fsf.org — The FSF welcomed the apology issued today by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as negative reviews from DefectiveByDesign.org campaign supporters criticizing the Kindle's use of proprietary software and DRM to remotely delete ebooks continued to pour in, but said more needed to be done -- including freeing the Kindle's software and dropping DRM.
Jul 23, 2009 View in Crawl 4
gubbasJul 24, 2009
Purchasing any digital content from Amazon is a gamble. At least the Kindle people got their accounts credited. I made the mistake in using Amazons video service. I *purchased* a few movies at $15 each and watched them on my Tivo and PC. After a few months I went to my video library on Amazon to watch them again and found Man of the Year no longer available for download or playback because of license restrictions. How can they do this? Well, I was told to review the TOS and I wasn't getting a credit/refund. This is akin to Amazon busting into my house and taking back DVD's I purchased.Needless to say, that experience is why I no longer use their digital content service and is the primary reason I have not purchased the Kindle.
6minuteabsJul 24, 2009
So what? Barnes & Noble sells paper version of these books as well. If you want the print book but don't want to buy that one, you can go to project Gutenberg and print it out on your home printer for "free".
rolfJul 24, 2009
Don't know why people would digg you down on this. I love amazon's service as a retailer, but not the way they treat the Kindle as a closed device and the closed distribution method is none too exciting either.Since they take 70% of newspaper revenues, I wonder what they take from authors? (Apple takes a 30% cut on iPhone Apps, in comparison):<a class="user" href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/07/amazon-takes-70-percent-of-kindle-newspaper-revenues/">http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/07/amazon-takes-70 ...</a>
julyzergJul 24, 2009
Until they delete them all...Yay for fascism!
oaklandnativeJul 24, 2009
Wow, that's f**king crazy. You should email the EFF and tell them your story.
4antistupidJul 24, 2009
You'll have to talk to the publishers about that and all the thieves that have proven an honor system cannot work. No books, no book rogers.
thatsunpossibleJul 24, 2009
Amazon responds, "Blow me."The kind of people that care this much about DRM are not Amazon's target market anyway.The real issue you guys never seem to get is that the problem is the publishers, just like the labels were the problem with iTunes. Apple didn't want DRM and when the labels finally said OK, they removed it. I'm sure Amazon would do the same. DRM is a total f**king headache to deal with.
stevethepocketJul 26, 2009
Agreed. It worked for Apple, after all. Granted, it took years, still only applies to music, and for reasons nobody quite understands the same record companies let Amazon distribute DRM-free MP3s for over a year before letting Apple off the hook, but ... actually now I'm really not sure if it worked after all.
osamakAug 21, 2009
Amazon didn't free Swindle, they freed few parts of it onlyThe ability to control users' devices is very bad, no matter what the reason is.
osamakAug 21, 2009
It's so bad that you're too afraid to reconnect *your* device. Again, it's yours, you must have the freedom, not Amazon.
merduatiMay 25, 2010
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