I beg to differ. Amazon does not have a monopoly on *anything* other than the manufacture of Kindles. However, this is just one of many types of eReaders (the actual market in question). Their goal is to maximize profit but they have to work within the ecosystem of publishers, competing retailers, and devices.

Before you snort and storm off, think about this. Fifteen years ago, Amazon was a nothing upstart going against some of the biggest and laziest incumbent retailers (I'm talking about the handful of music and book chains that dominated distribution in the US). They won that round by offering buyers what they wanted at prices that were better. As a company, they are more aware than most about how vulnerable a large incumbent can be to changes in its ecosystem. They are trying to find a product that will keep them relevant a decade from now.

What Amazon is doing is insisting on a piece of the action as the reseller (which every reseller does) and something extra for the distribution of bits. As I said before, that distribution fee may not be reasonable by any particular person's definition and is a reasonable subject for debate. <aside> Anything more than 15% above their wholesale rates (an overhead charge) seems excessive to *me* </aside> However, the only opinion that matters here is that of the publisher considering using Amazon as an e-document distributor. If Amazon's cost structure allows that organization to meet its revenue goals while keeping prices down to something consumers will accept, then it is good enough. If not, then the publisher will do something else (go elsewhere, beat on Amazon to reduce their cut, etc.). My point is that the publisher is the only one with the historical data to decide if the money is right. Some will and some won't.

This is also not to say the users are not getting screwed. That is a different question and involves what is a reasonable price to pay for an electronic, possibly DRM infected version of content you can also buy in dead-tree format. I tend to think that $9 is unreasonable for a paperback (and unconscionable for an electronic version) of entertainment prose. The question here to consider is "Who is screwing the customer?" I tend to think there is enough greed in enough places (publishers, advertising agencies, agents, resellers, authors, etc.) to spread the blame widely and thinly.

There are two things to consider here

1.) Amazon is handling the distribution. If their formula is unreasonable, that is something to kick around but they do need to cover those costs.

2.) The publishers probably cannot "pop it in the mail" for less. The article's author is forgetting about or intentionally ignoring the printing costs.

At the end of the day, the question has to be "Is the publisher getting a better or worse return?" This article (and most others on this subject) neglect that issue entirely. It's easy to bash at Apple's or Amazon's costing formula. It's much harder (and would display a lot of the publishers' proprietary data) to discuss the real fiscal impact on the publishing industry.

So, this time the plan is to design a capsule-switched network with 2m capsules that, undoubtedly, will have a maximum weight. How long until someone realizes that efficiency would be improved if each packet, I mean capsule, could carry six times the cargo....

One of the more amusing blog entries from Sun engineers was a discussion of the amount of energy needed to completely fill a ZFS file system. A 128-bit address space isn't just optimistically big, it's "freaking huge!"
http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/128_bit_storage_are_you

My daughter is almost three years-old. One of the most interesting things to observe is how she classifies her world. When she was 18 months old she would have classified a robot as sentient; she thought almost everything was alive (sort of a toddler version of pantheism). If it was a friendly robot, that would have put it in the realm of the three dogs and cat which she was already familiar with.

I tend to agree. Challenging this as a 1st Amendment issue is probably the weakest legal argument. It seems that the ex post facto violation would be stronger. Even more powerful would be to challenge this under the 5th amendment (unlawful taking) since property (in the form of legal, derivative works based on the public domain materials) is being rendered valueless.

Let's assume for a minute that the complaint is correct and that the school was remotely monitoring some set of students. (This might not be correct. Did the snapshot come from some public source like FaceBook?).

If it were my daughter's computer, I would not be talking about a class-action suit with a civil attorney. I would be sitting down at police HQ and the district attorney's office pursuing criminal charges against the individuals involved. They would need to face the felony charges that their behavior warranted. Once that was rolling, I would go after the individuals (not the district) for civil damages.

Why give a pass to the deep pockets? Simply because I don't want to have to look my neighbors in the face when a fractional point increase in their property taxes is required to pay a civil settlement that made me wealthy. I have no problems bankrupting the people who authorized and deployed the tech.