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87 Comments
- anthonyretro, on 07/17/2009, -1/+56The irony here is so rich and delicious I just can't eat another bite.
- Gm7Cadd9, on 07/17/2009, -1/+47I randomly received two refunds from Amazon yesterday both for "Animal Farm" and "1984."
If Orwell were still alive he'd have a field day to find out that "Big Brother" could remotely delete material.
2+2=5? - zend999, on 07/17/2009, -0/+23Lame. That's it then. I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm going to buy a Kindle. I bet Amazon lost a lot of customers with this action. So let's see, first we have corporations controlling which products we can purchase for our electronic devices (iPhone anybody?), and now they can remove previously purchased products in the middle of the night. Scary *****.
- dtkirby, on 07/17/2009, -0/+232-legs bad! 2-legs bad!
- stooge4ever, on 07/17/2009, -0/+20how orwellian.
oh... wait... - boneit, on 07/17/2009, -0/+18Death to DRM! As so few people own a Kindle, this probably won't make much noise, but imagine if it was done with itunes and regular audio tracks.
- codered1322, on 07/17/2009, -1/+16I was considering getting a Kindle but I don't think so anymore. The idea that they can go in and take something back is insane! It's like you never owned it to begin with. DRM is the real crime.
- Balanced, on 07/17/2009, -0/+12I thought they sold out of the first few batches of Kindles? Aren't they on the 3rd version already?
At least they gave refunds, but it's still poor precedent. I'm guessing the book publishers are not learning from the music publisher's mistakes.
It's much the same for some specialty book niches. Wizards of the Coasts (Hasbro subsidiary that owns D&D these days) stopped selling PDFs a few months back due to piracy concerns... Despite the concerns mostly being about newer books being available on file sharing sites that weren't even sold as PDFs yet.
It's a big vicious circle of stupid. - serif69, on 07/17/2009, -0/+12Ah yes, 411°- the temperature at which people forget the titles of famous books.
- angusm, on 07/17/2009, -0/+11"But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a large corporation deleting your purchased digital content without warning - for ever."
- Bulletbillx, on 07/17/2009, -0/+11and yet by taking the dnd pdfs away they've only made getting pirated scanned pdfs more attractive.
why don't companies realize that providing the most convenient distribution and superior product is the only way to actually beat piracy (well as much as possible since there will always be pirates) - rolf, on 07/17/2009, -0/+10What is the remote deletion doing there in the first place? Probably a kill switch too for all we know, you know, for those people caught reading the anarchist's cookbook on it without prior government authorization.
Was thinking about getting a kindle dx, but screw that, too much competition that allows wifi on their readers and don't have control of it after selling it to you. - inactive, on 07/17/2009, -1/+11lol 1984.
- fotoman607, on 07/17/2009, -0/+10I'm going to go put this in the entry for "irony" on wikipedia. Can't think of a better example.
- Branchex, on 07/17/2009, -1/+10Amazon, you will never be the Apple of e-books until you show some backbone in the face of book publishers.
- buckrogers1965, on 07/17/2009, -0/+9Winston, we want you to rewrite purchase orders on a certain book. Make it as if those purchases never happened.
- pagno, on 07/17/2009, -0/+9I still have my copy of 1984 from high school.
- uncleosbert, on 07/17/2009, -0/+8this is so ironic i almost think it's a hoax. next they're coming for fahrenheit 451!
- scooterbaga, on 07/17/2009, -1/+8I was on the fence about buying a Kindle... This pretty much cinches it for me.
- thelastcivilian, on 07/17/2009, -0/+7Revising history?
How about this:
Reader: "I just bought a book!"
Publisher: "No you didn't." - manlyandy, on 07/17/2009, -3/+9I bought it for 99 cents. Read it. They took it away and game me 99 cents back. Kinda worked out well for me.
- dinglebutt, on 07/17/2009, -0/+64 legs delicious!
- Entroper, on 07/17/2009, -0/+5When will content distributors learn that technology is supposed to ENHANCE the user experience? You can try to screw the customer to squeeze every penny out of them, or you can make the customer so happy they'll want to give you more money. Isn't the latter much more sustainable?
- MichiganJeep, on 07/17/2009, -0/+5Didn't the Stanza library have these titles for free?
- FritoPendejo, on 07/17/2009, -0/+5I'm going to pull the plug on the availability of your car tomorrow. I really need one, so I hope you weren't using it. I'll leave a check on your kitchen table.
Also, do you think maybe someone owns the rights to publish his books even though he's dead? I would assume a super-genius such as yourself might know that. - Norweed, on 07/18/2009, -1/+6It seems it was caused by someone stealing Orwel's books. It also seems that this won't happen any more.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/ ...
“Amazon Says It Will Stop Deleting Kindle Books ”
Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) on Thursday began e-mailing a few hundred owners of its Kindle reading device to explain that it had deleted electronic copies of the George Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984" and had refunded the $0.99 purchase price.
...
Amazon says that that the books in question were added to its catalog using the company's self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. And it says it will no longer delete books in this manner.
"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," the company said in an e-mailed statement. "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances." - buckrogers1965, on 07/17/2009, -0/+5Non geek friend to geek friend before a $300 tech purchase, "So, what do you think about the Kindle?"
Non Geeks always goto geek friends and ask their opinion before purchasing a product. They always google reviews of products before they throw down $300. If all their geek friends say, "Pass" and every article on the internet is talking about how the Kindle steals your books and has huge privacy concerns, then they will pass on the purchase. - celotil, on 07/17/2009, -0/+4I was just going to say something similar. I'm sure these two books are in the Public Domain.
- allfatherblack, on 07/17/2009, -2/+6Wow I was just waiting for more publishers to get on board before I picked one up. Now I'm not going to be picking one up until ***** like THAT is 100% illegal, and I sure as ***** won't be getting it from Amazon if anyone else offers a comparable product.
See, while they may stop doing this in the future, Amazon has proven that they CAN be coerced into doing ***** that is empirically wrong (I'm not going to argue about my use of the word "empirical", so don't bother). I'm still gonna buy stuff they couldn't take away from me without getting a knuckle-sandwich in return, but they've lost any and all digital sales they might have ever gotten from me... - Barackalypse, on 07/17/2009, -1/+5That's what you get for paying for some DRM enabled bits that you could have gotten free of cost and security from Project Gutenberg Australia:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt - Balanced, on 07/17/2009, -0/+4It's especially funny to me as the vast majority of gamers I've known are at least something of bibliophiles. The main reason to turn to PDFs is:
* Convenience (Searchable references, etc)
* Portability (You can carry books anywhere on a memory stick)
* Availability (Book is not being reprinted.)
WotC is trying their 'DDI' initiative that makes a lot of the material from books available on line along with some utility applications. it's a good idea, but I still think they're killing the whole thing as it doesn't really fulfill the above requirements:
* Convenience: The DDI material is searchable, sure. Note that what's online tends to be articles and mechanics, not the fluff and such... So the pirated books have a small step up here.
* Portability: The char builder works off-line as I understand, but the search of books only works online. Kind of a wash, and requiring internet access kills it for some hopeful users such as active duty military that might not be able to grab a computer that often.
* Availability. As far as I've heard, DDI focuses on the new edition, which is mostly in print... So those looking for legal 3.0 PDFs are out of luck.
It's kind of sad, really. - scooterbaga, on 07/17/2009, -0/+4I'm going the way that lets me keep things I want.
- bobroberts1953, on 07/17/2009, -0/+4How are these books not public domain by now? I doubt the "publisher" actually has any legitimate rights.
- allfatherblack, on 07/17/2009, -0/+4If it were a technical concern, they would have told people instead of doing something as callous as this.
- caldera, on 07/17/2009, -1/+5I spent weeks trying to decide between the Kindle and the Sony Reader. I went with the Reader as I decided that when it becomes obsolete, I'll still be able to use it with few issues. I regretted it when the new DX was announced, but I'm not feeling so bad all of a sudden.
If you'll excuse me, I need to upload .PDF copies of Animal Farm and 1984 to my favorite file-sharing service. :) - chockster, on 07/17/2009, -0/+3I've never seen a hipster with a Kindle. They're not really that cool. Or anti-cool. Or whatever hipster vogue is.
I have seem plenty of guys in shirts and ties with Kindles, reading the New York Times as they go to work on the subway. They're not very hip. - pinetree, on 07/17/2009, -1/+4Let me put it differently. If the customer had never "bought" the e-book, and had simply kept the money in the bank (instead of forking it over to Amazon), he/she would have had more money than he/she ended up with. The customer gave Amazon an interest-free loan (unintentionally). If the customer paid $20 for the book, the $20 he/she got back later was worth less than the $20 he/she paid, due to inflation.
- morcheeba, on 07/17/2009, -1/+4It's like rain on your wedding day!
- micropublisher, on 07/17/2009, -0/+3I really want to get an eBook reader as soon as I can afford one. I've been leaning towards Kindle, but this makes me think seriously about Sony's new touch screen reader.
- buddyw, on 07/17/2009, -0/+3Dammit amazon, I wanted to love you! Delicious DRM free MP3s and great prices on everything I have ever wanted.
Now you pull this.
I was going to buy a kindle, but now I am going to do what I did when music had DRM - Wait until it's gone. - gildude, on 07/17/2009, -2/+5Yes, and they read it for free. Because they got a refund for it after they read it and Amazon deleted it. A much better deal than the 25% you get for taking a book to the used book store, right? (OK, that was a joke).
It's interesting though that the publisher would rather REMOVE it and give a refund to folks who ALREADY PROBABLY READ IT than just stop it from being available for more customers. This kind of stuff, DRM, remote wipe, rights that die when a company shuts down a server or goes out of business, inability to transfer your purchased content to some other companies "newer shinier" device in a couple of years, etc. is exactly what keeps me away from ANY DRM'ed content - and has made me avoid the Kindle (and educate my family about why they should avoid them too). - buckrogers1965, on 07/17/2009, -2/+5If you can't sell it, then you don't own it.
If it can arbitrarily be taken from you, without recourse, then you don't own it.
If they can just take a book away like this then they can just switch out a book on you and you would never know it. Fascists have dreamed of technology like this for decades. They can rewrite history on the fly.
Until they offer ebook readers without a network connection and no DRM, count me out. - morcheeba, on 07/17/2009, -0/+3Glad you got to read it all the way through :-)
- breadfred, on 07/17/2009, -1/+3Isn't this some kind of break of contract? You bought a book - the seller agreed - at a pre-determent price set by the seller. You get the book. 2 weeks pass. You find you do not longer own the book. Try THAT in ANY other industry. 'Sorry, I picked your TV up overnight by sneaking through the backdoor, as I was not happy with the price after all'.
Isn;t there some kind of law against this behaviour? Oh yes, it is called break-in -and-entry. Sew the ***** to hell. - ewc80, on 07/18/2009, -0/+2Ok so the whole "publisher changed its mind" thing actually translates to "publisher wasn't the publisher and had no legal right to upload the book what so ever."
Also 1984 is still in copyright so the whole "it is free to everyone" argument just doesn't work.
It is kinda crappy that the ebooks can be digitally burned like that but the description of the article is about as misleading as you can get. Don't believe half of what you read on digg. - uncleosbert, on 07/17/2009, -0/+2vote 6 legs in 2012!
http://news.slashdot.org/story/09/07/01/2235252/An ... - feitclub, on 07/17/2009, -1/+3This would only be "ironic" if the books pulled were advocating the freedom of information or consumer's rights. Having Orwell's work handled in an Orwellian manner is the opposite of ironic. It is super eerie though.
- MyNameIsJoe, on 07/17/2009, -0/+2It's the good advice that you just didn't take
...wait a second. That isn't ironic at all. - celotil, on 07/17/2009, -0/+2Unfortunately DRM laws allow the publisher to remove any DRM'd content at their whim. Why? Because according to the DRM law, you never actually purchase the DVD/CD/download, you're just purchasing a licence to watch, read, or listen to the content. The publisher technically retains ownership, even after you drop a buck on something.
If there wasn't the legal distinction of them owning it and you purchasing a revocable licence to watching, reading, or listening to it, then you could sue them for hacking, and probably lose. - PisoMojado, on 07/18/2009, -2/+4As @gacord said on Twitter, "Had it been Bradbury they would've burned those Kindles!"
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