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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#221

Post by MrMember »

joshnerius wrote: post #190
cs702 wrote: post #152

Could you ever imagine a local retailer in your area breaking and entering into your home, taking away all your books, and then not giving you a straightforward explanation as to why they did so? Me neither. Breaking and entering into someone else's physical property, and talking away their physical possessions without explanation is so obviously wrong and illegal! Yet that's pretty much what Amazon did to this poor…

I've often wondered about the viability of students purchasing or renting textbooks for the Kindle. Just imagine the panic/terror that would ensue if a student's collection of textbooks just disappeared in the middle of a semester. If my collection of novels disappears, I'm inconvenienced. If my collection of textbooks disappears, my academic progress is severely jeopardized. Both seem extremely wrong as you mention,…

When Amazon remotely deleted 1984 from people's Kindles a few years ago a student lost the digital notes he had been creating as he was reading it for a class. He ended up suing Amazon, but I have no idea if it was ever resolved or if it's still ongoing.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#222

Post by belorn »

mdasen wrote: post #169
pi18n wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely should be illegal to delete files from a device that is currently rented or owned by another party unless they give explicit permission. It should be wire fraud, just like hacking a server and forcing it to act in a way the owner does not desire.

The problem is that Kindle users probably did give explicit permission (for some definition of explicit permission). I'm sure there's a clause in the ToS that allows Amazon to delete content that you've purchased. I'm not the type to sound the drum saying that piracy isn't theft, but here it seems like it's trying to go both ways. It's property if you "steal" it and it isn't property if you've bought it. Part of the…

You can not give explicit permissions in a ToS, and most importantly, you can not refuse or give away rights given by the law to protect the consumer.

Both has declared so by the court in both US and EU. Every single time I have seen a court rule, and the defending company is holding up the ToS as their defense, the company has lost. Every. Single. Time.

The only real difference, is that most courts do not give out punitive damages. I guess, writing in a ToS that you are going to break into folks houses and steal their books are somehow less criminal than if you did it without saying anything.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#223

Post by Antiks72 »

chris_wot wrote: post #178
qw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not like they don't have form. In 2009 they erased all the versions of 1984 from all Kindles, to massive uproar. 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…

Ironic that it was 1984.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#224

Post by Antiks72 »

clumsysmurf wrote: post #34

I was recently interested in purchasing eBooks from Morgan Kaufmann. "The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience" costs $89.95 USD; surely for that insane price your eBook would be DRM-free, right? Wrong. Both ePub and PDF use Adobe Adept (Inept) DRM. You can try to find the Kindle/iBook version, but as this article points out "its a license to read" ... and very often, the quality of…

Ink and paper is the only way for me.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#225

Post by Monotoko »

chris_wot wrote: post #178
qw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not like they don't have form. In 2009 they erased all the versions of 1984 from all Kindles, to massive uproar. 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…

At least they gave these people their money back..

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#226

Post by rane »

buro9 wrote: post #200
DiabloD3 wrote: post #7

This is why you should use a DRM removal tool and use a third party e-book reader on an Android tablet.

Is there a DRM removal tool that works on Kindle books? I have a lot of unread Kindle books (I buy a lot at once), and would now like enough of a backup in a form that I could use such that I can be sure I could at least read the books.

Yes, easiest way to go around it is using the DeDRM plugin with Calibre.

http://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/drm-removal-to...

http://www.cultofmac.com/173945/how-to-read-kindle-books-in-...

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#227

Post by otakucode »

cs702 wrote: post #152

Could you ever imagine a local retailer in your area breaking and entering into your home, taking away all your books, and then not giving you a straightforward explanation as to why they did so? Me neither. Breaking and entering into someone else's physical property, and talking away their physical possessions without explanation is so obviously wrong and illegal! Yet that's pretty much what Amazon did to this poor…

Until someone rich enough to fight this to the Supreme Court is screwed by these policies, they will stand, it's as simple as that. These sorts of policies are NOT new. EVERY industry has tried to rob consumers of property rights. And every other industry has a collection of case law establishing that the types of contracts digital content distributors put forward are just illegal. But, since it hasn't been established for digital property yet, we need court cases.

If Apple, Steam, and Amazon decided tomorrow that they wanted you to pay $10/item in your 'library' of things you have 'purchased' in order to be able to access it again, according to their contracts their users agreed to, they would be entirely within the contract to do that.

Expect publishers and digital content providers to wail and gnash their teeth and swear that giving consumers actual property rights will completely destroy their business. Other industries tried the same scare tactics. They're just lies. Being able to transfer your property, sell it 'used', etc actually massively boosts the success of markets and hopefully it is inevitable that this kind of thing will be extended to digital content.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#228

Post by ihsw »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #218
roguecoder wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as you give people a reason, they will argue with the specifics. The only way to get people to accept "no" and go away is to refuse to provide any additional information that they could take issue with.

That might work until the class action gets filed.

You've waived your rights to a class action file suit by purchasing an Amazon product or using an Amazon service.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#229

Post by Monotoko »

pi18n wrote: post #162
chris_wot wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe HN should reveal who the hell banners are?

I think it's the computers. Most of the ghosts I see weren't trolls, just young accounts going far enough against the grain to get downvotes. If it's humans doing it, they are absurdly harsh.

How do you see them? I thought a hellbanned user couldn't be seen by anyone?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#230

Post by pja »

jonno wrote: post #186
DanBC wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a twist in asking customers to pay 20%, and taking that from the authors, and then (according to GP) not paying the 20% in England but paying just 3% in some other country.

This sounds fraudulent.

You can be quite sure that the contract is not phrased in such a way that Amazon is required to pay 20% VAT on the ebooks in question to the UK government.

Is it sleazy as all getout? Yup, absolutely: but it's not illegal. Companies pull this kind of bait and switch all the time when they think they can get away with it. Remember when Microsoft bought the original Internet Explorer codebase in return for the company in question receiving a cut of the profits and then gave it away for free? How they must have laughed about that one back at MS HQ...

In reality, the publishers handed Amazon a near monopoly on ebook sales by their own short-sightedness and now Amazon is turning the thumbscrews to see how much they're actually prepared to cough up. The games with VAT in the contract are just part and parcel of that.

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