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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)

#181

Post by comeonseriously »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #179
blueflow wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/customerdocumentation/EM1...

Page 6

Another cool thing is Calibre recognizes the Kindle. :)

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

#183

Post by noworriesnate »

How about this compromise: whenever a company cancels a customer's account, everything they bought has to be sent to them in a DRM-free format.

It's a compromise because big companies still get to close customers' accounts on a whim (it sounds dumb, but companies should be allowed to "fire" their customers), but at least the customers get to keep what they paid for. Everybody wins. It's better than forcing the big companies to keep customers they suspect of abuse.

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

#184

Post by thaumasiotes »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #179
blueflow wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, of course that's true for all Kindle models.

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

#186

Post by yourapostasy »

elorant wrote: post #44

That's why I never registered my Kindle. It's always in Airplane mode and used as a dumb device connected to my PC through USB anytime I want to download books. Thanks, but no thanks Amazon. Unfortunately, we live in an era where everything that can connect to the Internet will abuse its intended use at some point.

> Unfortunately, we live in an era where everything that can connect to the Internet will abuse its intended use at some point.

This is not an era-problem, this is a culture-problem. Likely an economic-incentives-problem. The culture in both business and consumers. There always seem to be The Assholes who corrupt it all for everyone. It's easy to point at businesses, but few talk about incidents of malfeasance from the other parties to the transactions. The guy who buys a circular saw from a big box store, uses it for a weekend project, then returns it. The woman who buys a dress, hides the price tag, wears it to a wedding, then returns it.

Building high-trust, high-ethics organizations at scale and identifying individuals for those organizations is hard, and I wish there was more written about it. It's not a new problem, so I'd like to see the evolution of thought about it as well.

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

#188

Post by vict00ms »

kiaulen wrote: post #154
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #151

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.

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.

I use my Kobo like it's "dumb"...but I generally have to use Calibre to convert epub to kpub for it to format right on the "page".

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

#189

Post by smolder »

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 they need is a legally required termination procedure, so when the company shuts down, or if business with a user is terminated, it MUST supply the user with accessible digital goods equivalent to their library, or else the company is liable for goods not delivered.

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

#190

Post by shawnz »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #173
Silhouette wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

Have you considered that the people you told don't really believe you are as expert as you claim, or believe that you were overdramatizing the situation?

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

The consequences of losing access don't necessarily follow from that though. Lots of people for example understand the principle of leasing an apartment or car, and in those cases it's much harder for the true owner to arbitrarily take the property away from you.

> Actually I have a radical opinion: copyright should be abolished and it should be illegal to implement DRM in any form.

Radical opinions further tell people that you are not being pragmatic about what you are saying and therefore it can't be very practical advice. That is another reason why I expect people weren't receptive to your warnings.

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