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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#481

Post by markesmith »

EricDeb wrote: post #336
rmc wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy for books is quite interesting. There is already a lot of infastructure for sharing files (torrent sites et al.), but the new thing is how small books are. 1,000 books could be about the size of one standard def film (~ 1 GB). A lot of people are going to have a lot of books.

I am quite surprised the pirating of eBooks has not taken off. The infrastructure certainly exists, but I'm not aware of any exclusive, prolific communities in a similar vein to music and tv shows/movies.

There's http://libgen.org/ and http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/ , both of which are vast.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#482

Post by chris_wot »

talaketu wrote: post #416
kbutler wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

giggle Mass production has no beneficial effect when the incremental cost of each unit is indistinguishable from zero.

Volume drives the incremental cost towards marginal cost.

Yes, it might approach zero, but it never gets there. There aren't infinite trees to turn into infinite numbers of books.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#483

Post by bad_user »

chris_wot wrote: post #480
monkeypizza wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flickr is yahoo's toy, if they get pissed off they can take it home and deprive everyone of the game; it's still legal to be a jerk. The whole world used to be that way, though - kings owned everything and if you didn't like it, die - but it pissed people off so bad, they took back the rights to what really was the king's property. The real problem seems to be how easy it is to enter into extremely unjust agreements…

In the real world, it's not easy to sign a contract giving up all your future rights - imagine if a car company tried to slip clauses into a car purchase agreement giving them the right to take back the car without explanation at any time. People would rebel. But online, people regularly click through things just as bad as this. In Australia, consumer law prevents unfair terms in contracts by the simple expedient of…

In general and not just in Australia, terms in contracts that are against the law are null.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#484

Post by creamyhorror »

Ntrails wrote: post #448
tomp wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't the proper term for that "rent"?

I buy an MSDN license. I buy a fishing license. The license is simply a fixed term item that you purchase.

Buying a fixed-term license for a product is basically renting the product. In other words, "buying a license" is another example of replacing "rent" with "buy".

For consumer protection, companies like Amazon could be required to state "buy access to X" or "rent X" instead of "buy book X", which implies ownership of the product.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#485

Post by chris_wot »

bad_user wrote: post #483
chris_wot wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the real world, it's not easy to sign a contract giving up all your future rights - imagine if a car company tried to slip clauses into a car purchase agreement giving them the right to take back the car without explanation at any time. People would rebel. But online, people regularly click through things just as bad as this. In Australia, consumer law prevents unfair terms in contracts by the simple expedient of…

In general and not just in Australia, terms in contracts that are against the law are null.

You misunderstand... This is if a contract provision that is unfair, and may not be illegal. A court can strike it down, depending on the circumstances.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#486

Post by Deestan »

endianswap wrote: post #191
Deestan wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So while it's still legal , it tends to conflict with service most services TOS agreements. Were I to make "unauthorized backups" of my games, Steam would shut down my account completely, by means of the "we can do what we want for no given reason" clause of the ToS. I'm not even speculating, I've seem them do this - a guy owned L4D2 and complained to them that he had stability issues with singleplayer and had to pla…

Do you have a link regarding this?

To the episode in the anecdote? No, the affected guy, a personal acquaintance, never blogged about it or anything.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#487

Post by oliwarner »

chris_wot wrote: post #129
oliwarner wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamy wouldn't apply as it's a private relationship. They're not broadcasting to the world that they think you're a con, they're just telling you... Which is fine.

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…

On the same page, "it is usually a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is communicated to someone other than the person defamed".

If I tell you I think you're lazy, that's rude but it isn't defamy. If I write you a letter and you publish it, it's still not defamy.

If I talk to your boss and tell him I think you're lazy (without evidence) that may be defamy. If I publish a letter to you telling you you're lazy, that may be defamy.

And no, this has nothing to do with the rest of the issue.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#488

Post by oliwarner »

rmc wrote: post #137
oliwarner wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defamy wouldn't apply as it's a private relationship. They're not broadcasting to the world that they think you're a con, they're just telling you... Which is fine.

Depends. In the EU, companies are legally required to store personal data accurately. It doesn't matter if they don't tell anyone (in fact often they cannot tell people, privacy and all that). If you tell them that personal data they have one you is incorrect, they are legally required to correct it. So yes, if the data is wrong, they might be breaking the law.

I don't know... Even in records, Amazon are allowed to inaccurately call you a filthy good-for-nothing and these would not be subject to EU Privacy requests. They're not FOIA requests. You don't get to request a copy of your whole file like you can with the FBI. Amazon is not a public body.

Its privacy requirements are limited to giving you a copy of your personal information. Name. Address. Phone number.

Anything else (including the marker labelling you as a pillaging hobo) is their proprietary business intelligence and good luck convincing them otherwise.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#489

Post by elarkin »

saucerful wrote: post #418
elarkin wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co-worker of mine (US) lost his kindle library about a year ago. Amazon closed his account and refused to tell him why. It took several tech blogs and newspapers phoning up Amazon with the story for him to get it back. In other words, he got restitution because of articles like this one. He no longer buys kindle books.

Did he ever find out why the library was deleted in the first place?

Never

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#490

Post by elarkin »

jseliger wrote: post #423
elarkin wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A co-worker of mine (US) lost his kindle library about a year ago. Amazon closed his account and refused to tell him why. It took several tech blogs and newspapers phoning up Amazon with the story for him to get it back. In other words, he got restitution because of articles like this one. He no longer buys kindle books.

Will you post links to some of the articles?

They took down the one he sent me. Here's the hackernews page about it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3270841
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