Oracle Goddess writes "In a story just dripping with irony, Amazon Kindle owners awoke this morning to discover that 1984 and Animal Farm had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for, and thought they owned. Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by George Orwell from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, 'We've always been at war with Eastasia.'"
Okay, let's turn down the rhetoric a couple of notches. There are two aspects to this -
1) This does not appear to be a case where the publisher just "changed their minds." 1984 and Animal Farm are, through the usual idiocy, under copyright in the US but not in other countries, so someone re-publishing the text without paying the copyright licensing is breaking the law, and Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. (Equivalent: buying software that illegally includes GPL code). If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
2) However, this does reveal a pretty worrying tendency to kill books first, clarify later. If Amazon had just sent out refunds, plus notes that "Due to an oversight, if you are in the U.S., this version of 1984 is unauthorized," that would have seemed sensible.
My suggestion - use the Kindle if you like (I love mine), but backup your books, strip the DRM, and pirate shamelessly. Casual piracy adds features to ebooks - the ability to lend and trade books, which is how we all got hooked in the first place.
I heard a rumour once that there was a remake of Rollerball, but fortunately I was mistaken.
Along with other classic films like The Manchurian Candidate, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ocean's Eleven, Psycho, The Shining, Death Race 2000 and even the Thunderbirds, I am happy to say that there was never a remake of Rollerball.
Instead coming to get me, wget http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp [planetebook.com] and http://www.asiaing.com/animal-farm-by-george-orwell.html [asiaing.com] I'm no legal expert (I gave up on trying to understand the law), but these novels are impiratable since their copyright has expired (well, I think they have anyway). Even if they weren't if Amazon and publishers will do things like this, then they deserve all the piracy they wget!
---
Mod this one up, rather than either of my two comments.
If by "dismember and ground up", you mean "carbon capture". It's not rain forest trees going into your books. It's farm trees + natural trees with strict replanting laws.
For "$DEITY" sake, don't use, buy or recommend to anyone the Kindle!
It was designed from day one to be enable Amazon to fuck you and this is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised.
An alternative ereader with better hardware, open architecture and NOT defective by design is the iLiad by iRex. Yes, it runs Linux and you can install third-part programs. And, yes, it costs a little more, but if you value your freedom (and your books) it's more than worth it.
Disclaimer: I don't work for iRex, I'm only an happy customer.
For "$DEITY" sake, don't use, buy or recommend to anyone the Kindle!
It was designed from day one to be enable Amazon to fuck you and this is exactly what happened.
I strongly considered one, but this pushed me back from the brink. The guy whose Kindle account got arbitrarily canceled a while back made me wary, but Amazon at least repented quickly and made it right. This demonstrates that they still truly consider our purchases to be their property. Unless they drastically revise their terms, or someone with reasonable terms starts selling a good reader, I'm'a stick with stupid dead trees.
It's sad that Amazon fucked this up: Ebooks have the potential to be a huge boon to the environment while simultaneously making books cheaper and more convenient to buy.
Not to nitpick, but 1984 and Animal Farm aren't available for the iRex at all. Not legally anyway. And if they are, I will certainly mod you up for linking me to them.
They are legally published by Project Gutenberg Australia [gutenberg.net.au] (see: George Orwell [gutenberg.net.au]). Depending on how sane is copyright law in the country where you live it may be illegal for you to read them, and/or you may be legally allowed to buy a DRMed copy and convert it to a non-DRMed format.
Not if Amazon remotely turns off non-drm files reading. Man, they can actually erase books remotely, they can't turn off a feature?
IMHO, device vendor and software vendor along with content provider should always be separate with lots of options. It is just like buying iPhone and whining on slashdot about how evil Apple is for not allowing this or that.
Kindle is really something like "amazon owns you, your device, your reading habits, your location".
Erasing 1984 alone is amazing. Perhaps someone really wanted to show what Kindle is and released it illegally on purpose. If it is the case, I am really impressed. It doesn't have to be a "freedom fighter", it could be some amazon rival proxying etc.
The key to dealing with DRM is to make sure you are aware that the media is encumbered before you decide to buy and to factor the DRM into the purchase (for instance, most people that know about and understand the DRM used on DVDs purchase them anyway), not to avoid any and all hardware that supports playing that media.
I see two problems here: first, most people don't know that Amazon can remotely delete or change their books at any time (yes, they can even change the contents of your books after you have purchased them; the Kindle it's a censor wet dream).
Second I don't have any problem with hardware or software that allows me to read/listen/watch DRMed formats (e.g.: mplayer allows me to watch DVDs, that ok). What I don't like is when my computers/devices obey someone not me (e.g.: my hardware DVD player don't allow me to skip that stupid FBI bullshit).
yes, they can even change the contents of your books after you have purchased them; the Kindle it's a censor wet dream).
that leads to some interesting profit models, such as: "For a $5 charge, Dumbledore will live through the next chapter. Otherwise HE WILL DIE. Make your choice."
This seems extremely shady legally. You bought and paid for something. Electronic or not, how do they have the right to take it away from you? I could MAYBE understand if it was a subscription-based service in which you had access to a collection, but for them to take this away from someone who specifically bought the book seems legally dubious at best.
This happens all the time (the Major Leage Baseball deletions, Microsoft's older DRM, etc). The difference here is that Amazon was generous enough to refund the price; usually the company just keeps it because "all sales are final".
Personally I think they should be banned from using the word sale; indefinite rental is more accurate.
It's because you paid money for access to DRM-protected content. You didn't buy shit. It's their device (you paid money for the use of it), their content (you pay a fee to get to view it). At no time did they actually give you anything.
It's just like a DVD. What are you paying $20 for? Is it for the right to view the content? If it were, then you should be able to get a cheap replacement when the disc fails, right? Well if it's not that, then you paid for the copy of the movie, I suppose? But then, why can't you make a copy?
Pay money for DRM'd content and you'll get exactly what they want to give you - smoke and mirrors.
Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.
They contradict themselves with the use of "permanent copy" and "will be deemed licensed to you". If you read that last line, it doesn't even make sense. "It will be deemed licensed to you unless otherwise provided by Amazon"? That's poor grammar at best. I think what they mean to say is, "You get the license unless we take it back," but that's not what they've written.
Regardless, whether to force someone to sell you something is legal under their "terms of service", it's bad business. As this story grows, I can see e-bay piling up with Kindles.
Except it's NOT in the license. Quoted here in case it mysteriously changes:
Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.
In the US, you can thank Disney for copyrights being extended to death of author plus seventy years. Orwell died in 1950. For corporate authorship, it is 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier
In the case of music copyrights, one can also thank the Gershwin estate [asu.edu] among others for lobbying on behalf of copyright extension - Gershwin's music is big business and the copyright holders would like to make sure that American Airlines (as one past example) would have to keep paying large sums of money for the rights to use "An American in Paris" for as long as possible.
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 17, @05:45PM (#28735963)
Please, oh, please, Kindle owners sue! This would make for an interesting case. If the property in question were concrete like a lawn mower that I purchased at Home Depot, HD decides they want it back so they pull it from my back yard but credit my account isn't that still theft? I'm dying to see what is made of this.
I can see Amazon no longer allowing it to be purchased for download but actively pulling content that has already been purchased and downloaded sounds criminal.
If the property in question were concrete like a lawn mower that I purchased at Home Depot, HD decides they want it back so they pull it from my back yard but credit my account isn't that still theft?
In this case it seems that Amazon didn't actually have the rights they needed to sell it to you in the first place. A better analogy would be if you bought a used car, then the dealership came back to you and said, "it turns out the car we sold you was stolen, and we had no right to sell it to you in the first place. Here's your money back." Yeah, that would suck, but I don't see any alternative (under the current legal regime).
If Amazon sold the product without having had the rights to it in the first place, and they don't recall it in this way, they're liable to be sued by the copyright owners. It's not (apparently) a matter of them arbitrarily deciding that the value had gone up and changing their minds.
Who would buy a book from a publisher and sales person who think it's okay to sell you DRM crap and then take it away on a whim when you can get those exact same books legally, and for free?
That's great if you're kicking it in the Outback or somewhere else sane, but here in the States 1984 it is still under copyright (I assume using the simple heuristic that it was created after Steam Boat Willie) and so probably not actually legal.
It's a safe bet that they'll extend copyright again just as Mickey Mouse is looking like public domain.
You guys in the US won't have a public domain to speak of in a few years.. it'll all be owned by the great grandchildren of once famous authors - the new ruling elite.
I was quite surprised when an automatic update for a copy of the Stand (Stephen King) was pushed onto me, without my consent and without notification as to what had changed. Backup copies aren't hard to make. But who owns the copy? Does Amazon own my Kindle? Do I not have a right to refuse an update?
The year is 1984 in a dystopian future, in a repressive, totalitarian state. Historical facts and documents have been rewritten and revised so many times that even the correct year is uncertain. Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Amazon", bearing the caption AMAZON IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way Kindles (the e-book reader) which dominate the "private" and public spaces of the populace are being re-written at Amazon's will to change facts, censor illegal words or to delete/burn ebooks that get in the way of its propaganda...
Oh dead tree books are so obsolete, even though they are cheap, last longer than I ever will, can't be altered from a distance, and don't need electricity! Same with CDs, DVDs, and other durable backup media that can't be taken from me and don't depend on some here-today-gone-tomorrow license server! And land lines! Who needs them when we have such fickle and expensive cell phone service with far less coverage!
You know, it's one thing to be a Luddite, and quite another to stay with reliable, cheap, and fully functional technologies until the newer alternatives truly surpass them.
I'm amazed at this. Not that some company wanted them to do it; but that Amazon did it. All comments about "big, evil corporations" aside - are they trying to kill the Kindle? Don't they see what a PR nightmare this could be?
Why on earth should I buy an expensive electronic book reader from them, EVER, when they've just demonstrated that I might have my legally-purchased books deleted at any time?
I think Amazon did the right thing and according to their official response [amazon.com]:
Amazon Kindle Customer Service says: "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future, books will not be removed from customers' devices in these circumstances."
This is a pretty amazing story. In the Digital Age a distributor fells that they are allowed to invade an electronic device that you own, steal a copy of digital media that you own and force you to accept a refund for something that YOU own.
Let's imagine this happened thirty years ago, or even ten years ago for that matter. A book store sells a book to you and for whatever the publisher decides they don't want to sell the book to you and must have it back. The publisher must now trespass onto your property, break into your house, steal your book, leave a cash refund on your table and then leave your property without any one noticing just to get the book back. A crime has now been committed; namely trespassing, breaking and entering and theft.
Both of these scenarios are exactly the same, except that in today's scenario the book is in a DIGITAL format, which for some magical reason means that a publisher can trespass onto your property and steal something that you own.
In what other context, except the digital context, would behavior like this be tolerated or acceptable, and not to mention legal?
Have you read "Animal Farm?" If you have, you would know that the power of the people to unite against the power of corporations has long been extinct.
You know what's going to happen? A small but vocal minority will heavily protest and boycott Amazon and the Kindle, while the vast majority of mindless consumers will continue to purchase their goods. Amazon could not possibly care less about this. As a large corporate entity they make money hand over fist. Eventually, if the Kindle becomes sufficiently popular and achieves critical mass, people will simply accept the ability to remotely revoke your ownership rights as part of the normal terms of usage of the device.
ï
The exact same thing happens in Animal Farm. The government, which in actuality is ruled by a privileged elite, leverages the power of propaganda to exploit the worker class under the guise of improving the collective good. Dissent is not tolerated and mercilessly suppressed until the people simply accept the injustice as the reality of life. What the American public has largely failed to grasp is that Orwell's allegory of the dangers of communism is not a specific condemnation of this particular political ideology, but rather, of the dangers of an imbalanced power structure and a malleable, uneducated society. The modern-day corporation has supplanted the role of the communist elite. They are the true puppet masters in today's Western capitalist systems. We have quite vividly observed this phenomenon in the US government's reaction to the past year's economic debacle.
What many people do not realize is that the game is already lost. Americans do not live in a democratic society founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, but an illusion of one, much in the same way that the proletariat class lived under Communism. The average American consumer is as much brainwashed as your typical North Korean.
Whatever The Party says (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whatever The Party says (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's turn down the rhetoric a couple of notches. There are two aspects to this -
1) This does not appear to be a case where the publisher just "changed their minds." 1984 and Animal Farm are, through the usual idiocy, under copyright in the US but not in other countries, so someone re-publishing the text without paying the copyright licensing is breaking the law, and Kindle customers have, in effect, been sold "stolen" property. (Equivalent: buying software that illegally includes GPL code). If you buy a stolen ipod, it can get confiscated by the police.
2) However, this does reveal a pretty worrying tendency to kill books first, clarify later. If Amazon had just sent out refunds, plus notes that "Due to an oversight, if you are in the U.S., this version of 1984 is unauthorized," that would have seemed sensible.
My suggestion - use the Kindle if you like (I love mine), but backup your books, strip the DRM, and pirate shamelessly. Casual piracy adds features to ebooks - the ability to lend and trade books, which is how we all got hooked in the first place.
Parent
Re:Not Big Brother. (Score:5, Funny)
Obligatory Futurama reference: "Death by snoo snoo."
Parent
Re:Not Big Brother. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not Big Brother. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Not Big Brother. (Score:5, Funny)
I heard a rumour once that there was a remake of Rollerball, but fortunately I was mistaken.
Along with other classic films like The Manchurian Candidate, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ocean's Eleven, Psycho, The Shining, Death Race 2000 and even the Thunderbirds, I am happy to say that there was never a remake of Rollerball.
La la la la la...
Parent
Re:Not Big Brother. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Whatever The Party says (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
New fourth one (Score:5, Interesting)
Ignorance is strength
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
And the new fourth one:
OWNERSHIP IS DISCRETIONARY
Parent
haha (Score:5, Insightful)
fuck kindle. buy real books and support real trees
Re:haha (Score:5, Funny)
If by "support" you mean "dismember and ground up," then yes.
Parent
Re:haha (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:haha (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Trees are farmed for paper. Magic clicky text here. [tappi.org]
-- Also when you cut trees for lumber, you get chips and waste, which is made into paper, so that argument doesn't stand either.
Parent
For your convenience (Score:5, Funny)
The Kindle is now equipped with a memory hole.
With DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
You always lose. This is just another example.
Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Informative)
For "$DEITY" sake, don't use, buy or recommend to anyone the Kindle!
It was designed from day one to be enable Amazon to fuck you and this is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised.
An alternative ereader with better hardware, open architecture and NOT defective by design is the iLiad by iRex. Yes, it runs Linux and you can install third-part programs. And, yes, it costs a little more, but if you value your freedom (and your books) it's more than worth it.
Disclaimer: I don't work for iRex, I'm only an happy customer.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Funny)
Error $DEITY undefined.
I'm atheist you insensitive clod.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe I'm confused, but I thought the atheists defined it as an empty string, while the agnostics leave it in an undefined state.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Informative)
Incorrect. Ask any atheist today, or examine the wording, and you'll find it's a lack of affirmation.
The positive affirmation you want it to be would be called antitheism, not atheism.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Funny)
Error $DEITY undefined.
I'm atheist you insensitive clod.
I thought atheists defined $DEITY as localhost.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Insightful)
For "$DEITY" sake, don't use, buy or recommend to anyone the Kindle!
It was designed from day one to be enable Amazon to fuck you and this is exactly what happened.
I strongly considered one, but this pushed me back from the brink. The guy whose Kindle account got arbitrarily canceled a while back made me wary, but Amazon at least repented quickly and made it right. This demonstrates that they still truly consider our purchases to be their property. Unless they drastically revise their terms, or someone with reasonable terms starts selling a good reader, I'm'a stick with stupid dead trees.
It's sad that Amazon fucked this up: Ebooks have the potential to be a huge boon to the environment while simultaneously making books cheaper and more convenient to buy.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Informative)
Not to nitpick, but 1984 and Animal Farm aren't available for the iRex at all. Not legally anyway. And if they are, I will certainly mod you up for linking me to them.
They are legally published by Project Gutenberg Australia [gutenberg.net.au] (see: George Orwell [gutenberg.net.au]). Depending on how sane is copyright law in the country where you live it may be illegal for you to read them, and/or you may be legally allowed to buy a DRMed copy and convert it to a non-DRMed format.
Parent
They have control of device (including plain txt) (Score:5, Interesting)
Not if Amazon remotely turns off non-drm files reading. Man, they can actually erase books remotely, they can't turn off a feature?
IMHO, device vendor and software vendor along with content provider should always be separate with lots of options. It is just like buying iPhone and whining on slashdot about how evil Apple is for not allowing this or that.
Kindle is really something like "amazon owns you, your device, your reading habits, your location".
Erasing 1984 alone is amazing. Perhaps someone really wanted to show what Kindle is and released it illegally on purpose. If it is the case, I am really impressed. It doesn't have to be a "freedom fighter", it could be some amazon rival proxying etc.
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Informative)
The key to dealing with DRM is to make sure you are aware that the media is encumbered before you decide to buy and to factor the DRM into the purchase (for instance, most people that know about and understand the DRM used on DVDs purchase them anyway), not to avoid any and all hardware that supports playing that media.
I see two problems here: first, most people don't know that Amazon can remotely delete or change their books at any time (yes, they can even change the contents of your books after you have purchased them; the Kindle it's a censor wet dream).
Second I don't have any problem with hardware or software that allows me to read/listen/watch DRMed formats (e.g.: mplayer allows me to watch DVDs, that ok). What I don't like is when my computers/devices obey someone not me (e.g.: my hardware DVD player don't allow me to skip that stupid FBI bullshit).
Parent
Re:Stay away from the Kindle! (Score:5, Interesting)
yes, they can even change the contents of your books after you have purchased them; the Kindle it's a censor wet dream).
that leads to some interesting profit models, such as: "For a $5 charge, Dumbledore will live through the next chapter. Otherwise HE WILL DIE. Make your choice."
Parent
Legally, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Legally, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
This happens all the time (the Major Leage Baseball deletions, Microsoft's older DRM, etc). The difference here is that Amazon was generous enough to refund the price; usually the company just keeps it because "all sales are final".
Personally I think they should be banned from using the word sale; indefinite rental is more accurate.
Parent
Re:Legally, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's because you paid money for access to DRM-protected content. You didn't buy shit. It's their device (you paid money for the use of it), their content (you pay a fee to get to view it). At no time did they actually give you anything.
It's just like a DVD. What are you paying $20 for? Is it for the right to view the content? If it were, then you should be able to get a cheap replacement when the disc fails, right? Well if it's not that, then you paid for the copy of the movie, I suppose? But then, why can't you make a copy?
Pay money for DRM'd content and you'll get exactly what they want to give you - smoke and mirrors.
Parent
Re:Legally, how? (Score:5, Insightful)
The relevant part:
Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.
They contradict themselves with the use of "permanent copy" and "will be deemed licensed to you". If you read that last line, it doesn't even make sense. "It will be deemed licensed to you unless otherwise provided by Amazon"? That's poor grammar at best. I think what they mean to say is, "You get the license unless we take it back," but that's not what they've written.
Regardless, whether to force someone to sell you something is legal under their "terms of service", it's bad business. As this story grows, I can see e-bay piling up with Kindles.
Parent
Re:Legally, how? (Score:5, Informative)
Except it's NOT in the license. Quoted here in case it mysteriously changes:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530&#content [amazon.com]
Parent
The author has been dead for 60 years! (Score:5, Insightful)
How can there still be a copyright on this?
No wait - politicans of course.
But more to the point SHOULD there be a copyright on something from that long ago?
And if someone says it is public domain, how can they not only sell it but also deny people right to use it?
Re:The author has been dead for 60 years! (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, you can thank Disney for copyrights being extended to death of author plus seventy years. Orwell died in 1950. For corporate authorship, it is 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier
Parent
Re:The author has been dead for 60 years! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The author has been dead for 60 years! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Class Action Lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, oh, please, Kindle owners sue! This would make for an interesting case. If the property in question were concrete like a lawn mower that I purchased at Home Depot, HD decides they want it back so they pull it from my back yard but credit my account isn't that still theft? I'm dying to see what is made of this.
I can see Amazon no longer allowing it to be purchased for download but actively pulling content that has already been purchased and downloaded sounds criminal.
Re:Class Action Lawsuit? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the property in question were concrete like a lawn mower that I purchased at Home Depot, HD decides they want it back so they pull it from my back yard but credit my account isn't that still theft?
In this case it seems that Amazon didn't actually have the rights they needed to sell it to you in the first place. A better analogy would be if you bought a used car, then the dealership came back to you and said, "it turns out the car we sold you was stolen, and we had no right to sell it to you in the first place. Here's your money back." Yeah, that would suck, but I don't see any alternative (under the current legal regime).
If Amazon sold the product without having had the rights to it in the first place, and they don't recall it in this way, they're liable to be sued by the copyright owners. It's not (apparently) a matter of them arbitrarily deciding that the value had gone up and changing their minds.
Parent
Why Buy it When you Can Get it Legally for Free? (Score:5, Informative)
Who would buy a book from a publisher and sales person who think it's okay to sell you DRM crap and then take it away on a whim when you can get those exact same books legally, and for free?
Animal Farm: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011.txt [gutenberg.net.au]
1984: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt [gutenberg.net.au]
Re:Why Buy it When you Can Get it Legally for Free (Score:5, Informative)
when you can get those exact same books legally
That's great if you're kicking it in the Outback or somewhere else sane, but here in the States 1984 it is still under copyright (I assume using the simple heuristic that it was created after Steam Boat Willie) and so probably not actually legal.
Parent
Re:Why Buy it When you Can Get it Legally for Free (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a safe bet that they'll extend copyright again just as Mickey Mouse is looking like public domain.
You guys in the US won't have a public domain to speak of in a few years.. it'll all be owned by the great grandchildren of once famous authors - the new ruling elite.
Parent
Stick with dead tree editions.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Forced to download edits to books (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Forced to download edits to books (Score:5, Interesting)
Better yet, imagine this:
The year is 1984 in a dystopian future, in a repressive, totalitarian state. Historical facts and documents have been rewritten and revised so many times that even the correct year is uncertain. Posters of the ruling Party's leader, "Amazon", bearing the caption AMAZON IS WATCHING YOU, dominate the city landscapes, while two-way Kindles (the e-book reader) which dominate the "private" and public spaces of the populace are being re-written at Amazon's will to change facts, censor illegal words or to delete/burn ebooks that get in the way of its propaganda...
Parent
Amazon's new product (Score:5, Insightful)
Your books are now 'unbooks'. They don't exist. They never existed.
suckers (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it's one thing to be a Luddite, and quite another to stay with reliable, cheap, and fully functional technologies until the newer alternatives truly surpass them.
Stupid stupid stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm amazed at this. Not that some company wanted them to do it; but that Amazon did it. All comments about "big, evil corporations" aside - are they trying to kill the Kindle? Don't they see what a PR nightmare this could be?
Why on earth should I buy an expensive electronic book reader from them, EVER, when they've just demonstrated that I might have my legally-purchased books deleted at any time?
Never! (Score:5, Insightful)
only pirates win (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were one of the customers who had my book deleted, then I would feel entitled--even compelled--to download a DRM-free copy from the internet.
Once again Slashdot posts stupid headlines. (Score:5, Informative)
I think Amazon did the right thing and according to their official response [amazon.com]:
Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
"These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future, books will not be removed from customers' devices in these circumstances."
Digital Smoke Screen (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a pretty amazing story. In the Digital Age a distributor fells that they are allowed to invade an electronic device that you own, steal a copy of digital media that you own and force you to accept a refund for something that YOU own.
Let's imagine this happened thirty years ago, or even ten years ago for that matter. A book store sells a book to you and for whatever the publisher decides they don't want to sell the book to you and must have it back. The publisher must now trespass onto your property, break into your house, steal your book, leave a cash refund on your table and then leave your property without any one noticing just to get the book back. A crime has now been committed; namely trespassing, breaking and entering and theft.
Both of these scenarios are exactly the same, except that in today's scenario the book is in a DIGITAL format, which for some magical reason means that a publisher can trespass onto your property and steal something that you own.
In what other context, except the digital context, would behavior like this be tolerated or acceptable, and not to mention legal?
Re:All Geeks Unite (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you read "Animal Farm?" If you have, you would know that the power of the people to unite against the power of corporations has long been extinct.
You know what's going to happen? A small but vocal minority will heavily protest and boycott Amazon and the Kindle, while the vast majority of mindless consumers will continue to purchase their goods. Amazon could not possibly care less about this. As a large corporate entity they make money hand over fist. Eventually, if the Kindle becomes sufficiently popular and achieves critical mass, people will simply accept the ability to remotely revoke your ownership rights as part of the normal terms of usage of the device.
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The exact same thing happens in Animal Farm. The government, which in actuality is ruled by a privileged elite, leverages the power of propaganda to exploit the worker class under the guise of improving the collective good. Dissent is not tolerated and mercilessly suppressed until the people simply accept the injustice as the reality of life. What the American public has largely failed to grasp is that Orwell's allegory of the dangers of communism is not a specific condemnation of this particular political ideology, but rather, of the dangers of an imbalanced power structure and a malleable, uneducated society. The modern-day corporation has supplanted the role of the communist elite. They are the true puppet masters in today's Western capitalist systems. We have quite vividly observed this phenomenon in the US government's reaction to the past year's economic debacle.
What many people do not realize is that the game is already lost. Americans do not live in a democratic society founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, but an illusion of one, much in the same way that the proletariat class lived under Communism. The average American consumer is as much brainwashed as your typical North Korean.
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