Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Legal issues with Amazon.com

As far as I know, we are the first and only music torrents site that provides you the option to buy the albums we have published in Amazon.
I thought that this was an excellent idea, give the user the option to easily buy an album that they liked after download and hear it for free. That way, everybody wins: the user gets an album that already know they like, the artists and Amazon gets some money (oh, and the labels too, most of it), and we get a small commission that help us to cover our hosting expenses. A great idea that every torrent site should implement.

A couple of days ago, we received an email from Amazon, demanding us to remove any links to them and informing that they closed our account.

I can't overstate enough the idiocy of said request: they're actually telling us to stop helping them selling albums! This is so unbelievable that I needed to share it, and vent the frustration that caused me this failure in trying to cooperate with them for the best interests of everyone.

I created Coda.fm with the objective of innovate and go where no other torrent site has gone before, and this "partnership" was a key piece of our vision, but looks like they're not ready. This is a big disappointment and a bad decision that stopped a first attempt to integrate our activities, in my opinion only opposing in appearance.

Although we're no longer an Amazon Associate, we're going to keep the links to buy the albums. A couple of hundred of albums and digital downloads has been sold to the date, proving it's usefulness, and that is the only criteria I will use to decide what features we keep or remove.

Don't worry, as long as someone find us useful, not matter what happens, we will adapt (and fight) to keep Coda.fm running.

Cheers!


Coda.fm administrator

13 comments:

Vernau Mier said...

We can contact with iTunes Store. Is similar to Amazon, and is used by hundreds of people.


Sorry for my English, I don't speak very well.

Anonymous said...

This really is retarded. This whole issue needs more visibility. Have you contacted anyone at Torrent Freak? They always seem to get on the front page of Digg. From there, 1000's of people can learn about this and it might be the tipping point.

As far as I know, this is the first time this has been done . . . and Amazon itself shouldn't have a problem with it; they are just a middle man; they can't shut you down, and they have nothing to lose. A little public pressure might get them to change their mind. Right now they are just acting like pussy's!

Harry said...

Though not very surprising, that is still very unfortunate. Your decision to keep the links to buy the music whether or not you get a small commission just shows that your priorities are in the right place. More power to you guys. Keep up the fight! Fuck Amazon

Hooked On Stereophonics said...

I'm sure there are plenty of vendors who would be very happy to get traffic and sales leads from coda.fm. Don't keep supporting Amazon; support their competitors. Write to a few of them see what they say.

Anonymous said...

Thanks to this, I now know about this service from TorrentFreak. I really like your policy that torrents are not copyrighted materials and no copyright holder can demand people behind this service to remove them because of DMCA.

Keep up your work!

kratos said...

Be honest, amazon and you know that the lint to amazon is only to civer the real thing: this site is for download cr material, thats the reason amazon closed your account... I supprot coda.fm, but please,don´t try to fool us...

kratos said...

sorry, is " Link " instead of "lint and " Cover" instead of civer.

cr = copyrighted


cheers

Kirill said...

Heh.. I can understand Amazon. You really helped them to sell a few hundreeds of albums. But you've also helped to thousands of people not to buy thousands of albums at Amazon. That's why they do not want to pay for your hosting anymore ;)

ZOLLINO said...

neverethless, i joined this web after all this harsh with Amazon. thanks for this free ad, Coda.fm is more famous than even before... and its great web!

ipsto said...

;)) let me sing a leslie gore song =)) Do=zZz
--
don't try to change me (Coda) in any way
Oh, I don't tell you (Amazon) what to say

I don't tell you what to do

So just let me be myself

That's all I ask of you
I'm young and I love to be young

I'm free and I love to be free

To live my life the way I want
--
Keep Fight Coda!

Anonymous said...

Link to another company that seels the albums. IF amazon doenst want your help then help another.

Anonymous said...

love this site..the amazon affiliate thing was a splendid idea..hope u guys come up with many more innovative stuff

Memory Cards said...

Amazon is real fraud man i have personal experience with this auction site. Once i bought a one ebook from Amazon and they are not deliver to me up to now. I am receiving a mail like the seller is not identified.

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