"Special Offers?"

I recently learned that popular online retailer Amazon sells a version of their kindle e-reader, quote, "with special offers." Basically, what this means is for $20 cheaper, you can get a kindle with ads in it.

I am of the opinion that you can either put adverts in something or you can charge money for it, but never both (unless the money charged is clearly less than the actual value). Whether or not putting up with ads is worth USD $20 is up to you, but I suppose this qualifies as not an abuse of advertising privileges, since the ad-supported one is genuinely cheaper.

That said, referring to ads as "special offers" is a flagrant mutilation of the English language that should be punishable by three months in a prison referred to as an "enlightenment facility." It's a common euphemism that seems to be part of marketer-speak along with referring to companies as "brands," but it drives me several varieties of nuts, including, but not limited to, macadamia, wal, and almond.

Curiously, the cheaper version of the kindle with, *cough*, "special offers," is only available on the American version of Amazon. On amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk, they only have the regular ad-free kindle at $139 and £109 respectively. Apparently, America is the only country that tolerates that sort of shit. However, the British do tolerate higher prices, as their kindle costs the equivalent of CAD $178.

Also curiously, in the splash page for the kindle on American Amazon, the kindle in the picture is displaying a page from The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman, while in the splash page on Canadian Amazon, the picture shows Above All Things by Tanis Rideout, and in British Amazon, the picture shows The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. My best guess was that they tried to customise each splash page with an author from that country but they had never heard of any American writers.

Richard O'Dwyer

Richard O'Dwyer is a British citizen living in Britain who established a website based in Britain, which catered to British viewers and was legal under British law. However, the United States has asked that he be extradited to face charges in the US on the grounds that his website, had it been in the US would have been illegal under US law.

The website in question hosted links. The links pointed to copyrighted content which had been uploaded to third-party websites without permission from the copyright owners. However, O'Dwyer hosted no infringing content on his own site, and so his site did not violate any UK law.

This is a case about copyright, obviously. And it's about justice, just as obviously. But it's also fundamentally about sovereignty. The fundamental question at the heart of this matter is: Does the United States Congress have the power to pass laws that are applicable in Britain? Are British citizens required to obey United States laws in their own country?

If Britain agrees to extradite O'Dwyer, then Britain will cease to be a sovereign nation. If Britain agrees that O'Dwyer should be extradited to a country he's never been to because that country's laws must be obeyed at home, then Britain will become, in essence, a colony of the United States.

The case hasn't been decided yet, but I will be preemptively destroying my irony meter to offset the risk of catastrophic explosion.

Oh, and the final absurdity: I'm not quite up to date on the matter, but I'm fairly certain O'Dwyer's website was legal under US law as well. It can be a bit hard to tell though; US copyright law is somewhat analogous to British libel law and I will never be surprised at the nonsense churned out from it.