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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#241

Post by chris_wot »

unreal37 wrote: post #235
chris_wot wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adequat…

Telling her privately that her account is associated with a fraudulent account has not caused her any harm, thus its not libeled her. Only if they published it to the world, she could claim her reputation has been harmed.

Actually, it did because she lost all her books and she isn't able to get them back.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#242

Post by [deleted] »

Monotoko wrote: post #229
pi18n wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#243

Post by jiggy2011 »

roguecoder wrote: post #215
techsupporter wrote: post #56

Tangentially related, I am getting very, very tired of "customer service" departments using phrases like: "While we are unable to provide detailed information on how we link related accounts, please know that we have reviewed your account on the basis of the information provided and regret to inform you that it will not be reopened." This happens more frequently: Google says this all the time, based on posts here; Am…

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.

This is very true. I used to work in a call centre for a large company which had all manor of silly policies.

Since we were on the "front line" we were usually the ones informing the customers of these policies. We were usually given very limited information about the hows/whys of these policies so when the customers started getting annoyed and asking questions all we could reply with was "I don't know, that is just our policy" and "I don't have the authority to do that".

Looking back on it I'm guessing we were kept in the dark on purpose since after a couple of minutes about 90% of the customers would just give up and accept it. Some asked to speak to a manager but of course we were instructed never to put a manager on the line and always to claim that the manager was unavailable or to just transfer the call to another agent who would give the same answer.

If they had given us more information about these policies then we would have ended up spending hours in discussion with the customer which is of course what the call centre managers specifically didn't want.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#244

Post by snitko »

I can absolutely agree that the story is very disturbing, however I also believe that it is an Amazon's right as a private company to do whatever the hell it wants with products an services it provides. The problem is not that it can or cannot legally wipe out the contents of its devices, the problem is that there's not enough competition yet. If Amazon was in a very harsh competition with any another company for ebook market (which I believe it currently isn't) a story like this would undoubtedly drive a substantial amount of customers to competitors. What Amazon currently does, it enjoys a temporary situation in which it is a market leader. Since ebooks is not exactly a very regulated industry, I don't think it's too long before we actually have a serious competition.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#245

Post by maxerickson »

belorn wrote: post #212
jiggy2011 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that if stallman cut his hair and put on a suit his message would be better received?

No. Well dressed and much more groomed people has warned about obvious threat in similar areas, and has also been equally ignored. Its the problem of the frog and the slowly heating pot. The changes a just slow enough that one can get used to the abuse. It will get worse. There is a ton of stuff companies could be doing to increase revenue by abusing their customers. When companies can view sold units as "theirs" to…

The U.S. has pretty decent laws surrounding car parts. The manufacturers are adding custom data to their vehicles, but the whole right to repair battle was already fought back in the 90s, the independents won (with odb ii coming out of it).

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#246

Post by pi18n »

beedogs wrote: post #195
pi18n wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the ones to leap out of the woodwork and shout that copying is not theft, so it's only fair that I point out this; torrenting is a massive copyright violation, as you are basically republishing the content. What Amazon did in this case is not against copyright, and the user had no claim to copyright of that work anyway. Make no mistake; I disagree with the humongous damages leveled against torrenters and I…

I'm not really arguing whether one action is any better or worse than the other; seeding a pile of ebooks isn't really something for which any valid defense can usually be given. My point is that there's clearly a very large amount of effort being expended protecting the ever-expanding rights of content owners, and -- near as I can tell -- zero effort being spent protecting content purchased by honest consumers from…

I mistook your comment for saying they were roughly equivalent, I didn't get that you were pointing out the expanding rights for corporations vs. contracting rights for individuals. Please accept my apologies, I do believe that what you are talking about is one of the most important problems we have to address in the coming years.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#247

Post by pixelcort »

The worst part about this isn't so much the remote wipe of the device, but the eternal banning of the customer without recourse.

It doesn't matter if it's 30 or 50 years from now; this person has been told that for the rest of their life, until they die, that they are never again able to become a customer.

Sounds like a long time to be banned without being told why.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#248

Post by SoftwareMaven »

Arjuna wrote: post #183

I am curious: could a story like this happen in the United States? According to my reading of the legal case (I am not a lawyer, but it would be interesting if any of you are could comment - grellas, perhaps) regarding Amazon's remote deletion of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm , the settlement involving that case appears to protect what happened in this story from happening to users in the United States. Of cou…

The question is whether deleting an account is essentially a loophole.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#249

Post by raganwald »

nodata wrote: post #63
jwr wrote: post #5

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.

> Nobody else outside of HN does

I agree with this, provided that we adopt Joel Spolsky's definition of "Nobody:"

  Please understand that I'm talking about large trends
  here, and therefore when I say things like "nobody" I
  really mean "fewer than 10,000,000 people," and so on
  and so forth.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

That's the meaningful definition of nobody, and while it's entertaining for me to quibble that my ex-mother-in-law only "buys" light novels that she doesn't plan to re-read, your point is cogent.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#250

Post by [deleted] »

Monotoko wrote: post #229
pi18n wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]
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