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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)

#171

Post by ZanyProgrammer »

seattledev wrote: post #160
dubcanada wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Apple has spent more than a decade telling its users that you don’t (and can’t) do that. I wouldn’t assume that’s an easy skill for a lot of people.

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

#172

Post by golergka »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #151
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…

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.

Like managing your own mp3 library, it's incredibly inconvenient compared to the cloud option. I've done it for years with music, and I'm very happy to just be able to stream whatever I want instead. Same with books.

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

#173

Post by matheusmoreira »

Silhouette wrote: post #152
matheusmoreira wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. W…

> What makes you think that?

I used to tell people and most of them ignored what I said.

> 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

They don't have to understand technical details. They just have to understand one fact: they don't actually own what they're spending their money on.

I told them, they understood and they didn't care.

> 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?

Me. I used to tell everyone I know. It was useless.

> 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.

Don't get me wrong. I generally agree with this. Actually I have a radical opinion: copyright should be abolished and it should be illegal to implement DRM in any form.

This doesn't change the fact that these people cannot be helped. They want their pleasure and if you're pointing out issues you're just getting in their way. They absolutely deserve to be blamed if their accounts get banned and they lose everything.

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

#174

Post by Accacin »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #163
seattledev wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's needlessly elitist gatekeeping.

The phrasing used was not great, but I do not think it's gate keeping. I honestly find it insulting that we think 'normal' people can't drag some files to a device, most family members know how to use a USB drive, and managing files on a USB drive isn't too dissimilar to dragging and dropping files to a device like an e-reader.

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

#176

Post by bryanrasmussen »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #155
Silhouette wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this would explain why the big technology companies are always upset when they get fined by the EU and then pay the fine.

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

#177

Post by gruez »

learnstats2 wrote: post #109
underdeserver wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like it would fall under https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estoppel ?

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

#178

Post by jerf »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #150
matheusmoreira wrote: post #141

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.

As is often the case, a lot of these things are either illegal in the US too, or far less settled than the companies would have you believe. The companies stick them in the license clauses anyhow, because when you can just stick a severability clause [1] in there, why not grab things willy-nilly?

Plus a lot of people simply assume there's no recourse even when there in fact is ("the US is an anarchist wonderland where consumers have no protections at all" is a harmful and false meme, what we have is the widespread assumption that consumers have no protections), and of those who don't, who really wants to spend a ton of time in any sort of legal or arbitration resolution over 40 books, which almost certainly total far less than any possible legal or arbitration battle will cost?

The legal system, US, EU, or otherwise, doesn't have a good answer to when a company bones .01% of several million people to the tune of several hundred dollars, or bones its entire customer base for $1 or something. By the time you bust through their contract clauses against class action and even find everyone affected you've long since eaten up any value you're going to get from the lawsuit even if you win big and win punitive damages. Computers make it so much easier to do this kind of thing on the company's side, but they don't help anyone trying to fight it anywhere near as much. Very asymmetrical advantage for the companies to hit people like this at some scale.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp

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

#179

Post by DoingIsLearning »

blueflow wrote: post #170
srtjstjsj wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Kindle a dumb e-reader? Or does it require Amazon account even to access simple PDFs?

You can use a Kindle by drag&drop PDF files onto it. If you use it like that, there is no need to connect it to the Wifi at all. I use my Kindle like this.

This is news to me, is that really true for all Kindle models? Can you really load files onto it as a connected storage device?

Can you point to any amazon docs explaining this? I was under the impression that this was the big caveat restriction with amazon.

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

#180

Post by pnutjam »

chrononaut wrote: post #103
buran77 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You would forfeit anything in excess of the small claims limit, probably around $5k.

Also costs around $100 to file and you're looking at at a day or two of time away from work.

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