I think I'll stick with my physical media, thank you very much!!


http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/amazon-kindle-1984/

Short version:

Mobilereference sold 1984 while it's still copyrighted and not being the copyright holders.

The copyright holders contacted Amazon.

Amazon deleted the copies off the Kindles and refunded the purchase price to customers.

That's not what the article says. It cites publisher change of heart.

Don't believe everything you read

Thread at mobileread.com (not to be confused with MobileReference):

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51167

I don't.

I thought you were summarizing the article and simply made a mistake (since you didn't cite anything at the time).

So what

After purchase a party changing its mind and taking away YOUR PROPERTY (I dont give a fuck what the EULA says) is bullshit

That does it

No kindle for me ever

I believe the solution should have been:

-Removal of the item from the kindle store by amazon.
-Customers (who purchased it in good-faith) get to keep product.
-Retainer of IP rights sues and recovers profits from existing sales and damages.

EDIT: That's assuming that what Deb said is true. Sorry, Deb, I don't feel like looking through the thread you linked to.

As in


every other retail fuck up ever?

Someone at Mobileread gave this example:

You have a Lexus. Someone steals it. That person sells it to a third person. The police find the third person. Who does the car belong to? YOU.

I see nothing wrong with it since they refunded the purchase price.

That example is inapposite. The property that is owned in your example is tangible, the car. The property owned in the case of 1984 is a right, the right to publish it. The right was violated; that doesn't mean tangible property was stolen.

Wow, that's actually a word! Learn something new every day.

Wow, this is like something out of George Orwell novel.

It really is just like Animal Farm isn't it?

That's why I don't go for any sort of downloadable media- suppose all movies were only available through download, and then Disney kept doing the moratorium thing with their classics, putting them out just for a few months every few years. That would mean they'd be able to stop you from being able to watch those movies while they were off the market, whereas now as long as you have an old copy you can watch it forever.

Man, I hate these kinds of legal issues. It's annoying like when a song was on a tv show, and tv show makes it to dvd, then song owner complains. Neither side budges and DVDs are taken off shelf while fans moan.

That's kind of scary that they can remotely delete a book from your device.

Soul-less corporations need more customers like you.

Accepting, arguendo, this line of reasoning, you're papering over the real issue here -- Amazon has the power to reach into your Kindle and delete books that you purchased. Even if you think Amazon's actions were justified in this particular case, do you trust them to never use this power in a way you disagree with? Do you trust that if they ever decide the ebook business isn't taking off, that the books you "purchased" won't suddenly disappear? That's pretty much what happened the last time they tried it -- they shut down the authorization servers, so you couldn't transfer your ebooks to a new device.

so, did you get refunded, twice, one for each kindle?

This is going to stop me from getting a Kindle, until at least I can store my purchases on my own medium, far away from grabby vendors.

The Kindle never appealed to me to begin with. I'd much rather have a physical copy of any medium. This type of story just reaffirms that.

Imagine how pissed you'd be if you were most of the way through the book, and then it got taken away.

What appealed to me was the convenience and ease of book browsing and purchase. I wasn't aware of the ease of losing your books

So you can't back up a Kindle on another source?

I think it would be great if everyone who had a Kindle returned theirs as defective with the reason listed as "Woke up this morning and my copies of 1984 and Animal Farm were gone!" I think Amazon would get the message pretty quick.

But yes, the idea that Amazon can at any time remove books you've purchased (even if they give a refund) is enough for me to never buy a Kindle. I do have the Kindle app on my iPhone, but only use it for free books.

What a huge mistake by Amazon. People are already hesitant to switch to digital media (music is the only format that has really started to transition), and actions like this just solidify that reluctance. Now they have an even bigger fight ahead because people will always cite this as an example.

Looks like they have said this won't happen again

http://mashable.com/2009/07/17/amazon-remote-delete/