171–180 of 494 posts
Is a Kindle usable without an Amazon account ?
Very much so. Just use Calibre to load books and your fine.
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Companies have privacy obligations. If they inaccurately link you to a fraudulent user and then tell you all the activity of that fraudulent user, they've probably just broken the law. That's a specific example where it might not be legal but I agree that this is widespread and there are lots of things in the real world where it would be fine to tell you, but they choose not to. In my experience this is to protect in…
I'm not sure privacy obligations are really at play here. I can think of two reasons they're taking the approach they're taking: 1) They don't want to get into a discussion which is likely to be time consuming. It's not just innocent people who appeal these things, often the most guilty are those who will most actively and vocally profess their innocence (in some cases up to and including going to court over it - c.f…
I for one would like them to start talking about this sort of thing, and review these cases more thoroughly. After all, people paid good money to them to read books. Books which they stole away from them. It seems unlikely that Amazon provided a refund to the lady in question.
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Even DRM-less? That makes no sense. I agree on the DRM content though.. The problem is that most people will probably not.
You still don't necessarily own a DRM-free copy of something. DRM is simply a technical method of enforcing a legal license. Just because you can use a DRM free file in more ways (for example copy and share it) doesn't mean that the license grants you the rights to do so. One example I remember from the early 90s was "shareware" where you could send off for a free or low cost copy of a software program. These program…
I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. When making a decision whether to buy or not, I look at the price and consider whether I'm willing to pay this much to rent the book for an indeterminate amount of time, possibly as little as 3 months. Quite often it turns out that the price is too high. But I never delude myself that I actually "own" any of the DRM-restricted content that I paid for.
> I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does.
Interesting link to an Amazon.com Kindle Help discussion by the blog author: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/forums/kindleqna/ref=...
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My usage of kindle is similar to yours. I just don't like the possibility of being locked out of the own device. I also like how the publicly developed software improves over time. I haven't seen any improvements for my Kindle (most likely same model as yours, but gsm) from Amazon.
Can they lock you out of physical usage of the Kindle, like a remote kill-switch of sorts? Scary, if true.. Fair point on the software improvement though -- you might want to look into Duokan, it seems to be really popular and adds native ePub support: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150175 (bonus if you like some aspects of the original OS: there's a tool that let's you switch between the two firmw…
I don't think they can lock you out of the device. The only thing I've ever heard of them doing (and what they did in this case) is remote deletion of books you've purchased from them.
Its getting to the point where I am seriously considering closing my Amazon account. I just don't like the way it does business any more. Can anyone recommend a good online bookseller in the UK? Is Waterstones any good? The Guardian is running a story [1] today about how Amazon forces publishers to cover the cost of 20% VAT (sales tax) on ebook sales, even though it only pays 3% to the Luxembourg government (where it…
They have certainly lost me as a potential Kindle user. I was considering buying myself a Kindle for Christmas, but that's not going to happen now. I thought Amazon could be trusted with my money, but it's clear that it's too risky. I wouldn't be surprised if someone higher up sees her issues and activates her account. But I can't trust my money to a company where you could lose access to books worth thousands if you…
Back then, they said "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances". Looks like 3 years later they've decided to go back to what they were doing and promised not to do.
And THIS is why I won't buy a Kindle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
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You still don't necessarily own a DRM-free copy of something. DRM is simply a technical method of enforcing a legal license. Just because you can use a DRM free file in more ways (for example copy and share it) doesn't mean that the license grants you the rights to do so. One example I remember from the early 90s was "shareware" where you could send off for a free or low cost copy of a software program. These program…
Sme shareware would stop working after the trial period, and if you played it by the book or didn't know the workarounds, you would have to make the purchase.
mIRC is one program that was free to use for a long time.
I'm a comic book fan, and a while back I started buying comics digitally from Dark Horse's digital store. Being also a HN reader, I'm very aware of what these companies can do, how accounts are closed without notice, wiping all your previous purchases, etc. So obviously as my spending went up in that one digital store, I became concerned of what could happen, especially reading their FAQ that clearly state all my mon…
I wonder how difficult it'd be to create an end-user app... User plugs Kindle into the computer, user runs app, app backs up user's books, free from DRM. I guess people could use it to pirate as well, but c'est la vie.