Of all the many remarkable things to notice about the exchange between Amazon and Macmillan this past weekend, perhaps the most remarkable, at least from a linguistic point of view, is Amazon’s use of the word “monopoly” in their message to their customers yesterday. Yes, the company that has frightened the book business so badly with its attempt to create a closed system for e-book delivery on its Kindles said that Macmillan had a “monopoly on its titles.”  This nasty monopoly of Macmillan’s was forcing Amazon–now the David to Macmillan’s Goliath–to “capitulate.”

Whatever your point of view on this, the use of “monopoly” to describe a publisher’s control of its content is a bit overheated, no?  Maybe we can go back to calling it what we used to in the old days: “copyright.”