On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 18:22, Christopher Mahan wrote:
On Amazon,
I think the issue is with their one-ckick patent, which is seen by
many people, as a patent, to being counter-productive to the interest
of the internet and computer innovation as a whole.
This view is held by enough geek/hacker/tech people that associating
with amazon in a money-maker (which would benefit Amazon more than
the W) would be considered be a "Bad Thing".
We already have Amazon in the "Book sources" list; as long as we do
nothing to to make the Amazon entries more prominent in that list, the
only effect of becoming an Amazon affiliate should be to take money from
Amazon and give it to Wikipedia. As somebody who doesn't like Amazon
(because of the one-click patent), and who does like Wikipedia, I think
this is a "Good Thing" :-)
I would be less happy if the "Book sources" list did change. If it
mentioned "We have affiliate programs with the following bookstores:
..." (including Amazon), that probably would give Amazon more money.
That could be fixed by also saying "... but you shouldn't buy books from
Amazon because of the one-click patent"; but that's a POV statement that
doesn't belong anywhere on Wikipedia. A carefully NPOV essay ("Many
people feel that Amazon's one-click patent is bad for innovation, and
advocate a boycott of Amazon; other people...") would fix that problem,
but this essay just doesn't belong on the Book sources page.
Carl Witty