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)

#141

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:48 PM UTC

slightwinder wrote: post #137

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are s…

What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...

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

#142

Post by ampdepolymerase » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141

slightwinder wrote: post #137

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are s…

What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...

Regulate as utilities/infrastructure. Nobody likes the Ma Bell type of anti-trust because it feels like infringing on private property rights but regulating as utility or infrastructure is much widely accepted and palatable. However if you have poor management then you end up in the P&G situation with blame passing from one generation of management to another and no real improvements.

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

#143

Post by falcolas » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:54 PM UTC

f1refly wrote: post #104

leereeves wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon is also a publisher. Many books I’ve read have been self-published by authors via Amazon’s system.

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

#144

Post by falcolas » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:56 PM UTC

syshum wrote: post #95

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.

At one point in time, One-Way non-negotiable contracts where unenforceable and considered coercive. I wonder when / why that changed when we added "on the internet" an called it is "Terms of Service"

Why is easy - because corporations love them. As for the “how”, that’s also pretty simple. Enough money applied to lawyers who argue for the corporation’s side in contract disputes, enough to set precedent.

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

#145

Post by Joker_vD » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 12:59 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #98

gambiting wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, but that's like saying that you can download cracks for video games, so it's all fine. There are ways to make steam games work without steam, yet I wouldn't consider that to be a solution.

I sorta used to do this so I wouldnt need to pop in a CD just to play some games cause the CDs were getting really scratched up as things were.

Or take this actual example: you buy a CD with a game, install it, and it doesn't run :( You go to the forums and there is a crack which also apparently fixes some crashes? You download and apply it, and lo, the game runs :)

In fact, I believe in some jurisdictions it's actually legal: since you bought it, you're allowed file and sandpaper it to make it actually work.

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

#146

Post by throwaway_pdp09 » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #125

Moru wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you try to point out all this to someone, the usual response is that they don't care, it doesn't happen to them. I have been trying this since Steams first versions and more or less gave up by now. People value convenience above all else.

That, or "people" make their own educated decisions about the trade-offs they are accepting, and those may be different - yet equally valid - from your own decisions.

True. How often that careful measuring occurs would be interesting to know. Except for some people on here on HN I can't think of any personal acquaintances who do it that way.

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

#147

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 1:03 PM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #57

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.

Lots of people aren't victims, they choose to remain ignorant after being warned. Often they don't take the warnings seriously and even insult the person who was just trying to help. They absolutely deserve to be blamed for the results of their choices.

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

#148

Post by Silhouette » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 1:08 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141

slightwinder wrote: post #137

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are s…

What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...

That form of broken legal system is, as far as I know, peculiar to the USA. In most of the world, businesses aren't allowed to arbitrarily negate laws specifically created to protect their customers just by including some weasel words in the fine print. In fact, here in the UK and at least across much of Europe, businesses are required to actively inform their customers of various rights and other details, and failing to do so can have significant consequences.

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

#149

Post by matheusmoreira » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 1:10 PM 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.

There is nowhere you can take your money that doesn't force you to accept the same abusive terms of service. They all pay lawyers to write this stuff and they all come up with the same self-serving clauses. Once you've read one of these documents, you've pretty much read them all.

What they say is basically:

> you have no rights

> you promise not to try and exercise any right you think you have

> you will not do anything the company doesn't like

> the company can do anything whether you like it or not

> the company is not responsible for anything ever

> we make no guarantees about anything

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

#150

Post by MagnumOpus » Mon, Oct 05, 2020, 1:11 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #141

slightwinder wrote: post #137

It's really time for laws which forbid companies to terminate accounts and access to them if they met certain conditions like licencing digital properties. Sure, they can restrict them all they want, as long as a fair stance prevails und people are not ripped of their goods. This strong difference in powers between companies and customers in the digital realm becomes more and more a serious problem. When people are s…

What good are rights when corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy? They already make users waive a lot of rights, including the right to pursue legal action, the right to reverse engineer...

> corporations can just have users sign them away by agreeing with some policy

These shrink wrap licences can be legislated away. Lots of EU countries have consumer protection legislation that explicitly forbids/invalidates such imbalanced or unexpected terms in the fine print for consumer-facing contracts -- or indeed invalidates shrink-wrap licence terms outright.