloud To The Postal Service

from the i'd-like-to-send-this-priority-upload,-please dept

Amazon's done a lot with its Web Services offerings to advance the notion of cloud computing, and it's now realized that the state of broadband in the US could do a lot to hold it back. Slow upload speeds could hamper the growth of cloud computing: Amazon's CTO says that to upload a terabyte of data over a 10Mbps connection would take 13 days. So the company is working around that issue by letting people submit data to Amazon Web Services via US Mail. Users send in a storage device with data they want added to the cloud, and when Amazon receives it, the data gets copied over and put online. It's not an ideal solution, but an interesting stopgap until fatter pipes proliferate. Perhaps there are some interesting business ideas here, like setting up local "cloud upload" stations with superfat connections, where companies could drop off their storage devices to have their data uploaded quickly. The issue of slow uploads could pose an obstacle to the wider uptake of cloud computing, and until it's overcome, there will be a necessity for these sorts of solutions.

Filed Under: cloud computing, snail mail
Companies: amazon

Perfect 10 Shot Down Again; Will It Finally Realize That Search Engines Aren't Liable For Photos?

from the it's-time-to-give-it-up dept

Porn magazine publisher Perfect 10 has spent tons of money on a long series of fruitless lawsuits against the operators of search engines. The issue is that people with access to Perfect 10 photos had put them online, and (of course) search engines indexed these and included them in their image search features. Perfect 10 insisted that, since these search engines showed thumbnails of the images, the search engines were liable for the infringement. Except that courts keep throwing these cases out. But, that hasn't stopped Perfect 10. However, all it has to show for it is another loss. In its lawsuit against Amazon, for Amazon's A9 search subsidiary, the court has tossed out the lawsuit, pointing out that the DMCA safe harbors clearly protect Amazon, while also highlighting a bunch of pretty basic mistakes that Perfect 10 made in filing the lawsuit (you would think, having filed so many similar lawsuits, that it would get the specifics right). At some point, the company needs to realize that these lawsuits aren't getting it very far.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, safe harbors, thumbnails
Companies: amazon, perfect 10

One More Reminder That You Don't Own The Books On Your Kindle

from the ownership:-how-20th-century-of-you... dept

Lots of people have pointed out that one of the massive downsides of an eBook device like the Kindle is that you don't actually own the books you bought. Unlike a real book, you can't share it with a friend, resell it or donate it to the local library. And, in some cases, you can lose access to books you thought you "owned," based on the whims of employees at Amazon deciding you somehow abused their system. One of the big controversies over the Kindle was the TTS feature, which the Authors Guild claimed (without a shred of legal evidence) violated its rights. The Authors Guild had no claim here. It doesn't violate performance rights, because reading aloud isn't a performance. It doesn't violate copyright, because there's no fixed copy made -- and if it did violate copyright, so would reading a book aloud. Yet, for no clear reason, Amazon caved in and agreed to take away this feature.

Mark alerts us to the news that, as of May 13th, Amazon began remotely disabling the feature for certain eBooks, including many popular titles. In other words, Amazon remotely took away a feature that you used to have. That doesn't happen with a physical book. Random House doesn't get to say "oh, wait, we're now taking away the ability to dog ear pages." I love the concept of eBooks, but it's quite troubling that you don't actually get ownership of the eBooks you're buying -- and that Amazon can, at its own discretion, suddenly take away valuable features from books you had already purchased.

Filed Under: books, copyright, ebooks, features, ownership
Companies: amazon, random house

Why Would Amazon Want To Block Links From A File Sharing Search Engine?

from the uh...-what? dept

While it's certainly not true for everyone who uses file sharing systems, plenty of people do actually use them as a "try before you buy" system. As such, it certainly makes sense to put links on file sharing systems to take them to sites where they can purchase the digital version if they really want to. Yet, apparently, Amazon doesn't like the idea of converting unauthorized downloaders into authorized purchasers, as it demanded that Coda.fm remove links to the purchase pages on Amazon.com and also killed off Coda.fm's affiliate account. It's difficult to see any rationale for this at all. This was a way to convert people into paying for the files. Why would Amazon want to block that?

Somewhat related to this, it appears that Google is now blocking some custom searches set up by torrent tracker sites to help people find torrents via Google's custom search engine. Given that the response to The Pirate Bay verdict has actually focused a fair amount of attention on Google as being able to "do the same thing," perhaps this is an attempt to try to back away from that. If so, that's rather disappointing. Google claims its goal is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." An awful lot of that information is found via torrents -- and plenty of that is perfectly legit and authorized.

Filed Under: digital goods, file sharing, sales
Companies: amazon, coda.fm, google

Can A Moron In A Hurry Tell The Difference Between Amazon.com And A Social Activist Website?

from the one-would-hope dept

Thanks to Chris Maresca for sending in the story that Amazon.com is trying to block the trademark registration of a "social collaboration" website called Amazee. As the Register notes:

Amazon.com is an immensely popular online storefront that sells everything from books and groceries to virtual timeshares of its extensive data center infrastructure.

Amazee is a Switzerland-based, social "collaboration website" made for social activists and protestors to organize, promote, and fund their public uprisings and Earth-saving efforts.

Those seem quite a bit different, don't they? It seems unlikely one would confuse Amazee (who says it's name is derived from "amazing," rather than a South American river...) with the world's largest online retailer. Who knows if there's more behind this, but it seems like yet another case of overly aggressive attempts to defend a trademark that only serve to waste time, effort and money from organizations.

Filed Under: trademark
Companies: amazee, amazon

Author Offers Free Copy Of His Book To Anyone Who Writes An Amazon Review

from the free-books dept

It's pretty common for book publishers to send out free copies of their books to book reviewers and publications. It's part of the publicity effort that any new book tends to go through. However, in this day and age, pretty much everyone is a book reviewer thanks to blogs or Amazon... and one author is responding accordingly. ChurchHatesTucker alerts us to the news that author Charlie Finlay is offering a free copy of his book to anyone who promises to review it on Amazon. Basically, he knows that the best way to build buzz around the book is to actually get people to read it, and giving away the book to people who will provide that buzz is probably a cost effective way to get some attention. Now, some might question whether the reviewers will be "fair" because they received the book for free -- but that's true of most professional book reviewers already.

Filed Under: books, charlie finlay, free, reviews
Companies: amazon

Amazon Uses DRM To Turn Kindle Into A Very Expensive Paperweight

from the that's-not-good... dept

Reader Mark points us to a rather disturbing story about Amazon canceling a customer's account for no clear reason, and in doing so, using DRM to turn his Kindle 2 device into a useless paperweight -- such that he couldn't even read the books he'd purchased. This is troubling on a variety of levels. First, it's worrisome that Amazon would just cancel this guy's account with no warning, no full explanation and no method to appeal the decision. Second, it's quite problematic that, in doing so, it would turn his expensive device into a useless box, while disabling ebooks he'd thought he'd "bought." Once again, we see how DRM, rather than "enabling business models" as those who support it insist, tends to only serve to harm legitimate customers.

Filed Under: drm, kindle
Companies: amazon

Great Timing: USPTO Gives Amazon Patent For 'Reliable Ratings'

from the that-would-be-an-oops... dept

theodp writes "Do bad patents bring bad karma? Less than 24 hours after a hacker identified as 'Weev' claimed he exploited a feature for reporting inappropriate content to wreak havoc on Amazon's product ratings (Amazon blamed a "glitch"), the USPTO issued Amazon.com a patent for the Automatic Identification of Unreliable User Ratings, an 'invention' which - you guessed it - purportedly prevents Amazon's product ratings from being gamed by providing a feature for reporting inappropriate content ('Section 244 also contains a link 254 to a display (not shown) where customer CCC can report that item review 222 contains scandalous or inappropriate material')."

Filed Under: patents, ratings, reliability, uspto
Companies: amazon

What Do Amazon's Computers Have Against Fictional Gays And Lesbians?

from the just-wondering... dept

The big controversy of the weekend (there's always gotta be at least one, it seems) is that people started noticing that Amazon.com started removing books that involve gay or lesbian characters from its sales rankings, and when asked about it, the company initially said that it was excluding "adult" material from certain searches. That struck many as odd, considering that many of the "excluded" books weren't "adult" at all. After the controversy continued, Amazon changed its story and started claiming that it was actually all just a computer "glitch." Of course, this sounds remarkably similar to the computer "glitch" Amazon found when it suddenly deleted a bunch of negative reviews of EA's DRM-encrusted video game Spore. Whether it's true or not, Amazon is certainly giving off the appearance that it blames any such mistake on a "glitch," but never seems to provide anything in the way of details to support that.

Filed Under: computer glitch, gay, lesbian, rankings
Companies: amazon