Why the Kindle suit is good and bad for everyone...

Amazon has been named in a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of all Kindle owners for deleting some copies of 1984 from some accounts and Kindles. Amazon believes it had a duty to the publisher to remove stolen property from its customers' Kindles in order to keep them from going to jail for receiving that stolen property. But because some people like to spend time in jail, they're suing Amazon for all the fun they missed.

Or at least that's how I see it.

If you know me, you know that I hate the digital world. I'd like to go back to the days when I rode my bike over to my friend's house and he showed me things that he got for his birthday and we played with them or smashed them with a hammer. And the mailman brought us letters once a day. And the news came on at 6:00 and I didn't know a damn thing about the world until then.

I don't want to look at pictures of crap on Flickr or videos on YouTube. I don't want 5GB of email storage. I don't want to know everything as soon as it happens. I want life here, in my hands, so I can smash it with a hammer if I want to.

The Kindle suit is bad because Amazon was doing the right thing by its partner, the publisher and rights-holder to George Orwell's 1984. Amazon had unwittingly become a party to distributing stolen property when it allowed Kindle owners to purchase an item Amazon did not have the right to sell.

Amazon doesn't own the books it sells; the only thing Amazon really has any control over is the Kindle itself, the ebook reader, the hunk of plastic. And hammer-blow recipient.

I guess Amazon could have gotten a court order first, since, again, we're dealing with stolen property (IMO-IANAL-!!!-WTF-LOL, okay, forget it). But then hundreds of Amazon customers might have ended up in some criminal database only to have their children removed from their homes by the authorities.

But what makes this suit a good thing, is that I hate the digital world. I don't think any company has any right to tell me what I can do with my stuff. I don't like digital rights or copy limits or download restrictions. I don't want to go home to find that I'm locked out from all the shows on my DVR because some company has the power to limit how long I have to enjoy a television show. I don't want Microsoft to tell me that my installed Office suite is not a legal copy, and I don't want them to even have the power to look.

So if this suit forces companies to rethink their digital business models, then great. But to punish Amazon for taking advantage of people too stupid to understand how digital technology works, then that's just wrong. America is built on extracting fortunes from the stupid.

Why is it that I'm smart enough to understand how digital technology works, but they aren't. And look at me! I'm wearing a bib to eat! And I still got food all over myself. I'd have more to say about this, but my lunch break is over, and I think I got tuna in my hair.

To be a winner.

I like winning. I like winning at races and games, but mostly, I love winning when my opponents aren't aware there's a competition. I race strangers reading quietly at their table by finishing my page first and flipping to the next with a dramatic flourish. I race people out of the building to my car and pump my fist into the air in victory.

I have no friends.

So I can identify with the pathetic asswipes who race to be the top reviewers on Amazon.

As I explored the murky understory of Amazon's reviewer rankings, however, I came to see the real Web 2.0 as a tangle of hidden agendas...

Hell, all of the Web is a popularity contest. But only a few are aware of it. Some (like me) are aware, but try not to care, occasionally declaring shenanigans when the bullshit gets too deep.

Back when the Internet Movie Database needed program reviews, the webmasters didn't seem to care what comments got posted. Five or six years ago, I used to look for movies and programs that needed reviews and I would make up one. Back then, the first review posted for a movie was the one everybody saw first. For about a year, there were some movies where my "fake" review showed up first.
At first, it was fun. But after seeing them there for a while, I felt regret. I felt like it was a lie and that some poor schlub might waste 90 minutes of his life on my recommendation, and wished I could remove them without getting found out by some unseen authority.

But I never sought fame or recognition from my shenanigans. But these Amazon reviews are different. Their reviews, whether honestly earned or not, dilute the whole process. What is your stamp of approval worth if every book gets one?

The whole nature of competition, of winning, of being at the top leads me to one conclusion:
We are alone and we fear death.

I suck.

Got this in the email last night:

Thank you for participating in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. We received thousands of submissions and were impressed by the incredible talent and creativity, but as a result, were forced to make very difficult decisions. We regret to inform you that you have not been selected as a semi-finalist.
You will be receiving a follow up email from CreateSpace within one to two weeks regarding prizes and next steps. Your novel will be automatically set up in an account on CreateSpace and will be ready to publish.
The email will include instructions for redeeming your free proof copy prize, publishing your novel, and information about discounted publishing services such as cover design and editing from BookSurge.

That was a contest I entered with the chance to get my novel published and win $25,000. I never expected to win, but it would have been cool to make it past the second round.

Like some of you out there, I've written something that I think could be published. It's juvenile fiction, and I think it's pretty good, but I'm too lazy to keep working on it or to keep sending it to agents and publishers, so I thought a contest would be a way to get me excited about the prospect of getting in print. I'm not the kind of person who can toil away at a pointless endeavor for hours without some recognition (um, blog much, idiot?).

I would have been cool to get recognized for being a slightly better writer than someone else who can't get published through normal channels. Then at some point, I would have asked you guys to read my story excerpt and comment on it, and if I'd made it far enough, to vote on my story. But I lost.

Wait. Not me. It was that other guy who lost, the one whose name is on my driver's license and on all my mail. That guy over there, living that life. But I'm the.effing.librarian. On this page, I rock. It's that other guy who sucks. Woo-hoo! Ok, you're right; I suck here, too. You guys notice everything.

amazon test for cloudy goodness

I just saw this widget from Amazon.com and I thought it would be neat to see what products they might recommend to you based on the content of this blog.

The Internet is starting to freak me out with its interconnectedness. When I tell people in our computer classes that deleting cookies will help to keep them anonymous on certain web sites, I'm beginning to think that's no longer true. Many people now connect through a static IP which can be logged beyond any cookie transfer, and if your PDA or phone carries a GPS and you use it to surf, third-party agreements and complex privacy policies can have companies tracking (and compiling databases and personalized usage algorithms?) every moment of your life.

And I need to do my part to help. So I put the Amazon thingy here to give companies more data. And since this page is so full of crap, it'll just be gigo misinformation. It might be a fun experiment, or maybe nothing. But it's free, and I'll keep it for a few days to see what happens.

What the hell is wrong with libraries? (Nothing.)

I think I'm going way back to the original mission statement with this post.


Here's a quote from an article I just found that you might agree with:

From "Our Public Libraries,"

Our most valuable libraries are not popular, and our most popular ones are not extensive enough to be strictly called valuable.

It's a comparison of different libraries in the area. And if you're trying to guess when that was written, here is a clue via style:
(Referring to a specific public library)

It, moreover, keeps pace with current literature in a very halting fashion, and holds the more recent reviews beyond the reach of ordinary readers for an unreasonable length of time.

Any guesses? (click and drag below for answer)
Our Public Libraries (letter).
New York Times; Feb 4, 1870; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2004)
It seems that libraries have always been struggling between being seen as useful and being popular. So, of course I get pissed when I hear the criticism that "Libraries are not intuitive." And thus, not popular.

I'm tired of hearing this. Grocery stores are not intuitive. Department stores aren't. But people ain't starving and people ain't naked.

They have signage. And the people figure it out. People are not completely stupid. To say that libraries need to change to become more like bookstores or Amazon just says to me that you think people are too stupid to figure out libraries.
A library is a place that serves the function of librarianship. And the role of the librarian is to catalog and organize information in a meaningful way, that hopefully, can be accessible to others. The form of the physical library serves the function. Just like the grocery store serves the function of getting food into your cart.
To say that libraries need to move away from this form is to say that there's something wrong with librarianship. That the model is outdated. But there is nothing wrong with the effing model.
If you have problems with people finding stuff in your library, put up some signs:



(the Spanish is just a guess)

You might say that signs don't address all the subjects that might be in the area, but when you go shopping, all the store directory says is "Shoes." It doesn't say they have sandals or boots or slippers, but they do. People are able to learn this. All you need to do is get them close to what they want.
Some people make this seem like it's an impossible step. I think it's because every librarian wants guidelines. We want to see something work well before we accept it.

I understand that customers/patrons don't have any reason to learn Dewey. Fine. But some librarians want to group all their related library materials together into little domains. (I sometimes want to put all the computer repair and software and desktop publishing books together, but I wouldn't think of doing it without the appropriate links in the catalog and maybe some theme park type map:
"Technopod," "Travelpod," "Investpod," "Craftpod," ...yeah, right.)

But guess what, the grocery store doesn't put fresh fish near the canned fish or near the frozen fish just because it's all fish. Customers learn where to look and they remember. We just need to do a better job of teaching them where and how to look.

Libraries are always trying to chase after their customers by mimicking other businesses, but they should be working on what customers want from libraries: ample parking, no pedophiles, no videos playing on the PCs of people fornicating, books on clean shelves, short checkout lines, new books and CDs and videos that aren't covered with stains and don't look like crap, available staff to help them when they need it, and clean restrooms (again, without anyone fornicating or doing their laundry in the sink).
This is what people want from libraries. Only a-holes want to walk around the library with a hot cup of coffee and a chocolate croissant.

Book stores credit some of their success on not being like libraries; they're bright, modern, convenient places to shop. That's a great image to copy. But we don't charge fees for what we do, so the comparison should stop there.
So what about Amazon.com? People say they like Amazon because they find what they want. That's a freaking lie. You don't find what you want, but you find something that's close enough. It's just that most people don't know what they want, so they're satisfied with the results from an Amazon search. Unless I have an ISBN or other identifying number, I'm rarely able to find what I want on the first try.
Amazon prefers the shotgun approach in that a display of "wrong" results with colorful pictures is better than no results for a bad search. That's because they sell shit. For example, Amazon now sells Rosetta Stone language software; it's what they are promoting right now, but if I do a basic search for rosetta stone now, look at all the stuff I get:

Books (5,403) Software (212) Music (22) Office Products (14) Home & Garden (11) Health & Personal Care (4) Video Games (3) Apparel (3) VHS (2) DVD (2) Beauty (2) Jewelry & Watches (1) Everything Else (1) Electronics (1)

Jewelry & Watches??? But if I wanted a book, I still have 5000 to sort through, and Amazon uses a Relevance ranking that I don't understand, maybe it's a keyword count, dunno, but without accurate subject headings, I have no idea how long it might take to find my book.
If Amazon does its job correctly, you get more hits because for a retailer, "more is more." But for a librarian to do her job correctly, "less is more" because fewer accurate hits means you've cataloged your items properly.

A bookstore's marketing strategy is totally different from a library's. When libraries adopt online catalogs that mimic online retailers, which are keyword and recommendation based and less accurate, then they risk losing one of those cornerstone characteristics of the profession: authority. And then the point of cataloging things accurately no longer means shit.

Have you been to LibraryThing? Have you seen some of the tags people are using to "catalog" their books? Look at Gone With the Wind:
Tags used to describe the book
20th century(16) america(25) american(41) american civil war(30) american literature(41) american south(22) antebellum(8) atlanta(23) Civil War(250) Classic(178) classic fiction(11) classic literature(11) classics(100) epic(17) favorite(17) favorites(16) fiction(562) film(16) georgia(40) gwtw(19) hardcover(18) historical(50) Historical Fiction(191) historical romance(20) history(18) Literature(49) love(15) margaret mitchell(8) Mitchell(10) movies(9) novel(61) old south(8) own(38) pulitzer prize(42) read(64) Rhett Butler(13) romance(156) scarlett o'hara(15) slavery(23) southern(85) southern fiction(17) southern literature(11) tbr(10) the south(22) unread(26) war(34) women

I've actually seen posts where people claim that library catalogs will follow this model in the future. If this is the future of libraries, is anyone ever going to find anything ever again?

You know, you people f**king need me. I am rethinking this whole, ending-my-site business because I don't know what the f**k you'll do without me. Your libraries will just be full of porn and dog fights and the librarians will be behind razor-wire fences and bullet-proof glass.
And that's the good news.

So what the hell is wrong with libraries? For now, nothing. Let's keep it that way.