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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#81

Post by MattBearman »

I know it's not the best attitude, but if this ever happened to me I would simply pirate all the books I'd purchased from amazon, side load them onto my kindle and keep reading guilt free.

A part of me would like to dump amazon due to stories like this, but at the end of the day the whole set up is just too convenient (I can find, 'buy', and start reading a book in less than a minute directly from my kindle)

The worst part is that attitudes like mine are probably a big part of the reason Amazon will continue to get away with this. The even worse part is that I just don't care enough to do anything about it.

I wonder how many others there are like me who should know better, but enjoy the convenience too much?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#82

Post by aapl »

phireal wrote: post #73
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #64

Its getting to the point where I am seriously considering closing my Amazon account. I just don't like the way it does business any more. Can anyone recommend a good online bookseller in the UK? Is Waterstones any good? The Guardian is running a story [1] today about how Amazon forces publishers to cover the cost of 20% VAT (sales tax) on ebook sales, even though it only pays 3% to the Luxembourg government (where it…

Waterstones used to use Amazon to sell books (presumably they couldn't make any money any other way). Not sure if they still do. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/ is pretty good, particularly for difficult to find and second hand books. I've found more and more recently that play.com does almost as well as (and often better than) Amazon in terms of price, although I don't know much about their business tactics.

AbeBooks is actually owned by Amazon now.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#83

Post by [deleted] »

phireal wrote: post #73
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #64

Its getting to the point where I am seriously considering closing my Amazon account. I just don't like the way it does business any more. Can anyone recommend a good online bookseller in the UK? Is Waterstones any good? The Guardian is running a story [1] today about how Amazon forces publishers to cover the cost of 20% VAT (sales tax) on ebook sales, even though it only pays 3% to the Luxembourg government (where it…

Waterstones used to use Amazon to sell books (presumably they couldn't make any money any other way). Not sure if they still do. http://www.abebooks.co.uk/ is pretty good, particularly for difficult to find and second hand books. I've found more and more recently that play.com does almost as well as (and often better than) Amazon in terms of price, although I don't know much about their business tactics.

[deleted]

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#84

Post by hobbes »

rmc wrote: post #71
hobbes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did read the Terms and Conditions before you "bought" the books, didn't you? If you bought the books, you agreed [in the eyes of the law] to this kind of eventuality.. I'm as guilty of this kind of thing as well. We tend to assume an imaginary T&C that conforms to we think is fair when we buy things online - and we have to learn the hard way that the real T&C's are very much more dubious. Here's the relevant bit…

Laws trump contracts. You cannot sign away what the law says happened. It's just a matter of convincing a judge that you bought the book. They Amazon's T&Cs are irrelevant.

And, how, pray tell, will you convince the judge of that? You didn't purchase a book, as the T&C's make clear - the contents of which you agreed to by entering into the said agreement.

You paid applicable fees to enter into an agreement to view digital content. Nothing more. There was no purchase of a book.

Where's your evidence to the contrary?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#85

Post by aapl »

homeomorphic wrote: post #76
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #64

Its getting to the point where I am seriously considering closing my Amazon account. I just don't like the way it does business any more. Can anyone recommend a good online bookseller in the UK? Is Waterstones any good? The Guardian is running a story [1] today about how Amazon forces publishers to cover the cost of 20% VAT (sales tax) on ebook sales, even though it only pays 3% to the Luxembourg government (where it…

I find The Book Depository good, but I don't really know if they're good or evil. They're very pleasant doing business with, though.

The Book Depository is owned by Amazon too :)

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#86

Post by aw3c2 »

js951534 wrote: post #4

Pfft only more reason to use "free" websites for ebook downloads such as coinread.com

Warning: Neither legalreads.com nor coinread.com are legal free ebook sources, they are standard search engines for illegitimate downloads. js951534 repeatedly links to these sites.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#87

Post by shrikant »

scotty79 wrote: post #52
shrikant wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Kindle (wi-fi, w/ keyboard so 3rd gen, I think) for a little over two years, read tons on it, use the wireless delivery for Instapaper and such-like and have never bought an e-book from Amazon. Managing side-loaded content is quite simple with Calibre, but if you don't want to muck around too much with software, you can also just drag and drop books onto the Kindle as a mass storage device (but you would hav…

My usage of kindle is similar to yours. I just don't like the possibility of being locked out of the own device. I also like how the publicly developed software improves over time. I haven't seen any improvements for my Kindle (most likely same model as yours, but gsm) from Amazon.

Can they lock you out of physical usage of the Kindle, like a remote kill-switch of sorts? Scary, if true..

Fair point on the software improvement though -- you might want to look into Duokan, it seems to be really popular and adds native ePub support: http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=150175 (bonus if you like some aspects of the original OS: there's a tool that let's you switch between the two firmwares.)

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#88

Post by ljf »

js951534 wrote: post #40
ljf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked legalreads and it seems the site has now been closed.

try coinread.com then or any of the sites linked to on legalreads.com frontpage

Odd - I just get redirected to coinreads - no chance to view the legalreads page, which I then mistook for a domain squatters site. I see that it does infact work - though from the content it doesn't seem exactly 'legal'.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#90

Post by losvedir »

hobbes wrote: post #84
rmc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws trump contracts. You cannot sign away what the law says happened. It's just a matter of convincing a judge that you bought the book. They Amazon's T&Cs are irrelevant.

And, how, pray tell, will you convince the judge of that? You didn't purchase a book, as the T&C's make clear - the contents of which you agreed to by entering into the said agreement. You paid applicable fees to enter into an agreement to view digital content. Nothing more. There was no purchase of a book. Where's your evidence to the contrary?

> Where's your evidence to the contrary?

Oh, I don't know. Maybe when he visited the website of one of the largest retailers in the world, broke out his saved credit card like usual, and clicked the gigantic "Buy now with 1-Click" button?

I would love for this to get tested in court. Has it? My understanding (I'm not a lawyer, but heard this from a lawyer) is that the purpose of, say, signing a release form before playing paintball is not because it provides any real protection to the paintball company, but because it makes the signer less likely to sue.

I feel like maybe this is a similar situation? It seems very much like Amazon is "tricking" you into signing away the fact that you "bought" something since the whole experience of the site is devoted to making you think you're buying it. Throwing in a hidden paragraph at the end doesn't change everything.

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