Awesome irony. As a side point, I'm pretty pissy about this and it didn't even happen to me. Just because you can doesn't mean you have the right, and it doesn't mean you should. We used to use these publisher bastards to help us determine what to read since we didn't have an efficient way of establishing credibility.
Enter TEH T00Bz... We don't need these jack asses anymore. If I write anything, I'm going to e-publish.
I actually had to check it wasn't April 1st. Oh the irony indeed. On the plus side:
1. This might focus people's attentions on the problems of buying DRM books - I am still astonished how little it bothers people.
2. For the love of all your deities, can we please revisit copyright laws. The man has been dead for 59 years. Surely we can all agree those books should be public domain by now. Death+70 is just too long.
At this point, I'd actually accept a special "Disney gets to make money from Mickey Mouse forever" law in exchange for shorter copyrights for everything else.
That's actually an interesting idea. Wouldn't it be a good experiment (and a nice comeuppance if it pans out) to see the unshackled media beat the pants off a stagnating Mickey?
There's probably a more realistic version - to put expensive-to-prove legal loop for extending copyright (but not as expensive as lobbying congress) so large corporations can take that option instead of breaking copyright for everyone.
Another option would be to create a branch of IP "in between" copyright and trademark (which is indefinitely renewable).
Unfortunately, it would probably need to be "Disney gets to make money from all its copyrighted works forever".
But I suspect Disney isn't actually that powerful itself, but it has sufficient resources and motivation to argue its case strongly before the appropriate committees - and then the many other powerful parties with similar interests rally round it.
But I'd like to point out that the phrase "special interest" is very loaded. If you're going to use the phrase, can you differentiate between a "special interest" versus just a plain old regular interest?
It seems that people use "special interest" to denote interests with which they disagree. Those entities that they agree with are overlooked, despite the fact that all entities manifestly have their own interests.
(I hesitate to cite specific examples for fear of forking out an off-topic thread for an OP that's already marginal)
I think of "special" interest as the opposite (by some imaginary scale) of "public" interest. Public interest that which costs/benefits people equally - so things done "in the public interest" will benefit the majority of people. Democratic governments are good [1] because they tend to do things which are "in the public interest". Things done "for special interests" are those done for a minority at the expense of the majority - "special" because that minority has some sort of power (lobbying) that the majority of people don't have.
1. According to utilitarianism - the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism]
We are told that actions like Kelo and Didden are in the public interest -- that is, to the benefit and betterment of the entire community -- but this is clearly bunk. How can we discern which of policies being espoused are really net-beneficial to society?
I claim that in all but the most obvious cases, you can't. It's a fool's errand, and thus the term "special interest" has no use but in propaganda.
I'm all for precision in language, but this one is easy. A "special interest" is an entity that is a beneficiary of public policy intended to benefit some small subsector of the population. The "general interest" is the utility of society as a whole.
Interestingly, there are strong economic incentives for democracies to create policy that benefits special interests at the expense of the general interest.
I agree about DRM on books being bad. That's what I love about Pragmatic Programmers' e-books, I can get a plain PDF that I can read on any device that can read it.
Yeah, but the problem with that is that with PDF the page layout is really set in stone. What's appropriate for a 24" monitor may not be appropriate to read on your phone, or netbook, or what not.
The best format, IMO, is plain HTML. It can come with a custom style sheet, or can be overridden to taste on the client. It can be read by anything, it can be endlessly adapted .. it's just the best overall solution, IMO.
I'm astonished by how little DRM bothers people in general. The idea that I can buy something and not own it at the same time is ridiculous. It'd be like buying a car and having it taken back in 5 years. We make a distinction between "buying" and "leasing" for a reason. Except on the Internet, where everybody tries to get you to buy things and apply leasing rules to what you just bought. It's completely asinine.
It's not "leasing", either, though - unless they're indefinite-time leases for a fixed price, with the right to "withdraw" the lease for a full refund. Most leased cars are returned, I imagine. Most "DRM-bought" Kindle books are not.
So while "buy" isn't the right word, neither is "lease". It's a whole different beast altogether.
Every purchase has terms of sale and a price. Whether those terms are dictated by the counterparty or by laws and social customs is irrelevant.
You can buy a car but you can't drive it 100 miles per hour. You can buy 1000 smoke detectors, but you can't harvest the radioactive isotope and make a nuclear reactor. You can buy a book on paper, but you can't re-publish it as your own work, etc.
Interesting. I'm always astonished by how much DRM does bother people.
If a song costs $0.99 with DRM then it would cost more without DRM. Very simple. In most cases the DRM terms of use are acceptable to me, which is why I don't hesitate to buy DRM'ed content.
Of course, many DRM implementations are highly annoying, but that is a design issue not a core issue with DRM technology.
Why should the non-DRM version cost more? If anything, the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection".
In the vast majority of cases, DRM is only an annoyance. It doesn't stop anybody who really wants to share content from sharing it. The only things DRM does is give undue power to content sellers (like Amazon) and make content completely worthless when whatever technology is used to verify ownership stops working (or gets turned off like MSN Music, Yahoo Music...)
As I mentioned, DRM implementations are very poor.
Why shouldn't I be able to plug my iPod into someone else's computer, pick the songs I want, and confirm a popup for the amount I'll be billed? Or why shouldn't it let me listen to the songs for a few days free of charge?
DRM should let comtent owners think of extremely creative ways to virally market digital goods, while still preserving ownership and the ability to make a profit.
Sadly, there has not been a good DRM yet. Even Apple's DRM is so stupid that if you get a hard drive failure you can't re-download the songs free of charge (or for the price of bandwidth). I happen to have had two hard drive failures, and only the first one was covered. This is bad business, not bad technology.
the DRM version should cost more, given all the time and work put into wrapping the item in some annoying "protection"
Since when does price have to do with how much something cost to build? If I spend $10 building a shitty chair, it's still a shitty chair. DRM-protected music costs less because you're buying the right to listen to a song with restrictions not present in non-DRM-protected music.
It seems that RIAA and MPAA are the luckiest of these middle men and the most persistent, and that is why they came to make such a huge profit from what was relatively obscure nook of an intellectual property regulation. After all, the concept of an artist having the privileged right to his, already published, work comes first, and all the delegations and copyright issues come second.
DRM is designed to keep power in the hands of rights holder, the creator, and, by necessity, away from the consumer, and only the monstrous bulk of MPAA allowed them to effectively pretend that they are not the simple middle men, but the focus and origin of all the rights that anybody can ever have on IP.
Suppose I buy a copy of Acid Pro and create an awesome dance mix using some Jay Z and some Garth Brooks. In an ideal DRM'ed world, I could set a price for this song and sell it via bittorrent -- the original license holders of the songs would each get their cut but if I charged $3 then I'd get a dollar for each sale (for example).
DRM is the sort of technology that could enable this kind of free, expressive creation. That we don't have it is a failure of businesses to come up with creative licensing terms, not a failure of DRM technology.
Legally, it's like Amazon brokered sale of stolen goods and the owners demanded those goods be returned. People thought they had purchased limited rights to the book. Amazon _is_ responsible in some way.
Somebody (third-party) decided to sell 1984 and Animal Farm on the Kindle Store without owning the copyright to it. Amazon is of course forced to take down said illegal posting. The only questionable part here is whether or not they should be allowed to delete purchased copies (with refund).
Thanks for finding that, it sounds like that story came out somewhat after the story had already blown up. The detail that it was due to a self-service publisher who did not own the copyright is crucial. It sounds like Amazon could save itself a lot of the PR grief that comes with this sort of thing by posting takedowns and C&Ds on chillingeffects.org like Google does.
Illegal or not, the purchasers bought the books from Amazon's web site, not from some Hackerz site. Amazon later discovered that the books that Amazon was itself selling were somehow illegal, which the buyers need not have to be concerned about in the first place.
Then instead of informing the buyers of it's mistake, Amazon decided to delete the copies outright, without any notice and of course without any talk of refund to the buyers.
Then you misunderstand the situation. Amazon issued notice of the deletion (though did not clarify that the books were illegal), and automatically refunded money without the customers having to ask.
I think they handled it as well as anyone can handle this particular situation.
to not clarify that the books were illegal when rescinded is nearly as grave a mistake as to allow them to be sold in the first place. rather than being in front of this and stopping these books from being sold - which was something they had every right to bar & would have been a pr conflict for exactly no one- amazon instead designed a system that allowed bad content to be sold with a kill switch in place so 'in the event of a mistake, it could be rescinded' - they deserve this pr storm because they've earned it. they've broken trust with their consumers on not one but 2 fronts here - foremost, they offered an ILLEGAL product for sale on their website. secondly, rather than explain the fact that this was illegal, they immediately attempted to go back in time and undo it - something that directly conflicts with a value proposition offered on the premise that books create memorable value and that their consumers might notice if a book suddenly goes missing. Amazon deserves what it's getting and we can only hope this will be loud enough to set the precedents & standards that define a better eventuality next time a similar situation arises.
A better result from a CS standpoint would have been to purchase licenses for the legit copy, eat the difference in price and improve the vetting process so that books don't enter into the marketplace until their copyrights are validated. This way there aren't blog posts in nyt about this and your customers don't suspect you of doing something dirty.
The book is 1984 for f sake. Does it have to be 451 before someone at amazon realizes this would be a PR nightmare? There were better ways to handle this issue, but they can still fix it, as they must have a record of which books from which customers they revoked & refunded.
I disagree with #2. #1 is a problem, but this scenario doesn't exemplify in a way that other more prominent cases already have (Mickey anyone?).
As a copyright holder of course you have the right to go after people who have illegally copied your work. I see nothing wrong here. What I see wrong is the ability to preemptively delete this material without notifying the user first.
Someone had the copyright and they were clearly able to have the works deleted. QED.
Maybe they weren't in their immediate legal rights merely by virtue of their copyright but their possession of the copyrights gave them enough other leverage to force Amazon to take the actions that they did. So by having the copyright, they were able to get the books erased.
That's why I prefer real paper based books. No book seller will break in my home at night and burn my copy even in case it was "illegal". ("Illegal books" reminds of me of the Nazis)
I think China has become the new Godwin's Law - you're inventing a straw man instead of addressing this specific scenario.
The illegality of the book here has nothing to do with political pressure or information control. It is a simple matter of someone who didn't own something trying to sell what he didn't own.
Technical censorship mechanisms are agnostic as to why they are being used; the technical aspects of suppressing an illegal text are the same regardless of why that text is illegal. If we choose to create a world with very efficient technical mechanisms for censorship, we are providing governments with greater control over what information their people have access to. Some governments will use that control wisely; others will abuse it. You have to consider both sides when you are considering a technical measure like this.
But isn't the reason to maintain copyright on this particular dead man's work to help him make a good living and thus greatly increases his ability to contribute with even more creations? Oh. Oh, wait...
Sony Reader allows you to categorize your materials, while amazingly, Kindle doesn't have any hierarchy, just a long list. As a bonus, the Sony Reader doesn't have wireless DRM to remotely delete your books. That's not a bug, it's a feature.
(I have both devices. The Sony is more usable while the Kindle DX handles full size business and engineering PDFs.)
You know, I had a Sony mp3 player a while back. One day the music library software updated itself and installed DRM retroactively on the device and I could never change the music that was on it; I threw it out after I got tired of hearing the same 12 songs.
You can use pdflrfwin to read full size PDFs on the Reader pretty comfortably. It can rotate the file landscape-wise, and cuts it into 2-3 chunks, smartly merging across page boundaries.
I want a full-size e-paper display so I can edit code/use command lines outside in full sunlight. Think software development in a grove of trees from a hammock.
Nothing stopping you from doing that today. Trees are the key, so you end up having to move around a bit to keep the screen in the shade. I do a sizeable portion of my coding outdoors:
If it is anything like graphics on the version 1 Kindle, it would look like complete crap. E-paper does a beautiful job with text, not so much anything else.
The Kindle is absolutely worth buying. Just break the DRM on the books you get, take back-ups, and remember that The Pirate Bay is your friend when Amazon does something stupid.
No thanks. Setting aside the ethics of piracy, I'd rather not have to worry that Amazon is going to push out an update that I'll have to crack just to keep using the device I already bought.
I'd rather just live without it until something better and more open comes along. It's like deciding to use Linux instead of pirating Windows.
Whispernet is not the problem (although I would prefer a less "world-proof" GSM modem with no tie-in). The problem is the software that has this kind of backdoor.
Owners of those titles were robbed by Amazon. Amazon broke into their libraries, took the books and left some money on the table. All through the backdoor they had installed when you purchased your book case.
Good point. It's not really Whispernet, specifically, it's it combined with control.
Taking the iPhone Kindle app out of the picture (though it's probably relevant, I just don't know much about it, so I'll leave it alone for the moment)... Whispernet and software that is in the complete control of Amazon gives them a capability it can't have on my Netbook.
The thing that always concerned me about the Kindle/Whispernet is that they could use it to control all of the content on the Kindle. Lets say Amazon decides that only Kindle purchased e-books are allowed on the device ... one software update later and your imported PDF files are gone (legally or otherwise). I don't think they'd really be that nasty, but it's not as though the software installed is available for inspection. If the publishers push hard enough and the circumstances are right, who knows?
I'm not begging for a GNU/Linux e-book reader. I paid about the price of a Kindle for a low-end Eee PC with a big battery. It lasts about 7 hours (not 9.5 as advertised, but enough). To me, the Kindle is something undefinable. What do I get for $300?. Text to speech on all of my books? Sometimes. The ability to import PDF files? So far. Getting to read the books you purchased... unless...
I "get" that Amazon lives at the whims of their publishers. Unfortunately, the book publishers live at the whims of the consumer and the conditions of the marketplace. They should take notes from what's going on with music today. Scanners are cheap, and OCR software is very good with print. Compressed, text-only renditions of a book are tiny and bandwidth to the home is plentiful. Top that off with an inexpensive device that gets acceptable battery life and offers convenience and an acceptable screen for reading text... It certainly sounds a lot like Napster and mp3's to me.
1. The Kindle is a GNU/Linux e-book reader -- it runs a Linux kernel + userland atop an ARM chipset. The only thing "proprietary" about the system is the actual GUI tools for browsing/buying/reading books, and the radio firmware (pretty much mandated by the FCC).
2. The Kindle "experience" is very much different from what you get from reading on a laptop, even when suing a very compact model like the Eee. I've been reading book-length text on LCDs for years, but the Kindle is the first device that has allowed me to totally forget that I'm not reading a printed volume. If you haven't used one for at least 15 minutes, you really haven't had a chance to evaluate it fairly.
3. Finally, Amazon has never asserted any right to so much as examine what non-Kindle-store content you have on the device, much less delete it without your permission. Conversion of content from non-Amazon sources has been a feature of the Kindle from day 1, and any documents you acquire from other sources can simply be copied by using the Kindle as a USB mass storage device.
Like any hardware/software bundle manufacturer, Amazon has the option to render a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. However, like other companies possessing such power (Microsoft, for the XBox 360; Apple, for the iPhone; not to mention basically every smartphone on every carrier) they have to weigh any potential change against the risk that their customers will go elsewhere.
Good points, and in fairness, I don't know how to shut up, so I have to respond :o).
Point 1: You clearly have a better understanding of the software than I do and I appreciate the clarification. I still stand by the outcome, though. My own ignorance: has anyone managed to install firmware that eliminates the radio and makes it a simple GNU/Linux device (either generation)? That would make it more appealing to me assuming it has acceptable storage.
Point 2: Agreed that the experience is much different than an Eee. I rarely read text on paper. Most of my reading is on inexpensive, large LCDs with uneven back-lighting. The Eee display is an improvement to my eyes, though I've read on the eSlick (foxit's product) for well over 15 minutes and it is pleasant (minus the black and white which is unnecessary for books usually).
Point 3: Here's where I have to disagree: Amazon announced that the latest iteration of the Kindle would have Text to Speech, and had to back down. What I know is that if I purchase this device, I am purchasing something that I cannot control without an exceptional effort (hacking it myself, time I don't have). They own the front end and the back channel.
As to your final point: Yes. I'm a PC gamer, not an Xbox 360 guy for precisely this reason. I don't like mandatory game updates or a "sanctioned" selection of DLC. I'll concede on the iPhone comment since all mobile phones in the US suffer from the same disease to a greater or lesser degree.
The difference is that I believe Amazon has already rendered a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. GNU/Linux on the Kindle aside, the GUI is the functionality and whispernet is the control when the two are married in a device. Assertions (or lack thereof) and promises are as good as the screen they're read on.
[edit] So I'll make one more point, which is that it looks like Amazon may well have removed and refunded due to fraud perpetrated upon them because they expected that the copyright belonged to the person signing the rights over.
It's nice to know that Amazon didn't respond to the whims of a publisher but tried to make a wrong right again. But the outcome was still a serious wrong for the customer.
If they had been printing copies of the book based on the claims of permission from someone who didn't own the copyright, they would have sued that individual after being sued themselves. I'd get to keep my book that was purchased in good faith.
I'm starting to think Randall Munroe was right about piracy: I'd rather be a criminal and know the media I have is under my control than stay legal and have someone reach out and quietly delete (or, in the future, modify) the data on my machine.
Also: I'd rather buy a physical book than either of those.
I really wish somebody would make an ebook reader that's easily hackable, reasonably priced, good on battery life, and displays PDF's well. The eSlick gets 3/4.
My ideal device would be one that can read RSS feeds and sync with Dropbox over wifi. Maybe the easy-on-the-eyes netbook screens are the answer?
I don't know whether it is illegal. I am trying to figure out if this violates their TOS:
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"
Is that "or" a get-out clause? Because the first part seems to quite definitively rule out what they did.
The most logical reading of the or is that you are allowed to display the content as many times as you want, and those displays may either be on the screen or in another manner that has been authorized by Amazon.
That said, I'm sure their lawyers will be able to spin it as meaning that they grant you the right to keep the copy as authorized by them.
When you "purchase a book" from the kindle store, all you are actually purchasing is a license to view the book that is bound by amazon's terms of use.
Criminally illegal, no. But that leaves open civil suits, which are sure to come.
1) You can sue anyone for anything. The US does not have a "loser pays" rule, though frivolous lawsuits can include attorney's fees.
2) Class action lawsuits are very profitable for lawyers when they win. They need to convince a jury of 12 people who couldn't get out of jury duty that "Big Corporation" was wrong. They get a percentage of the total judgment.
My guess is that some lawyer will pick this one up. They'll sue Amazon based on "common sense" and Amazon will realize that a jury isn't going separate a "book" from an "e-book". The plaintiff's lawyers will equate it to removing a book from your bookshelf in your house.
Amazon will argue commas in their TOS or Amazon will settle. On top of it all, Amazon demonstrates why I purchased a netbook instead of a Kindle for my e-book reading pleasure ... and why I don't buy e-books that I can't remove the DRM from.
[edit] since I can't edit the original due to replies.
I still think they stand a good chance of a class action lawsuit. The likelihood of it succeeding is less since it sounds like the issue relates to "who really owned the copyright" and they had to take down the content due to that ambiguity or fraud.
I concur - bonehead handling by Amazon perhaps, Exhibit A to why the copyright laws might need reforming, but not likely to lead to legal liabilities for Amazon given that they refunded everybody's payments.
Amazon needs to make its licensing policies clear up front and not bury them in fine print.
I may not like it when I only get a license that might be yanked, but I'll be a lot less upset about it the day it is yanked if I did the deal with open eyes at the start.
Though Amazon may be technically correct, it deserves the drubbing it is getting by failing to make its DRM policies clear up front to its customers.
It obviously obscured this issue to ensure that the issue would not harm Kindle sales. Now that this bomb has exploded, Kindle sales will be hurt anyway.
My guess is that they either play nice with the publishing companies, or not at all.
Believe me, amazon hates this as much as you do. They had to credit a bunch of people's accounts for the books. Amazon is a company. One that spends money. The publisher is not the ONLY person that is seeing a taste of the $9.99. They're out the money they had to give to sprint (is it sprint that provides the connectivity? somebody correct me if I'm wrong), and every other cost that was covered by the money you spent on the book.
This was a horrible horrible move for all parties involved.
Sony is able to sell ebooks for its reader w/o being able to retroactively delete them. Why can't Amazon? I'm not sure they "hate it as much as I do". They may hate the fact that they're out of the refund money in this case, but love their ability to own the books on the customers' Kindles and be able to delete them at will.
I don't think it does. Where Amazon is the single largest online player in the book business, Sony is a small-scale newcomer. Where Amazon can exert an extraordinary amount of pressure on book publishers, Sony can exert bupkis. These differences are probably much more important to Amazon's ability to muster an impressive list of titles than the fact that it can withdraw books already purchased.
Amazon didn't have to put that ability in the Kindle. Without it, it'd still have a huge list of titles. Amazon wanted to have that kind of control.
(3) Amazon is a public company, hence it tries to maximize (1) and minimize (2)
---
Hence, Amazon is really on the customers' side here when it comes to "buying" versus "refunding random books, rubbing hands together, and laughing manically". The only reason Amazon would want this kind of control is to extend it to publishers.
I don't see where you contradict anything I've said. Sure it wanted this kind of control to extend it to publishers. It preferred the interests of the publishers (its suppliers) to the interests of the readers (its customers).
How is that being on the customers' side again? No Kindle owner is interested in the publishers' being able to delete books of their device.
The stuff about maximizing profits is just a red herring. Any time any public company is criticized for anything it does there's always a chance someone'll pop out with "they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
I don't see where you contradict anything I've said.
Well, a reply doesn't have to be a contradiction, but I didn't (and don't) agree with your implied assumptions. One being:
"they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse
That's kind of like saying that gravity is a universal excuse for rocks falling on your head. They aren't excuses, they're physical/economic realities.
"Public corporations" are institutions in which decisions are made by individuals not just a contractually obliged to maximize shareholder value (meaning they'll be fired if they don't), but also a legal obligation to do so (meaning they can be sued and go to jail). Add to that the extraordinary competition for those positions and the over-abundance of people willing to take those jobs, and you'll get very simple behavior - profit maximization.
If I may, allow me (humbly) point out the fallacy in your thinking - you're personifying corporations. But they're nothing like people - they're economic entities defined and reacting to laws, just as moths are defined by physical laws.
Just a moth doesn't "know" any better than to fly towards light, corporations can't "know" any better than to maximize shareholder value. I don't mean that as a criticism of corporations, but rather of the ways in which their legal environment (copyright laws in particular) drives them to maximize those profits. Also worth criticizing: the ways in which the legal environment allows them to affect (via lobbying) it in ways which hurt the public good.
That's kind of like saying that gravity is a universal excuse for rocks falling on your head.
No, that's almost entirely unlike that. Gravity is well-understood and can be calculated and predicted. Predicting how a public company will behave based on the principle that it's going to maximize its profits is impossible. There's an enormous range of attitudes and behaviors that are used in practice and not considered to run afoul of this principle. This is why appealing to it is a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
If you look at what actual public companies are doing, you will see all around you kinds of behavior that cannot be explained as maximizing the profits in any realistically predictable sort of way. Granted, for any such behavior you can come up with a plausible story about how it's somehow still going to contribute to profits by, for example, improving the company's public image, or betting on a long-shot breakthrough. But then, you can come up with such a story for virually any possible behavior, so it's, again, meaningless.
Some companies contribute to charity; others don't. Some companies spend huge amounts of money giving to their employees bonuses not mandated by contracts; others don't. Some companies (Yahoo) reject buyout offers based on higher-than-market evaluations - a decision that by definition robs shareholders of profit. Others don't. Some companies pay dividends. Others state upfront that they never will. Some companies follow established net standards when creating their applications. Others willfully break them. Some companies have a privacy policy for their users and stick to it; others have one and ignore it; others don't have one. Some public companies (Amazon, in fact) spend years racking up huge debt and ensuring they won't bring profit to their investors for many years to come. Some public companies (Microsoft) invest in a huge resource department that's poorly publicized (meaning little to no PR benefit) and almost certainly doesn't justify itself economically.
For all that, board takeovers for not maximizing profits, much less criminal persecutions, are very rare, because nearly any kind of behavior, including all enumerated above, can be justified with some sort of appeal to maximizing profits in some roundabout way or another, at some future or present point of time, according to some executive's judgement that's assumed to have been made in good faith. Yahoo's management had a good faith belief that Yahoo is really worth more than Microsoft was offering, even if the marker didn't recognize this. Spending lavishly on your employees is justified by claiming that otherwise the talent will leave and hurt profits; on the other hand, being a real cheapskate with your employees is justified by cutting costs and maximizing immediate profits. And so on and so on.
Given that just about any behavior can be explained as a way of maximizing profits, it's a useless explanation. It usually gets cited in defense of some objectionable behavior that can be seen to maximize profits in some easily-identifiable scope. The fact that other public companies (often) somehow manage to avoid doing the objectionable, or that this company (like just about any large company) routinely does things that hurt profits according to the same kind of simplistic explanation, is ignored. As I said in my original comment, it's a red herring.
You gave a lot of examples, but you missed the important one: Why would a publisher waive any of the rights the government (elected by the people) has granted them.
I couldn't agree more. I saw the refund email this morning but didn't put it together until I read about it on the web (it didn't mention deactivating the book). I checked my iPhone Kindle app and, sure enough, "1984" had been removed. I almost can't believe it. They reached into my device and turned off a book I bought from them.
I now know I'll never get a Kindle. Also I will not buy any more digital books from Amazon. It's a shame. I liked it.
Yeah wouldn't those annotations be copyrighted by the owner, and hence Amazon seizing them would constitute basis for case of appropriating someone else's work.
Of course IANAL, I'm just speculating, and am 95% certain what I just said wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Great link! I am just surprised that amazon cannot explain this to the publishers. It would seem that they have a good deal of clout with the publishers being such an online presence. If they went the iPod route and once it gets on the device it is hard for the average person to get the data back off. That should satiate the publishers that they are not going to get easily ripped off. Of course the hackers here know to download a piece of software to transfer the songs off an iPod but 80%(not a real statistic) does not know how to do this.
Someone else above said the Kindle edition of 1984 was 99 cents. I'm sure the publisher is well aware of the benefits of having a kindle edition, but got greedy and demanded it be sold at a significantly higher price (or they get a much larger percentage of the gross). When Amazon balked, they took their marbles and went home.
It's not the publishers, it's copyright law. Copyright law gives the publishers certain rights. Publishers are economic entities which maximize profits. Blaming publishers for exercising legal rights which maximize profit is like blaming rocks for falling on people.
When there are rocks in a position to fall on people, it is reasonable to warn others that they are hazardous in a way that, say, sheep or cotton balls in the same location would not be; and then to remove them.
Does anybody know if amazon actively checks the books put on your kindle via their email service? There are a number of books that I own in dead-tree format (some of them, multiple copies in dead-tree format) that they don't offer in the kindle store.
This sort of move really scares me; I have been contemplating moving some of them to the kindle (I have the books in .txt format).
"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."
Is that really how contracts work (honest question)? You can essentially put "just kidding" at the end of a contract and everything above it is nullified? If this is the case than those portions of the contract would seem to act solely for the purposes of deception.
Sorta, not really. Contracts have a lot more leeway than they look like. If the judge thinks you're being abusive in the writing of a contract, they'll say "nope, sorry, you lose", or throw out that clause and keep going.
The book is under copyright still in America. The Orwell estate is to be blamed for this, not Amazon, except they should be trashed for not vetting, properly, a book they thought was in the public domain.
Deleting the books is actually one of the more benign things they can do. What is truly scary is them or others changing the content of books Ministry of Truth style, without us realizing it.
Your comment goes a little too far (this is not the full realisation of 1984, not yet anyway) but you do raise a good point. It introduces the first actual working memory hole; one of the key enablers of the 1984 regime.
Imagine some little guy writes a controversial tell-all book, it's published. People buy it on Kindle. The guy is sued by The Man, loses, and any unsold books are pulped - plus, now, any Kindle books are recalled, or possibly revised.
Well the worst thing is it seems like there doesn't even need to be a legal basis! Everything's under a "license", no-one owns anything. What's to stop a newspaper company retroactively editing the news? Their news? Hell the system is in place for that already. Most news syndication uses Atom or similar, that has support for "updates".
We might be giving away more than we bargained for when we replace paper for mutable digitalia. We need to at least think about how we can address this systemic risk.
I had this on my Kindle and didn't realize it had been deleted until I read the story here. The email from Amazon is in the "Your Amazon.com Order #XXX..." format familiar to anyone who buys kindle content regularly, so many will not even realize this was removed.
1984 is literally my favorite book. I was happy to have it on my Kindle, readily available at all times. You would think, then, that I would be outraged by this. To be honest, after I got over the initial creepy "they went into MY device and deleted something" feeling, my (positive) feelings about either Amazon and the Kindle itself were unchanged. It's still an amazingly useful device that I get a ton of mileage out of, and they made a dumb mistake that just happened to affect me. I've been fully reimbursed for the title (all $0.99 of it), so no harm done.
The concerns about Amazon randomly deleting content on your Kindle seem overblown. The ostensible purpose of the Kindle is to drive sales of Amazon's e-books. How would deleting customers' purchases on a frequent basis further that goal? I'm willing to write this off as a one-time occurrence, albeit an unfortunate and somewhat frustrating one.
I feel like too many people are speaking up on HN just to speak (I wonder if the demographic has changed lately). I like this comment because it adds some data, not just an opinion or crafted argument.
I come to HN to hear first hand accounts from people. jknupp's comment is a good example. Other great examples are when founders comment on articles about their companies, or programmers about their code, or authors about their articles. But above this comment, with 40+ upvotes, are a couple of comments where the commenter doesn't even own a kindle, nevermind having 1984. sigh.
Huh? Does owning a Kindle give you some special insight into the question of DRM, copyright, consumer rights, etc, inaccessible to others? How would owning a Kindle make you more qualified to comment on this development?
Maybe a lot of people didn't buy the Kindle because they have compelling, well-argued positions on why they don't accept the limitations imposed on you by the product's terms and conditions. If anything those people are probably more informed on the issue than someone who just bought the latest gadget.
Speaking up just to speak is a problem, yes. But if you're going to impose barriers to participation, let's have them be a little less arbitrary than "owns a Kindle".
As someone that was actually affected by the decision Amazon took, I think jknupp has an opinion more valid than someone considering the situation hypothetically.
An "opinion more valid"? I don't think so. He might be able to offer a "this is how it made me feel" angle or something, and I liked hearing about how it's his favourite book, but otherwise he has no more insight or information than anyone else.
I am not trying to criticise jknupp. I liked his comment. But I reject the suggestion that only Kindle owners can legitimately comment on this matter.
You're right, that was sloppy - I'd have trouble defining what makes an opinion "[more|less] valid". And even with the "intuitive" definition one could just as well argue jknupp is biased in his opinion on the perspective parties' rights in the matter, as he could be trying to justify the $350 we paid for the device (and more for the "books").
I, too, am disappointed that we have pages after pages of comments of knee-jerk reactions with without anyone bothering to take a moment and ask "why did they do this?".
You're missing the point. It isn't Amazon that needs to want to delete your content, it's the publisher. Amazon enables the publisher to do it. In this case, Amazon didn't want to delete 1984 off your Kindle, the publisher did.
Say you bought a non-fiction book exposing some company's practices, or the Church of Scientology, or whoever, and they come after the publisher with defamation lawsuits. The publisher withdraws the book because it can't afford the legal battle, and Amazon deletes it off your Kindle. You don't get a say, Amazon doesn't get a say, Amazon's general desire to drive up its sales, which you base your optimisitic assessment on, plays no role whatsoever.
Or maybe it's not a defamation lawsuit, it's a copyright case over 10 lines of quotations in a novel you bought on your Kindle. And the publisher is just threatened with a suit, and decides to withdraw the book.
Or maybe you bought some memoirs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces), and later there's a scandal over how the author made it all up. To hush up the scandal, the publisher simply withdraws the book.
Regardless, Amazon should have done their homework and ensured that it was OK with the publishers before actually selling the commodity.
Its too late after they have sold the commodity to go ahead and forcibly reverse the sale. And they have to take some flak associated with this whole issue.
I do not understand the comments which say that "Amazon is blameless and blame the publisher". Sure they are less to blame than the publisher for this whole mess, but they do have some responsibility. As a large corporation, they should have checked it out with the publisher BEFORE they sold the book.
Also, they could have told the publishers that "the book is sold and we cannot reverse the transaction". Why make the world aware of the fact that they control the kindle content to such a large extent? It is simply opening a door to the publishers, who can later on make such demands in other cases also.
I didn't mean to imply that I thought Amazon capriciously decided to remove this themselves. I was merely saying, in all honesty, how often is a publisher going to withdraw all online copies of a book? It's in neither the publisher's nor Amazon's best interest to make this a frequent occurrence.
I understand what happened here, but I honestly don't see it happening too frequently.
Next week, Amazon plans a special interactive commemorative edition of Fahrenheit 451 that will trigger a battery-overload, setting your Kindle on fire and destroying its entire contents.
Nowhere near the same level of disappointment, but it is kind of sad that an article from the NYTimes lacks any mention that they tried to contact Amazon for a comment. Even a simple 'Amazon was called but declined to comment' would have been appreciated.
What could Amazon possible say to defend their actions? The facts are plain to see. Personally I could do without their lame corporate spin, anyway.
edit: why the downvotes? It's a sincere comment! When Sony installed frickin' rootkits on people's computers, did anyone say "wait, wait, let's wait for their side of the story"? Of course not.
"Why" doesn't matter. What matters is that it can be done, that it has been done, and it might well be done again. Nothing Amazon says changes any of that. I stand by what I said.
Um, Amazon could point out that the decision to withdraw the book was that of the publisher, and that they are legally bound to defend the rights publishers as defined under US law.
Think of it this way - there are a couple of parties here. Both Amazon and most publishers are public corporations. That means they have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. The law allows publishers certain rights, and, in order to follow the law (maximize shareholder value), they must take advantage of those rights.
Amazon, in turn, has a choice of forcing the publishers give up their rights under the law. Doing so would decrease the number of publishers that sell books. I imagine they did an economic analysis and figured that to maximize shareholder value, they must protect the publishers' legal right at the expense of common understanding of "readers' rights".
So, where exactly is the problem here? Is it in people following the laws?
I would say no: the problem is with the laws themselves. Which laws is an interesting question, one that is very much lacking discussion on this forum :(
From what I saw on the Kindle forums, the publisher of these editions (MobileReference) mostly offers $0.99 downloads of public-domain texts. There's a $10 version of 1984 still available for purchase from Amazon here:
So, it looks to me like this was a case of a publisher illegally distributing a book to which they had no license. As an analogy, think of people who buy a bootleg DVD from a flea market while traveling overseas, only to discover it won't play in their region-locked DVD player at home. Yes, it sucks that DRM prevented them from using media they thought they had bought, but they also knew perfectly well that they were getting a deal that was just a little too good to be true.
If this was indeed the case then the better solution would have been for Amazon to pay the royalties to the copyright holder on the previous sales and quietly remove the 99 cent version from the store. This is a public relations disaster for the Kindle.
I disagree with your argument that people should have known this was too good to be true. Orwell has been dead for almost 60 years, 1984 will be public domain soon enough.
Sure, but what about potential loss of sales of the kindle by more privacy conscious users?
Remember the Sony rootkit debacle a few years ago? No end users were really affected by it, but it was a huge PR disaster for them. Not saying that the current case is analogous but we cannot fortell how people will react to such sneaky behavior.
That assumes that it was simply an issue of royalty payments. Publishing agreements can have many more restrictions (only authorized content, limits to which markets can be served, editorial veto, etc.) that aren't just about paying $0.20/unit.
Regardless of the feasibility, I wouldn't expect Amazon to have any interest in creating a precedent of them paying to cover up for the mistakes of publishers on the Kindle store. Unlike many people, I actually think that yanking unauthorized books after download is totally reasonable, provided Amazon offers a detailed explanation of the reason.
This is a good thing. Nobody minds DRM when it doesn't bite them. When it starts fucking them over, they will start getting upset and stop buying intentionally crippled products. Then DRM will die. (Does DRM'd music even exist anymore?)
One day, someone's gonna come out with a 8 1/2" x 11" eBook reader that doesn't look like it ran into the ugly tree at 80 mph that doesn't have any associated DRM and I am gonna buy the FUCK out of that thing.
"Books simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the kindles, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word."
143 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 380 ms ] threadEnter TEH T00Bz... We don't need these jack asses anymore. If I write anything, I'm going to e-publish.
1. This might focus people's attentions on the problems of buying DRM books - I am still astonished how little it bothers people.
2. For the love of all your deities, can we please revisit copyright laws. The man has been dead for 59 years. Surely we can all agree those books should be public domain by now. Death+70 is just too long.
Another option would be to create a branch of IP "in between" copyright and trademark (which is indefinitely renewable).
But IMNAL, so it might as well be my ass talking.
But I suspect Disney isn't actually that powerful itself, but it has sufficient resources and motivation to argue its case strongly before the appropriate committees - and then the many other powerful parties with similar interests rally round it.
But I'd like to point out that the phrase "special interest" is very loaded. If you're going to use the phrase, can you differentiate between a "special interest" versus just a plain old regular interest?
It seems that people use "special interest" to denote interests with which they disagree. Those entities that they agree with are overlooked, despite the fact that all entities manifestly have their own interests.
(I hesitate to cite specific examples for fear of forking out an off-topic thread for an OP that's already marginal)
I would agree that getting too specific is best left to discussions on another site.
1. According to utilitarianism - the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism]
I claim that in all but the most obvious cases, you can't. It's a fool's errand, and thus the term "special interest" has no use but in propaganda.
While used in propaganda, I meant to explain that "special interest" == "not in the public interest". I agree that the latter is clearer.
Interestingly, there are strong economic incentives for democracies to create policy that benefits special interests at the expense of the general interest.
A: Special interests.
The best format, IMO, is plain HTML. It can come with a custom style sheet, or can be overridden to taste on the client. It can be read by anything, it can be endlessly adapted .. it's just the best overall solution, IMO.
So while "buy" isn't the right word, neither is "lease". It's a whole different beast altogether.
You can buy a car but you can't drive it 100 miles per hour. You can buy 1000 smoke detectors, but you can't harvest the radioactive isotope and make a nuclear reactor. You can buy a book on paper, but you can't re-publish it as your own work, etc.
If a song costs $0.99 with DRM then it would cost more without DRM. Very simple. In most cases the DRM terms of use are acceptable to me, which is why I don't hesitate to buy DRM'ed content.
Of course, many DRM implementations are highly annoying, but that is a design issue not a core issue with DRM technology.
In the vast majority of cases, DRM is only an annoyance. It doesn't stop anybody who really wants to share content from sharing it. The only things DRM does is give undue power to content sellers (like Amazon) and make content completely worthless when whatever technology is used to verify ownership stops working (or gets turned off like MSN Music, Yahoo Music...)
Why shouldn't I be able to plug my iPod into someone else's computer, pick the songs I want, and confirm a popup for the amount I'll be billed? Or why shouldn't it let me listen to the songs for a few days free of charge?
DRM should let comtent owners think of extremely creative ways to virally market digital goods, while still preserving ownership and the ability to make a profit.
Sadly, there has not been a good DRM yet. Even Apple's DRM is so stupid that if you get a hard drive failure you can't re-download the songs free of charge (or for the price of bandwidth). I happen to have had two hard drive failures, and only the first one was covered. This is bad business, not bad technology.
Since when does price have to do with how much something cost to build? If I spend $10 building a shitty chair, it's still a shitty chair. DRM-protected music costs less because you're buying the right to listen to a song with restrictions not present in non-DRM-protected music.
It seems that RIAA and MPAA are the luckiest of these middle men and the most persistent, and that is why they came to make such a huge profit from what was relatively obscure nook of an intellectual property regulation. After all, the concept of an artist having the privileged right to his, already published, work comes first, and all the delegations and copyright issues come second.
DRM is designed to keep power in the hands of rights holder, the creator, and, by necessity, away from the consumer, and only the monstrous bulk of MPAA allowed them to effectively pretend that they are not the simple middle men, but the focus and origin of all the rights that anybody can ever have on IP.
DRM is the sort of technology that could enable this kind of free, expressive creation. That we don't have it is a failure of businesses to come up with creative licensing terms, not a failure of DRM technology.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showAr...
Somebody (third-party) decided to sell 1984 and Animal Farm on the Kindle Store without owning the copyright to it. Amazon is of course forced to take down said illegal posting. The only questionable part here is whether or not they should be allowed to delete purchased copies (with refund).
Then instead of informing the buyers of it's mistake, Amazon decided to delete the copies outright, without any notice and of course without any talk of refund to the buyers.
That's what I understand of this situation.
I think they handled it as well as anyone can handle this particular situation.
The book is 1984 for f sake. Does it have to be 451 before someone at amazon realizes this would be a PR nightmare? There were better ways to handle this issue, but they can still fix it, as they must have a record of which books from which customers they revoked & refunded.
1. Someone still has a copyright on this book. 2. That person can demand that everyone that bought a copy of it have their copy deleted.
...should prove that without question.
As a copyright holder of course you have the right to go after people who have illegally copied your work. I see nothing wrong here. What I see wrong is the ability to preemptively delete this material without notifying the user first.
Someone had the copyright and they were clearly able to have the works deleted. QED.
Maybe they weren't in their immediate legal rights merely by virtue of their copyright but their possession of the copyrights gave them enough other leverage to force Amazon to take the actions that they did. So by having the copyright, they were able to get the books erased.
The illegality of the book here has nothing to do with political pressure or information control. It is a simple matter of someone who didn't own something trying to sell what he didn't own.
strikes Kindle off "to buy" list
(I have both devices. The Sony is more usable while the Kindle DX handles full size business and engineering PDFs.)
Yes, 12. 64mb storage =]
I wonder what xterm would look like on e-paper...
I want a full-size e-paper display so I can edit code/use command lines outside in full sunlight. Think software development in a grove of trees from a hammock.
http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/04/west-coast-mob...
You're right though. Coding in full sunlight on the beach would be a nice thing.
Hey, so maybe an xterm would look ok!
(http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5003507/1984_-_George_Orwell, for people in a rebellious mood.)
I'd rather just live without it until something better and more open comes along. It's like deciding to use Linux instead of pirating Windows.
Step 2 - Remove books that cannot be identified as legitimately purchased.
The "whispernet" functionality is often talked about as this great feature of the Kindle. It's the single biggest reason that I won't buy one.
Owners of those titles were robbed by Amazon. Amazon broke into their libraries, took the books and left some money on the table. All through the backdoor they had installed when you purchased your book case.
Taking the iPhone Kindle app out of the picture (though it's probably relevant, I just don't know much about it, so I'll leave it alone for the moment)... Whispernet and software that is in the complete control of Amazon gives them a capability it can't have on my Netbook.
The thing that always concerned me about the Kindle/Whispernet is that they could use it to control all of the content on the Kindle. Lets say Amazon decides that only Kindle purchased e-books are allowed on the device ... one software update later and your imported PDF files are gone (legally or otherwise). I don't think they'd really be that nasty, but it's not as though the software installed is available for inspection. If the publishers push hard enough and the circumstances are right, who knows?
I'm not begging for a GNU/Linux e-book reader. I paid about the price of a Kindle for a low-end Eee PC with a big battery. It lasts about 7 hours (not 9.5 as advertised, but enough). To me, the Kindle is something undefinable. What do I get for $300?. Text to speech on all of my books? Sometimes. The ability to import PDF files? So far. Getting to read the books you purchased... unless...
I "get" that Amazon lives at the whims of their publishers. Unfortunately, the book publishers live at the whims of the consumer and the conditions of the marketplace. They should take notes from what's going on with music today. Scanners are cheap, and OCR software is very good with print. Compressed, text-only renditions of a book are tiny and bandwidth to the home is plentiful. Top that off with an inexpensive device that gets acceptable battery life and offers convenience and an acceptable screen for reading text... It certainly sounds a lot like Napster and mp3's to me.
1. The Kindle is a GNU/Linux e-book reader -- it runs a Linux kernel + userland atop an ARM chipset. The only thing "proprietary" about the system is the actual GUI tools for browsing/buying/reading books, and the radio firmware (pretty much mandated by the FCC).
2. The Kindle "experience" is very much different from what you get from reading on a laptop, even when suing a very compact model like the Eee. I've been reading book-length text on LCDs for years, but the Kindle is the first device that has allowed me to totally forget that I'm not reading a printed volume. If you haven't used one for at least 15 minutes, you really haven't had a chance to evaluate it fairly.
3. Finally, Amazon has never asserted any right to so much as examine what non-Kindle-store content you have on the device, much less delete it without your permission. Conversion of content from non-Amazon sources has been a feature of the Kindle from day 1, and any documents you acquire from other sources can simply be copied by using the Kindle as a USB mass storage device.
Like any hardware/software bundle manufacturer, Amazon has the option to render a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. However, like other companies possessing such power (Microsoft, for the XBox 360; Apple, for the iPhone; not to mention basically every smartphone on every carrier) they have to weigh any potential change against the risk that their customers will go elsewhere.
Point 1: You clearly have a better understanding of the software than I do and I appreciate the clarification. I still stand by the outcome, though. My own ignorance: has anyone managed to install firmware that eliminates the radio and makes it a simple GNU/Linux device (either generation)? That would make it more appealing to me assuming it has acceptable storage.
Point 2: Agreed that the experience is much different than an Eee. I rarely read text on paper. Most of my reading is on inexpensive, large LCDs with uneven back-lighting. The Eee display is an improvement to my eyes, though I've read on the eSlick (foxit's product) for well over 15 minutes and it is pleasant (minus the black and white which is unnecessary for books usually).
Point 3: Here's where I have to disagree: Amazon announced that the latest iteration of the Kindle would have Text to Speech, and had to back down. What I know is that if I purchase this device, I am purchasing something that I cannot control without an exceptional effort (hacking it myself, time I don't have). They own the front end and the back channel.
As to your final point: Yes. I'm a PC gamer, not an Xbox 360 guy for precisely this reason. I don't like mandatory game updates or a "sanctioned" selection of DLC. I'll concede on the iPhone comment since all mobile phones in the US suffer from the same disease to a greater or lesser degree.
The difference is that I believe Amazon has already rendered a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. GNU/Linux on the Kindle aside, the GUI is the functionality and whispernet is the control when the two are married in a device. Assertions (or lack thereof) and promises are as good as the screen they're read on.
[edit] So I'll make one more point, which is that it looks like Amazon may well have removed and refunded due to fraud perpetrated upon them because they expected that the copyright belonged to the person signing the rights over.
It's nice to know that Amazon didn't respond to the whims of a publisher but tried to make a wrong right again. But the outcome was still a serious wrong for the customer.
If they had been printing copies of the book based on the claims of permission from someone who didn't own the copyright, they would have sued that individual after being sued themselves. I'd get to keep my book that was purchased in good faith.
Nobody wins here.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/
The copyright has expired here, in Canada and any number of other places. You poor Americans really got screwed by the Mouse.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sell illegal copies of Fahrenheit 451 on Amazon...
Also: I'd rather buy a physical book than either of those.
I really wish somebody would make an ebook reader that's easily hackable, reasonably priced, good on battery life, and displays PDF's well. The eSlick gets 3/4.
My ideal device would be one that can read RSS feeds and sync with Dropbox over wifi. Maybe the easy-on-the-eyes netbook screens are the answer?
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html
This could be because the copyright has expired almost everywhere.
Not that it matters, as you pointed out.
http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/info.htm
They have lost it today, utterly and likely irredeemably. There is no excuse for taking back what a customer has already purchased. None.
And that they did so without even asking the customer? It should be considered outright criminal.
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"
Is that "or" a get-out clause? Because the first part seems to quite definitively rule out what they did.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/article838...
That said, I'm sure their lawyers will be able to spin it as meaning that they grant you the right to keep the copy as authorized by them.
When you "purchase a book" from the kindle store, all you are actually purchasing is a license to view the book that is bound by amazon's terms of use.
1) You can sue anyone for anything. The US does not have a "loser pays" rule, though frivolous lawsuits can include attorney's fees.
2) Class action lawsuits are very profitable for lawyers when they win. They need to convince a jury of 12 people who couldn't get out of jury duty that "Big Corporation" was wrong. They get a percentage of the total judgment.
My guess is that some lawyer will pick this one up. They'll sue Amazon based on "common sense" and Amazon will realize that a jury isn't going separate a "book" from an "e-book". The plaintiff's lawyers will equate it to removing a book from your bookshelf in your house.
Amazon will argue commas in their TOS or Amazon will settle. On top of it all, Amazon demonstrates why I purchased a netbook instead of a Kindle for my e-book reading pleasure ... and why I don't buy e-books that I can't remove the DRM from.
I still think they stand a good chance of a class action lawsuit. The likelihood of it succeeding is less since it sounds like the issue relates to "who really owned the copyright" and they had to take down the content due to that ambiguity or fraud.
Amazon needs to make its licensing policies clear up front and not bury them in fine print.
I may not like it when I only get a license that might be yanked, but I'll be a lot less upset about it the day it is yanked if I did the deal with open eyes at the start.
Though Amazon may be technically correct, it deserves the drubbing it is getting by failing to make its DRM policies clear up front to its customers.
It obviously obscured this issue to ensure that the issue would not harm Kindle sales. Now that this bomb has exploded, Kindle sales will be hurt anyway.
Believe me, amazon hates this as much as you do. They had to credit a bunch of people's accounts for the books. Amazon is a company. One that spends money. The publisher is not the ONLY person that is seeing a taste of the $9.99. They're out the money they had to give to sprint (is it sprint that provides the connectivity? somebody correct me if I'm wrong), and every other cost that was covered by the money you spent on the book.
This was a horrible horrible move for all parties involved.
Amazon didn't have to put that ability in the Kindle. Without it, it'd still have a huge list of titles. Amazon wanted to have that kind of control.
(1) Amazon makes money when it sells books
(2) Amazon loses money when it "recalls" them
(3) Amazon is a public company, hence it tries to maximize (1) and minimize (2)
---
Hence, Amazon is really on the customers' side here when it comes to "buying" versus "refunding random books, rubbing hands together, and laughing manically". The only reason Amazon would want this kind of control is to extend it to publishers.
How is that being on the customers' side again? No Kindle owner is interested in the publishers' being able to delete books of their device.
The stuff about maximizing profits is just a red herring. Any time any public company is criticized for anything it does there's always a chance someone'll pop out with "they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
Well, a reply doesn't have to be a contradiction, but I didn't (and don't) agree with your implied assumptions. One being:
"they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse
That's kind of like saying that gravity is a universal excuse for rocks falling on your head. They aren't excuses, they're physical/economic realities.
"Public corporations" are institutions in which decisions are made by individuals not just a contractually obliged to maximize shareholder value (meaning they'll be fired if they don't), but also a legal obligation to do so (meaning they can be sued and go to jail). Add to that the extraordinary competition for those positions and the over-abundance of people willing to take those jobs, and you'll get very simple behavior - profit maximization.
If I may, allow me (humbly) point out the fallacy in your thinking - you're personifying corporations. But they're nothing like people - they're economic entities defined and reacting to laws, just as moths are defined by physical laws.
Just a moth doesn't "know" any better than to fly towards light, corporations can't "know" any better than to maximize shareholder value. I don't mean that as a criticism of corporations, but rather of the ways in which their legal environment (copyright laws in particular) drives them to maximize those profits. Also worth criticizing: the ways in which the legal environment allows them to affect (via lobbying) it in ways which hurt the public good.
No, that's almost entirely unlike that. Gravity is well-understood and can be calculated and predicted. Predicting how a public company will behave based on the principle that it's going to maximize its profits is impossible. There's an enormous range of attitudes and behaviors that are used in practice and not considered to run afoul of this principle. This is why appealing to it is a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
If you look at what actual public companies are doing, you will see all around you kinds of behavior that cannot be explained as maximizing the profits in any realistically predictable sort of way. Granted, for any such behavior you can come up with a plausible story about how it's somehow still going to contribute to profits by, for example, improving the company's public image, or betting on a long-shot breakthrough. But then, you can come up with such a story for virually any possible behavior, so it's, again, meaningless.
Some companies contribute to charity; others don't. Some companies spend huge amounts of money giving to their employees bonuses not mandated by contracts; others don't. Some companies (Yahoo) reject buyout offers based on higher-than-market evaluations - a decision that by definition robs shareholders of profit. Others don't. Some companies pay dividends. Others state upfront that they never will. Some companies follow established net standards when creating their applications. Others willfully break them. Some companies have a privacy policy for their users and stick to it; others have one and ignore it; others don't have one. Some public companies (Amazon, in fact) spend years racking up huge debt and ensuring they won't bring profit to their investors for many years to come. Some public companies (Microsoft) invest in a huge resource department that's poorly publicized (meaning little to no PR benefit) and almost certainly doesn't justify itself economically.
For all that, board takeovers for not maximizing profits, much less criminal persecutions, are very rare, because nearly any kind of behavior, including all enumerated above, can be justified with some sort of appeal to maximizing profits in some roundabout way or another, at some future or present point of time, according to some executive's judgement that's assumed to have been made in good faith. Yahoo's management had a good faith belief that Yahoo is really worth more than Microsoft was offering, even if the marker didn't recognize this. Spending lavishly on your employees is justified by claiming that otherwise the talent will leave and hurt profits; on the other hand, being a real cheapskate with your employees is justified by cutting costs and maximizing immediate profits. And so on and so on.
Given that just about any behavior can be explained as a way of maximizing profits, it's a useless explanation. It usually gets cited in defense of some objectionable behavior that can be seen to maximize profits in some easily-identifiable scope. The fact that other public companies (often) somehow manage to avoid doing the objectionable, or that this company (like just about any large company) routinely does things that hurt profits according to the same kind of simplistic explanation, is ignored. As I said in my original comment, it's a red herring.
I now know I'll never get a Kindle. Also I will not buy any more digital books from Amazon. It's a shame. I liked it.
but this screams out EPIC FAIL.
Of course IANAL, I'm just speculating, and am 95% certain what I just said wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
Somebody commented on my blog about this the other day, and nailed it pretty well: http://www.gibsonandlily.com/comments/4043/
This sort of move really scares me; I have been contemplating moving some of them to the kindle (I have the books in .txt format).
From: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
The last 1.5 sentences seem to nullify the rest of the paragraph for all intents and purposes...
IANAL, etc.
Obligatory link to Stallman's Right to Read essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Deleting the books is actually one of the more benign things they can do. What is truly scary is them or others changing the content of books Ministry of Truth style, without us realizing it.
Imagine some little guy writes a controversial tell-all book, it's published. People buy it on Kindle. The guy is sued by The Man, loses, and any unsold books are pulped - plus, now, any Kindle books are recalled, or possibly revised.
We have the technology ...
We might be giving away more than we bargained for when we replace paper for mutable digitalia. We need to at least think about how we can address this systemic risk.
1984 is literally my favorite book. I was happy to have it on my Kindle, readily available at all times. You would think, then, that I would be outraged by this. To be honest, after I got over the initial creepy "they went into MY device and deleted something" feeling, my (positive) feelings about either Amazon and the Kindle itself were unchanged. It's still an amazingly useful device that I get a ton of mileage out of, and they made a dumb mistake that just happened to affect me. I've been fully reimbursed for the title (all $0.99 of it), so no harm done.
The concerns about Amazon randomly deleting content on your Kindle seem overblown. The ostensible purpose of the Kindle is to drive sales of Amazon's e-books. How would deleting customers' purchases on a frequent basis further that goal? I'm willing to write this off as a one-time occurrence, albeit an unfortunate and somewhat frustrating one.
I feel like too many people are speaking up on HN just to speak (I wonder if the demographic has changed lately). I like this comment because it adds some data, not just an opinion or crafted argument.
I come to HN to hear first hand accounts from people. jknupp's comment is a good example. Other great examples are when founders comment on articles about their companies, or programmers about their code, or authors about their articles. But above this comment, with 40+ upvotes, are a couple of comments where the commenter doesn't even own a kindle, nevermind having 1984. sigh.
Maybe a lot of people didn't buy the Kindle because they have compelling, well-argued positions on why they don't accept the limitations imposed on you by the product's terms and conditions. If anything those people are probably more informed on the issue than someone who just bought the latest gadget.
Speaking up just to speak is a problem, yes. But if you're going to impose barriers to participation, let's have them be a little less arbitrary than "owns a Kindle".
I am not trying to criticise jknupp. I liked his comment. But I reject the suggestion that only Kindle owners can legitimately comment on this matter.
Say you bought a non-fiction book exposing some company's practices, or the Church of Scientology, or whoever, and they come after the publisher with defamation lawsuits. The publisher withdraws the book because it can't afford the legal battle, and Amazon deletes it off your Kindle. You don't get a say, Amazon doesn't get a say, Amazon's general desire to drive up its sales, which you base your optimisitic assessment on, plays no role whatsoever.
Or maybe it's not a defamation lawsuit, it's a copyright case over 10 lines of quotations in a novel you bought on your Kindle. And the publisher is just threatened with a suit, and decides to withdraw the book.
Or maybe you bought some memoirs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces), and later there's a scandal over how the author made it all up. To hush up the scandal, the publisher simply withdraws the book.
Etc. etc.
Its too late after they have sold the commodity to go ahead and forcibly reverse the sale. And they have to take some flak associated with this whole issue.
I do not understand the comments which say that "Amazon is blameless and blame the publisher". Sure they are less to blame than the publisher for this whole mess, but they do have some responsibility. As a large corporation, they should have checked it out with the publisher BEFORE they sold the book.
Also, they could have told the publishers that "the book is sold and we cannot reverse the transaction". Why make the world aware of the fact that they control the kindle content to such a large extent? It is simply opening a door to the publishers, who can later on make such demands in other cases also.
I understand what happened here, but I honestly don't see it happening too frequently.
edit: why the downvotes? It's a sincere comment! When Sony installed frickin' rootkits on people's computers, did anyone say "wait, wait, let's wait for their side of the story"? Of course not.
"Why" doesn't matter. What matters is that it can be done, that it has been done, and it might well be done again. Nothing Amazon says changes any of that. I stand by what I said.
Think of it this way - there are a couple of parties here. Both Amazon and most publishers are public corporations. That means they have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. The law allows publishers certain rights, and, in order to follow the law (maximize shareholder value), they must take advantage of those rights.
Amazon, in turn, has a choice of forcing the publishers give up their rights under the law. Doing so would decrease the number of publishers that sell books. I imagine they did an economic analysis and figured that to maximize shareholder value, they must protect the publishers' legal right at the expense of common understanding of "readers' rights".
So, where exactly is the problem here? Is it in people following the laws?
I would say no: the problem is with the laws themselves. Which laws is an interesting question, one that is very much lacking discussion on this forum :(
http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/dp/B002A9JO9W
So, it looks to me like this was a case of a publisher illegally distributing a book to which they had no license. As an analogy, think of people who buy a bootleg DVD from a flea market while traveling overseas, only to discover it won't play in their region-locked DVD player at home. Yes, it sucks that DRM prevented them from using media they thought they had bought, but they also knew perfectly well that they were getting a deal that was just a little too good to be true.
I disagree with your argument that people should have known this was too good to be true. Orwell has been dead for almost 60 years, 1984 will be public domain soon enough.
Remember the Sony rootkit debacle a few years ago? No end users were really affected by it, but it was a huge PR disaster for them. Not saying that the current case is analogous but we cannot fortell how people will react to such sneaky behavior.
Regardless of the feasibility, I wouldn't expect Amazon to have any interest in creating a precedent of them paying to cover up for the mistakes of publishers on the Kindle store. Unlike many people, I actually think that yanking unauthorized books after download is totally reasonable, provided Amazon offers a detailed explanation of the reason.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-...