Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move

[babsbunny]

Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984

guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 July 2009 23.39 BST

Bobbie Johnson, San Francisco

Owners of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge.

The books - downloaded from Amazon.com by American Kindle users - were remotely deleted after what the US company now says was a rights issue regarding the publisher, MobileReference.com.

"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," spokesman Drew Herdener told the Guardian. "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."

[NYCGirl]

1. Irony aside, Amazon did the right thing. NT

[hlthe2b]

3. Seems to me, Amazon did the "legally required thing"

but, in doing so, violated its implicit (and possibly, explicit) promises to its Kindle customers that they would own their content once purchased. I suspect they simply estimated the law suit costs from the copyright owner, but whether that price will have ultimately been higher than their losses from their disillusioned kindle customers remains to be seen. Use of the Kindle is quite an investment over time, to not be able to pass on a purchased book, nor lend it, nor pull it from the shelf. If owners can't even be certain they will retain an electronic "right" to the content, it becomes even less desirable.

[NYCGirl]

4. They did give the buyers a refund. NT

[hlthe2b]

12. They still violated their agreement and trust.

I would not forget that if I were a Kindle owner.

[Eric J in MN]

5. Amazon could have removed the book for the seller section, and...

...paid a settlement to the copyright-owner, without deleting the book from the Kindles of people who already bought it.

[hlthe2b]

9. And, that is my point, exactly...

they decided the settlement/lawsuit would be too costly. I consider that a cowardly decisions that will likely cost them in the long run.

[Ewellian]

10. If the people who bought it

back up their books to their computer, they still have the book. They just need to turn the 3G wireless off to read it on their Kindle. I still have a copy of 1984 on my Kindle because I didn't get it through Amazon. It's out of copyright in Australia & New Zealand. So, sue me.

[Ewellian]

2. It has happened before..

They did the same thing for an illegal Harry Potter book earlier this year. It just wasn't ironic enough to make headlines.

[dipsydoodle]

6. For anyone affected and missed the end.........

it was the butler and he used a candle stick.

[Vickers]

7. *forwards article to Alanis Morissette*

:P

[MADem]

8. Wow, if they can go into your Kindle and steal your shit--or change it--it's worthless.

What if another King George comes to power, and doesn't like that lefty book on your Kindle? He could make the Minister of Information rewrite it, and change whole scenes and meanings, without your having any control over that.

That sucks. I had been thinking about getting one of those things. Now I'm content to do without. It really should be a one-way street; once you buy it, it's yours.

[NashVegas]

11. If Distributors Sell Shit They Don't Have the Rights To They Should Be Busted

It's called "bootlegging."

[MADem]

13. Yep--Amazon should have paid the people and taken the hit.

They shouldn't have stolen from their customers who bought in good faith.

It's just creepy how they can do that....

[Ewellian]

15. Not creepy..

it's the main selling point. Free 3G wireless. It's just that when you turn it on, it syncs to your Amazon library...automatically downloading any subscriptions or purchases and removing any returns.

[MADem]

16. Creepy--that they can take without telling. That they can take without your knowledge or permission

That is like someone going into your library (or the bookshelf in the crapper that serves as your library) and swiping a book from you without your knowing.

Before they remove anything, the owner should have to approve it.

[Ewellian]

18. they did notify..

They sent an email to everyone who had purchased the book and also refunded their account.

[MADem]

21. But they still went in and TOOK. And no purchaser could have stopped them.

They had the control, not the Kindle owner.

It's just not cool. You don't really "own" the material if they can rescind the purchase.

[Ewellian]

24. It's easy for the purchaser to stop them.

Just back up your Amazon purchases on your computer. When you want to read it (if you're not morally opposed to reading illegally obtained bootleg material) turn off the 3G wireless on your Kindle, move the file and read it.

[MADem]

26. Illegally obtained? Come off it. The purchase came from AMAZON.

Amazon screwed up, not the purchasers. AMAZON should have settled with the copyright holder, not swiped material that people bought in good faith.

The onus is on AMAZON to behave in an ethical fashion. They failed in this instance.

Your solution, that someone who bought something in good faith through legal channels, should have to engage in subterfuge in order to keep something they bought "legally," is absurd. Amazon should bite the bullet and the cost, and pay the copyright owner. THEY fucked up, after all--not the customers.

[Ewellian]

31. I don't consider it

"subterfuge". I think of it as intelligently backing up all my important digital information. I'm surprised that this is even a news story...it was a .99 e-book. It's even available elsewhere on the internet for free. The same thing happened earlier in the year when some idiot "self-published" a Harry Potter book on Amazon for a day. Kindle owners brought it to the attention of Amazon customer service (JK Rowlings has said publicly that she will never make her books available in e-book format) and it was removed/refunded. That was never a news story.

The same system that allows them to delete illegal material also allows for excellent customer service. You can call Amazon and return an e-book for a refund.

I'm a Kindle owner and I don't have a problem with what they did.

[MADem]

33. OK, it was a cheap book. All the more reason for Amazon to not STEAL from their customers.

Amazon should have eaten the cost. It was THEIR error, not the actions of the customers.

I'll never be a Kindle owner. I was considering it, but fuck that. Give me a book that some mendacious asshole can't "edit" or "delete"--for my own good, of course--while I sleep.

[leeroysphitz]

14. I guess it's time for people to start jail breaking thier Kindles.

[stray cat]

17. Amazon returned the stuff bought illegally - and re-imbursed those who purchased it illegally

without knowing better. Wow - obeying the law is a bad thing?

[The Straight Story]

19. It is not the what, it is the how (nt)

[ThoughtCriminal]

20. If this was a non-electronic version

Suppose that you went to B&N and bought a paperback copy of "1984". Later it was discovered that the publisher did not have rights for that book. Would it be OK for B&N to break into your house and retrieve the book and leave you a refund? A better solution would be to simply pay the royalties due to the rights owner and stop selling it.

[Regret My New Name]

35. I think it would be more like this...

If you had some sort of agreement with Barnes and Nobel that they would come by and manage your library for you. So like if you bought or rented a book then they would put it in your library or remove it after your lease(or whatever) has expired. You already had an agreement with them to sync up your library with you were allowed to have.

[seabeyond]

22. do i, dont i want a kidle. i read tons. use library, interlibrary, and buy the books

i cant find at the lowest price...

i havent decided if i want kindle. hubby really wants me to get one. a friend of his grabbed me the other day showing me hers and spent a lot of time tellilng me all it could do. looked nifty. but i hate spending money, and pages small...

i dont know

[rrneck]

23. It seems that

the device is a lot less of a book than we thought.

Actual books do all the heavy lifting in any culture even today. They are portable, ownable, and transferable between real people. It seems that the Kindle is just another aggregator, not really a book at all.

[eilen]

25. I like my Kindle

I use it to read books--novels, that I would generally read once. It is portable and the books don't kill trees, and I don't have to find space on my shelves or transport them to the thrift store when I'm done. They are cheaper than buying new and very convenient. Sometimes I see books I'd like to read that are in hardcover at the bookstore that I will instead purchase on my Kindle as they are too new to find at a used bookstore. I have all the Sookie Stackhouse vampire mysteries on my Kindle, for example because when new one comes out, I don't have the patience to wait for the paperback version.

I still buy physical books that I want to hold and look at and reference for my hobbies. I also buy books that are out of print as well as books I want to pass on and share. I also go to the library to preview and to read because they are free so long as I remember to return them on time.

I looooove bookstores and they should never go out business so long as they are in driving distance.

The problems I have with my Kindle are that frequently it freezes up and I have to "reset" -- which is kind of a pain, but mine is a first generation and they may have worked out those bugs with the new one.

[rrneck]

29. Yep.

I use it to read books--novels, that I would generally read once.

The information that comes through a Kindle should be transient. They try to bill it as a book but it isn't. Electronic data downloaded from another source is fungible and trackable, requiring a third party, a middleman, to facilitate it and allowing other parties to observe where it goes and who access it. The cultural power of books is analogous to cash or precious metals. The transactions occur between individuals, anonymously or to various degrees of relationship depending on the needs of those involved.

Books are democratic. Book "feeds" are authoritarian.

Even so, I've considered getting a Kindle. Seems they would be great for traveling. Books can be heavy and cumbersome.

[MadHound]

27. And the ugly side of Kindle peeks out

Amazon can control what books you have on your Kindle, and eliminate them despite the fact that you bought them. Furthermore, you know that they're keeping a record of your reading purchases, something that Homeland Security and the Bush administration tried to pull off with libraries, searching through people's library records. Now we're giving it up with nary a thought to a corporation who, sure as shit, will give it up to DHS (remember our phone records).

Not to mention another electronic device to suck down energy, leech out heavy metals, and be thrown away every few years. Oh, and much like the transition from vinyl to CD, and now the one from CD, we're going to lose content in the process. Many recorded performances didn't make the jump from vinyl to CD, more aren't making it from CD to digital, and many books won't make the jump from paper to Kindle.

We're buying the tools of our own ignorance and oppression, and giving away the keys to our lives to amoral(at best) corporations. Sorry, no Kindle for me.

[Eric J in MN]

28. I think that the electronic format of books will make more books available...

...to the public, including books which have been out-of-print for decades which are difficult to find.

It costs less money for the publisher to distribute a book electronically than to print it on paper and distribute the books that way.

Google has a project of putting out-of-print books in electronic format, and I wish them well with that project.

I'm not sure that the switch from vinyl-to-CDs meant loss of content. If there wasn't enough demand for an album, the record company would have stopped publishing it on vinyl eventually, even if there were no CD format.

[MadHound]

30. Go flip through the stacks in your local used vinyl shop,

Or search through them online. There's a ton of music and recordings that never made the jump. Not because it wasn't selling, but because the corporate powers that be simply left it to die. The same thing is going to happen with electronic format books, despite what Google is doing thousands of titles will be abandoned.

Not to mention that for future historians and archeologists, paper holds up much better than electronics do. I regularly read books and other writing that's three hundred years old or greater. But if you look at electronics from even sixty-seventy years ago, most are degraded beyond all hope. There's a real debate and crisis in the historical community, as paper continues to go away to be replaced by digital. That's going to leave a huge hole in future historical records, a blank that can't be filled in.

[Confusious]

32. I ws thinking of buying a kindle

But if Amazon can delete shit off it, no way.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

34. just read whatever book of his you like online...

http://georgeorwell.org/#books

got several if not all popular ones...

sP