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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."
It would be 1984 they do this to. To quote Bart Simpson "The ironing is delicious".
Cruise TT
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.
Double-plus-ironic.
Meta will eat itself
For me, the "apology" doesn't sound heartfelt at all. It is easily written, doesn't cost much and makes good PR. It may be a smart and cheap move for the CEO, but it doesn't impress me. However, using the word solution - even in quotation marks - is impudent. One could call it "intrusion" or "encroachment" - maybe - but dispossessing people of something they paid for, because you made a mistake is not even near something you could call a "solution".
I know why I never wanted this DRM-ridden Kindle, now even more than before, but if something like this would happen to me I would be really really pissed.
When will they ever learn that DRM just means defective by design?
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
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
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"
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
Your being too nice about it.
Amazon has revealed by their actions that they have back doored the kindle, they are able to do what they wish with it and you can't do a thing about it.
They have violated their customers privacy and made a mockery of the first principle of buying anything if you paid for it its yours not theirs.
If it was a service that you bought then perhaps it would be almost acceptable , you would generally be able to terminate the contract if you didn't wish to continue.
At the very least Amazon customers should be able to return the kindle and get a full refund on the kindle and the books they bought. Thats all kindle owners because the sale was a fraud and a complete breach of trust.
Who knows just what has and can be transmitted from your kindle back to Amazon.
Sincere apologies don't cut it, Amazon deserve to be sued in court and punitive damages awarded. The only reasonable action would have been for amazon to ask for users to delete the copies, like with any other product recall it is up to the customer to comply or not. Instead Amazon has tipped its hand by demonstrating the control they have over the kindles which are no longer the property of Amazon.
I don't see how anyone can fail to see how outrageous Amazons actions are.
The only issue is just what charges apply in a case like this because this is absolutely unheard of.
What I can't believe is there is not one negative post to Jeff Bezos's apology you would almost think that someone was filtering any incoming posts.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
In any case, you can get a free copy of 1984 and Animal Farm without any DRM from Gutenberg Australia
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell
You won't break any Australian laws by downloading it, but the laws where you are may be different.
This was clearly the wrong action in this case, but it's worth remembering why they built this capability in the first place: so people can get refunds if they one-click the wrong book. That's something that they can't do without a remote-deletion capability.
BTW, you know, you don't have to leave the wireless on. And it reads unencrypted Mobipocket books with ease. And there's the Magic Catalog of Project Gutenberg E-books that will allow you to download any Gutenberg ebook directly to your kindle, free, via the wireless web interface.
Kindle books can be bought anonymously by using a throwaway email account with gift certificates (available from any Western Union location aka your nearest gas station, or via those Coinstar coin-counting machines, which don't charge a percentage if you get a gift card), and most of them can have their DRM stripped with ease (mobidedrm is what you're looking for; it's a painful process that works for the Kindle, when you're Googling.)
The police come and take it, with warrant. Not the person who sold it to you - they would be charged with trespassing/theft if they did. And if the police confiscate it, you'll have your day in court if you want it back.
Amazon isn't the police. It does not have the right to act as if were.
what the fuck? seriously?
How does DRM solve the backup problem and whatever else for me? The ONLY purpose of DRM is to make sure they can deny access to a) pirates b) me, a paying customer WHENEVER THEY WANT.
There is NO FUCKING BENEFIT to the customer. EVER. Things are not cheaper, they are no easier to access - in fact the opposite is often true.
The fact that steam does allow you to redownload your purchased digital goods is not because of DRM, but it is simply a service they offer. They could just as well offer it without DRM.
I know you will be modded insightful soon, but oh my god what a ignorant stance on DRM to have.