[HN Gopher] Amazon has a book piracy problem ___________________________________________________________________ Amazon has a book piracy problem Author : tosh Score : 92 points Date : 2022-07-08 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | codeslave13 wrote: | Amazon has a piracy/counterfeit problem. And has for a very long | time. I have basically stopped buying there as much as possible. | My current trend is to use them as a search engine then got to | the companies site. At this point you might as well shop alibaba | as thats where half the crap is from anyway. | antonymy wrote: | I'm the same way. I used to say "at least you can rely on books | bought on Amazon" but now you can't even say that much. Alibris | or eBay are more reliable online retailers for books nowadays. | randcraw wrote: | A better search engine (esp for used books) is BookFinder: | https://bookfinder.com. Between it and Goodreads, which has | better ratings anyway, you can avoid Amazon entirely. | solardev wrote: | ...and aside from Goodreads (which is owned by Amazon), | bookfinder is also hosted behind Amazon Cloudfront. | | No matter where you go and what you do, Amazon wins, lol. | | There's https://www.indiebound.org/ at least, which lets you | search the inventory of local bookstores. | | I've also had good luck ordering used books from | https://www.thriftbooks.com/ instead of Amazon. | ProAm wrote: | Amazon owns Goodreads fyi | simcop2387 wrote: | That's not avoiding them entirely, but it does avoid their | store front for discovery. GoodReads is owned wholly by | Amazon. | elcapitan wrote: | With books, Amazon has become the opposite of a search engine | for me. I have to use external resources to actually find the | right titles, to enter them 1:1 into Amazon search to get to | the books. Context based discovery has become next to | impossible (which I used it before a lot for). Something must | have changed in their indexing algorithm a while ago. Also many | results are flooded with garbage, like some ridiculous | "notebooks" with similar titles to the searched book or product | name. | diamondap wrote: | Amazon kind of gave up on discovery, at least for books, when | they realized they could make more money running ads. I sell | books on Amazon. Years ago, their book pages had two | carousels of "similar titles" on each book detail page. | Similar titles were selected by some pretty helpful | algorithms based on what purchasers of the current title had | also purchased, as well as some other secret sauce. | | At the time, ads weren't very prominent, and they were | profitable for authors. I could buy them for 5 cents a click | and even if only one in fifty clicks resulted in a purchase, | I made money. | | Now, most of the algorithmic recommendations are gone, and | for many ads, Amazon suggests bids of $2.50 or more per | click. Those clicks bring in money whether Amazon makes a | sale or not. | | To some extent, they've given up on matching customers to the | best or most suitable products. Why should they work that | hard if ads are more profitable? | | They've also had problems with piracy and counterfeits, as | mentioned in this article. I heard a radio interview with a | Target executive a couple years ago where a journalist said, | "Amazon is underpricing you on everything. How do you plan to | stay in business?" | | She said, "We vet every product on our shelves. We know who | makes it and where, whether it's legit, and whether it | contains lead paint and parts kids can choke on. Try to find | that info on Amazon." | | The reporter didn't seem too impressed at the time, but the | Target woman clearly saw where things were going. As the | quality, authenticity, and reliability of Amazon's | merchandise has declined, people are starting to notice. | | I'm not sure this is a problem they will ever have the will | to fix. While they break even or lose money on genuine goods | they have to ship for free, profits from third party sellers | and Chinese drop shippers keep the retail operation afloat. | rmbyrro wrote: | Interesting. The algorithmic recommendations still work | well for me. I discover a lot of good books swiping the | carousel. | iasay wrote: | I do similar. I use Amazon to find the ISBN number of the book | I want then search for it on ebay and buy the cheapest second | hand copy. | HarryHirsch wrote: | Besides, on Ebay you usually get a photograph of the actual | book or the seller is a known quantity. No such luck with | Amazon. | dhc02 wrote: | You can also go to bookshop.org, buy the book there (usually | for about the same price as Amazon), and most of the profit | goes to a local bookstore (which you can choose) instead of a | big search engine with warehouses. | V__ wrote: | Amazon has shown time and time again that they don't care. They | don't care about fake reviews, counterfeit products, cheap | Chinese crap, their workforce, or anything really as long as | customers keep on buying. | m463 wrote: | I wonder if they are jumping the shark? | | I intensely dislike the paid search results or sponsored | recommendations. The nonsense-name brands that are either | chinese or secretly amazon that prevent brand names from | showing up (and many good brands ship counterfeits). The fake | reviews. The popup "extended warranty" screens where if you | close the tab/window... the item doesn't make it to your | shopping basket. | | I remember when I had an iphone, and a few years ago when apple | did not prevent abuse I just stopped installing apps. The app | market had jumped the shark and become a cesspool. | | Nice apps I liked were bought and monetized in unethical ways, | and apple didn't care. | | For example, I had an app called gas cubby, which let me | locally - on the phone - keep track of all my vehicles. I could | enter detailed information about each car such as year, make, | model, vin, insurance policy, gas purchases, oil changes and | the like. It would tell you gas mileage and remind you of | upcoming maintenance. | | One day, the app was updated and all my local data was uploaded | to the cloud! | | Another app, camscanner plus purchased by tencent basically did | the same thing. | ilrwbwrkhv wrote: | I just cancelled prime this year. It has reached a point where I | just directly shop from AliExpress when required or I buy from | local stores. | vannevar wrote: | This is just one example of a broader problem with Amazon. It has | become essentially a vehicle for automated salesbots to push | anonymously manufactured goods of all kinds---not just books---to | as many buyers as possible, drowning out storefronts for | identifiable manufacturers and retailers who might have legal | right via copyright or licensing to sell similar, often higher- | quality versions. | eikenberry wrote: | This is what copyright was actually for... Publishers would put | out a book, it'd get popular then cut-rate copies would swamp the | market. Copyright was done to protect the publisher from this | sort of abuse (and secondarily the author, as the publisher was | their only means of reaching an audience). | | This should be the top (and only IMO) priority of CC enforcement | instead of going after sci-hub and the like. | riazrizvi wrote: | IMO Safaribooksonline is the gold standard of content piracy. | In the sense of how rampant it is. | adambatkin wrote: | Can you clarify what you mean by this? The platform formerly | known as Safari Books is now O'Reilly Learning, and I have | every reason to believe that it is all above-board, with | proper licensing from all of the included publishers. | ptero wrote: | Originally. But then publishers got greedy ("greed is forever") | and instead of a relatively short term of protection before | becoming public domain we now have stupid multi-decade | restrictions. Those prevent us from printing good out of print | books and do not give any benefit to either publisher or the | author. | WoodenChair wrote: | I'm also a Manning author and this also happened to me a couple | years ago. Amazon was allowing a counterfeit Kindle edition of | Classic Computer Science Problems in Python to pose as legitimate | on my own book's page! Only emailing Jeff got a solution. Manning | seemed powerless to solve the problem themselves. I still have | some bad reviews as a result of that counterfeit Kindle edition | that plague my book page. Totally unfair! | | Here's my original Tweet thread about it: | https://twitter.com/davekopec/status/1302578592552022018 | | Here's the Hacker News discussion about it: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24399301 | clumsysmurf wrote: | I can understand how physical copies of counterfeit books get | co-mingled with legit inventory, whether they are printed from | PDF or "re-covered" from destroyed copies ... but how does one | simply upload a counterfeit Kindle edition at all? | __mharrison__ wrote: | One simply uploads it to Amazon. They (Amazon) don't vet it | and the pirate gets to ride on your coattails. All of this | pirating would be easy to prevent, but one wonders why they | even enable this? | copperx wrote: | What's Jeff's email? I need to right a few wrongs. | mkw2000 wrote: | I recently purchased a book that I was really looking forward to | from Amazon and received a counterfeit version with the correct | cover but complete nonsense inside. It wasn't the book I | purchased at all just a scam. It was super frustrating and I | returned it and will not be purchasing books from Amazon ever | again, but I wonder what was even the purpose of the scam? Isn't | everyone just going to get annoyed and return it? What would the | seller even get out of this? | iasay wrote: | If they got rid of marketplace sellers and actually got control | over their supply chain then they might actually go up in | people's opinion. | | However Amazon and AWS isn't about doing a good job, it's about | doing a mediocre job and making everyone happy though apologies. | | And that's why I'm still using them. They are a good balance. | themitigating wrote: | What does aws have to do with this article, piracy, or the | retail side of Amazon | iasay wrote: | The same soulless automation running the show. | hourago wrote: | That is going to be the fight of the next generation. | Inappropriate videos on YouTube for kids, extremist | propaganda in Facebook or fake products in Amazon all have | that soulless automation as main culprit. (Let's not talk | about Roblox) | | Cost goes against resilience and quality. You can automate | things to a limit until everything breaks down. | themitigating wrote: | Whom? | __mharrison__ wrote: | Not sure why enabling piracy is a good balance. Care to expound | on that? | copperx wrote: | Oh, so that's why they don't have balance caps in AWS? It's | true that apologies are a good balance. | duped wrote: | I'm surprised there aren't class action lawsuits targeting the | FAANGs for this kind of thing | ProAm wrote: | They are just a marketplace, they cannot control or police what | is sold there. /s | __mharrison__ wrote: | Author of the article posting in the tweet. | | Happy to answer any questions. (Or discuss technical book | authoring in general). | not2b wrote: | Can't the ripped off authors and publishers sue Amazon for big | money for this? Or maybe band together and bring a class action | suit? | __mharrison__ wrote: | Perhaps. Someone who responded to my original tweet opined that | Amazon and Google could kill the pirate market easily. It | doesn't appear to be something that either wants to do. | Mixtape wrote: | Slightly off-topic, but I've recently heard from some corners of | the collecting world that this is a major issue for video game | resellers on Amazon (and other platforms) as well. People | regularly receive flash carts with stuck-on labels (i.e. stolen | trademarks) on them and a pirated ROM running on counterfeited | hardware. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible in some cases to | identify a well-crafted fake from a genuine copy before purchase, | and the burden is thus placed on Amazon to take action against | sellers of the products. Given that the loss of one consumer in a | relatively niche yet very competitive market will not deal | significant damage to Amazon's overall profits, (and that Amazon | can feasibly shift blame towards the seller,) the issue persists. | | All of this is to say that the idea of pirated books | proliferating on Amazon is entirely feasible if electronic | devices can be so successfully faked. However, what's not lost on | me is the irony of Amazon, a marketplace whose initial success | was anchored by trust in its ability to deliver books, falling | victim to such schemes in this specific market space. | Barrin92 wrote: | Nowadays I do what Francois recommends in his tweet. Go to our | local bookstore and order from there. The extent to which Amazon | enables this kind of behavior and presumably also profits from it | and the extent to which they ignore the problem altogether | shouldn't be supported. | | Speaks to a larger problem as well, the excuses platforms make to | not do due diligence when it comes to what is being sold and the | lack of ability to talk to a real person on the other end | quickly. | dhc02 wrote: | You can also choose your favorite local bookstore on | bookshop.org and order from there. | beej71 wrote: | Amazon makes money from every pirated book sold. Maybe book | publishers lack the clout of the music publishers? | dogsboywonder wrote: | I like how that article's thumbnail was generated by DALL-E lol. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-08 23:00 UTC)