This is even more scary for people/startups with their entire business on ec2.
Outlawed by Amazon DRM
271–280 of 494 posts
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every week there is a story in the UK press about how company A is not paying tax in the UK. This is not unique to Amazon. Vodafone, Amazon, Starbucks, Google, Apple, ...
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.
VAT is not the same as corporation tax.
In the UK, Amazon is being accused of not paying the full amount of corporation tax they ought to be paying.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure you would, but that's not much of a reason for Amazon to do so. It's far easier and cheaper for them to ignore most cases and instead wait for the few that blow up like this one and then look into them at that point. In those cases if they think that they're even remotely in the wrong I suspect that they'll reinstate the account, send their apologies, send the person in question a gift voucher and get on wit…
Well there's a cynical view of how to deal with the general public.
Unfortunately one that works - mainly because the general public's behaviour is driven by attention to news stories rather than informed choice.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#274Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The problem is that Kindle users probably did give explicit permission (for some definition of explicit permission). This is probably the case. Amazon would've covered their bases strongly. What is super annoying is this - there are many many books, whose kindle editions cost more than their paperbacks. Imagine paying 13$ for a ebook (the same book in paperback costs 10$) and then losing that due to some arbitrary "r…
Electronic content doesn't face the same over-supply possibility that physical content faces. For example, let's say that you buy 1M copies of Book X for $2 each to sell. Well, a year later only 250,000 have sold at $4 and the rest are just sitting in your warehouse. You don't even care if you sell them at cost now (or maybe below cost). You've spent $2M and taken in $1M and have 750k copies left. If you sell the remaining 750k copies at $2 a piece, you make money ($2.5M with costs of $2M). In fact, you could sell them for less than $2 if that would make them move to recoup the remaining $1M. So, there are supply issues that make the price of physical items more variable. With electronic items, you just get the price. Since there isn't a limited supply, you can have unlimited copies on day 1. They don't over or under buy, they transmit exactly the number of copies purchased.
Likewise, as a physical book ages, competition goes up. You might be given it once your friend is done with it or be sold it used. That doesn't happen with Kindle books (or not as much, I know the Kindle has some limited lending capability) and so the price stays stable since the level of competition is stable.
Many prices face competition with many sources. With eBooks, the number of sources declines, but electronic resources are cheap and so it's stays at a point that we merely complain about rather than searching for alternatives. So, losing first-sale rights means losing the cheaply available second-hand books that provide competition that helps to keep prices low.
Now, I'm not blind to the other side: a used book is less valuable than a new book. It's creased, written in, whatnot. A used Kindle book is identical to a new Kindle book. So, it might be disastrous for publishers to have all users be able to re-sell in an unlimited fashion because there's no aging of the physical thing like there is with physical volumes. But that's something to think about for another time.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#275Earlier 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…
"seeding a pile of ebooks isn't really something for which any valid defense can usually be given"
How come? If you seed a pile of ebooks (let's assume it's a very big pile that contains a good chunk of books humanity considers important) than you're helping our culture spread. It is in fact very important for books to be massively copied in order to survive future catastrophes: whatever they come in form of nuclear winter, totalitarian copyright regime or cultural degradation and neglect.
I have my torrent of 20G of compressed ebooks and I feel very prepared for a digital nuclear winter.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon settled fairly quickly: http://arstechnica.com/business/2009/10/amazon-stipulates-te... The most interesting/relevant bit from the article "In it, Amazon's attorneys agreed to legally binding terms that describe its content deletion policy. When it comes to blog and periodical content, as well as software, Amazon retains the right to perform a remote delete. But when it comes to books, deletions will only occu…
Perhaps I'm not reading this correctly, but it looks to me like Amazon does not hold the right to delete books in the case of a ToS abuse, which means that they shouldn't have deleted the books in this case.
IIRC that case was based entirely in the US.
As somehow Amazon UK seem to be involved in this case too, it's possible that those agreements don't apply to this case.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#277I'm not saying this to be rude, so I apologize in advance if you personally take offence:
In my mind, you're a complete idiot if you are an e-book consumer at this point in time.
You essentially rent the book for a price often higher than owning a physical copy of the exact same material. All this for the slight mobility advantage, and instant purchase ability. You can't share your ebooks with friends. You run the risk that the publisher might decide you're no longer worthy of that purchase.
I question the sanity of any person that has done a pro/con comparison and actually judged e-books to be superior. My guess is that most people don't bother to actually think about these purchases.
e-books can and should be revolutionary, but what is on offer now is essentially nothing more than window dressing - and people are eating it up.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon settled fairly quickly: http://arstechnica.com/business/2009/10/amazon-stipulates-te... The most interesting/relevant bit from the article "In it, Amazon's attorneys agreed to legally binding terms that describe its content deletion policy. When it comes to blog and periodical content, as well as software, Amazon retains the right to perform a remote delete. But when it comes to books, deletions will only occu…
Perhaps I'm not reading this correctly, but it looks to me like Amazon does not hold the right to delete books in the case of a ToS abuse, which means that they shouldn't have deleted the books in this case.
I would have thought the same. Perhaps the 'Amazon' that is bound under this settlement is a different corporate entity as the 'Amazon' in this case. E.g. Amazon.com vs. Amazon.co.uk
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
The loss of books has nothing to do with the speech act of libel.
"Second, the person must prove that the statement caused harm."
1:00 PM -- fraud system links her account to another banned account
1:00 PM -- her account is closed
2:00 PM -- she asks Amazon why her account is closed
3:00 PM -- Amazon makes the statement you claim is libelous
The loss occurred before the statement, so you cannot claim the statement caused that loss. The alleged libel did not result in the damages you're claiming.
Libel would be if Amazon falsely accused her of fraud in public, then her employer terminating her employment as a result of that statement. That is a harm resulting from the statement.
Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM
#280I e-mailed amazon using a feedback form[1]. following is what I wrote. I appreciate if other kindle owners can do the same to help Linn and for the greater good. Dear Amazon, Your service was really nice to me so far. But I happened to read a news that was not comforting. Following is a link to the story. http://www.bekkelund.net/2012/10/22/outlawed-by-amazon-drm/ This makes me hesitant about making any future purcha…
One data point: I work on the Kindle and have a pretty good understanding of how the device works. I'm not aware of how to wipe the device remotely. It's possible to revoke licenses for DRM content, but I have no idea how to remove all books. I can't explain how to reproduce what the blog describes happened.
If this person did in fact purchase DRM content and Amazon revoked it, then at a minimum the person should get a refund. There are ways that happens automatically (because it's the right thing for the customer -- Amazon doesn't want to take sides in the bigger debate). Since I don't see the refund mentioned I think there is more going on than "your account is connected to a flagged account."
Edit: SeanDav@ Deleting Amazon Account != wiping content from the device. They're different. It sounds like the person's account was deleted, but it shouldn't impact what's on the device save the revoked DRM licenses.
Edit 2: randartie@ I'm not blaming the victim, but refunds happen automatically if the customer originally paid for the content. There's a whole bunch of safeguards we have in place to protect customers and their content; this kind of sensational FUD continues to annoy me.