Bezos Responds to Tim O'Reilly's Open Letter 294
Dredd13 writes, "On his site, Tim O'Reilly recounts the conversation he had with Jeff Bezos, of Amazon, in regards to the "overwhelming positive response" to Tim's open letter to the community about one-click shopping. Makes for a good read. "
PORN LINK!!!! (Score:1)
Responding to abuses ... (Score:1)
Because people are worthless and stupid (Score:1)
Besides, when was the last time you gave thousands of dollars to candidates of every party in an election to ensure that you had a hand in government and courts no matter who wins? Individuals are stupid enough to believe in things and thus only back what they believe in.
Re:Jeff's got a point... (Score:1)
17 years (Score:1)
17 years ago, I didn't even yet have my first Commodore 64! If you had a C64 and a tape drive, you were the luckiest person on your block!
About 18 years ago, TCP/IP took its final shape (I think). If it had been patented, we would only be able to freely use TCP/IP last year. Linux would never have come about.
No, he doesn't. (Score:1)
If all this was about was stopping the bad guys from getting patents, one could simply publish "innovations" and thereby ensure they become prior art to ensure others cannot patent them.
Claiming that it is necessary to patent is disingenious at best.
Brick-and-mortar stores not so bad (Score:1)
Re:Oriely [sic] had no choice (Score:1)
You don't know Jeff Bezos. Neither do I. It's easy for us to see him as some faceless bad guy, a Snidely Whiplash laughing maniacly about how he put one (two, now) over the U.S. Patent Office. O'Reilly, on the other hand, apparently knows Bezos, or at least knows Bezos' business, and heretofore has had a lot of respect for him. Bezos, to him, is an actual human being. It's a lot harder to have pure animosity towards someone that you actually regard as a person.
From what I've seen, Bezos is acting in desperation. Amazon is in the red, and as big as it is, it is vulnerable. Bezos sees himself as trying to protect his company from competitors pushing on him. Does this make him any less wrong? No. However, now that Bezos' motivations and fears are known, they can be more directly addressed. What O'Reilly has done is open the door to a possible reconciliation, offering a chance for Amazon to back down without losing face. While this may be less romantic and exciting than a David-and-Goliath hackers versus giant-Amazon standoff, it may be more helpful.
Re:Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:1)
Actually that's not entirely true, a work is copyrightable when it's of such nature that it's unlikely it would be spontaneusly duplicated without knowing the original. Ergo, a very obvious text, such as "Hello World!"
Re:Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:1)
Re:Bezos' only responsibility is to shareholders (Score:1)
And despite the rhetoric to the contrary, I don't think it's so easy to call out the 1-click patent as a blatant violation of the system. The most important and effective innovations are those that are NATURALLY OBVIOUS but no one else DID IT BEFORE. If prior art can be found, then Amazon has no case. Otherwise, I really do think this fits into the spirit of patent law: protect a process innovation from competitors to bolster investment.
Copyrights and patents in many ways can HELP competition by forcing companies to look at NEW things to innovate on, instead of copying the old things.
Over-broad patents are a danger, especially in software infrastructure.. I definitely do think they should be shortened to something like 5 years over the current 20-some years. But, patents are needed to encourage investment into innovation...
Re:Jeff's got a point... (Score:1)
It's the holder of a trademark or servicemark who actually is obliged to defend it actively, lest it (they) fall into everyday parlance. If I'm not mistaken, that's how the word 'aspirin' became generic in the US. It's still a Bayer trademark in many other parts of the world.
Re:That's what the law says, but... (Score:1)
The real problem.... (Score:2)
When the patent system was invented, people were seeking patents on machines and such, and industry moved a lot slower. It probably really took 17 years or more to recoup the investment on the "innovation".
However, now we're in Internet time. Being able to control fundamental aspects of the Internet or trivial applications of them for 17 years is outrageous, ludicrous, and unacceptable. We NEED to reduce the length of time these things last! Seems to me like 2 or 3 years is about right.
Having said that, I will continue to support the Amazon boycott until #1) we get a promise that they will NEVER sue smaller companies (less than half their size or so) over this, and #2) the affiliate program patent is dropped. Even if Amazon really was the first company to do one click ordering, they did NOT invent the affiliate program.
Re:Doomed (Score:2)
Manufacturers are happy to sell wholesale to anyone who buys large enough amount to keep distribution costs low. Now they can't sell it to consumers because they have no shipping infrastructure that will be cheap enough to do that with individual users, so they need retailers. When large enough percentage of consumers will start using search engines to look for products, retailer will become an unnecessary middleman for the whole classes of products -- cheap low-maintenance web site and warehouses would give more profit when selling at prices lower than retail and higher than wholesale.
Because they don't want to undercut the retailers. Retailers act as free adverising. And don't forget that for every item a retailer has in stock, the manufacturer has already received their share.
Retailers are nowhere close to "free" anything -- they take the huge difference between retail and wholesale prices. Advertising is good only for classes of products that no one would buy online anyway, and retailers have their own means of forcing manufacturers to reduce prices or otherwise do favors to them -- manufacturers end up competing for retailers, not consumers.
So what? (Score:2)
If Amazon's business doesn't support itself, it should die -- possibly even earlier than when it will become useless by its base idea. There is nothing wrong with that, and if so, society will better without them -- after all it's a business, and if someone else (big company or not) successfully wins over it in fair competition, providing equal or better service, nothing is lost to consumers. No one, including me, you or O'Reilly has any obligation to support Amazon just because it competes with "big businesses" -- if they don't have anything to offer that will be better than B&N, they can kiss our collective asses.
I dislike Microsoft and its likes not because they are big but because they make bad products and cause trouble for people who are trying to make good products. If Microsoft made the best OS possible, sold it at reasonable price and allowed others to easily improve it, no one, even Open Source supporters, would attack it, just like no one would attack Amazon if it managed to keep its position as top online retailer justified. But since we know that Microsoft abused its ability to dictate terms of contracts and turned development of alternative OSes into a struggle with hardware manufacturers at one side, application software file formats at the other, and OEMs that refuse to sell boxes without Windows, we hate Microsoft with a passion and will do everything that is in our power to prevent such abuse in the future.
By the same logic I don't see why Amazon that instead of providing better service abuses USPTO stupidity and courts' technical incompetence, deserves anything better than a place in technology-related ideas junkyard, next to DVIX, STREAMS, DOS and X.25.
Re:The fact is (Score:2)
Corporations are not people.Why should they have more rights than individuals?
Because they have successfully subverted representstive democracy in US, and are ruling this country.
Doomed (Score:2)
The whole point is, Amazon is doomed. I can't know if they will ever turn a profit, but I am absolutely sure, their business model will not be viable after manufacturers themselves will start organizing their "e-commerce" sites, and noncommercial search engines (or semi-commercial -- ones that aren't paid for advertising in their search results) will become smart enough to look for those sites automatically. When that will happen, there will be absolutely no point to have central distributor -- if something is worth ordering by mail, manufacturer/publisher/... will just see users coming through search engines and ordering stuff, so he will send it by himself, probably with some help of low-overhead warehousing/distribution network that will work completely behind the scenes, and no customer will ever know how it looks and how little it charges for storage (no consumer-marketing and accessibility only to carriers => cheap warehousing). Amazon will have no place in such world, just like it had no place in the world before large number of potential customers started using the Internet.
Maybe Jeff Bezos doesn't understand that (he doesn't look smart enough), but he definitely understands that some kind of "dilution" of his business will happen soon, and instead of accepting the fate and trying to be something that competes in quality (what is actually hard to do in this kind of business -- it's just too hard to screw up such a simple process, so everybody except complete crooks will look good), he is trying to pour money into advertising and scare competitors away by bogus patents. Of course, his patents will be sooner or later overturned, and his advertising will be unable to overcome information from search engines, but probably he thinks, it will give him some time, and this is the only thing, this situation is about -- keeping Amazon from its inevitable, and beneficial for the society as a whole, death.
cc: Tim O'Reilly's comments page (Score:2)
One example: there's a local record store I've always frequented. The owner is a personal friend. I've been looking for specific records there for _years_. When one shows up, it can be $50, for instance Steve Vai's out-of-print original pressing of 'Flex-able'. That's the way things used to be. Now, I can look on eBay and within five minutes find every last record I ever searched for, usually for something like $8. What am I supposed to do? What is my friend supposed to do?
Jeff could be exactly right that Amazon is small business compared to his heavy corporate competitors. Unfortunately, if that is true I don't see how he can survive any better than the local small business is. Amazon tends to run more expensive than competing online booksellers, and still loses money. That's not good.
It seems that long ago, we needed corporations because their efficiencies allowed them to bring certain things to the consumer which otherwise would be totally nonexistent in a village economy. Well, now that the 'global village' economy is actually happening, 'bringing things' to the consumer is a nonissue: the awareness is a mouse click away, and shipping is just a matter of mail or UPS or FedEx. In this new context, the corporations are no longer the means of bringing stuff to isolated, poorly-resourced consumers. At this point they're basically using the same resources and fluidity the consumer now has, to fight amongst themselves. Those which try to hold the moral high ground are likely to be obliterated.
The trouble is, the end result is not success, or wealth, or consumer wellbeing. The end result of this fighting is basically the obliteration of all small business (_everybody_ shall be a consumer and work at Wal-Mart. On the bright side, Wal Mart pays much better than it used to!) and indeed the obliteration of a lot of big business. It shouldn't be surprising that this isn't a healthy development. It's cancerous.
Patents have become simply the method for scorching the earth so that, once all business but a few winners is obliterated, no new business can ever grow again. It's really irrelevant what role patents play for battling companies, because their very battling has been taken to unhealthy and unproductive extremes, and is not justifiable behavior- it's societal suicide to encourage it, but it's positively trendy now. The role of patents in this new context is solely to scorch the earth and prevent new business from arising.
I suspect Jeff Bezos is right that he must either scorch the earth and prevent new business from happening, or see his own business stumble and fail. Where he goes wrong is in behaving like this illustrates a healthy economy and society. I refuse to sanction his scorching the earth and killing the future, just to save himself in a present where he's trying to survive in a damn slaughterhouse- particularly since survival for Amazon (still losing money rather than making it) means establishing itself as the _only_ choice for online bookbuying. It can't carry on like that unless it can convince Wall Street that it _will_ scorch the earth. Some of us aren't okay with the idea of only Amazon getting to play...
There's a naval aviation anecdote that fits, here. A pilot began shouting over the radio, "I've got a MiG at zero! I've got a MiG at zero!" meaning that he had an enemy plane behind him, shooting at him, and was unable to shake the attacker. Another pilot, exasperated, cut in, with "Shut up and die like an aviator."
Jeff, shut up and die like an aviator!
Re:Interesting who he targeted (Score:2)
I don't love Amazon. I'm not supporting them. But I don't love B&N either, and agree that they are out to stifle Amazon along with all the little booksellers and everything else. It's Wal-Mart all over again, it's Microsoft all over again, whichever way you turn. :P
And Amazon has never had the slightest interest in helping my friend with the bookstore, either. They only want to be the ones doing the stifling, and as a twist they want to stifle the Internet, not just book-selling.
Re:To Tim O'Reilly and the OS Community.... (Score:2)
There are more important things than your determination to get things to trade. You're terribly stuck on the concept that you _must_ slug it out with corporations on their terms. I respect your sincerity and the clarity of your vision within the expectations of the proprietary world, but I disagree that this is relevant to the open source approach.
Us open-source-type-people are legion, many of us are clever, many of us are profoundly dedicated people who have a right to their own priorities. You ask a Richard Stallman what to do about the patent situation, and you won't find him thinking about what he can get to trade for the IP of others- he will be thinking about freedom, and damn everything else. I share that viewpoint, and I can cope if you think it doesn't make sense. From where I sit, your viewpoint doesn't make sense, as your concessions to extract IP from unwilling corporations are likely to just make everything worse. I see OSS patent portfolios as _negative_ value, locking up ideas that could be free in the _hopes_ of exchanging them with corporations that have no reason to come to the bargaining table in the first place.
Further, even if the patent lawyers offer their services for free, it's still going to cost the earth to do what you suggest, and who will choose the patents to be applied for? Smart patents can be blithely ignored, stupid patents are exactly the problem, and the whole process is hardly run at Internet speeds. It's too broken to get any benefit out of participating in.
Our best hope for OSS might simply be the model of DeCSS: we're legion, we're online, the information we need can be everywhere in seconds. There _is_ no Central Hacker to be imprisoned- just legions of geeks and script kiddies who are becoming increasingly politicized. Explain why exactly we would need to further the problem in order to crosslicense software patents which we could just use anyhow? When everything becomes a crime, everyone is automatically criminals anyhow, so who cares if somebody's patented 'the one click'?
Yes, I know: 'corporations cannot use Open Source if it is renegade and intentionally in violation of patent law!' Well... sucks to be them. And maybe it _should_ suck to be them. That's all I have to say about their plight, wanting to use free software but still lock up huge areas of idea and invention for themselves.
Meanwhile, using public disclosure as a sort of 'GPL for inventions', everybody, including the corporations, gets to use many new innovations. This is actually more generous than you're willing to be, and ought to soften the blow of the whole OSS movement gradually losing all respect for software patents (or any patents!) and beginning to just go on, using whatever they like, patented or not.
My viewpoint may well be far more radical than you are comfortable with, but I would say that at least it is more consistent than you suggest. It's just that I consider open rebellion, revolution, intentionally being an outlaw, a valid response to a situation that is completely untenable. You... don't. I respect your desire to work within the system, but I am less and less convinced that it's a good thing to do.
Yeah, they have. In a way. (Score:2)
If you think this is all about ability to compete, you're out of your mind. It's yet another example of corporate leverage, and it's yet another way that people in general are losing choice, losing a free market, and approaching a sort of balkanized Communism in which the only access to goods is not through the government, but through particular companies which entirely control the market sectors they serve.
So, the vast anticompetitive practice you're missing is the ability to take and hold a vertical monopoly, seizing the means of distribution much as trusts bought up railroads long ago. Whether or not you consider it shady, it certainly is not free-market, and I suggest that it is no longer capitalism.
Re:To Tim O'Reilly and the OS Community.... (Score:2)
That's not a blanket protection against the horrors of incarceration, but neither is it a reason to live in terror of 'being made an example'. Face it: when it comes right down to it, right and wrong are not solely dictated by the government. They are tricky concepts, but it's like trial by jury- the average person will tend to have an opinion, a sense of right and wrong. When this sharply differs from what the government (or, these days, a corporation) dictates, there's an inequity that won't be simply legislated away, and you start getting more scofflaws and in the end, reform or revolution such as the United States did long ago.
Welcome to the 21st century: maybe it's time to reach out and take some of those rights back.
Re:To Tim O'Reilly and the OS Community.... (Score:2)
How does the community get access to existing closed source? Mostly, it doesn't. It's the same here. Write off the stuff that's already been patented. Consider it earth that has been scorched. There will never be an incentive sufficient to get these things released to society. They are mines in the earth that will still be harming people years from now.
We don't have a tool, immediate or otherwise, to fight any of these patents, best or worst. There is no way to arm the community in this regard. Creating more patents is just making bait for somebody to come along and _buy_ _out_ whatever holds the patents, or if it's the FSF, reduce it to pennilessness through harassing, frivolous lawsuits. You _can't_ win this game. You can't. The way it's set out there _is_ no way to win.
That's why I advocate totally refusing to play in the first place. Formally disclosing things _only_ accomplishes the goal of blocking patents. Properly done it makes derivative works more difficult to patent, because a sort of prior art would exist and the patent office would be aware of it for a change. It does not deny access to the large corporations because you _can't_: they are lawless, you can't restrain them with law. But you can block their ability to abuse the law by getting in there first in such a way that they won't fight you. It's like judo, and nothing else will work.
As for open disclosure being a one way street: I see no other way to make things permanently available to the community. It is the _only_ way to be sure things remain publically available. Again, attempting to out-power multinational corporations by starting a pathetic little software patent pool is ludicrous, and the most likely outcome is that you spend all your money on this expensive process only to be ignored. If somebody wants one of the patents, they need only read up on it, sue you until you, the FSF, or whatever hopelessly naive organization takes on this burden is utterly broke, and then go use the idea anyhow. Alternately, if the organisation isn't the FSF- buy it!
The _only_ thing that can be done is to start putting things out there. There is _no_ way to wrestle Alcoa or Beatrice or Bell Labs or IBM or Microsoft into releasing their intellectual property. They are presiding over the collapse of capitalism and need that property in order to use the law to make themselves the undisputed owners of their markets. You can't stop them. All you can do is turn to detailed and determined disclosure, which is cheaper, and which _does_ block further patent applications. That's what the process is FOR! That's why it exists in the first place! You have to pay to do it, but something like the FSF could easily afford to take that on, unlike patenting. Once you have done it, the patent office itself becomes your ally and it, not you, defends against further patenting. The whole _mechanism_ is _designed_ to let a company stake out an area so that there's obvious prior art. I am sure that is the first place the patent office looks when looking for prior art. I think it might be the _only_ place they look...
Who wants patents? (Score:2)
I see nothing wrong with patenting innovative ideas, although I still wouldn't put Amazon's "1-click-shopping" patent in this realm. I don't like the shopping cart metaphor, and I also don't like storing people's credit card numbers on the server, so I wouldn't consider it "innovation" in the first place.
Patents are a tool. Like guns and computers, they aren't evil for merely existing. They can be used and abused like anything else. I think the FSF should patent any innovations they come up with, and allow anyone writing "free" software to use those patents, and offer to license them to corporations for some reasonable price, or use them as leverage, to cross-license some proprietary features into free software. (that may be the only way The GIMP ever gets the features it needs, for instance...)
But I'd prefer it if the patents are of the innovative variety and not of the "rename an old concept now that it's new on the web" variety. (Drat, I should have patented "e-business" before anyone ever thought of it!)
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
Re:Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:2)
Umm... tons of sites store profiles in a database and use cookies client side to simplify things. All Amazon did was include credit and shipping info so that you only had to click once to make a purchase.
Constitutional rationale for patent laws (Score:2)
Bzzt! Sorry, but you lose. I don't know what country you're from, but in the United States, the purpose of patent laws is defined in the highest law in the land, the US Constitution. Specifically, the Constitution says:
If you don't live in the US, then maybe things are different in your country, but considering that this entire issue is about US patent law, it is the US legal justification for patent law that applies.I really hate it when people go off on a limb and claim that the justification for patent law is this or that pet idea of theirs. The rationale behind patent laws is very clearly spelled out in the Constitution. If you don't like the legal justification given in the Constitution, then, well, tough luck buddy. While individual laws come and go and change, the Constitution is hardly ever changed.
As a side note, you claim in your post that patents and copyrights rest on different legal foundations, but that's just not true. Both patents and copyrights derive their legal legitimacy from the very same Constitutional clause that I quoted above.
Re:One Reason (Score:2)
You don't understand patent law.
Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks are three entirely different things. What you say is true of Trademarks, but not true of Copyrights or Patents.
Re:That's what the law says, but... (Score:2)
Unimpressed. (Score:2)
nice try Jeff, but you're still a loser.
Re:The best way to shop for books... (Score:2)
6. Have to drive to the store
As much as I like the small stores, there's no use in delaying the inevitable. Many industries are moving online, and there is no longer any reason to take it offline. If the small bookstores provide a better service, them shop there, but the online resellers provide a number of services you can't get elsewhere.
Evolve or die, I say.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:Much to think about... (Score:2)
My understanding is that they simply can't compete - sad, but it's not B&N's fault. They simply do the same thing more efficiently.
Is there some vast anticompetitive practice I'm missing? It certainly can't be price dumping, as they price more or less around the same as any other bookstore I've been to.
Is this just a 'root for the little guy' thing, or has B&N seriously done shady things to take out the independants?
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
Re:What's a little perplexing to me... (Score:2)
A boycott sends the message to the entire industry, that a critical mass of the public finds a certain behavior unacceptable. The first strategy is all very made-for-TV drama in which one instance of an injustice is addressed, but the second is more reliable as a way of getting things changed in an entire sector, and possibly even in getting the underlying flaw (the broken patent system) fixed.
And guess what? If Bezos is convinced on ethical grounds, but the stockholders of Amazon aren't, then it's quite possible that Bezos would get overruled, as well as facing liability for failure to take the most profitable route.
Re:The best way to shop for books... (Score:2)
Tim lost me... (Score:2)
Re:To Tim O'Reilly and the OS Community.... (Score:2)
Don't need one. Just need to make an example out of a few of them, have them busting rocks at Leavenworth and their rapable young ass sold for cigarettes. Leave out the Federal prison part and there's even a growth industry, namely the "corrections" industry, who would be tickled pink to have a new stream of "clients" that way.
Welcome to the 21st century: your right to think is over.
Re:Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:2)
The patent doesn't cover the `number of those it takes to accomplish something'. The patent essentially talks about storing user profiles in a database and using cookies client side to simplify things, IIRC. The process, as described in the patent ( which you obviously haven't read ) , would appear to be as `unique' as a paperclip.
Re:Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:2)
If the patent office routinely grants obvious patents, to make money, you only need to patent something obvious and then keep your licensing fees below the expense and risk you create for potential infringers. This is particularly lucrative if you are a lawyer or have a staff of lawyers as part of your normal business operations: then, the cost of pursuing obvious patents is much lower for you than for the people you go after.
If you manage to get an important but obvious patent past the patent office (and that isn't so difficult), and if you have reasonably efficient legal representation, you pretty much have written yourself a check for a few million dollars. And that's money that ultimately comes out of what you pay for goods and services.
Furthermore, the US patent office is activist and expands notions of patentability far beyond what used to be established practice. Some of the software and business practices that have been patented recently were obvious to many people in the 80's, but they weren't patentable then. You are rewarding boldness in pushing patent law, not innovation.
The idea behind patent law isn't stupid. But the actual implementation and politics in the US that surround it, the special interests, the lobbying, and the unchecked expansion of its scope are.
Re:There must have been more to it then that... (Score:2)
Re:Much to think about... (Score:2)
If I thought a competitor was trying to copy everything I did, I'd try to make sure that I did it *better*.
Amazon, by contrast, has stuck to its opt-out mailing guns, abused privacy rights, gotten patents, and used those patents aggressively (not just as a "defensive" measure, but as an attempt to kill competition).
They're not good guys. They've never, ever, been good guys. Amazon is one of the first companies to really exploit the fact that Internet users assume that Internet companies are somehow "nice guys". Amazon are a bunch of lying scumbags who are *VERY* good at *TELLING YOU EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR*.
But every so often, the truth will out.
Re:Alternative to amazon.co.uk? (Score:2)
Re:No Right To Patent (Score:2)
Well, right there you answered your own question. IBM did research and invested money. Amazon patented the web equivalent of hammers and nails. They said that it's illegal for anybody else to use a cookie to allow someone to purchase something out of an email. That's not research. IBM is an innovator. Amazon is not, at least not technologically.
As for the rest of your argument, I think you missed the point I was trying to make. I was trying to put the Netscape vs. IE battle in a world with no MS. Netscape sure had the right to patent a bunch of stuff, but we're all much better off that they didn't. It is this spirit of openness that Amazon is killing in the name of business interests. They are, as O'Reilly said, giving a slap-in-the-face to all those who came before them, on whose shoulders their still-losing-money empire rests.
You can take the "they're a business and their only responsibility is to make money" attitude, but if everyone from this point on takes that attitude, the web will be dead on ten, maybe fifteen years, guaranteed. This is about more than just money. This is the future of the internet, which is the future of the world. If we destroy it, or let others destroy it, we may never be able to take it back.
_________________
The whole story? (Score:2)
Amazon now has a patent on something that is the furthest thing from original that I can put to words. They can claim it to be a defensive patent, but after seeing them take agressive litigation against B&N.. I don't trust them. They can look noble, they can have nice stories on
FreePatents.org? (Score:2)
B&N could have patented 1-Click(tm?)... Or Jhon Doe could have patented it... it could have been worse... Amazon might be affected by public pressure and "release" the patents back to the "public".
Why not set up a non-profit organization to hold patents and license their use freely? Hey, Jeff could fund it to show his "good will" (and he can "donate" the 1-Click and Affiliate patents).
It could charge a less-than-nominal fee on for-profit uses, so it can support itself and all the paperwork involved. Or even better... it could live out of voluntary donations from people like you and me, who don't like ideas to be patented.
As long as the current patent system remains, we'll need patents to protect us from patents. All we need is those patents to be in the "right" hands.
Jeff, help create the "Amazing Ideas Foundation", transfer the ownership of your patents to that organization a give a couple million bucks so other people can send their ideas and get them patented and keep the bad-guys(tm) from doing so.
Should we care *why* they did it? (Score:2)
Patenting 1-click is like patenting giving change instead of requiring the exact ammount, in retail. You'd be laughed at for trying to patent being open on Sunday's.
So why is it okay to patent an obvious form of customer service?
It's not like there's *any* new technology in it, it's all old stuff (cookies, CGI, etc) used in exactly the way it was intended. Amazon didn't invent anything, hell, they didn't even *discover* anything, they simply were the first to use an obvious tool.
It's a blatant abuse of what the law was meant for and "They're doing it too" isn't a valid excuse. If the only way your company can survive is by abusing the spirit of the law, then maybe you shouldn't be in business.
Re:We should be boycotting Barnes and Nobles inste (Score:2)
Why?
And I will start feeling sorry for Netscape when someone demonstrates they weren't trying to own the entire Internet.
uh, duh. Any for-profit organization is going to try and capitalize as much as possible. What's your point?
Netscape, more than any other entity I can think of, damaged the viability of a free non-proprietary WWW.
You obvious can't think of Microsoft, ActiveX, non-pure Java, etc. etc. etc. etc.
Re:We should be boycotting Barnes and Nobles inste (Score:2)
You might disagree with me, but the entire DOJ agrees with me. Why do you think Netscape died? MS bundled IE into windows, and reduced it to a commodity item.
Re:The best way to shop for books... (Score:2)
There are countless ways of finding books' isbns online, so if you're going to act on pure principle then there's no reason to compromise it. If you're only acting on an approximation of pure principle ("I will not give Amazon.com $20, but I will encourage someone else to give them $0.000000001 if I have to."), then go ahead and continue to use their site without buying anything. Personally, I find that site slow and bloated, even in the text-only version.
Yawn, I've been boycotting SPAMAZON for years... (Score:2)
Big deal, I just buy elsewhere. I do most of my book shopping from borders.com, who have never e-mailed me except for my actual order details.
There's a big history about "spamazon" in news.admin.net-abuse.email. Use deja.com to do a search on spamazon and see for yourself. You'll be shocked.
Bezos acts like bn.com is evil because they are bigger than him and have real stores. Give me a break. At least the bigger stores know enough about the net to respect its culture. Bezos is trying to reshape it to profit himself. I hope a big store does buy out amazon.com. Someone needs to go in there and clean house as far as I'm concerned.
BTW, the one thing CEOs care more about then profits for their company is face. They care about saving face, image, etc, etc... I would bet most of that conversation was centered about how the two of them could present this to the public so they both appear to be good guys. Tim has to look like he's championing "the cause" and ole Bezos tries out the poor underdog image, fighting the good fight against big business. If Bezos loses Amazon.com, someday he'll want to head another company. If O'reilley books get bought out and Tim goes away, he'll want to run another company. It's all about their own images.
Think for yourself, don't let the various marketing machines do all the thinking for you.
Re:I hate to sound like a socialist (Score:2)
They need to be changed. I understand a company's need to pay for their years of development but the control needs to be limited. They should not be able to just have total control over any patent infringment. It should be somewhat like phone lines. Whoever builds them gets the right to charge for usage but they must allow others to use them. Energy supplier competition in my home state of PA is like this. Cable lines will hopefully go this way. Patents should only give the holder the right to charge for usage, not to block usage. The only problem is how do you regulate the fee structure without creating a massive amounts of expensive goverment that tax payers have to pay for? This is where most what kills most regulatory issues... the expense to force people to play fair.
Amazon is at the fork in the road (Score:2)
It seems that all to often companies that start out trying to do just that go either one of two directions. They either give up and become like the rest or they lose but go down fighting.
In the first direction is the argument, "Everybody else is doing it so I have to survive." I understand that on a business level. If you are playing a game and someone is cheating and you want to win, you have to cheat, right? Perhaps. I think that playing better, harder, smarter, etc. can still win the day. Sadly, though there is proof of the contrary. Or is there?
Netscape's demise is the noted as the perfect example of why to fear trying to "be the good guy". Netscape did all the right things but lost. Was it evil marketing, monopolistic practices, bad software, bad business decisions? IMHO, all of the above. This suggests to me that a good, smart technology company can still beat a "cheating" company. Netscape can not be used as the reason to cheat; although their competition cheated, they made a ton of their own mistakes. Their products became inferior. They cheated a little themselves with their own extensions to HTML.
Jeff Bezos should try to lead his company to keep their technical edge. They need to keep their marketing edge. They do not need software patents. It seems that Jeff is a bit afraid that he can't win without cheating. He is a student on test day and although he studies hard he is worried it will not be enough to beat the curve created by cheaters. Come on Jeff, you have set the curve so far; just study harder (hire smart people), worker harder (hire more of them), and you will do fine.
B&N was throwing a legal puch (Score:2)
Re:Cynicism (Score:2)
Of course there are ulterior motives. You seem to imply that a patent is an end in and of itself. Patents are a tool. No one gets a patent just to say, "look at me! I got a patent!"
As tools, they can be used for good things, bad things, or nothing at all. Jeff was spelling out his intent for the patent. So the "point" of the patent is to "[go] after the big guys who are going after us". Whether that is a good or bad thing is left as an exercise for the reader.
--GnrcMan--
Do two wrongs make a right ? (Score:2)
More important is the fundamental question of intellectual property rights. IP has piggybacked onto physical property rights. But IP & RP are fundamentally different things, and the most important commercial use of IP, publishing, has no analog in the real-property world.
When you sell wheat, you aren't worried about someone copying it. You havent sold the farm. When you publish, you have sold the farm because copying is trivially easy. But you won't necessarily notice copying the way you would if someone stole your bushel of wheat.
-- Robert
Re:What's a little perplexing to me... (Score:2)
Walt
Re:Associates Plan Patented? (Score:2)
Walt
Too many lawyers (Score:2)
What is there to convince us that the same is not now true about Amazon? Jeff uses the word "protection" a lot, when he really means "competition". Yeah, sure, it may give defensive ammunition for aggressive competitors, but don't believe anything about "protecting" against some other "bully" applying for the patent and using it against other retailers. That's the wolf guarding the hen-house there.
And is Amazon really the ultimate in internet retailers that we couldn't do just as well with someone else? Isn't the point of competition that the best product that people will buy will naturally rise to a place of dominance? Where does securing intellectual property enter into that process? It doesn't.
I wouldn't have too much faith that Amazon will formally allow use of their patents without fear of legal action. Doing that would undermine the effectiveness of any suits they do pursue. The defense could claim that, since they're allowing all these other uses of the patent, it implies permission for anyone to use it. Not to mention, Amazon may say they'll let you use it now, but what about when you grow too big for their tastes. Just ask OS/2 users how far cooperation will get you.
Then what? Sue the New York Times for their best-seller list?
This is something I'm not so thrilled about. Amazon has just one goal: to make money buy selling things to visitors of their web site. Before the internet, where did you go to find out information about something? Sears-Roebuck? Macys? No, you went to a library, not some store. Sure, you can become informed at a store, but that's not what the owners of the store want you to do there; they want you to spend money. So when you go to Amazon.com, even if you can find out lots of information about books or movies or whatever, the site's primary, and for the most part only function is to get you to spend money. The effective result is the site will only provide service to you so much as it is profitable for Amazon. Just take a look at how Apple's iReview [mac.com] is coming about. Everything presented there has a pro-Apple slant. May I point out a critical review of Real.com? (Real, makers of RealPlayer, a competitor to Apple's Quicktime. hrmmm)
The point is, Amazon exists to make money (for them). If they act nice and try to be friendly to consumers, it's because they expect it to increase their sales (as well they should). Anything beyond that should be treated with scepticism.
Correct you Are (Score:2)
Of course, I'm sure B&N would have sued Amazon if they had patented the 1-click shopping idea first.
Again, this whole ordeal is a mess. The fact remains that the patent shouldn't have been awarded in the first place. ^_^
I have 3 words for Bezos (Score:2)
Let's take a case study. I open up a b&m (that's brick&mortar not Barnes&Mobile) bookstore on the corner and I get a brilliant idea. Hey, I'll help my business with a new idea I just had. I don't think people should have to wait in line if they only want one book. I'll put a mini-cash register at several places in the store. If you want a book, you drop your money in, it gets scanned, you get a receipt, (optional: if I'm using those electronic tags, the tag gets turned off), and you walk out the store. One-stop book shopping. It's smart enough that people who use it would probably remember and keep coming back, and that's great for me, repeat business. Even if someone else used my idea, I'd still be first in the minds of those customers.
Am I entitled to keep other people from using this idea? Maybe. Probably not, since I won't be making the hardware required to do all of this (I own a bookstore, not a scanner/cash register business). But here's where JB's argument REALLY falls down: I don't feel entitled to own the entire book market because I had the idea. I own a bookstore. There's millions of them. If someone walks into a bookstore, sees my self-serve cash registers and thinks "hey, I can buy those pieces of equipment and put them together myself", maybe I can stop them, maybe I can't, but I probably won't try because I JUST OWN A BOOKSTORE. Stopping them from using it won't help MY business - a successful bookstore is all about location, ambience, marketing, and the other intangibles that make people choose to shop.
And believe me, Amazon is in the same boat. Marketing, ambience, and intangibles make Amazon successful, not its flipping patents. They've built themselves a customer base that will rely on them in the future, and that's fine. If they market enough, they'll get new customers. If they can keep their business going with just THAT, then more power to them. But what they won't do, what they don't deserve to do, is be the multi-billion-dollar-IPO golden child forever, because IT'S JUST A STORE. There's millions of them. JB feels entitled to own the whole web because his website was first and his stock valuation is high, and I'm here to say, not only were you not first, you won't be last.
Cynicism (Score:2)
If Bezos seriously believed in his patent for 1-click, would it not make more sense for him to go after all who (allegedly) violate it? What is the point of a patent if one does not enforce it against known (alleged) violators?
I'm not saying he should enforce it at all, but the fact that he is so open in his ideas of selective enforcement suggests to me ulterior motives.
Much to think about... (Score:2)
How would YOU react if you'd spent all the time and effort Bezos has, only to see that a competitor is copying everything you do, and trying very specifically to put YOUR company out of business? What other methods are there, legally, to stop this sort of thing?
The whole "Tipping Point" thing was a fairly good analogy. It makes sense. I think Amazon could actually garner much more support by using the Internet community, not by ignoreing it, and going the legal route (Customers be Damned!). You tell me, would you stand behind Amazon if they used methods that focused more on inovating and expanding on what the Internet is all about, rather then using a Legal system to try and maintain dominance?
My Two Bits.
-= Rhyas=-
Re:Jeff's got a point... (Score:2)
These days, if it says "patented" or "patent pending", and it's not hardware, I just walk away from it. I'm not about to pad the pockets of those who enjoy patenting trivial software technology.
Re:Effective advocacy as demonstrated by Tim O'Rei (Score:2)
Could you give us some examples?
Unfortunately, I see no good alternatives to software patents. Open Source is fine, if you happen to work at a large university that gets public subsidies, ultimately supported by taxpayers. But, given the choice, I would prefer to support large corporations by my careful shopping, rather than having the government (the ultimate large organization) tax me and let some committee allocate research funds.
Copyrights have the inconvenience of lasting too long, three times longer than patents. Perhaps, if software copyrights were drastically reduced in duration, they could be the answer. But no copyright should be allowed for what isn't published. This means that, if you only release binaries, that's all your copyright will protect.
Reverse engineering should be completely free, if you want legal protection for your ideas, you should publish them.
Re:Constitutional rationale for patent laws (Score:2)
The Congress shall have Power ... To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
You didn't quote anything that disagrees with what I wrote... The idea I disagreed with was Tim O'Reilly's assertion that certain ideas won't be developed without government providing a degree of protection. This assertion may differ from the constitutional text you cited in only an extremely subtle way, but it's different enough to completely invalidate TO'R's point of view.
The difference is between "providing" and "securing". To provide means "to furnish the means of support", while to secure means "to free from fear, care, doubt, or anxiety". Which means, to provide is an active task, the 'providing' government must actively subsidize invention, while all the 'securing' government must do is to make sure no one fucks the inventors. There's a world of difference. It's the difference between an East Coast Liberal and a Nevada Libertarian. (_not_ a *Montana* libertarian, which is the common cliche for a fundamentalist Christian...).
My definitions come from the "Webster's New Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary", Simon & Schuster, 1979, but any other english language dictionary would give approximately the same definitions.
Use this to change the patent system (Score:2)
With that said, I think Bezos and Amazon should use this opportunity to point out the obvious flaws in the patent system as it applies to the software/web industry. My radical idea: allow patents on anything at all, but do not allow individuals and other non-corporations to be the target of patent infringement cases. Corporations can tear each other apart as much as they like, but they cannot go after an individual. The benefits:
- Corps like Amazon receive patent protection against bigger corps like B&N
- Individuals, small businesses, and open source software are not affected by patents.
- Information will flow freely for those not obsessed with the bottom line.
What more could you ask for? I mean, Joe Bob Smith may start up his own bookstore, but he certainly won't be competition for Amazon and B&N. He can use any patented idea he likes. When M$ opens the M$ Printed Information Exchange Network TM, they will be subject to patent law.Does any have any problems with this?
Jesus may love you, but I think you're garbage wrapped in skin.
Bezos doesn't have a choice (Score:2)
We don't have shareholders - its just me and my partners (and a few VCs who don't have a controlling interest.) The way we see it right now we have two choices:
1) "Buy" a patent of our own from the patent office that covers something that both we and our competitor are doing so we can block any future suit, or
2) Wait until its obvious that they can't compete with us, let them obtain an injunction against us, shut a major part of our flagship site down as well as our software biz, borrow another $200k from the VCs for the legal fight get their patent thrown out and watch us both sink to the bottom.
The idea that Bezos is thinking only of his stock holders is ridiculous - Amazon.com is his baby, his mark on history. He is bound and determined to see it succeed. Patent law has been used historically to really screw up competitors and he is realizing that it could be done to him. Its very personal.
I'd like to think there was a third way for us or for Amazon or for any other company - but there isn't until US patent law is reformed. Want to end this _stupidity_? Lobby your senator or representative. Write a letter to the editor. But don't pretend that Bezos should risk his company to prove how inane the laws are.
Ambivalence. (Score:2)
All in all, I think this particular subject (Amazon patents) along with the plethora of related subjects where people have been patenting either inane or minute processes simply to raise barriers, should be used as a wake up call. The way things are done in our society as a whole need to keep up with the times. Nothing is horribly behind, but processes such as patenting need to be looked at, and continually monitored to make sure they're beneficial to society and not detrimental.
If any of that made any sense.
Jeff is responsible to his shareholders. (Score:2)
I think Jeff Bezos is attempting to avoid being a bad guy, because that would be bad for his company's image. I doubt his real concern is the freedom of the rest of the internet. And that's good, with respect to his responsibilities. So, if we give commentary that we really want a company to listen to, I think we should talk about it in terms of benefit to the company, not some moral code. I think Tim's done a reasonably good job of this, but even he strays a little too much into the assumption that Amazon.com and Jeff Bexos should somehow be concerned about the welfare of the rest of the world.
If we social critics and OSSers and etc would keep this in mind, then maybe companies would listen to us more often. Notice how well it worked in this instance. I bet if Tim had come up with some concrete and convincing exampleds of how hording patents could hurt Amazon.com specifically, then Jeff would have been been more enthusiastic in his agreement. More of the conflict of interest would have been removed.
That's what I think, anyway.
-N
Re:Jeff is responsible to his shareholders. (Score:2)
"Squashing competition is a legitemate part of that, unless it strays into illegality(eg. a monopoly)."
That leaves out Microsoft.
The reason being a monopoly or squashing competition on their own are not illegal is because either one can be countered without the presence of the other, as long as one's product and business practices are sound. However, monopolies who squash competition are impossible to beat without huge blunders on the monopolist's part. This mucks up the gears of capitalism and cannot be allowed.
Amazon.com has nothing like a monopoly. At best, they have a strong market position. This is one of the few things they can do to assure that they keep it.
-N
That's what the law says, but... (Score:2)
The big company almost always wins the lawsuit, too, if one is ever filed. Odd, that...
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The Other Patent (Score:3)
Re:To Tim O'Reilly and the OS Community.... (Score:3)
This, not 'a patent pool', is what people should be working towards. In order for it to actually benefit society, there needs to be a mechanism (ideally an Internet one) where people can submit ideas and inventions, have them filed as public disclosure (perhaps at the FSF's expense, or whoever wants to fund the relatively cheap process), and make them easily searchable not only by rich corporations but also by individuals.
Doing this would empower people to innovate and invent things, knowing that if they were good at it, not only would their ideas be protected from hostile patent attacks (by which I mean a company going and patenting the thing and then later filing a suit claiming original ownership), but they would be able to build a reputation as an innovative, inventive person: something which, as a service, is more valuable than simply the products of the invention process. This requires not only formal disclosure but _public_ disclosure: not only the resource for filing things with the patent office, but also the access to the public, the interest level of 'Oh look- an open inventions site! Let's go dig through the piles of stuff and see what's there!'.
Given sufficiently brilliant work available at such a site, there would be several results, all beneficial:
- Multiple companies would pounce on particularly good ideas and begin making them realities- but would be compelled to compete on price and quality rather than exclusivity, thus propping up the sagging freemarket economy
- Individuals could build small business on the same stuff, needing only an ability to market on a local level or produce a variation on the theme that is too specialised for the big company
- Consumers could choose among any of these sources for the resulting products, including the option to go do it themselves with full access to the general information about the thing
- Inventors of something good enough to produce all this activity would be newsworthy by virtue of the unusual approach to invention ownership: plus, the site itself would track popularity of its pages and contributors. Quickly, a gift economy would develop as described by ESR in his writings- with status directly mapping to a degree of fame and influence unavailable to inventors laboring in seclusion in corporate anonymity.
- As a result of that, the most talented inventors would be as in demand as top programmers and sysadmins: not by virtue of intellectual property they owned, but by virtue of their capacity to produce innovations and inventions. This could be treated either as the traditional "I see you can do this, so please develop something exclusively for me to patent for $BIGNUM", or in a more FSF-y way of "I see you can do this, so please develop something that I get to see first for $MEDIUMNUM, at which point you can publically disclose it and I'll have a headstart on running with it, plus I get to tailor it to my needs from the outset".
Please, no more talk of open source patent pools. There's a much better way.Book monopoly (Score:3)
This doesn't justify Amazon, however: Amazon doesn't want a free market either. They, too, want to be in a position where there's no choice anymore. Unlike B&N, rather than seize control of the distribution channels, they are trying to seize control of e-commerce intellectual property. That's just as bad, only in a totally different sphere.
Re:Jeff's got a point... (Score:3)
Associates Plan Patented? (Score:3)
Sheesh!
What's a little perplexing to me... (Score:3)
And his objection to the boycott is based, weirdly enough, on the value of the service that Amazon provides. That's missing the point of a boycott: 'boycotting' companies with inferior products or services isn't boycotting, it's just shopping. When you choose not to give a company its business because of the moral and social aspects of their business practices even though they may have the best service in the market, thenyou have a boycott. Why is Tim opposed to boycotts as part of a multifaceted strategy against harmful business practices?
Re:Much to think about... (Score:3)
My understanding is that they simply can't compete--sad, but it's not Microsoft's fault. They simply do the same thing more efficiently.
Re:Much to think about... (Score:3)
Which is why, if I don't buy from Amazon, I definitely won't buy from B&N.
Re:Then *why* did Amazon sue B&N? (Score:3)
Barnes & Noble has never liked the idea that an on-line concern might, theoretically, do to it what B&N itself does to the little independent bookstores wherever it puts in a shiny new B&N franchise. They'd be very happy if they could put Amazon out of business, and have been trying to throw whatever monkeywrench they can into Amazon's plans ever since it first came to their attention. Not to mention, as I've noted elsewhere, ripping off pretty much the entire look and feel of Amazon's site for their own.
I dislike the necessity of having to use patents defensively. But I'm finding it harder and harder to blame Jeff Bezos for protecting himself and his firm using means that others would use to try to bring him down if he didn't.
Turn off 1-Click ordering in your account! (Score:3)
It occurs to me that in addition to boycotting Amazon.com, you can send them a more immediate message by disabling 1-Click ordering in your Amazon.com account.
To turn off 1-Click ordering, go to Amazon.com's web site [amazon.com], click on the "Your Account" button, then click on "Access or change your 1-Click settings", then click on the "Turn off 1-Click ordering" button. If the button says "Turn on 1-Click ordering", just leave it that way.
I just did this. It felt good. :-)
--Roger
Jeff's got a point... (Score:3)
Re:Fighting the wrong company? Question (Score:3)
I've never bought anything from their online store, but B&N's campus bookstore arm is quite evil. My school recently released control of its bookstore to B&N. What happened? Textbook shortages, longer lines, and -- worst of all -- much higher prices. Not only did we lose our 10% discount, B&N actually increased prices by another 5% or so if my comparisson shopping is correct.
And now... now they are building a superstore north of campus, in the middle of friggin nowhere relative to the campus proper and the residence halls. At the very least, it's a several block hike. You may say, "big deal... I can actually get some excercise" but we're talking the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. Most people buy their books for the spring semester when they come back after break, first week or second week in January. Last year, 1999, the temps were about -30 without the wind chill and substantially colder. Don't believe me? Check out Jan uary 13, 1999 in North Dakota [wunderground.com].
----
Only a Bandaid... (Score:3)
As good as these talks are to this particular instance, they are just a band-aid to the greater problem, which is the US Patent Office's general cluelessness in dealing with software and new technology patents. It seems that any real reform has to be done on that level, or else the "worst case" that Tim talks about -- the big tech companies who try to use patents to crush smaller companies -- will happen, it's only a matter of time.
BTW: Say it's not so! Say Tim isn't one of those people who talk on their cell phones in the middle of restaurants!
Re:Bezos' only responsibility is to shareholders (Score:3)
That is why the patent system exists in the first place -- As Jeff and Tim agreed, it should prevent corporations from using their money and power to take the innovations of a smaller company or individual and smoother them with superior marketing etc, thus preventing further innovation by said small company.
Unfortunately, it has come to the point where large companies use patents and cross-licensing to prevent small startups to innovate without stepping on the patents of the "big boys".
It is somewhat refreshing seeing a relatively small company using patents to defend itself against larger corporations, the problem is that neither the 1-click or the affiliate programs are (or should be) patentable. Patents are supposed to prevent technical innovations, *not* marketing strategies. Amazons greatest, and fundamental innovations are all marketing, none techinical. The patent process never has, nor was intended to, protect such things, and is not intended to.
The real telling fact of these is that neither of them would be considered interesting, much less patentable offline. They are equivelant to patenting banner ads--people have been putting ads on every available surface for years now, there is no reason that putting them on a web-page should be patentable.
Basically, neither of those patents should have ever been allowed to be granted, and the USPO should be taking as much flak for this as Amazon.
I'm very confused by all this. (Score:3)
As I was reading this article I began to realize that I'd been extreme. Bezos does make some good points; and Amazon has so far done nothing worse than sue Barnes and Noble, who are definitely guilty of copying Amazon's site (tacky, at best), as well as pulling a "You've Got Mail" and putting lots of small independent bookstores out of business. Amazon on the other hand has done neither of these things. And in certain areas, they really have innovated.
Nonetheless I'm going to withhold my judgment for a while yet. I haven't bought anything from Amazon since the 1-Click patent; and I don't intend to until there appears to be some resolution to this.
BUT KEEP THIS IN MIND: So far Amazon has NOT sued ANYONE except B&N over the patent. It's not like the eToys business; they're not running over any little guys. Maybe we all just have a problem with the theory of what Amazon is doing; but they don't seem to actually have DONE anything wrong. Regardless of whether the patent is valid or not, that by itself should not be enough to condemn a company.
Re:Then *why* did Amazon sue B&N? (Score:3)
Read my earlier post [slashdot.org] about the punches that B&N has thrown Amazon or even better do a search for Amazon, B&N and the words lawsuit or sue and you'll be rather surprised to see the amount of blows that have been thrown by both parties. The rivalry between both companies is similar to the irrational hatreds that run deep within the Sun and Microsoft camps. The reason few geeks know about is that it's been mainly news for the book industry and few else.
My reply.... (Score:3)
If I had seen a serious statement as to WHY they were taking action against Barnes and Noble, what their opinions and beliefs were, and if they had presented a case on why Barnes and Noble were wrong in doing what they did in the manner in which they did it, I might well have been boycotting B&N now instead of Amazon. Lord knows I loved Amazon when they first came online. But I have lost my faith in them, and at this point Jeff Bezos needs to do something to restore that faith.
And here's where I'm out of luck. It's not an issue of cost, it's a matter of customer service. In my opinion, Amazon's site has always been and will always be much more informative than their competitors. That's why I would shop there, even if it cost an extra buck or two. I did not mind paying for that service. But I cannot condone a corporation who appears to be building a monopoly through lawsuits.
If Amazon wants to impress me, it can create a small non profit organization whose sole purpose is to patent and hold the patents for the things required for the internet. This organization will be based upon the concept that it will NEVER use these to initiate a lawsuit against another company. (They can be used as evidence in a countersuit for all I care.) This organization will handle and hold patents for all companies who are serious about patenting for defensive purposes only. Any companies patenting outside of this organization can be assumed to be patenting for agressive purposes.
Do it Jeff, and you'll have me as a customer forever.
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Patent laws aren't so stupid (Score:3)
That's not the idea behind patents. The patent system was created to insure against trade secrets dying with their inventors. Classic example: Antonio Stradivari's violin making techniques. That's why "obvious" ideas aren't patentable, they will inevitably occur again to someone else. It's different with copyrights, there's nothing in the law stating that a copyrighted text should not be obvious. All it needs to be is original, i.e. never having been written before.
Probably the "one-click" idea is obvious, so this patent should never have been granted, but courts exist to decide about such things. The only problem is how to make sure that judges and juries understand the application of laws in a context where technology evolves so fast. Perhaps we sould compare "one-click" with other uncontested patents in the past. What about the paper clip, for instance. This seems a pretty obvious thing, to bend a piece of wire to hold together sheets of paper. If the paper clip was accepted as a valid patent, then I think the one-click patent is just as valid, if no one did it before Amazon.
I'm not joining this boycott. I have bought from Amazon since all mess this started. I don't think Richard M Stallmann is such a god that I should blindly follow his lynch mob.
Re:A modest proposal... (Score:3)
The first sentence is true: Amazon announced record losses in the fourth quarter of 1999. The second sentence, however, is apparently false: Amazon claims that it is now making money on books alone; the losses come from expanding into other products (CDs, videos, etc.).
On a related topic.... Note that Amazon's profiting on books just might justify the view that losses taken to build market share can turn into profits later on.
The Chicken or the Egg (Score:3)
Re:What's a little perplexing to me... (Score:4)
Boycott of Amazon so that they feel the public
pressure and are operating under the premise that
they have to do something to change the situation.
On the other hand you need to have someone whom
they trust and whom we trust and have that person
talk to them in a truly constructive way. And I
cannot say how much I respect Tim for taking up
this task and creating a useful and sensible
conversation with Bezos and with us (at least with
me - I feel included).
© Copyright 1999 Kristian Köhntopp
No Right To Patent (Score:4)
He uses Netscape as an example. He says that maybe if Netscape had patented some of its ideas they wouldn't have fallen and been acquired by AOL (the king megacorp on the internet). The problem with this is that if Netscape had patented all its technology it would have hindered the growth of the Internet. If all the web browsing technology was owned by Netscape, Netscape would be the only browser around. This is sort of a bad example because the entity helped most by Netscape's not patenting the technology was Microsoft, for whom none of us have any great love.
But setting aside arguments about IE's incorporation into Windows and all that stuff, and looking at IE as a product, I think in the long run we are much better off with Netscape not having patented its technology. Companies need competition in order to keep making new, better products. In the end, the main benefactor of competition is usually the consumer. Prices are driven down and product quality is driven up.
Now, the death of Netscape was sad, and it was due mostly to the fact that their playing field wasn't level (when the competing product is included on every computer for free it does tend to kill your own product). But imagine that IE was made by a company that wasn't MS, and their only product was IE. I think Netscape would still be alive and kicking, and with each one trying to one-up the other, we would be the ones to reap the benefits of this contest. This is not a new idea, this is what all industries do. The problem here was that MS had such an enormous advantage.
Assuming that if Netscape had "filed a few patents" it would not have been swallowed, I don't think this is any kind of a good goal in itself. Filing for patents as a way to keep out competition is great for the filer of the patents, but it sucks for consumers. IE 3 sucked, I didn't like IE 4 much either, but I sure like IE 5 (and, even better, IE 4.5 on Mac). Before IE, I had only one choice: Netscape. The ability for consumers to choose what product to buy or use is the basis for all the antitrust legislation we have. Filing patents to stifle competition runs directly counter to that idea. And while Amazon should be rewarded for its innovations in ecommerce, this is not one of them, and they have really gone about it in the wrong way. The way to maintain marketshare is to one-up your competitor. If they are afraid of B&N, too bad. They must adapt or die, and not patent frivolous things in an attempt to fence off technology.
I would be sad to see Amazon go, but I think the market should decide who the winner is. Using patents to keep out competitors still seems like a very underhanded and dirty trick to me, and in the end it will most likely be the consumers who lose out.
_________________
The Story of O' (Score:4)
Jeff B: listen you little geek, post a total suck-up letter on your website, or I'm not selling your books.
Tim O: Oh, now I see your point about the intellectual property stuff, it's downright +1 Insightful. But what will I say?
Jeff B: Make it up, I don't care, just get it done.
Tim O: Yes, master.
[click] [bzzz][beep][last message repeated 9 times]
Tim O: RMS? Could you help me out with a letter I'm writing to the ... um er... EFF? What should I say about patents and stuff.
RMS: Dear EFF, Patents [voice rising] are [voice rising] very [shreiking] bad. Information wants to be free. It's a free speech issue.[/talking][/shrieking]
Tim O: thanks dude, good enough! [click]
[tap tap tap] s/good/bad/ [oops] s/good/bad/g [tap tap tap] s/[shrill]/[soothing]/g [oops] s/[shrill]/[soothing]/gi
RCPT TO:Jeff B
My Dearest Friend, How's this?
[connection lost before line could be traced]
Echelon is unable to determine identity of parties.
We've Already Forgotten? B&N Would Have Been Worse (Score:4)
Barnes and Noble has been out to crush Amazon the same way it bullied and crushed independent booksellers [corpwatch.org] for at least the past two years. After all B&N was trying to become a true monopolist by buying up book publishers [zdnet.com] then using that against their competitors. IMHO opinion Amazon got this patent just to protect them against B&N which has showed itself to be a completely ruthless and unscrupulous competitor.
God only knows how much worse things would have been if Barnes and Noble had gotten the patent. That said the patent is still wrong but if the USPTO is going to be stupid enough to grant those patents then Amazon has a right to grab as many as possible to protect themselves from Barnes & Noble.
And Bezos issued forth a great stream of hot air.. (Score:5)
I don't mean to flame here, but I really don't think the summary you provided reflects a very good discussion. On the one hand you had Mr. O'Reilly pretty much arguing by analogy the whole time, and on the other hand you had Mr. Bezos doing the classic used car salesman's pitch of "I'll get back to you on that" and "I'll have to talk to my manager". The "I'll get back to you on that" is accomplished by pushing the problem out to a place where he can make a promise to "try" (i.e. see to what extent he can allow independent developers to use "his invention" without harming his case against B&N) without having to commit immediately. The "I'll have to talk to my manager" allows him to be the good cop and Amazon's patent lawyers to be the bad cop. The upshot is, he still basically represents a big business trying to rake in as much as possible, consequences be damned, and I'm afraid that all that happened here is that Jeff talks a very good talk and told Tim just what he wants to hear. The "I'm just a little guy against giants like Wal-Mart" and "I'm just like Netscape" angles are simply attempts to get on Tim's good side and turn the discussion from "me against you" to "us against them". That is, after all, what a good used car salesman does.
As far as the patentability issue, there should be no compromise: this simply must stop here. Someone in an earlier post said (roughly) that the reason for all the outcry over this is that this one click "innovation" is so simple and obvious that even people who can barely write "hello world" in a programming language are disgusted. And they should be. There is nothing more here than an attempt to use the law as a crowbar, to get any advantage, no matter how tenuous and no matter what its consequences, against Amazon's competitors. For Jeff Bezos to compare his company to Netscape is indeed arresting, but only because it's incredible that someone in the retail business whose company simply uses tools that others (including Netscape) have developed, would have the hubris to compare themselves to Netscape.
Tim says, "The social norms of the Internet and of the Open Source community, which have proven so productive in the development of the Web, need to be recognized, honored, and upheld. The public relations cost of violating those norms needs to be high." Everyone knows that the patent system is totally broken. Not everyone chooses to use it. Those who do, like Amazon, deserve all the flak they receive. The only thing these companies understand is dollars, and the only way to make them behave is to make the consequences of their actions translate into lost revenue.
Then *why* did Amazon sue B&N? (Score:5)
If Bezos had simply obtained the patent, and kept it in the company's portfolio for defense, then he would have some merit in that point. But he took B&N to court, and stopped them from using the "1-click" system. He used that patent offensively, not defensively. (And as far as was mentioned, B&N wasn't throwing Amazon any legal punches before Amazon did).
Bezos talks a reasonable talk, but his company's doing exactly what he fears others would do to him. Net negative gain, folks.
We should be boycotting Barnes and Nobles instead (Score:5)
http://www.wired.com/wired/arch ive/7.06/barnes.html [wired.com]
Specifically, they talk about how they implemented most of amazon's functionality, almost feature by feature.
Bezos has a point about not wanting to be "Netscape." Barnes & Nobles is just like Microsoft - they are leveraging their wielding power in the brick and mortar stores (operating systems) and trying to gain a presence online by providing an Amazon clone (web browser).
We should be boycotting B&N, not amazon.
Re:What's a little perplexing to me... (Score:5)
To address thy first point: what exactly is wrong with taking a good ol' boy approach to things? You'll note that O'Reilly has Bezos actually talking to him, as opposed to those who merely send hatemail. You use what works. Besides, this is one of the reasons that we have CEOs and managers; much of what they do is negotiate with each other. It's politics; it's their job.
On your second point, he is doing it not so much because Amazon provides a valuable service (B&N is oftentimes cheaper), but because Amazon is, in every other respect, a top-notch quality company. He respects them; they respect him. You don't get very much respect by boycotting and refusing to talk. You simply get press. O'Reilly wants to get things done, not get on the evening news (although that's always fun too...).
Patent laws are really at fault. (Score:5)
Now, I don't agree with these patents being awarded to anyone. However, I think Bezos realized how stupid the patent laws were and took advantage of them. I agree that if he wouldn't have, someone else would have, and that company would be the target of our flames instead.
The real problem is with the patent office and the laws itself. I think most of on Slashdot agree (or at least it would seem by the response to these things) that the patent laws in the US are very messed up. This is due to big companies lobbying for years to get patent laws that allowed them to screw over competitors. The entire patent system really needs an overhaul for the 21st. century.
Of course, I doubt we'll get it. ^_^
A modest proposal... (Score:5)
Of course if you actualy *wanted* to hurt them you could join the affiliate program, link to a specific title (15% commission), buy a best seller with "one click" (30% discount), pocket your 40% net savings, and watch Amazon sink deeper into a sea of red ink.