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Comment by will_brown | Hacker News Reader

>I don't hate the outcome, I just wish this was being done the "right way."

So your saying the right way is to force amazon to continue selling this book? That the sole remedy at Law is when people are injured then they can sue the author?

That’s not how products liability works. If I’m injured by a defective product, my legal remedy is against everyone in the stream of commerce...manufacturers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, etc... they would all be jointly and severally liable for my damages, meaning I can collect 100% of my award for damages from any of the parties found liable.

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Ideas aren't products. There's a difference between books and physical products that you ingest (such as arsenic or mentos). The GP's argument uses a false equivalency.

A book isn't just ideas though. If it's sold and presented by a retailer that you trust (Amazon), then those words carry a lot more weight for the readers than the ideas would on their own.

Bullshit. A book is just ideas that have been written down.

And the argument that buying it on Amazon gives it more credibility is so ridiculous that I actually laughed out loud.

> A book is just ideas that have been written down.

So are safety labels which attempt to minimize product liability.

So say I sell a chainsaw with safety labels that say to hold the chain and not the handle when starting the thing...could I be liable if someone is injured holding the chain? I mean the chainsaw was a perfectly safe product, as far as chainsaws go, it was only the following of my written down ideas that got someone injured.

I know exactly what you are saying and there is some case Law on point (a case involving a wild mushroom picking book and the plaintiff relying on the book and getting sick as a result). It’s one thing for the author to take that risk but it’s a whole other animal to force amazon to take that risk when they didn’t want to carry the book to begin with.

I'm not arguing that Amazon should be forced to sell these books. I'm arguing that the original argument above which used product liability for selling poisons to argue in favor of stopping the publication of books is inappropriate.

Products and ideas are two different things. Frankly, it's frightening that such a basic point has to be argued at all.

To the larger points about "censorship" being made here, for me it's not so much to do with the government banning books or corporations refusing to sell books. It's that there is so much fervor on so many fronts to prevent ideas from being presented at all. Bad ideas will ultimately be discarded if there is open and free discussion because they will be shown to be weak and wrong. Suppressing discussion is the tactic of those who are afraid their ideas won't win in a free marketplace.

> So your saying the right way is to force amazon to continue selling this book?

Possibly yes. When a publisher choses to sell through Amazon I assume that includes some form of legal agreement between the two parties. This idea that "They're a private company, they can do what they want" is wrong if they have some kind of agreement to sell the book.

The fact that we've been letting the tech giants get away with putting vague language into their terms of service and using that as a justification for arbitrarily enforcing or even changing the rules is bullshit. These catch-all provisions that let companies "do whatever they want" would never have stood up in court in the past. They are undermining our ability to conduct business and are being abused to stifle competition.

I’m no fan of big tech companies, but I am a fan of constitutional right for parties to contract.

There is no catch all Amazon can do whatever they want provision, but certainly the have the contractual right to stop carrying the book at anytime without notice. Just as if you are selling your book through traditional brick and mortar they could always stop selling/carrying your book (maybe there could be exceptions if they did it on the basis of discrimination against a protected class).

Trust me I wouldn’t even put amazon to allow others to sell a counterfeit of your book/product, which the law would provide a remedy for...but they have no contractual obligation to carry your book/product.

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