1.	Lillington received a response to her Irish Times piece from Amazon spokesperson Bill Curry.
2.	He said: "Bullying? Greedy? Warped? Tell us what you really think! Try visiting www.amazon.com/patents. And before you run any more misguided stuff, maybe you should talk to us. And you'll also want to visit www.oreilly.com for a better understanding of the patents."
3.	She forwarded the email to me with this comment: "I have never in 5 years of working as a tech journalist received such a rude reply from anyone I've written about -- much less the company spokesman for a high-profile firm."
4.	It is unusual! Even so, I followed Curry's links.
5.	I re-read what Bezos says. Taken at face value, he gave the issue some thought, and found that he truly cares about the Internet, and understands that freedom of expression, not just in writing, but in technology, is essential to what the Internet is. He's having second thoughts about using patents as a competitive weapon. I think this is great!
6.	http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$15495
7.	But as much as I like the spirit of what he says, I still see that he is using patents to limit competition. How you say it is not as important as what you say. The patents are still there and are still being used to limit competition.
8.	I also went to O'Reilly, at Curry's suggestion, and re-read his essays, but he doesn't think Amazon is clear of the problem.
9.	Finally Curry says we should talk to him to avoid being misguided. But honestly, who would want to?