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Jeff Bezos Offers Apology For Erasing 1984
levicivita writes "From the down-but-not-out NYT comes an article (warning: login may be required) about user backlash against Kindle's embedded DRM: 'Last week, Jeffrey P. Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa to customers whose digital editions of George Orwell's "1984" were remotely deleted from their Kindle reading devices. Though copies of the books were sold by a bookseller that did not have legal rights to the novel, Mr. Bezos wrote on a company forum that Amazon's "'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."' Bezos's post is here."
Amazon has refunded their customers according to the article, but if I was halfway through a book and it got deleted from my device I would be very annoyed. To me it seems that the better solution would be for Amazon to arrange the correct rights from the copyright holder and arrange some form of deal to make sure that those who have a copy of the book on their Kindle can continue to use it or receive a new copy with the proper rights and at no cost. In the end, the material was offered through their service and they do have responsibility to their customers, even if it is not illegal for them to use this solution.
The apology posted from Mr. Bezos sounds heartfelt indeed. I wonder how this will be handled in future incidents like this one. Unfortunately, in the Netherlands we do not have access to the Kindle. But even with the risks of allowing Amazon to retain control to remotely delete items you have purchased I would definitely be a customer for the device. I suppose that with products like these you have to decide whether you trust a supplier or not.
is out of the bag now Bezos
i was interested in a DX but now ill just get a laptop
this is yet another reason not to buy a kindle, how many other geeks out there feel same way now ?
"'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."
You forgot ironic. The big brother connotations on this scandal makes the whole story somewhat funny even.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
.....Amazon's "'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles."' So how the hell did this ever happen then? What kind of brain-fart does someone have to have to make this seem like it was ever going to end well?
It would be 1984 they do this to. To quote Bart Simpson "The ironing is delicious".
Cruise TT
Just got a lot cooler with a hot gadget like the Kindle.
used book store
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If Amazon truly wanted to fix their mistake, they would restore the book to the affected Kindles (and work out a deal with the rightholders themselves, maybe).
Unless Amazon sees to it that the last thing remotely deleted is their ability to remotely delete, their "apology" is just so much eloquent PR posturing.
Even if this was entirely a screwup on the part of the bookseller (though, doesn't Amazon check such things before selling the books?), the fact that Amazon is willing to delete product in this way is telling. I wondered if we'd get a memo that read something like:
"We apologise for the sacking of your books. Those responsible for sacking your books, have been sacked."
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
1984 declared non-purchase.
Read is thoughtcrime.
Doublethink. Just get the customers to think that there never was such a book, and that they hadn't read it half way through.
If this is out of line with Amazon's principles, then why does the technology to remotely delete books exist?
It makes me very very sad that people are still so naive that they believe that he "feels bad". The only thing he feels bad about is that he might have lost future Kindle sales.
I don't know how many times people need to have this proven to them before they accept it: corporations do not care about anything other than the amount of money they make. They don't care about the customers. They really, really don't!!! Oh, they were nice to you on the phone? Guess why! Because they don't want to lose future sales to you.
Interestingly, the "quote" at the bottom of this page is very very apropos: "The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind. -- H.L. Mencken"
Here's a dump of the protocol Kindle uses to communicate with the Amazon servers:
times 17.3.84 bb speech malreported africa rectify
times 19.12.83 forecasts 3 yp 4th quarter 83 misprints verify current issue
times 14.2.84 miniplenty malquoted chocolate rectify
times 3.12.83 reporting bb dayorder doubleplusungood refs unpersons rewrite fullwise upsub antefiling
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
If you really want to restore faith in your customers how about completely unlocking their kindles and let them decide what they do and do not delete? Or perhaps that's too much heart for Bezos.
I doubt he'd have a single "heartfelt" thing to say if he wasn't dragged over the hot coals of the net.
Does the message of the book really scare them that much. Next they will erase "Animal Farm" and "Brave New World" Will we be saying, "Oh that's ironic too?"
Repeat after me: Death to DRM. Terminate all instances of DRM in all cases. The user's content is the user's fair use. Resist DRM until death
Oh, how convenient: a theory about God that doesn't involve looking through a telescope.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
totally apropos, making a PERFECT example of the travesty that is DRM, by deleting a selection that could not serve more perfectly as a dénouement to this entire issue.
HEY BEZOS: PEOPLE OWN WHAT THEY PAY FOR.
kulakovich
The statement, from Amazon's Drew Herdener, reads:
These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books...When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers....
We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.
As highlighted by the WSJ, the case draws attention to an expectation gap between real books and their digital counterparts: the latter is simply a license to read the content on your device.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
... until they can convince me beyond reasonable doubt that they removed the ability to delete books on their customer's devices.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Perhaps it's my advanced state of sleeplessness, but I swear I just read that as 'Bozo Offers Apology for Erasing 1984.' Anyways, an apology is hardly going to rebuild the trust he lost with his Kindle customers through these actions. He has made Amazon.com the laughing stock of the industry!
Demented But Determined.
I'm sure Mr. Bezos can afford advisors who know that that is the key to "sincerity" and can coach him on how to achieve it.
However, they still consciously and deliberately designed their system so as to allow them to remove material from Kindle owners' machines without their knowledge or permission. Why would anyone trust a company that would do that? Have they removed that functionality and explained why it was there in the first place?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Slightly offtopic, but many people don't know Orwell's original introduction to the Animal Farm was censored because it was anti-Soviet. It's a telling sign of how easy it is to get the entire media to wholly invest in obvious lies at the order of government and business interests. The enemy of my enemy...
The servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda from 1941 onwards would be quite astounding if it were not that they have behaved similarly on several earlier occasions. On one controversial issue after another the Russian viewpoint has been accepted without examination and then publicized with complete disregard to historical truth or intellectual decency. To name only one instance, the BBC celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Red Army without mentioning Trotsky. This was about as accurate as commemorating the battle of Trafalgar without mentioning Nelson, but it evoked no protest from the English intelligentsia. In the internal struggles in the various occupied countries, the British press has in almost all cases sided with the faction favoured by the Russians and libelled the opposing faction, sometimes suppressing material evidence in order to do so.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/Orwell.html
If it's true that the publisher of the book had no legal right to publish the work, then this is nothing more than an electronic recall-and-destroy that all publishers and distributors have to go through once in a blue moon. Although I'm not at all interested in a device that can remotely delete my content without my permission, in this particular instantance it's not really the fault of Amazon or the DRM so much as technological progress in general. At least it's not an instance of the publisher deciding retroactively to yoink electronic rights to the work.
Still, damned unfortunate and/or stupid of Amazon to include the function in the first place, as it likely gives them ltitle wiggle room. If you've got the ability to recall unauthorized works, then the legal system can make you use them.
Though 1984 isn't a bad choice, Fahrenheit 411 would have been ever better.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Talk is cheap, and it costs nothing to apologise. Clearly, this is an attempt to mollify angry customers, and nothing more. This is rather typical of Amazon's contempt for their customers. They've demonstrated through their actions -- imposing odious DRM on their paying customers, and setting a dangerous precedent for Big Content to rape their customers at will -- that they cannot be trusted.
Trust is very hard to build and very easy to destroy. I will not spend a red cent with Amazon again.
Interestingly, beyond Jeff's cheap talk, they seem to be showing very little remorse. All my enquiries to their "customer" "service" contact either get a form letter, or are ignored entirely. Likewise, my requests to them to close my account have been ignored.
Amazon doesn't deserve your business. Don't shop with Amazon, and spend your money with book retailers who show their customers at least a token amount of respect.
Jeff Bezos is wrong, Amazon's "'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles." is not a correct statement. DRM use was " the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.". OK, maybe not out of line with their principles, they are the purveyors of the 1-click patent if you recall.
As it just goes to show, if you pay for digital media, you get screwed. If you pirate it, you get a demonstrably and provably better product, albeit an illegal one. Then again, should you exercise your fair use rights to say, move it to a different device like your phone, you are being just as illegal, so is there a difference? Oh yeah, about $7.99.
So, here is a heartfelt response to Mr. Bezos: Jeff, if you are serious about caring for your customers, lose the DRM entirely. If not, you are nothing more than a hypocritical patent troll trying to polish your halo in public after getting caught doing something unsavory.
-Charlie
A wise person once said "sometimes it is easier to seek forgiveness than permission". I think that we are seeing that phrase in action.
what they need to apologize for is creating the technology that allowed them to remotely delete books.
what's next? remotely editing history books?
OK, Amazon trespassed on your device and stole a book (or two) from you ... if you took them to court could you substantiate a claim for any monetary damages other than the price you paid for the book(s)?
The Kindle's not a computer system where you could (try to) put forward a claim that the intrusion required you to audit everything you kept on it to determine what other damage the trespassor did.
The number of people who agree/disagree with the 'helpfulness' of some of the comment seem very skewed to me. Comments that make sense, "do not delete books from the device in the future" only have around 60% approval. Most of comments are just people fawning over Bezos and the Kindle.
Those circumstances being when the books 1984 or Animal Farm are submitted improperly to our service. In all other cases, we will have no hesitation to delete material from our^H^H^Hyour Kindle.
Regards, The Management
Or so DRM advocates would have you believe. Copyright law just doesn't read that way. A copy of the book existed on the users' device before Amazon removed it. Amazon destroyed those copies. It's more practical for them to do this than for them to burn customer copies of real books they sold, but it's no different in terms of copyrigh tlaw.
GIGAPEDIA
No.
Without order, nothing can exist. Without chaos, nothing can be created.
If you don't like the way that Amazon runs it's Kindle program then don't buy one. I'm sure the impact of the 1984 incident will impact Amazon sales of new Kindles. Or, maybe consumers will chalk it up to life at the bleeding edge and the incident won't affect sales. Either way, any consumer's relationship with Kindle is a voluntary one. If it gets abusive because of Amazon's practices then sales will slow and a competitor with more consumer friendly terms will jump in and be rewarded.
Well, I have a DX, but the only thing I've been reading on it so far is PDFs. Haven't spent a penny on content from the Kindle store. I did try a sample just to see how it rendered. But as to this article, here's what I posted at another site:
An important issue, but not a great write-up. The author claims that "tethered systems provide significant advantages to the consumer. Companies can keep their own records of what people buy and restore the content if it is inadvertently lost," but neglects to mention that one of the most widely-used DRM platforms, the iTunes store, had no such mechanism for restoring lost purchases (and as far as I know, they still don't, despite dropping the DRM but maintaining records of purchases).
Also, Prof. Picker's comment that "âoeBecause copyright infringement [sic] was poor and lax in the offline world, it should also be that way in the online world? I donâ(TM)t understand that logic,â simply fails to grasp that the only way copyright has functioned at all for the past few centuries has been with poor and lax enforcement. Perfect enforcement comes with too many costs; just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
for "wasting my time" going to a brick and mortar book store, perusing the catalogs of new and used books. Maybe it's just me but there's noting like the feeling of a buying a new (to me) paperback, reading it and having the freedom to pass it along to someone else who may enjoy it just as much as I did.
Buying books from Amazon is convenient but doesn't compare to spending an hour or two in a Barnes and Noble.
This system gives too many rights to the owner of the system and too few to the owner of the product. I would totally avoid this product. Reminds me of Microsoft WGA and how a local church had its computer turned off because someone had pirated its software key. I can't see how Bezos can sell something and then tell you its stolen without any consequences to him? What about his responsibility as a major retailer to due diligence?
Is it just me, or did he use too many adjectives (and adverbs) to be even remotely believable? The line about "scar tissue from this painful mistake" was where I threw up in my mouth a little bit.
For me, the "apology" doesn't sound heartfelt at all. It is easily written, doesn't cost much and makes good PR.
Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of chances before
But I'm not gonna give anymore
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
Cause part of me knows what you're thinkin'
[...]
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that
I can read your mind, I can read your mind
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
You can read the book free this web site. http://www.george-orwell.org/1984
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
We got it the first time, Jeff B.
What kind of name is Bezos anyway?
The right of first sale, The purchaser bought the book in good faith. The seller, who sold illegally can turn over the list of people they sold that book to, and the police can track down all those people and confiscate their kindles while an expert deletes the book from each of them. If the consumers had purchased dead tree copies of the book that Amazon had sold illegally, Amazon would not be allowed to trespass into each person's house and remove the book. So why is it that they are allowed to trespass into our digital property and steal (as in I paid and had it, now I don't) from us?
Unfortunately, that would be costly and expensive, so instead they just overstep their bounds and deleted the files themselves. While claiming that the customers had only purchased a revocable license to read the content of the book.
Personally, I'd really like to see some of these cases of license to view content vs sale of property get into a court. Because as it stands now, consumers are on the significantly shorter end of the stick. Heck I'd love to see Congress be proactive, but the odds of that happening are about slim to nil.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Dose anyone find it funny that it was a book about "Big Brother" that was instantly deleted right out of the hands of those that owned it?
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Having the ability is not the main problem.
They may have the ability. But do they and should they have the legal right to do so?
Hackers have all sorts of abilities. They have the right to break into their own computers and delete their own data. But it's illegal in most countries for them to do it to other people's computers without permission.
So in this case:
1) Are all the Kindles owned by Amazon?
2) Is it reasonable to consider that the Kindle buyers have given Amazon the permission to do what they did?
3) Was the content/data illegally sold by Amazon or by someone else?
If Amazon was just providing a payment service like "Visa/Mastercard" and a shopping mall for shop owners to sell their stuff in, I don't see how that gives Amazon the right to stick their nose in other people's businesses and delete that content, just because it happens to be illegal. Go call the cops, or kickout the shop owners.
It's a different thing if the customers wanted to return the book for a refund (because somehow due to a screw up the wrong book was downloaded), then Amazon provides a "goods return and refunding" service for the customers and the shopowners to _voluntarily_ use.
I can hire a locksmith to go break into my house to return a book I took by mistake. But I'd be rather pissed off if the department store gets their guys over to do the same thing when I didn't ask them to.
Leave the breaking, entering and confiscation to the cops. Then at least we only need to worry about and keep an eye over just one bunch of thugs.
At the rate things go maybe in the future a General Genetic's franchisee might gene modify your wife, but then General Genetics sends thugs to "downgrade" her because they made a mistake. And go after your kids when they find out you had children - unauthorized reproduction of General Genetic's property.
So if Amazon has stepped out of line, they need to be smacked for it. You cannot just "leave it to the market", leaving it to the market means those with the most money have the most votes.
This is why the Kindle is doomed or will have to change it's ideas on DRM.
Apple is already underway in talks with publishers regarding their tablet which will be out by Christmas. Apple realizes how DRM screws with their business model. Besides, I know I would rather have an Apple product to read with instead of an overpriced, one horse pony that the Kindle is.
Corporate lawyers are doing their best to ignore the parts of copyright law that allow one to sell digital content and let the owner of a copy to use it, and even resell the copy as long as they retain no copy of their own. Even though Amazon pretends to be "selling" digital books, their lawyers write license agreements that give you a limited right to access the content. In effect they are using contract law to work around the parts of copyright law they don't like. It doesn't matter that selling copies to customers under the terms dictated by copyright law worked perfectly well for hundreds of years, they don't want to do that any more.
"acted stupidly"
Would you agree, President Obama?
>
When will they ever learn that DRM just means defective by design?
I wonder... if the collective damage done by this erasure adds up to $5000, does that make it a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Is he going to blubber like this every time it happens from now on? Or do you think this one's got him covered?
While your apology is appreciated, it does not compensate me, the buyer, of non-monetary losses of your action. I must therefore insist that we be treated as equal business partners and we get the right to reverse the transaction of buying the Kindle from Amazon. And get prompt refund. Sincerely, Mr.Not-Unreasonable
Ditch the kindle, buy a sony ereader,
Log into an undernet server in IRC and download whatever you want free.
Profit
WOW. What else can Amazon do to your Kindle. Bet there has to be a lot more their CONTROL can do, too. NOW WHY would anyone want that.
This looks like time again to AVOID the Kindle and maybe other products with closed source software, Vote with your $ and brains. :(
Scanned the blog with the CEO's "apology". Can't believe that so many people actually like Amazon controlling their readers??? Surely the Kindle didn't attract all and only naive people, did it.??? So it would look like the big "A" is controlling the blog also. :(
A disgusting example of "you got it but we still really own it, though we required you to pay". And on top of that the CEO blames a "third party"?? Kind of strange on top of stupid.
The former and the later are both merely licenses. When you buy a book you have only limited rights to the IP contained therin. Copyright owners would prefer that you have no rights to things like resale or library donation, but the courts have ruled that some rights cannot be waived without a signed contract.
eBooks are exactly the same, except that the courts have not yet ruled as to which rights can be waived.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Simply do not buy Kindle . Buy books or a "netbook" with PDF reader.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved his Kindle...
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Or so DRM advocates would have you believe. Copyright law just doesn't read that way.
[Citation Needed] When I go into a shop and buy a book, I do not sign a licence agreement, I go to the cashier and say "I want to buy this book" and they accept some money in return. That constitutes purchasing the *book*, not a licence to the contents of the book. I did not purchase the copyright to the contents, so copyright law dictates that I can't make copies of the contents (except in certain explicitly allowed ways) but that doesn't detract from the fact that I purchased the actual book and can do whatever I like with it within the confines of the law - this includes reselling it, burning it or using it as cat litter.
Conversely, when you buy an eBook from Amazon, or a DRMed song from iTunes, you are purchasing a licence to use the content, not the content itself. The licence you are agreeing to contains many restrictions over and above what you would have if you had actually purchased the item instead of a licence, such as prohibiting reselling and allowing the licence to be revoked in the future.
It's more practical for them to do this than for them to burn customer copies of real books they sold, but it's no different in terms of copyrigh tlaw.
I'm pretty sure that if Amazon broke into my house, removed a book I had purchased and burned it then they would be guilty of breaking and entering, criminal damage and probably a number of other laws, whether or not they refunded my money.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
War is peace!
Freedom is slavery!
Ignorance is strength!
[the] 'solution' to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles
Principles aren't something that you talk about, they are something that you do.
And Amazon certainly stood behind it's principles when it wiped the book, by acting.
The only thing Amazon is upset about is the backlash from consumers against their actual principles.
So, they go on to say "oh, no! we REALLY have these different principles, pay no attention to what we actually did".
You have to wonder if Jeff actually wrote it, or if the PR and marketing departments had their hand in the piece. That would be another "principle" derived from actions. Perhaps a good writing fingerprint program could tell you...
Regards.
There are laws that make what Amazon did illegal! In California it is penal code 502. Under Federal Law it is the Computer Fraud and Trespass Act. They accessed a computing device and destroyed data.
Fight Spammers!
As mentioned in the article, the Free Software Foundation is calling on Amazon to release the Kindle's software as free software, and drop the DRM: http://www.fsf.org/news/amazon-apologizes. The Kindle is already a GNU/Linux system running largely free software -- it would be a short step for them to do so, and the only real way to make sure this or something like it doesn't happen again. This is, after all, the 3rd time in a year they have pulled something like this, despite supposedly being sorry each time.
I don't have a Kindle. However, when I go to the page of a Kindle edition on the Amazon website, I am presented with an offer to purchase the book. There's even a button to push to pop up "How Buying Works"... which states "Your _purchase_ will be sent automatically and wirelessly to the Kindle via Amazon Whispernet." (emphasis mine) What then happens is Amazon transmits the book to your Kindle, where a new copy is made. That copy, on your Kindle, is yours.
Indeed, they would, but none of those are copyright law.
Bezos is sorry that this blunder called the integrity of his platform in question and that he stands to lose billions in sales. He is sorry that people will now look more seriously at other E-book readers, devices that aren't as closed and controlled as his product. He is really sorry that his company committed this blunder with one of the most iconic books of the 20th century.
Bezos is really sorry that his attempts to sucker people into his DRM-laden platform and control everything about how they obtain and use information are now a little more difficult.
We get it. Really.
Sounds very Orwellian of him to go into a persons device and remotely delete a file like that...
And who's going to apologies for switching the original Eurithmics soundtrack in the original movie to anotherone in the DVD Noth American release but still crediting the original artists for this very bad surrogate and worst, not telling anyone about this as if... like in the novel...????
there was a place where you could borrow any book you wanted for free as long as you promise to take good care of it and return it in a timely manner.
>>>gap between real books and their digital counterparts: the latter is simply a license to read the content on your device.
In other words you're merely RENTING the book for an undetermined length of time. Therefore we customers should be paying *rental* rates not purchase rates (which also includes the right of resale on the used market).
I think businesses like amazon are taking advantage of this confusion, letting customers believe they "own" the downloaded books and charging full price for them, when in reality it's just a temporary rental which can be deleted at any time.
I'll stick with physical books, thank you.
At least I can resell them and recover 80-90% of my money.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Frying pan, meet fire.
I've been reading DRM-free eBooks on my PDA since 2000. There's no reason to spend more on a restricted dedicated book reader instead.
I always viewed Big Brother is a kindly grandfather type who told a lot of lies.
If the public is ever going to see and understand what DRM is, and the danger it represents, we need more incidents like this. Especially incidents noteworthy enough to get mainstream media coverage. As things stand now, the average electronic device user has no clue about DRM. Articles and issues like this can hopefully change this... eventually.
If Amazon really cared about their customers, they'd remove the facility that allows them to delete user content from user devices.
Even the capacity is unthinkable. Amazon is always trying to see just how much invasiveness they can get away with.
There are other aggregators out there . . .
Sadly this shows the real problem w/DRM solutions. The customer is never the 'owner' of the device, and either Amazon or an increasingly intrusive government (take ur pick) can demand not only the 'renters' reading habits, but can censor them as well. As a concerned consumer I shall NEVER purchase a device that I do not have full control over. Perhaps the Kindle should be leased w/this understanding.
Here's what I would have posted if Amazon's website would have let me: (apparently I have to buy from the US branch to count in this discussion... no wonder it is a lovefest....)
I am not a fan of any technology which lets a retailer rethink their decision to sell me something post-facto and then decide to yank back that product. In the first place, this simply sets a bad precedent. In the second place, it shows poor foresight and procedure. In the third place, it is a crappy way to resolve the problem.
If someone had sold copies of an illegal paper book, how would this have been resolved? Certianly the move that Amazon pulled with the Kindle would not have been possible unless they have teams of black ops people sneaking into houses, stealing back the offending copies, and leaving a cheque like the tooth fairy. Some other mechanism of return would be required or Amazon would have had to resolve the matter directly with the original rights holder, perhaps by simply writing them a check for the N copies of the book that went out and were unlikely to be recovered.
This 'surreptitious return' was only possible because of invasive Kindle technology and has no amalgam in the actual tangible goods market. THAT is my root problem with this situation - it displays once and for all that the user is no longer buying a tangible physical good, simply a license to use something. This is like having a paper book show up wrapped in shrink wrap with a EULA at the front. Is that on the horizon soon? If not, then why should the consumers condone and support any product/policy that tries to inflict this in the e-book market?
Amazon should not have this capability in their e-book reader period. E-books should be treated analogously to real books, as if they were a tangible physical good. In this event, Amazon would have had to either simply deal with the issue financially with the rights holder or attempt a voluntary recall which would have involved concious choice from the various book owners. They might have had to incentivize the book owners to return the copies. Instead, the pulled a midnight raid on the e-book libraries. Not only should this not have happened, the capability for it should never have existed in the first place.
As to the apology: So far, without tangible actions to back it up and some profound changes in how the Kindle works, all I see is a CEO doing some PR damage control. Mr. Bezos may even mean what he says, but unless the Kindle itself is changed to render this sort of involuntary recall impossible and unless e-books begin to be treated like tangible books, this apology is meaningless.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I've never understood why people would pay Amazon to *rent* what they can already borrow from the Library for *free*.
Oh, you thought you bought Orwell's 1984? Silly reader, haven't you heard of DRM? The only books you buy from Amazon are the dead-tree variety with shipping charges.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Nineteen Eighty Four
Someday they won't let you
Now you must agree
The times they are a telling
And the changing isn't free
You read it in the tea leaves
And the tracks are on TV
Beware the Savage Jaw
In Nineteen Eighty Four
They'll split your pretty cranium
And fill it full of air
They'll tell you that you're eighty
And really you won't care
You'll be shooting up on everything
Tomorrow's never there
Beware the Savage Jaw
In Nineteen Eighty Four
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Conversely, when you buy an eBook from Amazon, or a DRMed song from iTunes, you are purchasing a licence to use the content, not the content itself.
That is false. Amazon is presenting the transaction as a sale, not a license. Courts have already ruled on similar cases. When you buy an eBook from Amazon, you own that copy the same way you own a read book from the bookstore. The whole "is it a license or a sale" question has already been answered by the court system.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
Now if it had been Misner, Wheeler and Thorne, you could understand why people would need an additional copy that was easier to read in bed.
Squirrel!
Like his "apparently" heartfelt opposition to patent abuse, which was followed by the exact sort of patent litigation (not "defensive" in any way at all) that is usually characterized as patent abuse.
In short, the guy's a habitual liar, of course what he says is "apparently heartfelt".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Most people don't see the danger in adopting a device that is under the control of a third party, especially one that is for-profit. Perhaps when average Joe has his books remotely deleted, he will realize what I've always known... that any kind of remote kill-switch is ALWAYS a bad idea.
People should get over their infatuation with shiny things and start doing research before purchasing the latest DRM device.
The problem I had with the Kindle all along is that Amazon has the ability to delete my purchases. Doesn't matter if they reimburse me, or if they feel really really bad about it afterwards, it was the ability to delete something I had purchased that was troubling, even if they never actually used the feature. Now, they have. It doesn't matter why, or that users got compensated, or that Mr. Bezos feels really really really bad about it.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The real question of DRM is who owns it? You want to suppress books, can you afford to buy out Amazon and just erase them wholesale? That is the real question of DRM - Can you own the provider of it?
This is the same reason that spam blockers have so much trouble going up against rich spammers and the dumbass court system that makes you spend tens to hundreds of thousands to prove your innocence against harassment lawsuits. Why hasn't the RIAA just purchased Peer Guardian and killed it?
It's hard to fight money with idealism when the system is tilted against you.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Would you happen to have any supporting evidence that it was actively censored because the publisher either loved the Soviets, or feared the government? (And simultaneously is brave enough to publish a thinly veiled attack on the Soviet form of government but cowardly enough to refuse to publish a screed about publishers and "intelligentsia" loving that same government?)
I think we can agree: Orwell wrote that text as a proposed preface to Animal Farm. It did not appear in early, or indeed most, printings of Animal Farm. But was it censorship because of a love of Soviet Russia? I don't think you can support that claim.
Given the book was originally refused by four publishers, including "Two [that] had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and [another that] had no noticeable political colour," it seems entirely plausible that the preface was rejected for other reasons. Perhaps the publisher felt it was a hamfisted introduction to an otherwise (relatively) subtle book. It's possible they refused it because they generally felt the book was better without it. They might have felt the book might be more widely read and the anti communist message spread without it. It's entirely possible Orwell agreed with these decisions. The page you linked to has no supporting claims, only mentioning the idea that it was "censored" in passing. Some quick checking around fails to turn up any evidence for the theory of active suppression by a publisher.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Therefore the content (the book) is not defined as software, and therefore the content, in their own words, is OWNED not licensed. For those who had this book removed, you have been stolen from and should press charges. If someone breaks into your house, takes your PS3, and leaves $400 cash where it was, does that mean they are not stealing?
On the other hand, if you bought a PS3 from someone who didn't legally own it in the first place, it's not a valid sale, and you don't really own the PS3 either. You're not even entitled to automatic compensation if the rightful owner takes back the stolen property.
We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.
So under what circumstances does Mr. Herdener believe it's okay to delete content from his customers' devices? What legitimate use is there for this capability?
Did you even bother to read the rest of that paragraph?
Two had been publishing anti-Russian books for years, and the other had no noticeable political colour. One publisher actually started by accepting the book, but after making the preliminary arrangements he decided to consult the Ministry of Information, who appear to have warned him, or at any rate strongly advised him, against publishing it.
You should perhaps consider reading the entire preface. It may be enlightening for you.
What kind of name is Bezos anyway?
His father's, I'd wager.
Particularly depressing ending of the article:
"This is probably going to happen again and we just have to learn to live with it."
No punk, you need to grow a pair, and fight it! With that kind of 'tude, what little rights we have left will go completely unprotected in the very near future.
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
The Kindle has abolished an established copyright right - the first sale doctrine that allows you to give, resell or trash a copy of a book or other tangible work.
I took my name off of my Amazon reviews last year when JB decided I should drop from 3100 rank to about 50,000. Amazon has become too big and too stupid and sooner or later they will fail. I won't be short-selling Amazon anytime soon - but they have lost my trust and that ought to keep JB up nights....
So, Jeffy-Boy is going to make good and put the books back, right... He needs to clean up his mess and right on the blackboard, "I will not steal" 1,048,576 times.
I agree with previous posters that this is a grievous breach of trust by Amazon. I understand that Amazon wanted to remove their liability for having sold something they didn't have rights to, but I strongly believe that they have breached our trust and this should have been done differently. Lets assume for a moment that it is true that 1984 was unlicensed and this was the right thing to do. The fact that this capability exists means that an amazon employee could vengefully delete all content from every kindle everywhere. No single point of control should exist with that much power. Humans cannot be trusted with that much authority. All it takes is one disgruntled employee and poof. Microsoft's authenticode went poof when verisign issued a rogue certificate. It is only a matter of time till this happens. I am unconvinced that enough control exists to protect us from this liability. I just bought a kindle and I am very conflicted now. The capability to inventory the kindle probably exists too, and can they fetch documents you have loaded onto your kindle from your PC or using the email link? As for returning books for a refund... If you want a refund, you could delete it yourself and they could verify remotely that you had deleted it. I wouldn't mind if they could inventory only the files they had sold me and not documents I loaded that were private.
Hmm.. I think I'm gonna keep my sony ebook so big brother doesn't monitor what I read. If they can delete a selection from your collection, they can also list what you are reading. Let's say you are disgusted with what the current administration is doing and you are reading up on your lack of Constitutional rights.. guess what? Big Brother knows what you are reading!!!!!!!!!!! I was disgusted enough to request an RMA and ship the Kindle2 (what was gonna be an upgrade from my sony ebook) back and take my refund.
I much rather have my old sony ereader. Amazon, you blew it. Because with the technology you demonstrated, not only can you delete a book from our collection, you can also list our collection and share that information with whoever.
how much is the right about of neck to put into the noose?
see, that's sorta the same problem with DRM, once you get to the neck, there is pretty much no going back.
NSA
Only a fool takes anything out from a library anymore, unless of course you don't mind being on a "watch list".
... some libraries have protested the National Security Letter nonsense by purging patron records on a frequent basis, but I suppose if you're really paranoid, you can do your reading in the library itself, which has the added benefit of usually featuring some rather comfy chairs.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca