Outlawed by Amazon DRM

There are certain fixed costs which remain the same no matter the format: you have to (or at least should!) pay the authors, editors, proofreaders, artists, and cover designers the same amount no matter the form because they're doing pretty much the same work. And while ebooks don't have typesetting/layout processes identical to physical books, they still have them. And if you don't want the ebooks to look like ass -- something that a lot of big publishers clearly don't care about yet, unfortunately -- it's not going to take all that much less time, particularly if you have to prepare them in multiple formats; you have to do a "final proof," ideally on the actual devices you're targeting.

In practice, all of the costs above are generally much more of the production cost than the actual printing is. The biggest savings you have with an ebook isn't from not paying the printer, it's from not paying the distributor. But there's still a catch there: while you're not giving 50% or more of the cover price to the distributor the way you would if you were trying to get the book into Barnes & Noble or what have you, you're still giving 30% or more of the cover price to the retailer. (And you have to pay attention to the "or more"; you may be paying a middleman like Lulu to get you into some of the online stores, or you may be paying Amazon's bogus "download charges" in addition to their stated 30% cut. Assuming your sale qualifies for their 30% cut bracket, rather than one of the higher ones.)

And?! That would be a horrible reason for deleting all of a user's purchased items. More reason for these types of posts to exist. The situation itself doesn't really matter, but bringing attention to the possible dangers of DRM is important. The fact that we don't own these DRMed items is incredibly scary.

"there have definitely been cases that vary between being one side of the story to being a distortion of facts and events to being outright lies."

Okay.. but without data this is just a vague anecdote.

If all you're trying to say is "be careful", well alright. But honestly I don't care. The story itself isn't that important in these cases as long as people are thinking about what the possible dangers of DRM are. And they are really big dangers.

These types of posts are the only action an individual can take when pitted against a big company.

It contained tons of original genealogical research, macro shots of plants, photographs of family-related newspaper stories... And possibly some videos with copyrighted music clips.

It's a shame how far we've fallen from traditional justice, which involves:

1. right to confront your accuser, 2. right to legal representation, 3. knowing the charges and evidence against you 4. right to call witnesses and present evidence 5. judgement by your peers

I know, flickr owns the servers, they make the rules etc.

But as human beings, and as a company, I think it's a mistake for them to behave this way.

The feeling of injustice is really powerful, and I think everyone would be better served if companies didn't disregard it.

Are you referring to Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus (1908) later codified into 17 USC 109?