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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#371

Post by regularfry »

rmc wrote: post #143
tomp wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in europe. Here, it's fair use.

IANAL Fair use usually applies to copying the work or publishing it, or making a dervied work from it (y'know all the thing that the copyright holder usually only has legal rights to do). Merely transforming the work yourself and keeping it yourself, wouldn't really count as anything that copyright law has any say over. Since it's not explicitly illegal, it's legal. You don't need 'fair use rights' when you tear up a…

Again, this is not the case in Europe. For instance, format shifting is technically illegal in the UK, even for your own use.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#372

Post by engtech »

Here's a fun game to illustrate why we should be interested in protecting consumer rights to maintain their own libraries of digital goods.

Go back through the New York Time Best Seller list in 5 year increments, and see at what point you start reaching books you've never heard of and that are no longer in print.

It's pretty revealing that except for novels that are in school curriculum or transferred to another medium (book, TV) the majority of best sellers are only relevant for 15-20 years.

If you're in your late 30s or old, try to find a new copy of some favourite novels from your adolescence. Good luck.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#373

Post by lwat »

samdk wrote: post #311
run4yourlives wrote: post #277

I'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 ri…

You're understating the benefits and missing a few key ones. First, the instant purchase ability is extremely important. It means that books gain some measure of equality with other forms of media (the internet, movies/tv, music). With a Kindle I can read whatever book I want whenever I want, which means that I read many more books than I used to. Second, the mobility advantage isn't slight at all, especially for peo…

Best of both worlds: Order the physical book and download a digital copy from The Pirate Bay.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#374

Post by nasmorn »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #327

I have sympathy for the lady (and others) who lost their Kindle books. However, I am going to take the opposition view here because I feel like people don't understand 'the beast' also known as Amazon. Amazon optimizes on low margins, and cheap prices for goods (both physical and electronic). Amazon optimizes on the benefit to the mass majority of their customers at the expense of a small minority who do occasionally…

You do know Ulysses is out of Copyright? You paid 2$ for the convenience of not using project gutenbergs version.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#375

Post by brokentone »

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…

Should it really be illegal? Every time legislators get involved in these Internet legalities, they don't understand what they're doing. While we (technical young folks) understand the similarities to breaking and entering, somehow they end up seeing similarities to trucks and "series of tubes." Big business can be annoying, but they are nothing like big lobbyist groups like RIAA and MPAA, and as soon as legislation comes up, these people end up being primary influencers. Or the legislators push through favorable bills for these people and immediately leave and become their chairmen (Chris Dodd/MPAA anyone?).

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#376

Post by brokentone »

Whether the story is completely true, whether it has another side, or if it's a complete farce, we understand this situation could happen under the agreements we make to Amazon and just about every other digital services provider (yes, we've jumped from goods to services). When we understand that, don't take action, and continue purchasing from any of the companies that legalese themselves onto a fortified high ground that disadvantages consumers to this degree, we're part of the problem.

The very fact this story is this popular is because we all understand it could happen to us, think that by upvoting it, commenting on it, and sharing it, we're making a difference, but then we go right back to Amazon and purchase more things. Perpetuating the cycle.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#378

Post by engtech »

mightybyte wrote: post #304
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 completely agree with you, but the consumer here isn't without fault. By purchasing a Kindle and DRM'd books for it, you're agreeing to Amazon's policies. It's true that kindle books don't work like regular books, but being ignorant of that fact isn't an excuse. This is why I categorically refuse to pay a single penny for any digital media that has DRM attached to it and might prevent me from playing it at any time…

"It's true that kindle books don't work like regular books, but being ignorant of that fact isn't an excuse."

Have you tried explaining to a non-technical person about remote wipes?

I had a 20 minute discussion on this subject with a 58 year old friend of mine who has a doctorate, presents at conferences, etc.

I spent the first 15 minutes convincing him that the ebook publish had the right to do a remote wipe.

He remained unconvinced that an ebook publisher would ever do a remote wipe because it would be bad for business.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#379

Post by spindritf »

fluidcruft wrote: post #326
donniezazen wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First think came to my mind. I am reading textbook for a course I am taking. I am not taking any paper notes as I just highlight and take online note on Kindle Reader Webapp/mobile app. I would be devastated if I lose my bookmarkings and data.

If you would be devastated, why are you relying on something you cannot backup? That's not rational.

Did you have backups of your notes in college?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#380

Post by edanm »

maratd wrote: post #361
cletus wrote: post #335

The fact that Amazon can do this is obviously scary, particularly for those with extensive Kindle libraries. Personally I love the idea of ebooks but the publishers are doing their best to kill this market (eg Surface Detail in paperback is $6, as an ebook its $10 WTF?). Now I can't speak to the truth of these claims. I have no inside knowledge but I will say this: be skeptical of such stories. I have seen other stor…

> be skeptical of such stories Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point. Microsoft, Google, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Facebook, etc. handle millions of accounts. They have automated filters that trigger based on specified criteria that kill your account. Their default response when this happens? Talk to legal. Well, more like write to legal…

"Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point."

Most? That is a pretty serious statement, and I really doubt you can back it up. I don't have statistics on this and don't know where to look for them, but I would guess that the numbers of HN'ers that have had an account closed by a BigCo is actually much less than 1%, never mind more than 50%.

Am I grossly underestimating here? Keep in mind that these stories tend to be very popular, so there could definitely be a lot more of these stories around than is statistically correct.

P.s. As for one of cletus' point above, I've also noticed a few of these kinds of points eventually bring out more details which tend not to confirm the events, as told in the original posts. Nothing specific to this case of course, I've just caught myself a few times thinking "hmmm, looks like it wasn't such a crystal-clear case of the company being wrong".

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