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

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

#101

Post by imgabe » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

accountLost wrote: post #96

Does anyone here have some experience using a kindle without account as describe here : https://www.techjunkie.com/kindle-without-amazon-account/ Or here : https://ebookfriendly.com/unregistered-kindle-pros-cons/ I think after some research that the oasis may be the best value for money reader for my use case (pdf CS books) but I'm not sure about the amazon account and if it is worth the hassle to avoid it.

I haven't used my Kindle without an account, but I have put non-Kindle, non-Amazon books on it, including some PDFs.

In my experience, the Kindle is terrible for reading PDFs. The screen is small, and PDFs don't dynamically resize the way e-books do. You'd probably be better off with an iPad or other tablet with better PDF software and better ability to zoom and pan than the Kindle has.

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

#102

Post by leereeves » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

f1refly wrote: post #91

Qahlel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot avoid the TOS. They are all designed to protect the seller not the buyer. On top of that, you -as a single consumer- has no choice to select parts of the TOS. It's a unilateral-contract by definition.

You, as a comsumer, always have the right to not accept the ToS and take your money elsewhere. Amazon fortunately doesn't have a monopoly on the ebook market.

What store sells ebooks legally and doesn't have similar ToS?

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

#103

Post by chrononaut » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:38 AM UTC

buran77 wrote: post #52

evgen wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Wouldn't a possible avenue here [in the US] be small claims court? Or could costs still rise to that level under that situation?

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

#104

Post by f1refly » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:40 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #102

f1refly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, as a comsumer, always have the right to not accept the ToS and take your money elsewhere. Amazon fortunately doesn't have a monopoly on the ebook market.

What store sells ebooks legally and doesn't have similar ToS?

I usually go to the publishers or, if self published, authors website directly and buy from there. Books are distributed as epub that I can load on my ereader calibre alike.

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

#105

Post by martyvis » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:47 AM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #20

Honestly? I'm okay with this business model. I know it's not a popular opinion here - but as there's no reasonable way to prevent people from unrestrictedly distributing copies, the business model of licensing books sounds reasonable to me. What's not reasonable is the lack of transparency when you're suspected of abuse. I understand that there are many bad actors, but these companies are judge, jury and executioner…

Publishers like O'Reilly explicitly don't put DRM on ebooks you buy from them. They also have a subscription library model in parallel. I use both these methods for books from them and I understood the difference. Somehow O'Reilly remains one of the premium and presumably profitable tech book publishers

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

#106

Post by wccrawford » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #102

f1refly wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You, as a comsumer, always have the right to not accept the ToS and take your money elsewhere. Amazon fortunately doesn't have a monopoly on the ebook market.

What store sells ebooks legally and doesn't have similar ToS?

Any of them that sell DRM-free ebooks would work.

Of course, they have a much smaller selection than Amazon and you likely won't find the book you want. So it's not really a proper alternative. You either accept their TOS or you don't get to read the book you want digitally.

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

#107

Post by ClumsyPilot » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

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 contract such as "we may block your account for uploading any content against our guidelines. We may rule content to be against our guidelines for any reason and at our sole discrecion."

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

#108

Post by BrandoElFollito » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 10:57 AM UTC

yreg wrote: post #64

javajosh wrote: post #2

Indeed, and this is why I still buy paper books, DVDs and CDs (and vinyl, when the mood strikes). Heck, I suspect that in the not-too-distant future, old software licenses and media will be valuable, perhaps extremely so if open-source tools are effectively blocked on the major platforms.

My 2013 1Password license ($19.99) proved to be a valuable investment. Unfortunately I'll have to migrate to their subscription sooner or later, I already don't have access to their Safari extension.

You may want to give a try to Bitwarden (https://bitwarden.com/)

I was a long (15years?) paying user of Lastpass, saw the company grow and discussed with the founders when they were just starting. Then the software grew old (and some M&A were dubious)

Switching to Bitwarden was a great choice (since about a year)

(I have no affiliation with Bitwarden, I just work in Information Security and look closely at this kind of software and their tradeoffs)

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

#109

Post by learnstats2 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 11:02 AM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #69

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.

All money and interest is not enough. If sign a contract that you will provide me a service and you back out of it midway, I'm usually worse off than if you had declined the engagement in advance. For example, if I contract you to build me a house, it takes six months, and three months in you decide to back out and pay me back with interest, I still have half a house I need to demolish or else I have to find someone…

I'm doubtful that you would get additional compensation in your hypothetical example.

You're not worse off if you didn't spend anything and you are half-way towards your goal of having a house.

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

#110

Post by chx » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 11:13 AM UTC

underdeserver wrote: post #20

Honestly? I'm okay with this business model. I know it's not a popular opinion here - but as there's no reasonable way to prevent people from unrestrictedly distributing copies, the business model of licensing books sounds reasonable to me. What's not reasonable is the lack of transparency when you're suspected of abuse. I understand that there are many bad actors, but these companies are judge, jury and executioner…

A watermark is just about as effective to deter the casual user from distributing their books nilly-willy. I have DRM free ebooks which contain something like "Thanks X Y for buying this book" and so it's blatanly obvious who it belongs to. Now, you could remove it but you could also remove DRM.