There are specialty e-distributor such as netflix that takes Wal-Mart out of the DVD competition but that is simply too costly to create.

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Penguin, for instance, is embarking on its library lending pilot with e-book distributor (and German industrial giant) 3M, some say because it may not want to do business with OverDrive.

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To match that, Sony has partnered with OverDrive, a distributor of e-books to libraries, to offer its customers easy access to the local library's collection of e-books.

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Another important building block of e-commerce infrastructure involves activities described by Web Services Description Language, or WSDL. Oriental Motor, a Japanese distributor of industrial motors, relies on one of these programs to update the inventories and prices of the many parts it offers online.

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