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Feels a bit odd to rail against tech companies extracting dollars from artists, and then use Amazon, Kickstarter and PayPal as a sales mechanism. Could be worse

Feels a bit odd to rail against tech companies extracting dollars from artists, and then use Amazon, Kickstarter and PayPal as a sales mechanism. Could be worse I guess. Edit: included Amazon as he is also selling his product through it. https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured-Creative/dp/0807007064 https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured...

snapcaster 4y ago
Honestly comments like this really depress me. Maybe consider why you immediately have knee jerk thoughts about why this is bad or hypocritical and negative and reflect on that
- randomran01234 4y ago
  As I said in another comment: > You can pre-order the book on Amazon. It’s like a PETA selling furs to support their anti-fur campaign.
  - danaris 4y ago
    It's really not. Fur doesn't have a near-monopoly on "raising funds for charity". Like it or not, Amazon is the place most people in the US, and much of the West, go to when they're looking for books. It's much more like paying for a newspaper ad in the early 1900s to promote your anti-newspaper radio station.
    - randomran01234 4y ago
      He does not need to sell his anti-Amazon book on Amazon, it is laughably hypocritical and goes against his entire message in his Twitter announcement: > it's an action-oriented look at how tech and entertainment monopolies steal creators' incomes, with detailed, shovel-ready plans to unrig creative labor markets and pay artists Let’s just agree to disagree though.
      - antifa 4y ago
        That's not hypocritical. A hypothetical example of him being hypocritical would be if he owned an comparable business to Amazon and enacted the same practices he complained about Amazon doing.
jasonvorhe 4y ago
Oh the tiresome "you can't use what you're fighting against" trope. Yawn.
- randomran01234 4y ago
  You can pre-order the book on Amazon. It’s like a PETA selling furs to support their anti-fur campaign.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
    In martial arts, it would be called using your opponents weight against them.
    - joemazerino 4y ago
      If your opponent is also gaining some revenue in your theoretical situation, sure.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        The ultimate point of the book is to gather support for legislation that would give teeth to antitrust. It needs to reach sufficiently many people for that, and only the likes of Amazon can provide that kind of outreach. If it succeeds, the meager profits off the book that Amazon will skim in the process won't matter. Of course, whether it succeeds or not is a gamble, but it's a reasonable one.
  - pwinnski 4y ago
    In what sense is Doctorow himself causing the same sort of suffering against which he's inveighing? The parallel makes no sense. Doctorow does not sell only on Amazon[0]. He also has a history of giving his books away for free[1], and insists on every release of his books in any format being DRM-free. Since those are the issues he is passionate about, that doesn't seem hypocritical to me. It's more like PETA protesting in front of shops that sell furs, rather than only in places where people are already 100% anti-fur. Which... they probably do. Obviously. 0. https://craphound.com/shop/ https://craphound.com/shop/ 1. https://craphound.com/makers/download/ https://craphound.com/makers/download/
Karellen 4y ago
Congratulations on being very intelligent. Well done. Good job, even. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ Crikey. That comic is nearly 6 years old now. Heck, it was at least 16 years ago that Tom Morello pointed out: > When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart. https://web.archive.org/web/20060526032423/http://www.ratm.de/faq/ragefaq.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060526032423/http://www.ratm.d... Doctorow himself has also said that he'd like to be able to sell his anti-Amazon audiobooks on Amazon - if Amazon would agree do so without DRM. Because that's where a lot of his customers are. It's just that he, the author, doesn't want DRM on his audiobooks, and neither do his customers. He sells his audiobooks without DRM to his customers through other channels. All he wants from Amazon is for it to be a reseller, selling the thing he has to sell, to the people who want to buy it, in the place that people buy and sell things.
- randomran01234 4y ago
  You can pre-order his anti-Amazon book on Amazon. You don’t need to sell your book on Amazon just to live in a capitalist society. To me this is hypocrisy, but I guess not everybody agrees. https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured-Creative/dp/0807007064 https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured...
  - Karellen 4y ago
    > You can pre-order his anti-Amazon book on Amazon. Um, yes, I know? What's your point there, exactly? I was specifically talking about the audiobook version. It's right there, in the comment I wrote. > You don’t need to sell your book on Amazon just to live in a capitalist society. He doesn't just sell his books to live. He makes most of them available for free to download on his website. e.g. https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ He sells a lot of his books to spread a message. If you're spreading a message, the important thing is that it gets to as many people as possible. And it's important that it gets to lots of people who haven't yet heard that message yet. That means lowering the barrier for people who aren't yet invested in the message to be able to hear it. It means spreading the message to people who don't know how terrible Amazon are, to people who do most of their shopping on Amazon and wouldn't even think to look anywhere else to find a copy of the message. Sure, it's great if the insular group of people who've already boycotted Amazon can get a copy of his anti-Amazon book on not-Amazon, and all clap themselves on the back about how smart they are for having already boycotted Amazon. Yay, us! But that doesn't spread the message to anyone else. It won't change any new minds. It won't change public opinion. It can't be part of a movement.

snapcaster 4y ago

Honestly comments like this really depress me. Maybe consider why you immediately have knee jerk thoughts about why this is bad or hypocritical and negative and reflect on that

randomran01234 4y ago
As I said in another comment: > You can pre-order the book on Amazon. It’s like a PETA selling furs to support their anti-fur campaign.
- danaris 4y ago
  It's really not. Fur doesn't have a near-monopoly on "raising funds for charity". Like it or not, Amazon is the place most people in the US, and much of the West, go to when they're looking for books. It's much more like paying for a newspaper ad in the early 1900s to promote your anti-newspaper radio station.
  - randomran01234 4y ago
    He does not need to sell his anti-Amazon book on Amazon, it is laughably hypocritical and goes against his entire message in his Twitter announcement: > it's an action-oriented look at how tech and entertainment monopolies steal creators' incomes, with detailed, shovel-ready plans to unrig creative labor markets and pay artists Let’s just agree to disagree though.
    - antifa 4y ago
      That's not hypocritical. A hypothetical example of him being hypocritical would be if he owned an comparable business to Amazon and enacted the same practices he complained about Amazon doing.

jasonvorhe 4y ago

Oh the tiresome "you can't use what you're fighting against" trope. Yawn.

randomran01234 4y ago
You can pre-order the book on Amazon. It’s like a PETA selling furs to support their anti-fur campaign.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
  In martial arts, it would be called using your opponents weight against them.
  - joemazerino 4y ago
    If your opponent is also gaining some revenue in your theoretical situation, sure.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      The ultimate point of the book is to gather support for legislation that would give teeth to antitrust. It needs to reach sufficiently many people for that, and only the likes of Amazon can provide that kind of outreach. If it succeeds, the meager profits off the book that Amazon will skim in the process won't matter. Of course, whether it succeeds or not is a gamble, but it's a reasonable one.
- pwinnski 4y ago
  In what sense is Doctorow himself causing the same sort of suffering against which he's inveighing? The parallel makes no sense. Doctorow does not sell only on Amazon[0]. He also has a history of giving his books away for free[1], and insists on every release of his books in any format being DRM-free. Since those are the issues he is passionate about, that doesn't seem hypocritical to me. It's more like PETA protesting in front of shops that sell furs, rather than only in places where people are already 100% anti-fur. Which... they probably do. Obviously. 0. https://craphound.com/shop/ https://craphound.com/shop/ 1. https://craphound.com/makers/download/ https://craphound.com/makers/download/

Karellen 4y ago

Congratulations on being very intelligent. Well done. Good job, even. https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ https://thenib.com/mister-gotcha/ Crikey. That comic is nearly 6 years old now. Heck, it was at least 16 years ago that Tom Morello pointed out: > When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart. https://web.archive.org/web/20060526032423/http://www.ratm.de/faq/ragefaq.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060526032423/http://www.ratm.d... Doctorow himself has also said that he'd like to be able to sell his anti-Amazon audiobooks on Amazon - if Amazon would agree do so without DRM. Because that's where a lot of his customers are. It's just that he, the author, doesn't want DRM on his audiobooks, and neither do his customers. He sells his audiobooks without DRM to his customers through other channels. All he wants from Amazon is for it to be a reseller, selling the thing he has to sell, to the people who want to buy it, in the place that people buy and sell things.

randomran01234 4y ago
You can pre-order his anti-Amazon book on Amazon. You don’t need to sell your book on Amazon just to live in a capitalist society. To me this is hypocrisy, but I guess not everybody agrees. https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured-Creative/dp/0807007064 https://www.amazon.ca/Chokepoint-Capitalism-Content-Captured...
- Karellen 4y ago
  > You can pre-order his anti-Amazon book on Amazon. Um, yes, I know? What's your point there, exactly? I was specifically talking about the audiobook version. It's right there, in the comment I wrote. > You don’t need to sell your book on Amazon just to live in a capitalist society. He doesn't just sell his books to live. He makes most of them available for free to download on his website. e.g. https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ https://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ He sells a lot of his books to spread a message. If you're spreading a message, the important thing is that it gets to as many people as possible. And it's important that it gets to lots of people who haven't yet heard that message yet. That means lowering the barrier for people who aren't yet invested in the message to be able to hear it. It means spreading the message to people who don't know how terrible Amazon are, to people who do most of their shopping on Amazon and wouldn't even think to look anywhere else to find a copy of the message. Sure, it's great if the insular group of people who've already boycotted Amazon can get a copy of his anti-Amazon book on not-Amazon, and all clap themselves on the back about how smart they are for having already boycotted Amazon. Yay, us! But that doesn't spread the message to anyone else. It won't change any new minds. It won't change public opinion. It can't be part of a movement.