AS HEARD ON - The Jim Polito Show - WTAG 580 AM: Amazon, Digital Rights, Libraries, and Apple Music

Good morning, everybody.

I was on this morning on WTAG with Jim Polito.   We discussed the new Amazon, ebooks, libraries, digital rights management and what some States are demanding from Amazon. Here we go with Jim.

For more tech tips, news, and updates, visit - CraigPeterson.com.

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Automated Machine Generated Transcript:

Craig Peterson: [00:00:00] In Rhode Island have bills as well as New York that would require Amazon, as well as everybody else, to sell eBooks to libraries with quote reasonable terms endquote. 

Jim Polito: [00:00:13] Okay. 

Craig Peterson: [00:00:14] Hey everybody, Craig Peterson here. Just got off the phone with Mr. Jim Polito and we had some fun talking about libraries, Jeff Bezos and even George Orwell, got into the act here. Anyhow, here we go with Mr. Jim Polito. 

Jim Polito: [00:00:34] Hey, Amazon started off as a place to sell books. You know, online books and they basically destroyed the bookstore.  I mean, we contributed to it. But now it seems that they're out to destroy libraries. Taking over the world, isn't enough for these folks.

I don't know, that's the accusation. Well, let's see if we can confirm it. Let's bring in our good friend and tech talk guru of Craig peterson.com. The man that website is named after, Craig Peterson. 

Good morning, Craig. 

Craig Peterson: [00:01:13] Good morning, Jim. 

Jim Polito: [00:01:14] Oh, so here's the deal? We were just talking a little while ago about Jeff Bezos, started with his garage selling books out of there. Then mail order, then all of a sudden they sold everything.

They basically changed retail. They made what we told online shopping would be like 25 years ago. People said, Oh no, you're going to be buying everything online.  We said, sure we will. But we are, COVID helped that. 

Now there's talk that he's gonna close libraries and I went wait a minute. Is this a wild accusation? 

Craig Peterson: [00:01:48] Well, it is kind of wild, and certainly an accusation. Unfortunately it's also true. If you look at the libraries work over the years, Jim, you go in and you borrow a book. Well, where did that book come from, right? The library bought it. Libraries for a long time, have been paying more for a book than you would. You might go into the bookstore and you pay 20 bucks for the book, but the library is going to pay a lot more for that same book. 50, even a hundred dollars sometimes. 

So Jeff Bezos is doing right now. Is okay great. You've been paying for these books over price sometimes as much as a hundred dollars for one ebook and it can only be lent so many times,  that ebook can. If you want to have five copies of that book out for people to read, you have to buy five licenses, that's what it's been. 

Jim Polito: [00:02:44] All right. So wait a minute. Let me just make sure, because make sure I understand this. So in the old days before we had, you know, you bought a book online and you read it on your nook or whatever. 

Hold on a second. So if I was buying a book for a library. I paid a higher rate because the library knew you were going to be loaning that book out, yada, yada, yada. Almost like the publisher said, Hey, we want a little bit more than the average person for this book. Is that true? 

Craig Peterson: [00:03:14] Absolutely. 

Jim Polito: [00:03:15] Okay. All right. So now I get this, you have intellectual property. You have a book that is virtual. I mean it's online. If you are a library and you want to let people be able to read that, download it and read it. You're going to have to pay a pretty penny to Jeff Bezos? 

Craig Peterson: [00:03:38] Yeah. If he will sell it to you. See that's the change that's happened more recently? Jeff Bezos has decided, well, Amazon, right?  I'm not sure it was him personally, but they decided that it will not sell, at any price, downloadable versions of it's more than 10,000 eBooks it publishes.  

Think about an acquisition that Amazon made a few years ago, I have been an Audible subscriber for many, many years. Of course, Audible is the company that sells audio versions of books. Amazon bought Audible. Amazon has said, okay, you used to be able to go and borrow tapes at the library, and you'd listen as you're driving or whatever. You kept up on the latest business book or history or whatever he wanted.

So Bezos also owns Audible , which is number one for audio books. They say, Hey, listen, not only, are, we not going to sell any of our eBooks to libraries, but we're not going to let them get any audio books either. 

Jim Polito: [00:04:43] Wow. Now that is pretty bad. Look from a business perspective, I understand. You're selling a product that now, why would someone buy it, if they could just join the library and download the book. 

There's gotta be somewhere in between. So libraries will be destroyed. I mean, libraries are great places for research and other things and talented librarians can help you out quite a bit. A talented librarian sometimes is a lot better than what Google will tell you. When you go into a search about a certain topic. Librarians are much better, and don't,  usually have an agenda, like Google. You should buy this while you're researching that, you know what I mean? 

This could completely destroy libraries. 

Craig Peterson: [00:05:35] Of course, we're on in Rhode Island and right now. Lawmakers in Rhode Island have bills, as well as New York, that would require Amazon as well as everybody else to sell eBooks to libraries with reasonable terms and quotes. 

So we'll see, we'll see what happens, Maryland's already passed a law like that, but this is a real problem as you go forward. 

Now, remember, Amazon is the one you mentioned, the Kindle, or actually you mentioned the Nook 

Jim Polito: [00:06:06] That'sBarnes and noble, isn't it? Yeah. 

Craig Peterson: [00:06:08] Yeah, it is whoever they are. Yeah. 

Jim Polito: [00:06:12] Wait a minute. Hold on. Barnes and Nobles is on the phone.

Danny DME. Don't take that call. Yeah. 

Craig Peterson: [00:06:21] Yeah. So whoever they are. Amazon has the number one ebook reader. Now, for those that have never done this, and ebook reader allows you to keep hundreds of books right there in this little almost like a display. They're fantastic. That's how I read 99% of my books.

So they've got the number one ebook reader out there. And because of that, they kind of control the whole thing. 

But if you bought George Orwell's 1984, you might remember this was a few years back, Amazon decided you couldn't have that book anymore and removed it from everybody's ebook reader. All of the Kindles, they remove copies of 1984.

Jim Polito: [00:07:05] What is the reasoning behind this, because I thought that 1984 was no longer under copyright, but I could be wrong.

Craig Peterson: [00:07:10] Yeah, it is. The copyright holders told Amazon. That they didn't like the terms Amazon was putting the books under. So Amazon pulled them all back. 

That's another problem with eBooks, especially with digital rights management, they can take them away, that copy that you have in those Dr. Seuss books could disappear from your Kindle, because you don't own it. 

You see, if you buy a book and you read the book and you want to have a yard sale and sell the book for a buck or whatever it is, you can, because you own that book. 

If you get a book from Amazon on your Kindle, or any of these other places, you don't own that, in almost every case. You're just getting a right to read it and. They can pull it back. 

Jim Polito: [00:08:02] You know, it's interesting. My, my neighbor across the street, when he retired Dominic, Dominic, and his wife, Lucy, she's a school teacher. She's still working.  He built one of those beautiful boxes that looks like a really big bird house with a glass door and it's for the neighborhood, put a book in, take a book, whatever. He can do that because people own the books. You own it. 

Craig Peterson: [00:08:25] Right. 

Jim Polito: [00:08:26] Good.  Hey, whatever happened while we're on this topic with Apple and Apple music, when I downloaded a song for 99 cents and I thought I owned that song, I technically, did they change this? I technically didn't own it. 

Craig Peterson: [00:08:45] Yeah, you never have actually. That's the way they're doing it, nowadays.  Apple said, Hey, listen, we're going to do this. And Amazon did too.  It's going to be much cheaper for them to distribute it. But again, think back, you and I both remember albums, records, the black vinyl, you know, or that, of course the acetate and other things and we switched over to CDs. The compact disk.  People don't know, those are thesedays either. Right?  It was much, much cheaper for the record industry to produce a CD than it was to produce a record. Their costs went from a couple of bucks down to just a dime, but they charged more for the CD.

What Amazon did. Yeah. More margin. Is, they said, Hey, listen guys, your distribution costs are going to be nil because all you're doing is copying digital books around. You're not going to have to have a warehouse. You're not going to have to ship these. You're not going to have trucks or anything else. We expect you to sell them for less. And the Amazon using its market power strong armed these publishing houses to lower their prices. 

Now the publishing houses are really pushing back and saying, no, you can'ttell me I can only sell it for $10 and make $9.99 cents. Whereas before I was only making $2, now I want more money and it's a shame, but that's, what always happens.

Jim Polito: [00:10:11] And then your Don Quixote and you're going after windmills. Because you're going up against Amazon. 

This is one of the dangers of a big success, like Amazon. You know, what's sad is in the whole thing. 1984, isn't it ironic that George Orwell's book about big brother and this and that you can't get it on Amazon.

When in fact the people who are using Amazon should know a little something about big brother, and it would be a good book for people to read right now. 

Craig Peterson: [00:10:46] You can get it. 

Yeah, it was just temporary. You can get it. You can get it. 

All right. Good. I'm glad his descendants have, and they've worked at it.  Craig fascinating is usual with you. 

Folks. We always podcast segments. Which you can get on the station website, go to the Jim Polito show.  On that page, you'll see Jim's podcasts on the right hand side. Just click there and this will be podcasted.

Craig, if folks want to get more information from you, how do they do it? 

Well, just go online to Craig peterson.com and I also have my iHeart podcasts and tolisten to those things, just go to Craig peterson.com/iheart.  That'll take you to the right spot. 

I was listening, in France, iHeart, so I can pick up my safe space.

Jim Polito: [00:11:37] Nice. Craig as usual. Thank you. You always bring great stuff to the table.  We'll talk with you next week. 

Craig Peterson: [00:11:43] Take care, Jim. Bye-bye. 

If you're in the healthcare industry, I am speaking for the big Massachusetts association this Friday. I am conducting a webinar for them on, of course, cybersecurity, particularly in the healthcare industry. If you are a member of an organization of some sort, and you'd like to have me on and do a webinar for you guys to let me know, I do make some time available for that and I may be able to help you out. 

Just email me M [email protected].  I know of few of you guys are going to be there on Friday at 10:00 AM. I think it is as we go over healthcare industry stuff. Then I'm also going to be doing a few more webinars afterwards, delving into some of these topics a little bit deeper.

All right, everybody take care. 

We'll be back tomorrow. 

Bye-bye.

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