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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#121

Post by chris_wot »

donapieppo wrote: post #15

A sentence like "We wish you luck in locating a retailer better able to meet your needs and will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on these matters" is the best explanation of the evil of monopoly.

Monopolies tend to die. Sure, there might not be any competition from other companies, but their biggest competition is in the mass distributed and downloaded pirated book market.

As an example, I only buy non-DRM PDFs, but I never distribute them. Ever. And I never will, because those who use non-DRM PDFs get my hard earned money as I will then get to enjoy and profit from their works on any device that I so desire to use.

Now if, for example, I got a DRM encoded book and it was taken away from me due to some ridiculous arbitrary decision, I would be sorely tempted to get a non-DRM encoded copy of the book that I purchased. I think, in fact I know, I would be justified.

But given that I don't buy DRM encoded books, this will never be an ethical dilemna for me. And I'm no dirty hippy :-)

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#122

Post by hobbes »

josephlord wrote: post #112
hobbes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did read the Terms and Conditions before you "bought" the books, didn't you? If you bought the books, you agreed [in the eyes of the law] to this kind of eventuality.. I'm as guilty of this kind of thing as well. We tend to assume an imaginary T&C that conforms to we think is fair when we buy things online - and we have to learn the hard way that the real T&C's are very much more dubious. Here's the relevant bit…

If you read and actually considered the worst case in every contract/website terms and conditions/software licence that you come across it would probably take about a day a week and you would never actually agree to anything that wasn't a GPL/BSD/MIT... software licence. For one thing most give the party offering the agreement rights to change it which should be an absolute no-way. For most things such as online purc…

The kindle license agreement is relatively short and perfectly understandable.

The moral of this story is: if you give a website some money, find out what you are getting for your money.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#123

Post by gioele »

rmc wrote: post #72
scotty79 wrote: post #27

I have a Kindle but I don't want to have to do with Amazon. What is the best open firmware so far I can flash into it? I'd like to retain ability to send documents from my computer to my Kindle over the internet.

I have a Kindle and never read nor use any DRM books. You don't need to use Amazon's software or service or anything. You can convert files into .mobi format using open source tools and use a programme like Calibre or just put the files in the "documents" folder of the Kindle to load them. Using a Kindle without DRM is very possible. If you turn off wireless, then it will never try to do any software updating.

What is the point of buying a Kindle then? You could have bought one of the many ebook readers available out there. What about a Kobo? Or a stylish Sony PRS? A small Booken? A feature-packed Onyx? An hackable iRiver Story?

Why giving money to Amazon in the first place if you do not agree with their core business practice?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#125

Post by dhimes »

gioele wrote: post #116
nodata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does.

> > I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. >Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does. Lawyers and librarians also do. There are big discussions in those circles about the meaning of the verbs "to buy" and "to possess" as used by Amazon, Apple and other big DRM "retailers". It is not only about DRM. Libraries are realising that paying for access to a website of a publishing house is not exactly like pa…

I had never heard of "dark archives." Is this what you mean?

(from: http://www.osti.gov/ostiblog/dark-archives)

So, what is a dark archive? It is, simply put, an archive of information that is not used for public access. Most often it serves as a failsafe copy of a light archive, i.e. a publicly available version of the information, for use in disaster recovery operations. Dark archives need not be a fully operational copy of an information system, rather just the content behind the information system.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#126

Post by phireal »

aapl wrote: post #82
phireal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waterstones used to use Amazon to sell books (presumably they couldn't make any money any other way). Not sure if they still do. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/ is pretty good, particularly for difficult to find and second hand books. I've found more and more recently that play.com does almost as well as (and often better than) Amazon in terms of price, although I don't know much about their business tactics.

AbeBooks is actually owned by Amazon now.

Seriously? Wow. Amazon really are dominating that particular market.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#127

Post by jiggy2011 »

pja wrote: post #110
jiggy2011 wrote: post #33

Surely this is what a small claims court could be used for? I haven't read the Amazon TOS but is it really as simple as "you rent this book for as long as we feel like and we can revoke it for no reason"? In which case I would be somewhat surprised if this really held up in a court, for example what happens if you buy a book and they immediately decide to revoke the license 1 second after purchase?

Surely this is what a small claims court could be used for? In principle, possibly. It's a bit difficult to sue if you live in Norway & have been buying from Amazon US though: your costs will exceed any potential return very quickly! (I'm assuming that filing a small claims suit remotely is either not possible or not effective here of course.)

That presents a bit of a problem. As digital stuff is being increasingly sold across geopolitical lines you get a situation where you have little practical recourse if you have an issue with anything you have bought.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#128

Post by mherdeg »

gioele wrote: post #116
nodata wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does.

> > I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. >Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does. Lawyers and librarians also do. There are big discussions in those circles about the meaning of the verbs "to buy" and "to possess" as used by Amazon, Apple and other big DRM "retailers". It is not only about DRM. Libraries are realising that paying for access to a website of a publishing house is not exactly like pa…

Could you spell out what a "dark archive" is? The top few Google hits don't give me a precise sense of the thing.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#129

Post by chris_wot »

oliwarner wrote: post #109
chris_wot wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of catch 22 really. If they have inaccurately linked you with a fraudulent user and they accuse you of having committed fraud, they've just defamed your character. If they were in the U.S. I'd be suggesting they lawyer up.

Defamy wouldn't apply as it's a private relationship. They're not broadcasting to the world that they think you're a con, they're just telling you... Which is fine.

Where are you getting that definition from?

I have used Wikipedia for the definition of how one proves libel:

There are several ways a person must go about proving that libel has taken place. For example, in the United States, first, the person must prove that the statement was false. Second, the person must prove that the statement caused harm. Third, the person must prove that the statement was made without adequate research into the truthfulness of the statement. These steps are for an ordinary citizen.

Of course, there is no citation. I just added the {{fact}} tag. But does anyone know if this is true or not?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#130

Post by zizee »

praptak wrote: post #57
lancewiggs wrote: post #3

I wonder whether this is related to Linn living in Norway, purchasing from Amazon.com and somehow Amazon.co.uk are getting in the middle, perhaps because they run Europe from there. It's the game that many people play - trying to find the best Amazon (or Apple) store when they live and travel between countries. This means a constant struggle to find a combination of credit card, store with enough content (The US is b…

> Please Amazon - please move to one global store where any credit card from any country can purchase any edition of any book. Not gonna happen without a huge change in international copyright law, probably only possible if the Pirate Party gets constitution-changing majority in all of the key countries at the same time :) Currently, for the most books there is no such thing as the right to publish a book globally, t…

PhantomLobe replied to this comment:

Wat? I've bought in .com, .ca, .co.uk, .fr and .es with (both) France and Spain based credit cards with no problems whatsoever.

PhantomLobe, you were hellbanned* for making a comment that didn't fit the the community guidelines:

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Looking at your comment history, you don't seem to be a spammer or a troll, I think it is more that your second comment didn't fit the guidelines and because you didn't have enough karma your account went under water, never to be seen again.

I don't know if it was by a mod, or by a robot, but to keep commenting with our PhantomLobe account is an effort in futility and a waste of your time.

I recommend that you review the guidelines doc above and avoid making comments that may be seen as not adding to the discussion. Also, start spelling words correctly. Wot is not a word and won't win you friends here.

On a related note: I wish HN would would stop hellbanning users for making comments that are not constructive. That's what downvotes are for! I have been seeing far too many people wasting so much time because they don't know they are hellbanned. Hellbanning should be reserved to obvious trolls and spammers, not people getting used to the standards of these discussions.

*http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/06/suspension-ban-or-h...

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