Slashdot Mirror
Student Suing Amazon For Book Deletions
Stupified writes "High school student Justin Gawronski is suing Amazon for deleting his Kindle copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four (complaint, PDF), because doing so destroyed the annotations he'd created to the text for class. The complaint states: 'The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as "remember this paragraph for your thesis" is useless if it does not actually reference a specific paragraph.' The suit, which is seeking class action status, asks that Amazon be legally blocked from improperly accessing users' Kindles in the future and punitive damages for those affected by the deletion. Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit."
What class has 1984 as required reading and where can I sign up?
Why do I get the feeling Dad was a Lawyer? Or he's going into pre-law?
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
Given the other absurdities of copyright law, and how the RIAA's lawyer think that disappearing purchases are normal in every area of life, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lawyer claim that the annotations are in fact a derivative work of the book, and that since Amazon had no right to sell the book, then the student had no right to create the annotations.
Also, there's probably some boilerplate legal language included with the Kindle that says they are not responsible for data loss, etc., or if it kills your grandmother or dog.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I don't even pretend to understand the convoluted mess that is 'the law', but it seems strange to me that he can sue for a SPECIFIC problem (destroying HIS notes) but he's seeking GENERAL damages via the class action status.
My $.02
Amazon didn't know that it was still under copyright in the US, and didn't have the rights to sell it. When they discovered their mistake, they took it back -- removing the books and refunding the buyers' money. Damages paid to rights-holders are given to compensate for the fact that the violator can't remove every copy of the infringing product they sold; but in this case, they were able to. If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
I thought when I bought something from Amazon, that I owned it!
Why was the copy of 1984 deleted? Any reason given at all? Also, this hardly needs to come to a law suit if amazon just gives him another copy (and say, credit to his account for books or whatever). Of course, that way there would be no fat paycheck in it for the guy. I am assuming that the notes can be reattached to a new copy of a book quickly and easy; but even if they can't surely it can be done by one of their tech guys?
I get the feeling that this was a decision by Amazon based on what would cost them less. Either delete these and face user wrath, or let users who have the books keep them and settle monetarily with the copyright holder. I think they may have underestimated the true cost of losing reputation with their user base, lawsuit cost aside.
The irony that Orwell's 1984 describes "Children Heroes" who snitch on grown-ups is tasting sweeter with every passing moment.
I don't think the guy has a legal leg to stand on. Amazon removed an illegal book, and the guy still has his annotations, useless or not.
If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
Bullshit.
I hope amazon gets slapped with the "for the children" phrase publicly.
Otherwise, they're just going to go with the cheapest route, even if that means stalling in court till the kid's family runs out of money.
Whoever tagged this story "goodluckwiththat" obviously doesn't understand the American legal system. Amazon is already feeling the effects of this, and they will have to pay lawyers to fight it. They'll settle for less than it would cost them. No luck involved.
Wouldn't this not have happened except by the owner's fault if the person was using an actual copy of the book as opposed to a Kindle from Amazon?
Insightful? Really!?
per the /. story i read 4 days ago
Yeah, fuck e-books. What is an e-book anyway? Just another file format. So fuck .txt files and fuck HTML.
he's either got a lawyer in the family or money (or likely both). i was plenty opportunistic growing up but we didn't have a dime to spend on litigation, no matter what the likelihood of success.
Litigation happens to be the only way we get things done.
I bet it will be better than whatever parroting was going to come out of his previous notes.
Now he gets a chance to project the future proposed by 1984 into a modern context and possibly make some points on the future of history in an electronic world.
This promises to be a more rewarding approach than whatever worthless vouchers and over-paid lawyers come out of the class action.
And you paid for a device which was tethered to its master, which happened not to be you.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
If they didn't have the right to sell it, and it's illegal to reposess such a work through legal means, then they need to pay the copyright owner for the copies distributed. The lawyers can hammer out an agreement which will make Jeff & Co. look just a little harder the next time they go publishing a work. Of course, since Amazon knows how many they sold, that will make it easy for the copyright holder to sue for damages based on statutory infringement should the talks break down
Why is this so hard?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
As a country, they're litigation happy. As a teenager, he's probably lazy and opportunistic. Put the two together ...
or maybe he is willing to stand up and fight for his rights, and the rights of others. There is a reason why Slashdot isn't in German. Godwin!
Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit."
This is not true. The Kindle EULA states "Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use." But Amazon cannot grant rights that it does not have, and in this case Amazon did not have the right to sell the novel in the first place, which is why they were pulled. US Copyright law most definitely empowers courts to enjoin infringers to destroy or turn over copies of infringing material. There was no judgment in this case, but Amazon likely saw the writing on the wall and felt that using its control over the platform to remove the offending copies was preferable to paying a settlement to the publisher.
Imagine a physical book store that accidentally received a shipment of books meant for another store that had an exclusive deal with the publisher. If some of those books were sold before the mistake was realized, one possible remedy would be to recall the sold books, annotations and all. Normally of course the liability would be with the book seller and in the form of monetary damages rather than specific performance (i.e., return of the books). In this case, however, Amazon's control of the platform makes it easier to remove the books than a real-world recall (good luck recalling a book paid for in cash, for example).
Now, of course, the PR backlash has shown that the right choice would have been for Amazon to own the mistake and eat the loss of paying a settlement, but at the time Amazon made a judgment call that, if the publisher decided to play hardball, it would have to remove the copies eventually anyway as the result of an injunction. I think there is every reason to believe that Amazon will react differently to future mistakes.
Me sue you long time!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
its just there to scare the sheeple into inaction
We are dealing with a high school kid who owns a kindle and was using it for school. While it is possible that kid actually earned the $500 to buy it himself, I'm probably not alone in finding that unlikely.
What a surprise that he found money to hire a lawyer as well. I wonder if he got around to actually reading a print copy of 1984 in the meantime, or if his school is going to let him skip the test while he waits for his lawyer to find a judge willing to hear his case.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It was not the owners fault.
If you buy a book and lose it or toss it in the fireplace, that's your fault.
This is more like you buying a book and the bookstore realizing that they shouldn't have sold it to you, and taking it from you without your permission. They're the ones taking the action, so they're at fault.
The EULA is available here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530
Specifically, it says:
Amazon modified the service by removing the book.
End of discussion.
Could this case be a far worse precedent than Amazon move? Amazon is being sued because they "changed" something in a place that they (by licence?) could control, and the student created something that depends on how things used to be. What if i create annotations for my class based on i.e. current slashdot content or structure, and slashdot modifies it? Could be sued because my intellectual work lost its meaning?
Would the distribution of 1984 in this case be the same as distributing any other stolen property? If that's the case, then Amazon wouldn't have the right to take it back (unless the contract between users and Amazon said they could) but the police could. I'm inclined to believe that this young man has a solid case, as would any other Kindle user who had purchased 1984. Amazon did something illegal, their users had no idea and really no way of knowing without doing more research than anyone should have to just to buy a book. I'm sure the US Courts will decide otherwise, but I think Amazon should be held responsible for everything that occurred because of their own illegal act, and therefore should have to pay damages in any scenario like this one. That's not to say they should have to pay everyone beyond the refund, but if it can be proven that more damage was caused by the removal of the book then yeah, users should be entitled to something.
That said, time to bash Americans. Fat, lazy, stupid, and everyone wants to sue everyone else for everything. Yeah, Amazon may have screwed this kid over, but data loss is something everyone should be prepared for today. It's still ultimately his own fault for relying on an electronic device, if it crashed and he lost his data he wouldn't have a right to sue then and he'd be in the same boat. This is just another case of one prick suing a bunch of other pricks, when really they're all wrong.
Every day I grow more ashamed of the citizens of my country. While I know not all Americans are bad, the vast majority have this false idea that they're better than everyone, entitled to more for less, and it makes us all look like shitheads. Look, we even think "American" means "US Citizen," forget about those other countries throughout the American continents.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
it also gives them rights to insert a wide range of vegetables into their subscribers anuses... People should really read before clicking the NEXT/OK button.
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
How many possible "ate my homework" jokes can we go for here:
"The Kindle ate my homework."
"Jeff Bezos ate my homework."
"If there is hope for my homework, it lies with the proles."
"We have triumphed over the unprincipled dissemination of 1984. The users and readers have been cast out. And the poisonous weeds of note-taking have been consigned to the dustbin of history. Let each and every student rejoice!...We are one Amazon. With one will. One resolve. One cause. Our enemies shall read themselves to death. And we will bury them with their own Kindle! We shall prevail!" [too obscure?]
come on an chime in!
I downloaded some music from a site that was giving out free music.
The RIAA came and took my computer and sued me.
But I mean, it's a high school English class. Not like the kids are producing scholarly reports or theses in there.
in many many jurisdictions, they fucked up
Why does Amazon call it Kindle?
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
I don't think the guy has a legal leg to stand on. Amazon removed an illegal book, and the guy still has his annotations, useless or not.
While Amazon didn't destroy "tangible stuff"*, they did destroy the value of that stuff.
Say I throw a really loud party at my house, with you living next door; or I burn my garden waste, which is smoky and sooty; or I park in front of your driveway. I haven't destroyed your property, but I have reduced it's value. I have destroyed the value of your property without destroying the property itself.
I don't know whether any of the nuisance scenarios would give you a case, but if they do, why doesn't the same common sense extend to destroying the value of bits by changing their context?
* I know bits aren't tangible, but go with me here.
It's all in a "My Clippings.txt" in Documents. A little bit of work to sort through them all because they aren't in book order, but his annotations are still around.
So when his harddrive dies and he loses his homework that he didn't bother to back up does he sue Maxtor/Seagate? If his Windows machine gets infected with a virus or worm and won't even boot anymore, does he sue Microsoft for not making it perfectly secure?
It sucks, but with digital technology, it is possible to recover stolen property, which is what Amazon did and should have done.
It was not "stolen" property. It was misappropriated according to copyright law. This is sort of like the issue of illegal downloads: IP owners like the **AA like to spout about "stolen" IP, but that's not what it is. Neither Amazon nore the customer broke into anything or anywhere and made off with anyone's IP. You may debate the validity of the copyright and if the content was misused by Amazon, but nothing was "stolen".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Here's predicting a dismissal of the class action, a non-disclosed settlement to the original claimant and an Amazon discount coupon for everyone else affected that can provide a proof of purchase.
It seems like a good alternative solution would have been to pool up all the refund money and make an offer to the real copyright owner for all the current ebook "owners" to keep their copy, and then not sell any new ones
Amazon, and big corps in general, are NOT the police, and do not have the rights as such.
1984 is not such a voluminous tome.
The guy has his notes in a file. Very likely (and I don't have a Kindle or his notes on hand to verify this), they're placed in there in the order in which they were applied to the text.
So, theoretically, all he has to do is look at each note and re-read through 1984 and re-apply the labels he's missing. It's probable some of his notes are quite location-specific, creating markers with which he could then locate his current whereabouts and continue on.
Granted, if the notes in the text file are in "order of addition", he's screwed. Equally so if his notes consisted of simply underlining or tagging (without a label) areas of text (can you do this?) and now those are disassociated. That sort of thing defeats my data recovery proposal..
It may have been premature for Amazon to remotely delete under 17 USC 503 and 509 but those sections clearly authorize a court of competent jurisdiction to "order the destruction or other reasonable disposition of all copies or phonorecords found to have been made or used in violation of the copyright owner's exclusive rights, and of all plates, molds, matrices, masters, tapes, film negatives, or other articles by means of which such copies or phonorecords may be reproduced." Amazon, having the technical capability, might have been compelled by order to exercise that capability. Now, Amazon did not have to resort to deletion without a court order but may have seen the writing on the wall: either get screwed by the publisher for willful copyright infringement or screwed by a class action breach of contract by Kindle users and picked the lesser of two evils. Ideally Amazon should have bit the bullet for the consumer experience by docking the company who put the unauthorized 1984 up on the Kindle marketplace and getting authorization for either the existing or a new copy of 1984 for its consumers in as seamless a transition as possible but of course then the shareholders would have gotten angry and sued Amazon for doing something clearly unprofitable leaving pretty much no one happy.
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
Precedent is indeed the right worry here, but not quite in the way you're mentioning.
1984 was not legally sold on Amazon.com's Kindle store. It's legal in almost every other country on Earth -- basically any country without corporate overlords demanding Copyright be extended to "Age of Mickey Mouse +20 years" in perpetuity.
No, the real precedent that is very, very bad and very, very scary is that now, now publishers know that Amazon can remotely delete items from the Kindle, without user input.
Textbook companies want to sell a textbook that's only good for 1 quarter? Why not? Not like you'll need it after this year, since we're gonna release the 351st edition to make sure students can't resell the deadtree back to the bookstore.
Someone sues Amazon cause "Twilight" offends local obscenity laws? "Well golly gee, we're seeing you're connecting to a Cell tower in Bumfuck Idaho, we'll just auto-delete that Twilight book for you to avoid offending the prudes..."
Or better yet. "Hey Apple, Amazon can just delete stuff from their Kindle remotely, why can't you delete any songs with Metallica in their filename / ID3 tags that don't match up with ones they've bought from us off iPods when they dock?"
Amazon played a very bad hand here. They admitted they can screw over users on behalf of 3rd party companies. Worse, they admitted they will if asked.
A very, very bad precedent all around.
Sounds like Gawronski had a change of heart. On Sunday he was quoted in the New York Times saying:
(emphasis added)
If the legal system had any particular desire to pursue criminal actions by corporations, Amazon could be in more trouble. I rather suspect that what they did is a felony in quite a few states, probably including Washington. There are laws against destroying data on other people's computer systems.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I find Amazon's attitude towards DRM to be hypocritical. I buy all my mp3's from Amazon.com (and not iTunes) specifically because Amazon doesn't use DRM on music purchases. I know that music I buy through Amazon can't be remotely erased, I can still play it 10 years from now even if Amazon shuts down their mp3 business, and I can transfer it if I buy a new computer or get a different brand of mp3 player. But when it comes to books and Amazon is selling the hardware AND the content, their attitude sure did change about DRM. I don't own a Kindle, and am not likely to be buying one.
Why does Amazon call it Kindle?
Guy Montag gives the Kindle two thumbs up!
I would believe it's the Kindle accessing Amazon and deleting the book when something is flagged (or not flagged!)
And Amazon won't trespass your device. Never heard of any DRM setup that would do that.
At any case, I hope the student wins.
While you might have the technical ability to do something, it does not necessarily mean you have the legal right to do something.
Gary McKinnon had the technical ability to get into certain computer systems and look at the data (he did not delete stuff), but he didn't have the legal right to do it, so he's facing extradition to the USA and potentially quite a number of years in prison.
Amazon had the technical ability to get into certain computer systems (Kindles) and delete the data. And Amazon deleted data without permission from people who thought they owned those certain computer systems.
I'm not a lawyer but whether that's legal depends on who owns those Kindles, and whether Amazon has been given extra special powers to delete data from systems they don't own.
FWIW, Amazon says "buy" Kindle, they don't say "rent".
Car repossessors still have to follow certain steps to repossess a car - they typically cannot break into garages to repossess the car - it has to be in an open area, in some cases they have to notify the buyer that they are going to repossess the car.
Similarly when a Bank seizes back property there are certain procedures they have to follow.
Another thing - the initial problem was with Amazon's _Partner_ selling stuff they shouldn't have, not Amazon themselves.
Just because a shop in Amazon Mall sells me stuff they shouldn't have doesn't mean that Amazon can send their Mall Guards to sneak into my house and remove it on behalf of that shop, even if Amazon Mall is afraid they might get sued.
If the shop has done something illegal, Amazon Mall could report it to the police - the cops are the ones who have powers to seize and destroy stuff. Lets all only have to deal with one bunch of thugs running around ok?
This about law and order.
Nope. Distribution of copyrighted works without permission is illegal. Possession isn't.That's why in all the p2p trials they have to argue the distribution to others angle.
The publisher who released the book to amazon without permission should be liable for damages, but customers bought them in good faith.
Does anyone here think that if this had been a hard copy, Barnes and Noble would track you down from your credit card number, and send someone to knock on your front door demanding you return the book?
....or maybe he is willing to stand up and fight for his rights, and the rights of others.
In that case he would be campaigning to have the law changed to make such actions illegal and not trying to sue Amazon. Even if he is successful all they will do is change the licensing agreement to allow them to do this without being sued in the future. If he is really trying to stand up for his (and others) rights this is a stupid way to go about it....its also a stupid way to try and get some money. The only people who will get rich from this are the lawyers.
Is returning the books to the users devices really enough at this point? I mean they have now caused irreparable harm to at least some of the purchasers by illegally accessing their devices. A kid who fails an assignment as a result of these actions for instance can't just go back and say "hey teach- I have my final report now (weeks after it was due)". Even if they could they have probably suffered in other ways like anxiety, wasted time (trying to get SOMETHING to hand in), etc. What they did was inexcusable and they need to pay significant damages in addition to facing criminal liability.
If 13 year olds can be prosecuted under federal laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act then certainly Amazon- who should know better aught to be prosecuted for its own unauthorized access to these computing devices. I'm not a fan of this law at all- but if we're going to be use it lets at least use it against the biggest most obvious offenders.
More specifically: The term exceeds authorized access is defined by the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) to mean "to access a computer with authorization and to use such access to obtain or alter information in the computer that the accesser is not entitled so to obtain or alter.
Seems to me Amazon is guilty of exceeding authorized access as defined by this statue.
If some company deleted materials from your laptop or your iPod, what would your reaction be? Furthermore, if someone damaged your work by accessing your laptop or personal computer, what would your reaction be? If the licensing terms allow it, I would say sue them, big time.
When is the last time TPB or any other torrent site took anything back? You never hear of that. Oh, this movie I downloaded the other night was deleted from my downloads folder... apparently TPB didn't have the rights to distribute it! Not gonna happen. And yes, I know TPB isn't distributing the actual files but you get my point. When piracy is easier than acquiring something by legitimate means, you are increasing the likelihood that the item will be pirated. The legitimate means obviously can't compete on price so they have to offer better quality, easier acquisition, or something else along those lines.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
So, they can SELL a product to us, and then, whenever they decide to do so, they can take back the product ? what the fuck ?
tho such kind of legal bullshit seems possible in united states.
Read radical news here
fuck HTML.
Too many < sharp edges >!
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
From the PDF:
2. With an uncanny knack for irony, Amazon recently remotely deleted any traces of certain electronic copies of George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from customers' Kindles and iPhones, thereby sending these books down Orwell's so-called "memory hole."
WTF? Is this a legal complaint, or a sensationalistic blog post? I'd expect more professionalism from a law firm.
Idiot, illiterate mods. If he had read and understood the book he wouldn't have bothered with the lawsuit. Winston loved Big Brother at the end.
If someone buys stolen property in good faith, never believing that it was stolen then the police inform them, they have absolutely no right to keep it
Well done for believing the RIAA's propaganda campaign. What Amazon did was provide unauthorized copies of a text. This is copyright infringement NOT stealing. You are completely correct if Amazon had stolen physical books from someone and then sold them because there would be a prior owner who would want them back. However Amazon illegally created copies of the book and sold those. Hence there is no prior owner to return them too. All the copyright owner can do is sue Amazon for damages.
"In that case he would be campaigning to have the law changed to make such actions illegal"
Isn't that what he's doing?
"asks that Amazon be legally blocked from improperly accessing users' Kindles in the future"
Not all campaigns to change the law involve congress anymore.
There are two kinds of fool One says 'This is old therefore good' Another says 'This is new therefore better'- Dean Ing
Hacking laws on the books make it illegal to add, modify, or delete data on another person's computer without their consent. I believe it carries a pretty stiff sentence too, because it is a federal statute. I am pretty sure that Amazon has no consent from anyone when they used their DRM to kill the book, so they could be in some deep water.
Also, since it was an an actual person that punched the enter key when it came time to revoke the DRM license, I wonder if they could be hit with the criminal hacking charge. The fact that invoking DRM controls could land you in the federal pen for 20 years might be a great way get corps to knock that shit off.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
And Amazon won't trespass your device. Never heard of any DRM setup that would do that.
Ever hear of XCP? Also known as "Extended Copy Protection" and "The Sony Rootkit".
Free Martian Whores!
You may wan to forgive him. The article also states: "it also deleted the notes he had taken on the device for his homework." Which it later contradicts with the quote you made.
So then nothing is enough, since it would be willful copyright infringment at this point, now that they KNOW they don't have the right to distribute the book. I guess in your eyes that's between them and the publisher and they should break the law and suck up whatever punishment they get hit with... but I don't find that a very practical view.
For sure, Amazon should never have deleted these books and never should have given themselves that ability in the first place (if only for plausible deniability in exactly these cases), but now that the damage is done they can't go back.
If they were really serious about making things right, they'd offer more than the damage they've done, say, $20 gift cards for their REAL, PHYSICAL store so we don't have to trust them not to do this again. And of course, still be liable in exceptional cases like this where further damages were done.
While digging in deeper is technically correct most news sources see the recession nearing its depth. Most economy statistics are in decline but a significantly slower decline than earlier in the year.
Obama's failure will be when the economy does come back. Even when you get your job back, find another house, or get into college you won't be able to afford anything due to the hyper inflation and raised cost of living.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
This student makes a valid case that Amazon has destroyed the value of his original content with its actions. This is certainly a shining example of The Law of Unintended Consequences biting them in the posterior.
OTOH, admittedly Amazon was caught in-between a rock and a hard place here. I think what they should have done is have given all book royalties already collected to the proper copyright holder, revoked/sued the person who improperly posted the book for sale for all damages, removed the books from further sale, and left the people who had purchased the books in good faith with their copies.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You triggered a thought I've had from time to time about the evolution of /., and I've prepared this simple karma whore cheat sheet for those that can't be bothered to read the article, summary or, in the next phase, comments:
Microsoft: We hate them. Referencing XP as an upgrade to Vista is still good for +5 Insightful or +5 Funny. This is because somehow, somewhere, there are still people that haven't already seen this joke hundreds of times.
Google: We're afraid of them, although most of us still use their products. Comments with creative ways they could do evil are good for +5 Informative.
Linux: Whatever year it is now, it's the year of the desktop. Comments generally descend into a KDE vs. Gnome battle royal ending in stalemate. There would be lots of +5 Mental Masturbation, if that category existed. Instead we get lots of +5 Informative and +5 Insightful. It doesn't matter which side you pick and you can probably get mod points with conflicting comments on the same article.
Apple: We love them no matter what kind of shit they pull. Irony is not appreciated when referring the the big silver fruit. Good opportunity to bash Microsoft (see above).
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
What if you'd copied the book file(s) to your computer, stripped the DRM and converted to another format (this process should be familiar to those who've done it), copied the DRM-free file back onto your Kindle, and deleted the original DRMed version? Would Amazon have been able to nuke it anyway? A DRM-free book in a different file format?
It used to be simply: "The dog ate my home work"
I recently discovered Firefly on HULU. The wife and I have been enjoying the 14 episodes for the last week or so. I told her it was the basis for the movie Serenity which she had not seen. We wanted to watch the flick, but it's like 100 here right now so we were both not really wanting to leave the comfort of our a/c'd house.
We go to Block buster online and try to download the rental. It took me an friggin hour to get their app to work right, and after all that, the fricken player couldn't do a simple keep alive to stop the screensave from kicking in. I WAS FURIOUS. I knew to disable it, but still, why would I do that in this day and age?
I was so mad that I vowed to steal it.
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
in 1984, the enemy of the state the hero lives in is simultaneously everywhere and all powefull, yet completely defeatable by the states armies, but to defeat the enemy, and prevent his literaly brutish attacks that might strike anywhere, you have to give up all freedom.
it is very close to bush cheney strategy after 9 11
This all doesn't matter. He paid for the book on his Kindle2. He was using that for his school work. Amazon deleted it. Amazon is totally wrong and needs to go to court.
This is why I won't buy a Kindle2.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
This all doesn't matter. He paid for the book on his Kindle2. He was using that for his school work. Amazon deleted it. Amazon is totally wrong and needs to go to court. This is why I won't buy a Kindle2.
I agree with you 100%. My point was just that no matter what the justification a lot of people can not afford litigation. Unfortunately justice almost always takes money in the US.
Give this guy the freedom fighter of the week award! He stood up for himself and in so doing may help others.
Sorry, couldn't resist that bait.
None of the basic premises of capitalism has been proven faulty or unworkable by the economic realities over the last couple of years. If anything, insane monetary policy, reckless spending and the blatant corruption of regulatory bodies has demonstrated the utter failure of big central government as an institution. Perhaps your definition varies, but I don't consider "hiring people to lobby the government for favors" to be a valid business model in a capitalistic system. Capitalism is based on the means of genuine production, not money printing, paper shuffling, government spending and a system of bailouts to a select few. Suppose that we broaden the definition of capitalism to include activities like fractional reserve banking, stock trading and real estate specualtion. Even though nothing is being produced by "capital", businesses that make bad decisions fail, go bankrupt, and get replaced by smarter healthier businesses. I don't know what you call an economic system based on government stealing money from its citizens and using it for bailouts of a politically well connected elite, but it certainly is NOT "capitalism".
The other side of the coin is that we probably wouldn't need even non-corrupt regulatory bodies if capitalism didn't breed a bunch of greedy egomaniacs. Capitalism and the free market is flawed from the outset because it favors a person over the people. We're not predator/prey. We're a society of varying people who contribute in different ways, not in all monetarily significant ways.
But the difficult part is that capitalism brings out the worst in people -- you see yourself earning more because you were innovative. That's a good thing. But now you see what money can provide, but your innovative streak has run out or perhaps you're tired of being competitive...but you still want the money.
So you start to screw people out of theirs. You give them bad loans to get the bonus associated with them. You give yourself a million dollar bonus because your company went completely bankrupt but not insolvent so you "saved" it -- and you let your employees take the bullet for you.
Capitalism dates back to a less civilized structure. Let's grow up a bit.
Good. I hope Amazon loses. They should be ashamed of playing the role of Big Brother.
FYI, the first bailout was put forward by Bush. You may or may not know this, just that a lot of people seem to think it was Obama's idea.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
um, why aren't we talking about how to hack the device to prevent this kind of sh*t?
i mean it's a linux box it shouldn't be too hard to backup the data on the box or prevent files from being remotely deleted.
I believe I read somewhere that the only reason this edition of 1984 was available on the Kindle in the first place was that Amazon was given permission to by a company that did not own the rights to the book. iirc Amazon pulled this particular version of 1984 after discovering this, so technically Amazon didn't revoke purchased material, since they had no real right to sell it in the first place.
So, So Right, I am helped/cursed by Ford's, (latter USG) McNamara, who had a lot of his employee's children taught how to speed read, which hast cost me a lot of money as I read about 3 novels/week.
Most of the classics c. 1990 are hugely over-rated by people who rate characterization over plot. Thomas Hardy is one of the most boring, and Harry Potter is much better. The problem is that English Lit teachers mostly like boring drivel and are perjoritive of anything that has a plot eg Heinlen, Asimov, AE van Volgt, Dr. EE Smith all wrote riviting books; Clancy et al also write good books.
The problem seems to be teachers in French and English Literature, as most of the German stuff is a quite good, and fun read.
Sadly there is very little good original Science Fiction except (maybe) in English
Idiot, it is very, very well thought out and well written, If I got 10% reports in the quant-pricing arena that were as well written as Ms Granger's Essays, I would be saved 3 hours per day finding out what their bad English was intended to mean.
from TFA
The law firm pledges to donate any proceeds from the litigation to charity.
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore."
If you'll specify exactly what characterizes a system as capitalist, I'll tell you whether there's any evidence that capitalism doesn't work.
My guess is that there won't be any evidence either way, because there never has been a capitalist system.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
is to create a new generation of Kindle device that does NOT have monitoring / control of customer content capability and give its installed base a gift certificate good either for a new device or the equivalent value in free downloads of Kindle books.
The mistake Amazon made was building a capability for monitoring/controlling content into the Kindle to begin with. AFAIK, no other e-reader either as hardware or pure software implementation, even the ones that support DRM has this, and it's a feature for which there is no known customer demand.
They can still correct the mistake now, settle with the student out of court, and get good publicity out of making this right.
Amazon's hope that nobody would sue was in vain, all they can do about this now is damage control. The damage judgment from a class action suit (they got caught with their asses swinging in the breeze, their only realistic hope of winning would be with a jury composed of RIAA/MPAA employees) is going to be a lot more expensive than simply settling out of court both in terms of damages + contingency fees and renewed bad publicity.
Tech Public Policy stuff
This may sound a bit like a 1984 paraphrasing, but how can he prove the existence of the homework, and the value of it?
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
OH FUCK OFF YOU TWAT.
Shit, I think my PC has become self aware.
I'll bet it was pretty much a pure capitalist society before the invention of currency. Where's Alanis Morrisette when you need her? (And I need her quite a lot so please be prompt in your sightings)
...Steve Jobs!
Why else would he put iSight cameras into everything?
It's public domain in Australia (+ Canada and others). Which raises an interesting question for the "copyright violation is theft" crowd. If a US citizen goes on holiday to Australia and legally downloads 1984 and starts reading it, then returns to the US without deleting the book from their device, at what point are they stealing?
Did the steal it when they land in the US?
Did the steal it when the plane enters US airspace?
Did the steal it when (if) they get caught?
Did the steal it when they boarded the plane?
Did the steal it when they (legally in Australia) downloaded the book?
Is it sometime before, which was the reason they were sent to Australia anyway?
Enquiring minds want to know.
If your answer was going to be that the seller stole it, so the customer didn't steal but received stolen property, then lets assume that the seller travelled to Australia to download it:
Did they steal it when they land in the US?
Did they steal it when the plane enters US airspace?
Did they steal it when (if) they get caught?
Did they steal it when they boarded the plane?
Did they steal it when they (legally in Australia) downloaded the book?
Is it sometime before, which was the reason they were sent to Australia anyway?
Did they steal it when they sold it? If so, by what legal mechanism does selling a legally obtained copy become stealing?
How about if I, as an Australian, download this book and start selling copies, quite legal in Australia since it's public domain:
If I sell the book to a US citizen here on Australian soil and they return to the US with it, it is still stolen? Who stole it and when?
If I email a copy to a US citizen, who is stealing the book?
If the American is using a Canadian email provider, when does it become stolen? If I email it to them without their prior knowledge, did collecting their email constitute an act of theft? Or am I a thief for sending a public domain book to an email server in a country where the book is also public domain? Perhaps using foreign email servers is theft?
If I make 1000 copies on CD in Australia, then travel to the US to sell them, is it theft? Every copy was legally made in Australia, no copying takes place in the US, where it would be illegal. Am I protected by first sale doctrine or another law so I can sell my legally obtained books, or are they now stolen? Does legally entering the US with legally obtained books constitute an act of theft?
Tell me, please. I don't want to be a thief! I have friends in the US who might enjoy this book. It's mine, I legally obtained it, I can legally copy it. How can I be sure I'm not stealing this book?
Really, it's time to drop the "copying = theft", there are too many real-world situations where it doesn't stand up to the most cursory scrutiny.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Under pressure by the incoming Obama administration to do something to help Obama before he took office.
The law is actually clear, if you purchase something from a business that is in their normal line of business, you can assume the purchase was legal. I watched a court case where a sign company purchased a boat through barter from a marina. The Marina failed to pay the bank for the boat which they had purchased for resale on a revolving line of credit from the bank. The bank sued the sign company, the judge ruled that the sign company was not liable for the price of the boat because the marina sells boat in their normal course of business and the bank would have to sue the marina for their money. Like-wise the purchase of the book, purchasing the book from Amazon, a book seller should be able to assume that the book was purchased legally and the rights-holders should recover their royalties from Amazon. Amazon deleting the book from the purchaser attempted to void their illegal distribution, however distributing the book and deleting it is still distributing it; if you robbed a bank then later returned the money, the bank was still robbed. Amazon's deletion of the illegally distributed book is actually a confession of wrongdoing. Amazon now not only owes the purchaser for the price of the book and co-incidental damages caused by deletion of the book to the purchaser, but now also owes the rights-holders for royalties and civil penalties for the illegal distribution.
One would think that amazon's legal dept would be much sharper than what they just displayed.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If Amazon has the ability to delete a book - how more so the ability to edit/"update"? Very Winston Smithy, don't you think???
Don't fucking care.
Campaigning to change the law would, potentially, prevent future abuse by Amazon. It would not, however, redress the damage caused by Amazon with regard to 1984. Changes to law should not be retroactive (that would be akin to changing the rules of the game after the game ended in order to change the outcome of the game - who would bother to play, given such circumstances?). The only way to achieve redress for damages already done is to sue. The suit need not go to trial (suits are frequently resolved by the involved parties long before they go to trial). Lawsuits are not inherently evil. If the courts are fair, impartial, and sensible, lawsuits serve as one of the means of ensuring fairness in the system. When courts are unfair, or biased, or when they permit frivolous lawsuits to proceed, the concept of lawsuits is subverted and used as a means of making the system less fair, ultimately damaging the system and harming all involved.
linquendum tondere
Sorry, before the invention of money there was lots of communal sharing of things. Actually it was closer to either an idealized communism or to an autocracy (not so idealized) than to capitalism. Different cultures handled things differently, though, so there might have been a capitalist culture somewhere. Africa had an anarchist society, after all. (The Yk, or Yik. And *had* is the operative word. It fell apart under stress.) I don't know much about African cultures, except Egyptian.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Yeah, I didn't really think that one through. I stand corrected.
Mainstream economics has certainly failed. This crisis should teach us that there should be some hard and solid boundaries that the economy can operate within. One big problem however is that a stable economy is de-stabilising. The more it looks like everything is rosy, the more we drop our guard and the bigger the risks we take. And the harder the fall will be when there is a systematic failure like the "sub-prime crisis" that finally broke the camels back.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
The other side of the coin is that we probably wouldn't need even non-corrupt regulatory bodies if capitalism didn't breed a bunch of greedy egomaniacs. Capitalism and the free market is flawed from the outset because it favors a person over the people. We're not predator/prey. We're a society of varying people who contribute in different ways, not in all monetarily significant ways.
But the difficult part is that capitalism brings out the worst in people -- you see yourself earning more because you were innovative. That's a good thing. But now you see what money can provide, but your innovative streak has run out or perhaps you're tired of being competitive...but you still want the money.
So you start to screw people out of theirs. You give them bad loans to get the bonus associated with them. You give yourself a million dollar bonus because your company went completely bankrupt but not insolvent so you "saved" it -- and you let your employees take the bullet for you.
Capitalism dates back to a less civilized structure. Let's grow up a bit.
For me personally, the problem with I have with non-capitalist economies is that I care about me more than I do about you or society. I shouldn't be forced to care just to participate in society. That very well may be greedy, to care about oneself more than others... I am certainly a me-first'er in life, but then I'm a family and friends second'er, and a community/society last'er. I don't want you to have anything I produce or earn, just because we participate in the same society. Having said that, that doesn't mean that I don't believe we need an unbiased by greed system of checks and balances for people or corporations exceeding incomes of $50M/yr or so...
"Be prepared, son. That's my motto. Be prepared." --Joe Hallenbeck
Exactly. Any money left after the lawyer's fees and expenses have been covered will get donated.