This is Spooky...does anyone 'Kindle'?

It was a question of copyright, nothing spooky about it:

"The issue, says Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener, is that the Orwell books had been added to the company’s catalog using a self-service platform by a third party that did not actually have rights to sell 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,” he said."

WSJ article here

Dang! Another perfectly good, Orwellian conspiracy shot all to heck.

Just wait until the Ayn Rand readers wake up.

The Harry Potter folks just assumed it was a cloak of invisibility.

Copyright yes, but how many people are familiar with the ability of Amazon to step into your device and extract data? You do not own the book, you are licensed to hold a copy on the toy...The ability of Amazon to extract data from your Kindle is what is spooky. If idiots want to buy the toy and product with those rules, fine, as long as they know....

Well, you could build your own e-reader, I guess. Or walk down to your library and find the book...right there on the shelf.

Or not???

Just messing with you, JimV. But as the Amazon rep notes in the WSJ article - digital content is a whole new ball game, and Amazon will learn from this mistake. From the article linked above:

"In response to the customer reaction, Amazon says it will take a different approach if something like this happens again. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” said Herdener."

* ... there is nothing so peeved as a reader deprived when on page 395 of a 400 page volume... *
lol

That's why I like REAL, hard-copy books. Yes, one could accidentally leave it on the car roof, or have it burnt up in a fire... but the chances are far more remote than some robotic drone deleting it off one's reading device.

The ability of the company to go into ones device without ones permission and extract data is rife with the potential for abuse....I don't want Amazon to 'learn' but to sell the book...as in sell, and keep themselves out of that product after the sale. If they are unwilling, then I am unwilling to buy such a toy.

You did note that there was over 17 pages of comment on the issue, maybe 200 posts and 99% of them were from folk vowing not to buy the thing.

Fortunately, I didn't need even 1/16th page of comments to know that I wouldn't ever buy one of them.

This is both spooky and fascinating. Spooky that Amazon can make disappear a downloaded book. That's one or two clicks beyond iTune's, for example, practice of preventing a paid for, downloaded song be dubbed only X times.

skf

Welcome to the brave new world of Digital Rights Management.

The Kindle is tethered - it offers wireless connectivity which gives them the technical capacity to remove content from individual readers.

What is unclear for many consumers is the ownership part - it is your device, yes, but not necessarily your content. You pay to read the content on your screen, and the while terms of service do say you may keep a permanent copy of the work - that is all dependent or conditional on Amazon's authorization to allow you to do so - in this case, Amazon was informed of a copyright violation and so it made the choice to remove the content (much like downloads whose content access expires over time) and refund the purchase price - 99 cents, in this case.

Id rather get a Cooler eBook than amazons. Its cheaper, it reads PDF's and if you buy a book, its yours. No one will delete it. You paid for the pdf, you can do what you want with it.