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Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

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Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#51

Post by sherincall »

Moru wrote: post #7

This is true not just for Kindle books. It's also your games library on Steam and all other similar stores. GOG.com is probably the only online game store where you realy own the stuff you "buy".

I don't think it is fair to pin this on steam. Plenty of games on steam run without steam, and require no installation - just copy them over to a different PC. They often come with binaries for all supported OSes at once, so your windows install will work on linux too.

It is the game publishers that choose to use steam drm. Often the same publishers publish on GOG without the drm (since gog, admirably, does not offer a drm option to them), but it is not steam that is forcing the drm on you. Your issue is with the game publisher.

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#52

Post by buran77 »

evgen wrote: post #31
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also be fine with the T&C's saying "For any reason, we can terminate the services we provide to you, and we will refund any money's paid with interest". That way, the company can decide to keep the evidence to themselves and not need to go to court, but must forgo all revenue from your account.

If you break the rules of the contract what makes you think you get your money back? If you want a refund you should be required to prove that the company was the one that violated the agreement.

The problem in countries with expensive litigation is that it raises the bar for what a person would be willing to fight for. If I'll end up spending $10000 whether I win or lose I'll think twice before I litigate for a few hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of ebooks. It also incentivizes companies to do it for as long as they know they'll get away with it.

You're pitting a company with billions to spend on this stuff and all the incentive to keep doing it against a regular consumer with none of the resources or determination. This is where regulation comes in and it should always favor the consumer by default. It's why countries have consumer protection agencies but no company protection agencies.

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#53

Post by toyg »

neiman wrote: post #25

We don't purchase products anymore, at least not digital things. Instead we're always buying a service. Buying includes a very short period of trust between you and the seller, where you give them money, and they give you the product in return. Sometimes there's also a long trust involved due to warranty, but more often than not those failed me in the past, so I stopped taking them into account when making a purchase…

Unfortunately, it will take legislation to forbid them from stating or suggesting that you are actually purchasing digital goods.

We should get a law that forbids any SaaS or media-rental company from ever using "purchase" in their advertising and operation. It could be the Interned Digital Goods Advertisement Fraud Act, or IDGAF act - as in "I don't give a f__k what you say; if I can't keep them forever and copy them around, those ain't 'goods' I'm buying, it's a rental service".

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#54

Post by kybernetikos »

neiman wrote: post #25

We don't purchase products anymore, at least not digital things. Instead we're always buying a service. Buying includes a very short period of trust between you and the seller, where you give them money, and they give you the product in return. Sometimes there's also a long trust involved due to warranty, but more often than not those failed me in the past, so I stopped taking them into account when making a purchase…

> We don't purchase products anymore, at least not digital things. Instead we're always buying a service.

This is certainly what Amazon etc write in their terms and would like the legal system to enforce, but I think it's clear that most normal humans don't really think of it like this.

The strongest argument that they don't is that the prices for films that you buy on google play and the books that you buy on amazon cost the same as they did before.

Quite clearly, ownership rights are not worth nothing, so if the public are prepared to pay the same rates, the most likely explanation is that they are confused about what they are getting. There's been no real effort to disabuse them either - the amazon ebook site says 'Buy now', google play says 'buy'. What we're seeing is large tech companies trying (and so far succeeding) to redefine what it means to buy and to own things.

People probably don't even think about the fact that if the company went bust or decided to stop offering their service, potentially thousands of dollars worth of things they thought they owned would go up in a puff of electrons.

20 years ago, people would have CD, DVD or book collections that would be insured for significant amounts of money. Is it possible to insure access to a digital media collection?

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#55

Post by f1refly »

toyg wrote: post #47
f1refly wrote: post #38

It's always a bit alienating to me when people suddenly wake up with their stuff taken away and are all like "how could this happen to me? why did noone warn me about this? how could amazon _do this to me_?" and then go off on their ways and "buy" the next movie from them (in addition to the amazon prime membership they already pay for that for some reason only includes the 480p version of the movie). It's not like t…

> I buy all my books directly from the publisher, drm-free Most publishers don't do that. Why do you think Amazon has DRM? It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes, they were among the first to sell straight MP3s even. It's because most publishers love DRM. See also the lawsuit against Internet Archive at the first whiff of creaks in the DRM dam.

As I replied to the sister comment, I might be biased because I love science fiction and most science fiction authors are probably somewhat aware what drm is and pick a publisher that fits them not only from a financial standpoint but also the ethical one. This whole comment might've looked different if I'd be a fan of historical fiction, but I don't really feel like finding out.

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#56

Post by toyg »

rob74 wrote: post #17
Moru wrote: post #7

This is true not just for Kindle books. It's also your games library on Steam and all other similar stores. GOG.com is probably the only online game store where you realy own the stuff you "buy".

I was going to throw in https://www.humblebundle.com/store , but then I realized that the myriad of various "bundles" that they keep launching nowadays (at least as far as games are concerned) and also their store only sells Steam keys. I think the games in the "Humble Indie Bundles" which come out once or twice a year are still mostly DRM free, but that's about it. You can't even search their store for "DRM free", s…

HumbleBundle is a classic case of moral decline once institutional priorities overcome the actual mission. It went from "nice idea to support indies and pay-as-you-wish" to just another bargain-price channel for any company, expanding for its own sake.

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#57

Post by Lammy »

f1refly wrote: post #38

It's always a bit alienating to me when people suddenly wake up with their stuff taken away and are all like "how could this happen to me? why did noone warn me about this? how could amazon _do this to me_?" and then go off on their ways and "buy" the next movie from them (in addition to the amazon prime membership they already pay for that for some reason only includes the 480p version of the movie). It's not like t…

I don't think victim-blaming is a great way to educate people on the existence and dangers of DRM. Convenience might even be worth it to some people, but I think it's more often a problem of ignorance. Any TV ad for a Kindle is going to focus on the broad selection and ease of use. Telling those people about the DRM isn't participating in the same conversation that sold them the device.

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#58

Post by kranner »

hyperman1 wrote: post #24
romwell wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but with Kindle at least you can strip the DRM of your eBooks. There's a Calibre plugin[1] that does it. If you really care about ebooks that you purchase, I highly recommend installing this plugin. It automatically strips DRM off books you download and open with Calibre. And keep a back-up of the (DRM-free) books somewhere that's not Amazon / a cloud. Because a cloud is simply a computer that you do not own . […

Note how this is in most jurisdictions illegal. You are now pirating, except you paid for it.

Is it really illegal? At least in the US cracking DRM for personal backup is not infringing AFAIK.

https://gizmodo.com/its-perfectly-legal-to-tell-people-how-t...

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#59

Post by input_sh »

wilt wrote: post #9

This is why I try to get drm free ebooks when possible or at least breakable drm. I like paying for it so the author gets paid but i don't want some 3rd party being able to revoke my access.

Kindle's DRM is breakable for at least half a decade now using this calibre plugin: https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/

I find it more convenient to break it than DRM-protected ePub files sold elsewhere (Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc.).

Re: Amazon turned off customer’s Kindle account, blocking her from her books (2012)

#60

Post by justinclift »

nindalf wrote: post #36
londons_explore wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also be fine with the T&C's saying "For any reason, we can terminate the services we provide to you, and we will refund any money's paid with interest". That way, the company can decide to keep the evidence to themselves and not need to go to court, but must forgo all revenue from your account.

I’ve bought 100 books on Kindle. You’re saying I could do something that would cause Amazon to decide to break the contract, and I’d get a refund of all 100 books with interest? Seems like a sweet deal to me, since I’m not reading the old books very often.

While true, for other people they'd use the money to repurchase those same books elsewhere. Or perhaps the printed version of them.
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