
Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil? - cstross
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/05/amazon-malignant-monopoly-or-j.html
======
Turing_Machine
"they supply editorial, production, packaging, marketing, accounting, and
sales services and pay me a percentage of the revenue....I could do this
myself, and self-publish, but I don't want to be a publisher, I want to be a
writer: we have this thing called "the division of labour""

You can hire that done for a flat rate, without giving up 85% of your money in
perpetuity.

"will even pay quite well if I accept extremely onerous terms."

What are these "extremely onerous terms"?

There aren't any. They will pay you 70% of retail, on time, every month. No
exclusive contracts. No Byzantine "royalty statements". Their accounting is
quite clear. No signing over your copyrights forever.

"if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the
same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with
less recourse"

This, of course, is pure nonsense.

It may eventually come about that Amazon starts abusing authors, but that's
certainly not the case now.

~~~
anon1385
>What are these "extremely onerous terms"? There aren't any. They will pay you
70% of retail, on time, every month.

No they won't.

70% royalties is only available if you sell your book for less than $9.99,
otherwise it drops to 35%:
[https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A301WJ6XCJ8KW0)

That's what you might call an "onerous term".

~~~
pja
Note also that Amazon charges ordinary authors an onerous per kb delivery
charge under the 70% royalty option. You get to pay the charge whether the
Kindle owner buys the book over 3G or Wifi, even though Amazon only incurs the
costs when delivering 3G data.

The contract is also full of delightful potential gotchas like Amazon
demanding worldwide distribution rights at exchange rates set by them, without
reference to any externally defined rates.

The whole thing is incredibly biased in favour of Amazon over the author. This
should be absolutely no surprise whatsoever given Amazon's history: At one
point, they were charging EU authors their local VAT rate, whilst only paying
3% VAT in Luxembourg:
[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/21/amazon-
for...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/oct/21/amazon-forces-
publishers-pay-vat-ebook) (they may have given up on this particular piece of
blatant gouging, but I'm sure they're trying to make up for it elsewhere).

~~~
Turing_Machine
"onerous per kb delivery charge"

$0.15/megabyte.

Most ebooks are considerably less than one megabyte.

"even though Amazon only incurs the costs when delivering 3G data."

Really? They get data centers and bandwidth for free?

~~~
pja
_Really? They get data centers and bandwidth for free?_

Meanwhile Amazon Cloudfront charges $0.12 per Gb. What was that about data
centres and bandwidth again?

Be serious: $0.15 per Mb is a massive rip-off compared to the actual cost of
delivery, unless the download is over 3G in which case it's merely an
obnoxious markup rather than an outright rapacious one.

~~~
res0nat0r
That bandwidth price is helping to pay for much more of the kindle ecosystem
than just bits from s3.

~~~
chrismcb
I would have thought the rest of what they charge the consumer is what pays
for the "kindle ecosystem." Not like the "kindle ecosystem" costs all the much
to run.

~~~
res0nat0r
It's more expensive to run than you think.

------
spindritf
Neither. They pass almost all of their surplus to customers. They're a model
corporation as far as I'm concerned, the anti-Apple.

 _Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by
elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers_ \-- Matthew
Yglesias

In this case they are a middleman replacing another middleman. That's just
capitalism. Publishers had a good run.

Can Amazon turn evil? Sure. But it will be 20 years this year and they still
haven't. If they do, you can replace them tomorrow.

You can even read a book bought anywhere else on your Kindle. EPUB converts to
MOBI just like that

    
    
        ebook-convert book.epub book.mobi
    

But that won't be necessary since another book store will happily give you
.mobi files. That's some monopoly they have.

As to the point that somehow we will run out of books to read, there is not
even the slightest chance that I will read the best 1% of the books published
until today in my entire lifetime. That's assuming everyone stops writing
_now_. And statistically I'm a heavy reader, I'm up to 2-3 not-strictly-
technical books a month.

~~~
anon1385
>They're a model corporation as far as I'm concerned

I think we must have a very different idea of 'model corporation'

[http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_...](http://www.salon.com/2014/02/23/worse_than_wal_mart_amazons_sick_brutality_and_secret_history_of_ruthlessly_intimidating_workers/)

>The series revealed the lengths Amazon was prepared to go to keep costs down
and output high and yielded a singular image of Amazon’s
ruthlessness—ambulances stationed on hot days at the Amazon center to take
employees suffering from heat stroke to the hospital. Despite the summer
weather, there was no air-conditioning in the depot, and Amazon refused to let
fresh air circulate by opening loading doors at either end of the depot—for
fear of theft

>On June 2, 2011, a warehouse employee contacted the US Occupational Safety
and Health Administration to report that the heat index had reached 102
degrees in the warehouse and that fifteen workers had collapsed.

>On July 25, with temperatures in the depot reaching 110 degrees, a security
guard reported to OSHA that Amazon was refusing to open garage doors to help
air circulate and that he had seen two pregnant women taken to a nursing
station. Calls to the local ambulance service became so frequent that for five
hot days in June and July, ambulances and paramedics were stationed all day at
the depot

~~~
res0nat0r
Factory warehouse jobs suck. I used to work in one myself before college.

Those stores are not the everyday in and out working environment, nor is a
factory job any way comparable to a 100k salary position. You definitely are
not going to have as cushy a work environment no matter what factory you work
in.

~~~
adwn
> _[...] nor is a factory job any way comparable to a 100k salary position
> [...]_

So what you're saying is that since their salary is low, they don't deserve
humane working conditions?!

The fact that they just accepted the health risks for their employees out of
"fear of theft" (why couldn't they put a security guard there?) makes them
evil.

~~~
res0nat0r
I'd say factory working conditions at amazon are humane. Working in a factory
just sucks.

~~~
adwn
There was a way to make it suck less, which Amazon didn't do for stupid
reasons.

------
WalterBright
Oh, rubbish. I have a couple of my own books that no publisher would touch,
for sale on Amazon. I have helped a couple authors get their out-of-print-
that-no-publisher-would-touch books published on Amazon.

Has Stross considered that maybe it's Hachette that is holding out for
unreasonable terms? Maybe he could go with another publisher. He also writes:

"They have a publishing subsidiary and allow me—if I want to self-publish—to
use them as a sales channel, and will even pay quite well if I accept
extremely onerous terms."

I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous.

"It's anti-author, and in the long term it will deprive you of the books you
want to read."

On the contrary, my impression is that there's been a recent explosion of new
titles being released, as well as putting old out-of-print books back on the
(electronic) shelf.

~~~
craigching
> I don't see how being paid quite well is extremely onerous.

That's not how I read it. I read it as he gets paid extremely well if he
accepts the onerous terms. What are the onerous terms? I wish he'd elaborated,
but you can imagine it might have something to do with ownership once you've
published with Amazon. I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for
sure.

~~~
anon1385
>I really do wish he'd elaborated though so we know for sure

[https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=APILE934L348N)

>You will not, without our express, prior written permission: (a) issue any
press release or make any other public disclosures regarding this Agreement or
its terms

~~~
craigching
Thanks for that. I think some of the comments downstream have sated my
appetite to know more as well :)

------
ilamont
One issue I seldom see mentioned in articles about ebook monopolies is how
Apple -- which has many of the pieces in place to be a strong competitor --
has really dropped the ball.

When I first began testing different ebook formats a few years ago, not only
was the iPad hardware superior to the Kindles and Nook, the ePub reading
experience in iBooks was vastly better than the same ePub on the Nook or the
.mobi equivalent in the Kindles.

Where Apple failed was in the purchasing experience (the iBookstore/iTunes
mess) and some of the back-end tools for publishing. Other than updating the
iTunes Producer interface for submitting new titles, and improving iBooks
Author for Apple-only rich media ebooks, I haven't seen any significant
improvements for readers or publishers who want to use the Apple platform over
the past two years. Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire has brought Amazon customers a
slick alternative to the iPad at a much lower price point.

I don't like having an Amazon monopoly, but some of the blame should be
assigned to the erstwhile competitors who can't seem to get it together.

~~~
blinkingled
Are Apple iBooks cross platform? I could live with Amazon Kindle ebooks even
if they are evil with the publishers but it Apple wants to tie me to their
ecosystem without a way to exit then that's an evil that affects me more
directly. And if we are talking about dropping the ball lack of cross platform
availability is as big a ball they could drop.

~~~
pooper
Perhaps in a few years we will have a "Thoughts on books" similar to the
"Thoughts on music". In my opinion, if the iBooks experience is really good,
people who love Apple will continue to use iBooks even without the shackles of
DRM.

I think Apple can afford to sell books without DRM and will do so if
publishers allow them. I don't think Amazon.com and Apple are evil. It is the
publishers who increasingly find themselves less useful and are willing to
sacrifice usability for the sake of temporary relevance.

~~~
blinkingled
Great point about DRM free books - if they can do it that's one step forward
but they'll still need to open up the formats and distribution so people can
read them on whatever device they want.

Problem is right now they have selection issues, no cross platform
availability and they colluded to raise prices.

~~~
pooper
Instead of starting from scratch, we could build up on epub. It should already
be possible to read DRM-free books on Apple's iBook app. It'd be nice if
Amazon.com supported epub natively.

~~~
ClashTheBunny
Nook epubs and amazon .mobis are both easily decrypted. The key is your name
and credit card for nook and your serial number for kindle. There is no lock
in when you add calibre to the mix, it will convert anything to anything.

~~~
DanBC
It's easy to do, but it's circumventing a copy protection measure thus illegal
in many places.

Making format-shifting illegal is a hateful thing to do and there should be
exceptions in law for this.

------
wjnc
The thing that resonates in this story for me, is that these monopsonies
mostly harm producers (writers, musicians), not consumers. The monopsonists
keep prices quite low and service quite high, compared to monopolists. It
really feels like a problem for Stross, but not too generally for mankind
(Stross-fans aside).

Troubles on the producer side might force some producers out, but since this
is in the creative sphere we cannot really know which Shakespeare we've missed
because he "became a banker".

I do feel sorry for Stross the writer that might have to switch publisher, or
the artist who gets .002 cents per download, but hey, my Amazon or Spotify
experience rocks and delivers great value.

Other comments rightly add that in the transition from monopsony to oligopsony
(: say Apple enters) producers might be able to retain more value, but then
again, these producers still have to deal with the middle men. You have this
stacked market here where each party would blame the others for not getting
his / her 'appropriate' level of reward:

 _producer (creative, high-risk endeavor, superstar effects) <\--> _publishing
house (makes market, creates prints, less risky endeavor, but has competition
in picking winners) <\--> *platform Amazon (delivers product, makes userbase,
pays per sale: least risk but low added value per sale)

~~~
zcrar70
> but hey, my Amazon or Spotify experience rocks and delivers great value.

They won't if there are no more good books to read/music to listen to, because
the gains aren't worth the effort that goes into producing them.

I don't think danger is books or music disappearing, but that the quality goes
down, as the incentives for authors/musicians/composers to invest significant
time and effort producing high quality work are reduced.

This particularly applies to the 'avant-guarde' works which push the envelope
creatively/intellectually, but typically don't correlate with high volumes.

------
spir
Let us not fall into the peasant trap of calling a website, which you need
never visit, that sells commodities, which you need never purchase, a
monopoly.

Amazon's strategy is price, convenience and selection. It has been since at
least the famous 1997 letter to shareholders.

(Of course, Kindle isn't a monopoly either. None of the pricing is predatory -
ie temporarily selling at a loss for anticompetitive purposes. It's razor and
blades.)

First World Problems at its finest. "Those fucking starbucks guys have a
MONOPOLY on good coffee!!" Suck it up or use widely-available inferior
products and services.

~~~
Anderkent
You're looking at it from the point of a customer. Sure, if you want to buy a
book you could use a different retailer, they probably have the book too.

From the point of the producer, if you're not on amazon, you're not reaching
80% of your audience. You don't have a choice.

~~~
WalterBright
I've bought ebooks from people's own web sites that were not available from
Amazon. They did their own promotion, such as posting reddit articles about
their books. They reached a worldwide audience, and (presumably) kept 100% of
the sales revenue.

~~~
Anderkent
You might have. You're hardly representative. If everyone bought books on
personal web sites, amazon wouldn't have 80% market penetration.

------
vosper
There's a particularly good link to an insightful counter-argument from
another author way down in the comments:
[http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-
hache...](http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/amazon-v-hachette-
dont-believe-the-spin/)

~~~
moomin
I note that even after he includes other media in the size of these behemoths,
the numbers he's quoting are factors of 5 or 6 smaller than Amazon (a number
notably missing from his analysis)

Yes, on many occasions these guys would be the scariest 12-year old in the
playground. But this time they're getting picked on by Mike Tyson.

~~~
vosper
You're right that he doesn't mention that Amazon's revenues dwarf the
publishers' revenues, though this [1] Guardian article suggests that Amazon's
book revenues may be as low as 7% of the revenue figure that Stross cited.

At any rate, the most interesting points in the blog post were that firstly
it's not clear that Hachette aren't playing some shenanigans of their own with
delivery times, and secondly that there's this whole background of court-
ordered deal renegotiation that Stross didn't mention.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-
esc...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/23/amazon-escalates-
battle-hachette-publishing)

~~~
moomin
The problem is, as far as I can tell, it's the source of the rumour. I mean,
there's no evidence that Jeff Bezos is not doing it because he was ordered to
by the Bavarian illuminati. For or against. I could say it was unclear, but
it'd be more likely a transparent contra-play by a PR company representing
someone doing something bad.

------
stcredzero
_monopsony_

It's always a good sign when an article expands one's vocabulary. (Yes, look
it up!)

~~~
rahimnathwani
The first example of a monopsony I was taught at school was that of the market
for teachers if all schools are run by the state. Then teachers can only be
employed by the state (if they want to remain teachers).

------
mark_l_watson
It is ironic that all of Charlie's books that I have bought have been on
Kindle.

That said, I basically agree with the premise of this article. When the price
is comparable I prefer buying eBooks from publishers, with an advantage of
getting multiple formats. Yesterday I bought one book on Kindle and another
directly from the publisher. The book I bought on Kindle was unfortunately
much cheaper from Amazon than the publisher's direct price.

------
edanm
Great article, and I love getting an update on one of the more influential
articles I've read about Amazon that has stuck with me over the years.

But I'm left with a question - is Amazon stupid? They rely on new works coming
out _just as much_ as authors and publishers. Why are they acting in a way
that will drive off the creation of new content in the long term? It looks
like a losing strategy for them.

~~~
tormeh
Writing is like music: Someone will always do it, even if it doesn't pay. You
can take the author's money and he'll still write. Being passionate about your
job (which most artists are) in a market with abundant supply (which art has)
means you are a career sucker. While art is not fungible in the sense that a
free market would drive the margins to zero, a monopolist could still twist
artists pretty bad before a significant portion of them stop writing.

~~~
WalterBright
My father wrote and had published a couple of books (obscure historical
topics). He spent years writing them. He didn't care about making money off of
them, he wrote them to establish his professional reputation. He's happy that
people read them and cite them.

------
jstalin
Conversely, I've been able to publish through Amazon's on-demand imprint,
CreateSpace, books that I would have no way of publishing otherwise. I make a
few hundred bucks a month and have fun with self-publishing. The Kindle
editions also earn 70% royalties. I make some money, so does Amazon, and those
who buy the books get what they want. Everyone wins.

------
bowlofpetunias
Given that publishers, authors, printers, bookstore and basically the entire
publishing chain has done pretty much fuck all in the 20(!) years that Amazon
has been active to even remotely innovate their industry, I have a hard time
feeling sorry for them.

Crying on the sideline about how evil Amazon is whilst doing nothing to
service readers doesn't get any sympathy votes from me.

And that includes Charlie Stross, who's work I love. I have money and
e-reader, but if I want to buy his books, he sends me to... Amazon. To buy
DRM-ed vendor-locked Kindle-only copies.

Okay, Accelerando is an exception, but we're talking pretty much the most
tech-savvy, open source minded fiction author out there. You can pretty much
imagine the state of the rest of the industry.

Amazon is the only party that innovates and tries to provide for the needs of
the reader. They've earned their monopoly the hard way. Hachette is not the
little guy. Hachette is a multinational that sat on its fat ass counting money
for two decades.

------
facepalm
And Amazon is interested in driving Charlie Stross out of business because?

By the logic of the article everybody who negotiates a price is evil because
they want to drive the other party out of business by aiming for lower and
lower prices.

~~~
stcredzero
Such tendencies are fine in your typical market. Monopolies make it a problem.

~~~
cjy
Actually, a monopoly should remove problems like these. If Amazon is the only
firm, it will bear all the costs if fewer good books come out in the future.
Therefore, it has an incentive to create an ecosystem that maximizes it's long
term profit.

For example, think about fishing. If there are lots of fishing boats they will
tend to overfish. They can't leave fish in the ocean to reproduce because
other boats will catch them. If there is just one boat (or all boats are owned
by the same company) it will take out the optimal number of fish so that the
fishery remains healthy and pays the highest dividends in the future.

~~~
SapphireSun
w.r.t. fishing, I remember reading about this and while that approach works in
theory, in practice people are subject to careerist tendencies. The fact that
they will not be around as long as the company will be incentivizes them to
extract wealth as fast as possible.

I tried looking for the article that talked about this, but I couldn't find
it. The conclusion of the article was that some form of regulation was
necessary.

My gut feeling is that the monopolist strategy can work, but only if the
company's board implements strong internal controls and the executives don't
get them changed. I feel that this is a bit of a gamble though as you have two
powerful diametrically opposed forces. Also, members of the board could be
looking for a quick exit from time to time as well.

On another note, while I was looking for the article, I found this interesting
article on the necessary characteristics for a Marine Protected Area to work:
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature1...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v506/n7487/full/nature13053.html)

------
chris123
I don't know if I'd go so far as calling them "plain evil," but they
definitely have tendencies. They are certainly a near-monopoly, and they are
known to treat their employees (at least the low level ones), vendors, and
customers in monopolistic (and maybe evil) ways, such as by basically
dictating "everything," for one. That said, I am not at all unbiased. In fact,
I strongly dislike Amazon after a bad experience with them as a marketplace
seller: Amazon suspended my seller account for life, without opportunity to
appeal for an honest mistake I fixed myself before they even noticed it.
Details on Ripoff Report: [http://goo.gl/xgbelU](http://goo.gl/xgbelU)

------
larrys
"So, point one is that this is not a battle of equals: it's a big-ish
corporation being picked on by a Goliath more than ten times its size, in an
attempt to extort better terms."

This is really a stupid way to put it.

The 1/10th size company is plenty big enough to hire top notch lawyers,
lobbyists, PR people etc to fight this battle. The fact is this is really a
battle where, past a certain point, size doesn't matter. We are not talking
about a schoolyard fight.

What Amazon is doing is wrong (if as reported) however making out the underdog
(if you want to call it that) as a "David" as if they are some small 10 person
company being picked on by, say, google (and their algorithm) is just
hyperbole.

------
icebraining
_if I were to self-publish through Amazon I would be vulnerable to exactly the
same pressure that Hachette is currently on the receiving end of, but with
less recourse._

Is this claim backed up by any actual evidence? Does Amazon pressure self-
published authors the same way they pressure publishers?

~~~
michaelt
Even if Amazon doesn't pressure self-publishers on price today, a career
writer has to think about where the market will be 10 or 15 years from now.

The claim is not that Amazon is pressuring self-publishing authors today -
it's that they could start in the future, as an ebook monopoly would give them
have the means, motive and opportunity.

~~~
icebraining
Amazon will never be a true monopoly, because shipping ebooks has no real
barriers. There's no way that writers will be unable to sell their works
elsewhere, and as Stross himself writes, novels are not commodities that can
be undercut by another producer.

The only authors that have to fear that future are those that produce works
uninteresting enough that people won't look for them outside of the Amazon
store.

~~~
michaelt
Stross himself seems quite worried about Amazon declining pre-orders of his
book. Not real orders once the book is out - just pre-orders. He obviously
thinks he needs to be stocked by Amazon.

Does this mean Stross is an uninteresting writer? Or is he worrying about
nothing?

~~~
icebraining
_Does this mean Stross is an uninteresting writer?_

Maybe he is. SF has never been particularly interesting to the general reading
public, alas.

------
rwmj
And what stops Charlie Stross from selling eBooks through his own website and
taking PayPal as payment?

~~~
moomin
His agreement with Hachette, which, as he has explained, he believes to be an
agreement in his best interest.

Seriously, has it been so long since Microsoft that people can't recognise
straight up abuse of market position anymore?

~~~
rwmj
At one time you could practically not buy a computer without buying a
Microsoft license. It's not as if you can't get internet without being forced
to buy everything through Amazon. Anyone can still set up a website.

~~~
yardie
You could always buy a computer without a Microsoft license. What you could
not buy was a computer minus the price of that license (small independent
shops excluded).

You can sell your books through Amazon. But you can't sell your books anywhere
else cheaper than Amazon.

~~~
WalterBright
You can sell your books through your own web site and set your own prices.

The internet is the great democratizer of commerce.

~~~
moomin
I think you misunderstand what's involved in selling a book. A website that
takes orders isn't enough, you've got to actually stock and deliver them. This
is what Amazon is developing a stranglehold on.

~~~
WalterBright
I've published and sold books in the past. I know what is involved in it. It
is not that hard, nor is it that expensive.

Most print shops will do the printing & binding for you, you can get mailers
from Uline, and mail with the USPS.

It's hard to see how Amazon could stop or even inhibit any of that.

------
hershel
If they fear being left alone against amazon, why don't authors use their
union to start directly collectively bargaining, or even starting business
activities together ? In a world where a book store is just an app, there are
a lot of opportunities open to authors, and they really hold the power in the
book market, at least with regards to ebooks.

~~~
Anderkent
Because they don't want to be publishers, they want to be writers. As said in
the article.

~~~
hershel
They don't have to be publishers. They just vote once in a while, pay their
dues , and the union does the rest.

~~~
icebraining
Union might not be the best example. Maybe a "writers' cooperative".

------
Oletros
I would like to see any proof of that accusation of predatory pricing.

~~~
MaysonL
Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling ebooks below cost.

~~~
Oletros
Before Apple entered the market, Amazon was selling SOME books below cost.

Still waiting any proof from him about that predatory pricing accusation

------
alexeisadeski3
Pretty obviously not a monopoly.

------
vertex-four
So, here's something that I want as an occasional reader. I want a service
that'll let me buy a different small-ish bundle of e-books of various genres
every week/month/whatever, Humble Bundle style. I've had a look for such
things, and haven't really found anything which does it properly.

~~~
7799862
So you want a Humble Bundle, but for books? Maybe they could call it the
"Humble Book Bundle"! And maybe they could give it a humblebundle.com URL too!

Oh, it already exists...

[https://www.humblebundle.com/books](https://www.humblebundle.com/books)

~~~
furyofantares
There is no need to use sarcasm, you can just inform the person you are
replying to without trying to belittle them

~~~
aidanf
The parent's tone doesn't come across as belittling to me - it seems more like
a playful, joking form of sarcasm - although I guess tone is difficult to
decipher on the web. Nevertheless, there's no harm in a little humour, and I
prefer to give parent the benefit of the doubt.

------
avoutthere
Amazon is a great American success story that has improved the lives of many
around the world. Only those of a particular political persuasion would
characterize them as evil.

------
juniorcopywrt
Ugh more whining from Stross. What a headline: Betteridge's Law and "Amazon,
have you stopped beating your wife yet?" combined in one.

Amazon's negotiating tactics are not unique and don't make them evil. B&N
pulled the same tricks when negotiating with Simon & Schuster last year:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-
schus...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/business/media/simon-schuster-and-
barnes-noble-reach-a-deal.html?_r=0) It's a common incident in the television
industry as well. Time Warner dropped CBS last year while negotiating a fee
dispute: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-
cbs-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/04/us-timewarner-cbs-blackout-
idUSBRE97309G20130804)

It doesn't matter that one party is in a stronger negotiating position than
the other. That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game.

p.s. The DOJ anti-trust lawyers _never_ had a focus on preventing monopolies
before the '80s. Their focus has always been on the prevention of the abuse of
market power whether by monopolists or oligopolies. If Amazon should be
targeted for having an ebook monopoly then Apple would have been on the
hitlist first for having a digital music monopoly that they managed for half a
decade before the Kindle.

~~~
gress
> That's capitalism; don't hate the player, hate the game.

Try some other words in there and see how you feel:

"That's fascism; don't hate the player, hate the game."

At least it's clear that you wish to resolve corporations from responsibility
for what they do.

~~~
pja
absolve?

~~~
gress
Thanks - that looks like it was an autocorrect typo and the edit window has
closed.

