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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)

#151

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…

People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across.

There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.

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

#152
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of people aren't victims, they choose to remain ignorant after being warned.

What makes you think that? It seems highly unlikely to me that the average customer of an ebook reader or a streaming TV/movie service or one of the gaming networks has any idea about how the DRM works or how intrusively the provider of their electronic content can later monitor their use of it and change or revoke their access to it. Who do you think is going around and warning all these people, in such a way that they can reasonably understand the implications of what is being said, about the risks that come with these kinds of technologies?

Now, if you were arguing that governments should be regulating these industries, mandating information for customers about the risks and prohibiting abusive behaviours by content providers, then I'd be the first to agree with you. I think such measures are long overdue. But that's not the same thing as what you wrote before.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My country does the same thing but it's meaningless since companies are usually located in the USA.

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

#154

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…

People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.

Does anyone make these? I know you can get a phone app, but all the e-ink I've seen has been kindle/nook/kobo. I'd happily buy one.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 failin…

The problem is most big technology companies seem to be located in the USA. Foreign laws are meaningless to them.

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

#156

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…

People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.

Where does a person with very little technological knowhow go to get these epub/pdf/rtf/txt files to somehow load onto this "dumb" e-reader they buy? What is a "dumb" e-reader? What software does a "dumb" e-reader need.

There is a reason that Kindle prevail, and it's not because of some conspiracy or a giant company. It's because it's easy, basically like going to Chapters or Barnes and Noble and walking out with a book. There is no similar avenue for "dumb" e-readers. They need to know several levels of skills to get it and it's a lot more difficult then clicking "Buy" and start reading.

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

#157
post #65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand, I dont think victim-blaming is an excuse for rampant and continuous ignorance either. At some point, after getting abused again and again, users are to blame. All this shouldn't suprise any of them, it's in the ToS after all. Some users read the ToS and made an educated choice, some didn't read them and decided to not participate in any business with a company that obfuscates its goals in a 50-page…

All this shouldn't suprise any of them, it's in the ToS after all.

This is an extremely weak argument, IMHO.

For a start, it's clearly impractical for the average person to even read all of the legal documents they theoretically agree to. It would take an absurd amount of time and have a devastating effect on our quality of life and the productivity of our society.

Even that assumes the reader would be qualified to understand the legal implications of a long, often complicated document, possibly written according to the laws of another country, in the first place. This again seems extremely optimistic, given that professional lawyers spend years studying their own legal systems and are then often very well paid for sharing the expertise they have acquired.

So the idea that burying something unfair or unreasonable in a ToS document that realistically almost no-one is going to read and properly understand is really just a conceit of the legal profession (and possibly not even that, since even lawyers understand the fiction that is happening here).

The essence of any legal contract is an agreement, understood and entered into voluntarily by all parties involved, that exchanges things of value to the parties. Different legal systems might use slightly different words to say that, but they mean much the same thing. Hiding shady stuff in the small print of an agreement written by one side's professional lawyers and probably never even read never mind understood by the other side is far from sufficient to meet that standard for a legal contract.

This is why good businesses and their lawyers go out of their way to present the key details of any agreement clearly and up-front, not to hide them on page 91. It's also why courts hearing consumer rights cases sometimes side with the consumer even if something else was stated in a ToS or similar document.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to talk with their wallet to get the message across. There is nothing stopping people from buying a 'dumb' e-reader with internal storage where you load epub/pdf/rtf/txt files that you actually own or borrow from a library.

Where does a person with very little technological knowhow go to get these epub/pdf/rtf/txt files to somehow load onto this "dumb" e-reader they buy? What is a "dumb" e-reader? What software does a "dumb" e-reader need. There is a reason that Kindle prevail, and it's not because of some conspiracy or a giant company. It's because it's easy, basically like going to Chapters or Barnes and Noble and walking out with a b…

If you're so out of touch you can't connect a usb cord and drag and drop files, maybe just stick to physical books
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