Doubleplusungood: That Copy Of 1984 On Your Kindle Is Now Gone
from the you-never-had-that-book... dept
For quite some time we've been pointing out the simple fact that, unlike with a physical book, you don't really own the ebooks that you buy on your Amazon Kindle. Even worse, Amazon can simply delete them at will. In fact, that's exactly what's happened to (of all books!) George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Talk about irony. People who legitimately purchased those books discovered that they're now gone, as the publisher has decided that ebook versions were doubleplusungood and should never have existed in the first place. So, like the war with Eurasia, the book is now just a figment of your imagination. You never had it. At least Amazon refunded the money, but what kind of book do you buy that gets automatically disappeared? eBooks are an interesting concept, but how can anyone buy into something where their books might suddenly disappear? Update: The NY Times is now reporting that Amazon says it will change its system so that, in the future, books won't be deleted. However, that's not making many customers happy. They seem pretty pissed off -- with some noting that Amazon's own terms of service claim that you have a permanent right to the content once you've bought it. On top of that, the Times quotes a student who had taken a bunch of notes, which Amazon destroyed as well.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: 1984, ebooks, george orwell, kindle, ownership
Companies: amazon
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Amazon is at fault on fronts
But... Amazon should NEVER have signed any distribution agreements with any publisher that insisted on the "kill switch". MobuleReference should have been told to go to hell.
Unfortunately, like with the Authors' Guild being able to bully Amazon into allowing the text-to-speech ability to be disabled at the whim of an author, Amazon and its legal team have shown themselves to be absolutely, totally spineless. Consumer be damned... our partners are more important.
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Re: Amazon is at fault on three fronts
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Re: Re: Amazon is at fault on three fronts
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Re: Re: Re: Amazon is at fault on three fronts
Oh, well it must be true then if you remember reading it. We don't need any references.
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Re: Amazon is at fault on fronts
You should be smart enough to never buy a device with a kill switch. (At least with the one that's not controlled by you)
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Re: Re: Amazon is at fault on fronts
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Whoops
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Another lawsuit Amazon may want to lose.
I still am waiting for a blind organization to sue over the disabled text to speech feature.
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Re:
Here's a primer: a very interesting speech from March 1962.
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/VideoTest/hux2.ram
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Federal Offense?
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Crimes
The affected customers should sue, and should press for criminal charges.
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Re: Crimes
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Re: BTW, NYT completely lifted the comment from Engadget
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Re: Re: BTW, NYT completely lifted the comment from Engadget
Which "time stamps" are you basing this claim on?
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Re: Re: BTW, NYT completely lifted the comment from Engadget
Engadget wrote that Drew Herdener contacted them directly with the quote that also appeared in the NYT. So are you saying that Engadget is lying? I think you need to post this supposed proof of yours.
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Ironic
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Re: Ironic
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Never!
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Re: Never!
lot of good books for free from project gutenburg, but they do appreciate a donation, which i do religously
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@jimsin630
I am sure you meant http://websubscriptions.com/, which I easily guessed.
Still, thanks for the pointers to these two interesting sites (websubscriptions.com and fictionwise.com).
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Re: @jimsin630
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Re: Re: @jimsin630
I have been using them since 1999.
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Re: Re: @jimsin630
webscription.net
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Paper based books can't be deleted
No ID, password or batteries required.
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Re: Paper based books can't be deleted
Until you need to move to another house. Ouch, these things are heavy! (At least if you own more than a couple).
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Re: Re: Paper based books can't be deleted
So is furniture, your point?
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Re: Re: Paper based books can't be deleted
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Re: Paper based books can't be deleted
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Calling All Kindle Fanboys
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And a netbook can read full PDF novels without the worry of a company deleting them from your drive... oh, and a netbook can be used for so much more than just reading books?
Blasphemy!!
Personally, I still prefer physical books. I can take them to the beach or in my backyard and read them without the worry of stupid things like sand or sun instantly ruining my purches.
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Re:
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Doublespeak
Now let me get this straight: Amazon says it is changing its system to keep itself from doing again what it chose to do in the first place again in the future? Yeah, right. Talk about doublespeak. No wonder they deleted 1984.
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Could be worse...
If they can download a book, and if they can delete a book, then they certainly have the capability to REPLACE a book. Imagine that some night thousands of Kindle ebooks disappear and then reappear... altered.
We are at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia...
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Re: "Farenheit 451 is next..."
Paranoia will destroy ya!
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BTW, I've been checking out the cool copyright thingie they have. It never ceases to amaze me. First, a "blog" and an "internet site" are different things. And then, you can have regional internets, apparently! Also, the price to publish the note in your intranet is U$S 1000. Cool, huh?
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Ironic
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And this is why...
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An Interesting Note
It looks like it's getting a bad reputation.
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Duh
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Anti-DRM
Digital RENTAL Media
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Ray Bradbury
Unfortunately, you'll have to pick another title. As reported here on Techdirt, Ray Bradbury hates the internet and will never release digital copies.
"Burn em to ashes, then burn the ashes."
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Re: Ray Bradbury
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Re: Ray Bradbury
http://www.amazon.com/Fahrenheit-451-Temperature-Which-Catches/dp/9562911047/ref=ed_oe _o
I also note that "Fahrenheit 451" is available as an audio CD, which I also believed was a "digital" format. My ignorance knows no bounds.
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Re: Re: Ray Bradbury
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Bookz
All books, movies, music, plays, etc are copyrighted 20 years. After that everything is public domain. No exceptions.
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This is truly an effective marketing strategy...
And selling books was the original goal at Amazon, right? They've certainly convinced me to purchase only ink and paper.
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Is it really Amazon?
1997: Publishers cut deals with distributors, who cut huge deals to megabookstores--independent bookstores lose. Amazon steps in to fill the gap, gets blamed for nuking small bookstores.
2009: Publisher decides an ebook was a mistake and tells Amazon to pull it. Amazon may or may not think that's a hot idea, but they have to comply if they want to keep their deals with the publisher. Ebook is pulled, Amazon gets blamed.
Therefore the Kindle is an invalid format, a bad idea, a blot on the Constitution? Sorry guys, I don't get your logic. DRM has to go, but given that Amazon is a retailer, they'd be happy with whatever increases their margin. Right now publishers insist on DRM. If Amazon doesn't cave, they lose their ebook product as well as distribution deals on paper books.
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Re: Is it really Amazon?
of course they will, if they want to keep there customers they should protect them. If you have books but no customers your not going far, but if you have customers then publishers will have no choice but to deal with you, I am sure you are familiar with the saying "if you build it they will come"
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Re: Is it really Amazon?
Judge: So what do you have to say for yourself?
Crook: You see, ya Honor, I didn't wanna shoot that guy, but I gots to make a livin', see? I mean, the gut what hired me said he wussint gonna pay me no more 'lessen I did it, so I didn't have no choice. You can't expect me to miss out on my profits, can ya? I'm a bizness man and I gots other people dependin' on me too. So ya see, it wuzzint my fault, I *had* to do it!
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Re:
It was a pleasure to burn.
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Kindle Spam Problem.
The curious thing about the Kindle is that it is set up in such a way that customers expect to pay even for free content. These people apparently exploited it by writing a fully automatic program to generate kindle copies of just about everything they could get for free. Amazon apparently has some kind of indexing problem which causes people to pay for public-domain books even when they are available for free. Operations like Mobile Reference seem to be the Kindle's equivalent of comment spam.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindl es.ars
http://ireaderreview.com/2009/06/29/kindle-store-discoverablity-problem-is-getting-worse/
For Amazon, the Kindle is a blunder. They need to stop dreaming about selling E-content, and concentrate on the business of selling small physical objects, which may be used books or may be sets of wrenches.
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It's theft,
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War against Eurasia?
Gentlemen, please!
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At least it's more nature friendly...
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Re:
Yep, because you're actually taking something away from someone.
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AP Headlines calling it Piracy
I wonder if any of the profits from this 'Piracy' went to terrorists.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/03/us-attorney-general-piracy-funds-terr or.ars
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Enslavement
“By 2050—earlier, probably—all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually contradictory of what they used to be.”
-George Orwell, (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four
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Re: Enslavement
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Publisher didn't have the rights (from Ars Technica)
That doesn't excuse Amazon's woeful mishandling of the situation, but it did do a wonderful job of highlighting both the stupidity of ridiculously long copyright periods (Orwell died in 1950, but the books are still under copyright 49 years later - yep, I'm sure he's working on that next best seller right now!) as well as the risks of letting someone else control your media library (not so easy for a company to come into your house and take back a book they sold you that they didn't actually have the rights to).
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Re: Publisher didn't have the rights (from Ars Technica)
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In case you were wondering:
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Good Reason not to buy Kindle
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“I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.” -Charles Slater
Very well said. As for me, I'll simply say "NO" to the Kindle.
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What were they thinking?
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I may still buy a kindle
You just need to go into it understanding what you are getting into.
I suspect if I already owned a Kindle and this happened, I would be pissed too.
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I don't understand the fuss...
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ironic..
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Actually, the fact that _that_ kind of code actually existed and was hidden from the public breaks the trust between dealer and customer. That is not a good way to make business.
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DRM Crap
'Use of Digital Content. 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. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.'
'Kindle books are intended to be read only on Kindle devices or with a Kindle mobile reading application. Your Kindle ebooks will be accessible for as long as you own a Kindle and have an active Amazon account. Access to your Kindle ebooks may be discontinued should your Amazon account be terminated. Kindle ebooks may not be read on any competing digital reading device.'
and if you email them asking if they have any way of telling what books contain drm and which dont.
'Thanks for sending us your question about Digital Rights Management for Amazon Kindle content. Publishers choose whether or not they apply DRM to their content, and when they do, we respect and protect that DRM.
At this time we do not post information as to which books have DRM, and which do not. I’ll pass your request along to the Kindle team as a suggestion though.'
I agree that a book is still great, but not always practical. I like my sony ebook. It does pdf format and I can just download anywhere and convert it. It does have drm, but easily turned off.
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You'll never even hear about this...
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kindle, kindling
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Unlike Kindle. Sony Reader cannot be accessed by BB
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We were warned
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/kindle-see-we-told-you-so/
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http://www.kindleport.com/
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kindle
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1984/Orwell
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