Reasons Not to Buy from Amazon, According to Richard Stallman

stallman.org

28 points·emersonrsantos··8 comments

I agree with Richard, in almost every point he makes about Amazon.

Still, I find myself using Amazon a lot for reasons of convenience. I do try to buy locally when possible, buy books directly from their source, and for digital content purchasing, at least split my business to Amazon, Google, and Apple.

It is wanting to do the right thing vs. sometimes saving money and also more convenience.

Have you tried ebooks.com ?

Have you been to your local library lately? I was spurred to sign up from a post I saw on here, and it’s actually surprising how good the quality of content is. Plus I save a ton of money on purchasing books AND support the community. Definitely check it out if you haven’t!

Indeed I do use my local library. I mostly borrow eBooks, and sometimes physical books and rarely DVDs. I also use my library to escape my home office for a different place to put my head down and work.

For anyone unfamiliar with borrowing ebooks and audiobooks from U.S. libraries which use Libby (aka Overdrive) this is a wonderful blog post explaining how to get started. It's even easier than it looks and has saved me hundreds of dollars at this point - I highly recommend it!

https://www.charlieharrington.com/borrowing-library-books-fo...

Synchronicity.

I personally came to the same conclusions a week or two ago. Amazon keeps trying to charge me more for less service provided.

One good reason for buying from Amazon: books and audiobook are trivially de-drmed.

I get that Stallman wants to make a point, but in my opinion calling the Kindle a Swindle harms his credibility in the same way that using Micro$oft does.

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