Slashdot Mirror
Remote Kill Flags Surface In Kindle
PL/SQL Guy writes "The Kindle has a number of 'remote kill' flags built in to the hardware that, among other things, allow the text-to-speech function to be disabled at any time on a book-by-book basis. 'Beginning yesterday, Random House Publishers began to disable text-to-speech remotely. The TTS function has apparently been remotely disabled in over 40 works so far.' But what no one at Amazon will discuss is what other flags are lurking in the Kindle format: is there a 'read only once' flag? A 'no turning the pages backwards' flag?"
There, I said it. Kindle remotely made me do it!
Well, that's what you get for buying content instead of just copying it from pirate bay or whatever. Maybe it's time for us to finally learn our lesson?
Sometimes I wish Slashdot had a "baseless speculation" flag.
But what no one at Amazon will discuss is what other flags are lurking in the Kindle format: is there a "read only once" flag?
No. But there inside your home on your desk inside your kindle is a flag so vile, so full of hatred, so very <insert your opposing political party here> that when activated it will only let you read books from Oprah's Book Club.
My work here is dung.
Kindle: The iPhone of readers. Proprietary schemes rock.
The article doesn't talk about the Kindle's other technological back doors at all, so colour me disappointed.
Still, as a parent of an autistic child, I know how valuable the TTS function can be in our computer programs. As an author, I'm saddened that Amazon's rolled over on this for the publishers' and Author's Guild panic. TTS is not the same as an audiobook performance, nor does it have that possibility any time soon.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
I think the first is more likely - although the second could be useful in other ways (the Kindle could automatically correct errors in books as they are found).
I pre-ordered a Kindle DX. Thanks to the information in this article I have changed my mind and I'm now canceling my order. I would be stupid to pay $500 for a device that can be remotely crippled, when cheaper ebook readers give me full control. What was I thinking?
...and they are internet capable? I'm going to laugh my ass off when some hacker reduces every ebook on every Kindle in the world to a useless pile of bits.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I was going to get my wife a Kindle for her birthday. She asked, "What's the point? The books are almost as expensive, and I can't send them to my mom or sister when I'm done. And what happens when the hardware breaks, and I need to get a new one? I don't want to be forced to get a Kindle just because those are the books I bought before. Fuck 'em."
My wife, the non-geek. She gets it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I was a customer for over ten years. Spent well over ten thousand dollars there in books and other items. But for the last several years their customer support has declined, their partner businesses engage in numerous disreputable practices that mirror the abuses at ebay, their manipulation of book rankings on so-called adult material (gay), and they seem intent on monopolizing the epublishing trade. I closed my account and won't look back.
Yes, the Kindle-DX looks like a nice machine. But what one gives up in basic rights as a reader is more than enough to keep me buying used books printed on dead trees for some time. And I can always scan the books I buy to load on an ereader with less virulent DRM limitations and corporate controls. I own an iRex iLiad, that while not the best manufacturer, at least they offer a free Linux development environment to download and install. Users are hacking new software on that platform. Does anyone here expect Amazon to allow that? Not me.
BTW: closing my account with Amazon took several phone calls and numerous transfers from one department to the next. They don't like it when customers attempt to leave them and make the process as difficult as possible. Yet another reason to never give them my money again.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
This is a law suit waiting to happen if there is no disclosure that the books will have these "flags" at the time of purchase.
Buy a real book and then have it read to you by your girlfr... oh, wait, this is Slashdot. Ignore me :)
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
You don't think that having functionality removed from something you've bought, after the fact, is a problem?
This is a law suit waiting to happen if there is no disclosure that the books will have these "flags" at the time of purchase.
Big fucking deal. If history is any guide, the affected consumers will get a credit for $0.99 off their next purchase from Amazon while the law firm who initiated the lawsuit will walk away with millions. Amazon will just write it off as a cost of doing business and go right on screwing their customers, albeit this time with a disclaimer about the DRM flags clearly displayed in a 2pt font.
Call me cynical.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Can't one of those Blind Advocacy groups sue them for discrimination?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
You sound like an optimist to me
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Don't forget to direct your ire at Random House for doing this as well as Amazon for rolling over.
Call them and bitch.
http://www.randomhouse.com/about/contact.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And that's why my Kindle's flag will be a Jolly Roger.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
This is my post. I wrote it. Is is a creative and inventive work which benefits society at large. Moreover, it is a concrete example of intellectual property. This post, that you are reading right now, belongs to me. It is mine.
This post is mine in the same way that my house, or car or clothes are mine. These words that I have written are given as much protection as freedom of speech or to vote. They need it. If just anyone is allowed to come along and copy them, or alter them, or include them in another work without my permission, then it will be as though my right to speak freely has been taken away, or I have been disenfranchised.
If someone else reads these words without paying me, or worse sells them to others to read, I will have been robbed. It will be as if my home was burned down, or my family sold into slavery. An injustice of the highest order.
These words need protections. Strong protections. This post needs to be defended, even as it is copied endless and effortlessly across millions of computers, each recopying it hundreds of times, at negligible expense. The worth of these words is worth more than all the bits it occupies in cyberspace. Indeed, their worth is worth more than the worth of cyberspace, and even society itself.
For if these words, if this post cannot be afforded the most stringent, uncompromising and sacred protection that our society has to offer, then our society will not be worth the bits it is represented on. The reality of digital worldwide transmission must not be allowed to compromise the most fundamental rights we have. The protection of this post is a challenge which our civilization must meet, or else our civilization must fall.
This post and all related materials, Copyright © ObsessiveMathsFreak 2009.
All rights reserved, worldwide.
None of the materials provided in this post site may be used, reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or the use of any information storage and retrieval system, without express permission in writing from the author, along with suitable monetary compensation.
Unauthorized use of the materials in this post are subject to prosecution to the fullest exent allowable by law.
May the Maths Be with you!
the memento flag:
you can only read the chapters once and in reverse order only.
the pulp fiction flag:
chapter order is randomized
the Bedazzled flag:
last page is missing in mystery novels
the pat robertson flag:
all naughty words like "gay" and "damn" are changed to "homo" and "golly"
they also introduced several modes:
leet speak mode:
so your p4r3nts can't read over your shoulder.
The beevis and bottomhead flag:
all accidental double entedres are bolded (heh heh).
Ascii art mode
speed reading mode: the words disappear from the page at defined rate.
Controverial undocumented ebonics and hot coffee modes.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Do we need a "sensationalist" tag? Is CmdrTaco abusing his power as editor? What's stopping him from using these powers to spy on your Slashdot viewing habits? Will he kill your family and steal your very soul through your nose? And what about his wife? Why don't we ever hear about her? What's she got to hide?
All very suspicious. Terrifying, you might say...
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
That's a great point, and really drives to the heart of the problem with this stuff. Someone needs to start suing for misleading advertising, whatever laws cover that.
I'm sure they have a TOS that says they can come by and bang your mom whenever they want, but hopefully the courts will call BS on that.
To be somewhat fair to Amazon (and Apple, and so on) they're not exactly the boogeymen here. Obviously Amazon thinks automated text-to-speech isn't a "performance" and should be included and allowed in all works. But the content owners are saying "disable text to speech or we pull our works". Just like the music labels with DRM.
We know for a fact that the content owner's are serious - they think they have a monopoly, and would rather make their content unavailable than to make it available in the form customers want.
Perhaps Amazon is even sitting back praying that a customer will sue them for disabling/removing text-to-speech so that they can point their finger at a court when telling the publishers "We can't disable text to speech".
AFAIK Amazon clearly wants to have text-to-speech enabled for all books. It's the publishers (and their threat to remove works if speech is enabled) you should be mad at. Amazon is trying their damnedest to make a compelling ebook product, and like Apple with iTunes, trying to drag the publisher's kicking and screaming onto the internet.
Like music, I expect once the market is there, people will demand the functionality (or pirate for it, or sue for it) and it will become commonplace.
If Amazon took a high and mighty moral stand, they would just be killing the market (and their own business opportunity) and letting another eBook maker who WILL compromise their morals take over the market.
At least we know Amazon is trying to open things up as much as they can.
The following was from the first paragraph of the email:
I've requested a refund for "NAME OF BOOK OMITTED". Issuing a refund also removes access to the file. If the item is still on your Kindle, please delete that copy. After the refund is issued, you will no longer be able to access it.
Well, I watched for it, and not only was access to the file removed, The file is no longer present.
Amazon has the Kill-switch ability to delete content. I am going to assume they have the ability to delete my personal content I add to through the USB.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
AFAIK Amazon clearly wants to have text-to-speech enabled for all books. It's the publishers (and their threat to remove works if speech is enabled) you should be mad at.
If Amazon wants us to direct our ire towards the publishers, then they should have come clean about these flags before selling the Kindle. Except, wait... then it would have flopped, and hard. Instead, they pulled a bait and switch fraud on their customers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This story was important to me. My wife wants to buy one of these and as long as stories like this come out I'll encourage her to buy the paper copies.
In my house this isn't sensationalist, it's a story about DRM and Amazons growing use of it.
You don't think that having functionality removed from something you've bought, after the fact, is a problem?
This is the big issue for me.
Say I'm shopping for a new toaster. There's all sorts of toasters on the market, lots of good models to choose from. Ultimately I decide to buy one specifically because it has a built-in bagel slicer... But not just any bagel slicer - it's some kind of high-powered laser bagel slicer.
But, after I buy the thing, lawsuits start cropping up. Kids are sticking their fingers in the thing and getting them sliced off. Traditionally manufacturers have done a recall if something like this happened... Or issued a warning... Or designed new packaging that indicates it isn't kid-safe... Or redesigned the product so that kids can't stick their fingers in it...
Not anymore though. These days they'd just send the kill signal and disable the laser bagel slicer. Suddenly my toaster, which I bought specifically for the bagel slicer, has no bagel slicer.
A key feature that made me buy that product, instead of another, is gone. A feature that may have made one product cost more than another, is gone. A feature that I liked and used, is gone.
I definitely have a problem with that.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
This is old news. The whole brouhaha over this happened months ago. The Kindle 2 came out, with text-to-speech. The Author's Guild whined like little babies claiming it would reduce audiobook sales (presumably they also want to charge you for reading to your kids.) They wanted the functionality removed completely. Amazon reached a compromise, that publishers could opt-out by requesting that it be disallowed on their books.
There's no point getting your panties in a bunch *now*. The horse is out of the barn. Nor is Amazon the one to complain to. The publishers and the Author's Guild are the ones to complain to.
If anything, Amazon deserves credit for putting the feature in in the first place without restrictions. Given their business model, you might have expected them to proactively design the feature to the publishers' requirements long before it was released. They might have been like Microsoft who preemptively crippled the Zune's sharing feature.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
It should be considered to be theft on a massive scale. What else would we call it when A deprives B of something that they paid for fair and square?
The problem with "buying" digital content these days is that the only way you can legally purchase it is by agreeing to 50 pages of legalese that basically strip you of any rights you could possibly have with regard to the information you're buying. Thus, you are giving them money without any assurance that you'll actually be able to make any use of what you're buying. Nice racket they've got going, huh?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
To me, this flagging ability should be viewed as a good thing.
All books should be available from the library FOR FREE. You go to the library, you borrow the book, and you return it in two weeks. You can re-check it out again for another 2 weeks if you want.
This flagging ability COULD allow this to be done without driving to the library. You COULD use this to NEVER buy a book. You simply "check it out" for 2 weeks and then it vanishes.
Now I'm skeptical that it will ever be allowed to work this way, but this is the way such devices SHOULD work. If I can go check out a physical copy for 2 weeks, why not a digital copy? If it's free, I don't mind if it vanishes in 2 weeks, just like a library loan would.
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
No. The customer is right unless them being right interferes with another, bigger customer being right. Or it interferes with a number of other customers being right. That's the way it really works.
The way it should work is, the customer is only right if they are not wrong. In most of Europe, if you go into an establishment looking to have your butt smooched and every single one of your sniffy little needs met, you will be shown the door rather than letting you waste the employee's and other customer's time.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The entire reason we bought Kindles was the text to speech function. Our school teaches dyslexic kids and any technology that allows these kids to read ANY book, whether or not an audio book version is available, is extremely useful.
Without unlimited text to speech kindles are reduced, from a useful teaching tool, to simply a nifty gadget. Without TTS, there is very little to justify the cost of these over other e-book readers.
Good job Amazon! You've just allowed your book publishers to kill a potentially HUGE market for these things - schools.
-ted
From the Kindle Content Return Policy:
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search