PUBLISHERS lUNCH
h Gessen's Vanity
Fair piece on "the Amazon
war of 2014" is online in advance of the December print
issue. In one fashion, he suggests, "the Amazon-Hachette dispute mirrors
the wider culture wars that have been playing out in America since at least the
1960s. On the one side, super-wealthy elites employing populist rhetoric and
mobilizing non-elites; on the other side, slightly less wealthy elites
struggling to explain why their way of life is worth preserving." Later he
writes: "The dispute between Amazon and the publishers is a dispute
between an e-commerce giant and companies that have for generations been
printing text on paper. In some respects it is also a dispute between the East
Coast and the West Coast. It is definitely a dispute between hyper-capitalism
and cultural conservation. But in the end it is a dispute that comes down to
different visions of the future of the written word."
Gessen visits with Seattle-based class action lawyer Steve Berman, who brought
the ebook pricing lawsuit against publishers and Apple on behalf of consumers.
"I'd love to sue Amazon. It's the only big company I haven’t sued,"
he said. "But you need a Microsoft moment" such as when the software
company was caught saying "We need to cut off Netscape's air supply"
with Internet Explorer. Gessen adds, "Berman wasn't optimistic."
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