Kindle book theft: The Irony

[Potemkin]

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/...han-others/?hp


Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.


1984A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

[flourbug]

Jason bought a Sony reader for me about a month ago, and I really like it. It is slightly larger, but much thinner, than a paperback. I just stick it in my purse and can read anywhere. It's not perfect - in fact, I really look at it as a young technology. The text is fine, but in black and white, and the pages are small. Plus it took me a while to get the hang of not turning a page until I actually read ALL the text. But that is soon forgotten because of the convenience. You can't carry a library around with you, unless that library is on a SD card. I would love to see a laptop sized reader that could download magazines in full color. That would Really save the forests. Maybe in 10 years. For now, I am quite happy reading the NYT's top ten best sellers.

But I am drifting away from my point. The Sony reader is different from the Kindle in one important way - while the Kindle connects directly to the internet to download books, the Sony attaches to my computer via a USB port. I download the files to my computer, then upload them to the reader or put them on a standard card that I can plug into the reader. I never have to worry about anything like what Amazon just did to their subscribers. Once I download a book, it is mine.

I think this stunt is going to turn a LOT of people off to the Kindle - and maybe to book readers in general. If it does, that is a shame.

[Twoolf]

I use a Motion LE 1600 tablet computer for my work. Its expensive, but makes for an excellent reading platform independent of Amazons Kindle foibles.

[jason]

It's a completely different reading experience with the eink screens over back lit lcds

[jason]

http://chamberfour.com/2009/03/19/wh...th-color-eink/

[flourbug]

Hey, someone invented my idea before I thought of it. Not fair! I do like it... and I would really like to see a full color flexible screen version. The tablet seems kind of bulky. $1000 is a bit much too. $300-450 and I'm sold.

[rb.]

I'm really happy with my iPod Touch and Stanza to read books. I can either download them right on the iPod, or do it on the computer I sync to. I've only bought one so far, the rest I'm currently reading are classics out of copyright, so I can distribute them any way I want.

What amazes me is the price of some of the books. One I want is $23. It's recently published hardcover, prize winner. Will be a looong time before I read it I guess.

As for someone whisking back my book, I'd be extremely angry, and they would lose me as a customer for good. Too many places to buy ebooks now, including straight from the publishers.

Fitting that it was 1984 and Animal Farm pulled.

[Ter]

This is soo unbelievably scandalous, I cannot start to express my outrage. Amazon continues to control what you have on your Kindle ? What a joke. I wouldn't be surprised if they also catalogue whatever else you keep on your Kindle.

I will go the Sony Reader way as soon as my business runs better, or if I get a good consultancy. New fr8idges and living room furniture are still higher on our list of desirables.

And sorry if I offend some people's ethics, but what is all that buying and paying for ? There are hundreds of thousands of recent books freely available for download on Demonoid.com, that's just one torrent site.

Ter

[rb.]

Ter, that's exactly where I was last night. After years of looking in libraries and online for a copy of A Canticle for Leibowitz, I found it as part of a science fiction list. Betcha I got 30 books last night. Thanks, by the way.

As for paying for the one book, I have a great love of Canadian fiction, mostly new. There's not a huge commercial market for those books, so they are hard to find in the manner above. I usually buy the prize winners in hardcover, anyway, so I think I will do the same with the one I'm looking for.

As for the ones I downloaded last night, I have no guilt, as I never would have purchased most of them, I would have borrowed them from the library.

[lilly]

At this stage in life I rarely buy books. Maybe a few interesting oddments from the bargain bins at Borders. We have such impressive book sales by University volunteer women twice a year. Plus book sales 4 times a year at various libraries, plus free carts at other libraries, plus 50cent books. I'm inundated with fantastic books and magazines. Might be I spend $100 a year, with an occasional expensive rare book, first edition or leather bound antiquity. (We are a family of bibliophiles.)

Amazon usually pushes the publishers just a bit. This time the publishers screwed Amazon. Read a great article last month about Jeff Bezos ( I did meet him once, and he's just what he is on T.V.) and the entire publishing deal. In a business magazine I never heard of. Will have to look it up again, as I didn't read it in its entirety. Was on Kindle and E books. I was interested but didn't have the time, and didn't feel like spending 6$ on a magazine.

Have known publishers, and they are being squeezed.

[Mama Alanna]

Lots of discussion on the Amazon Kindle forums -- Amazon isn't paying the copyright-holders (usually the authors) their royalties, or the royalties are late while "bugs in the accounting software" are fixed, or the book's ratings are going up (indicating that it's being sold) but the sales aren't being recorded in the author's accounts. I've hesitated to send mine in for that reason.

[lilly]

If you are interested the Article is called. "The Evolution of Amazon" by Adam Penenberg.

In Fast Company. the July-August 2009 edition.

I knew a lot of writers. One very fine writer was putting her version of Clarissa in modern day out as a blog, that you have to pay to get to read (that struck me as odd, but I didn't know the details.). At least that's how I think she did it. Other writers I know have been published, with very little lucre. And others have self published.( an expensive hobby) So many ways to skin a cat, but as always writing is a crap shoot. We all have at least one book in us.

There are a rare few who hit it big. Most don't. Everyone it seems writes nowadays. Some good, some very good, and some commercialy lucrative.

I have many aquaintances who write, numerous books, and you know I haven't bothered to read their work. I don't want to know how their minds work.

We have some best seller writers here who do it for a living, and somehow once I read something, I can't see the person quite the same. Their characters tingue my take on them.

I am very idiosyncratic about my reading. I'll open a book anywhere, and if it catches my interest I'll read it. Otherwise why bother. I don't much care who wrote it, its the book I care about, not its author.

And something has to resonate in my own life in the book. Illuminate something I'm mulling over at that particular moment in time.

I write for myself, not an audience.

[flourbug]

Ter, there are many good sites for free e-books. I've loaded my reader with a lot of classics that I passed over in my younger days. As for current books/music/software that have a fee attached, I think its just silly not to support a worthy author/artist. If you like them, keep them in business. Ya know what I mean?

[Sarrah]

I had a flash thought of all the future holds.
The two genetically engineered life forms. Having their meds adjusted, because they released inappropriate reading material.

Now, it is necessary to reprogram the allowed reading materials on the reading modules.
It may be necessary to adjust the meds in the drinking water. To keep the populace calm until they forget about it.

[D. Gale]

Originally Posted by Sarrah

It may be necessary to adjust the meds in the drinking water. To keep the populace calm until they forget about it.

Nah, they'll just distribute more Soma.

Maybe they'll pull some Aldous Huxley books next...

[Potemkin]

http://business.theatlantic.com/2009...alitarians.php
Amazon to World: We are Not Evil Totalitarians

A mini-scandal broke last week when it was reported that Amazon deleted copies of certain novels from its e-reader, the Kindle, including George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, the dystopian tome where "Big Brother" controls information flow. Creepy! Information-controlling companies want to avoid the label Orwellian, but it certainly doesn't help when the thing you're being Orwellian about is the work of George Orwell. Amazon explained the weird move this way:

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to 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. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.

Peter Kafka parses this lawyerspeak and winces, saying it doesn't seem to match Amazon's license terms, which seem to offer permanent access to the files you download onto your Kindle.

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.

I agree with Kafka that there seems to be a bizarre chain of events here. First, Amazon promises that you keep what you buy on their devices, permanently. Second, it deletes two George Orwell books. Third, it promises it will "not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances" ever again. That sequence should not instill confidence in Kindle readers that their downloads are guaranteed to be permanent.

Of course, we should expect more media piracy in books, just as illegal downloads have impacted movies and music downloads. As Jack Shafer wrote in Slate, there's no reason why the book industry won't face it's own Napster conundrum -- that is, the launching of an illegal e-book channel that customers use in lieu of Amazon's platform. Will Amazon maintain the right to reach into your reader and yank out the offending titles as you read them? I can imagine something like that being 1) Somewhat terrifying; and 2) A good reason for hoards hordes of young people to switch to an e-reader that supports pirated books. In short, this isn't the end of Amazon's worries over third-party publishing platforms. It's only the beginning. For their sake, I hope the next book-pulling scandal doesn't involve Fahrenheit 451.

[A.T. Hagan]

Imagine that. A property owner discovers that Amazon is aiding and abetting a third party in the theft of the first party's property so Amazon acts to end the theft.

And that's Orwellian?

.....Alan.

[Potemkin]

Kindle Swindle? (3 Verse Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Have you noticed your e-book list dwindle?
You’re probably using a Kindle.
A book that you bought
Has turned into naught —
Replaced with a refund. No swindle?

Yet the seller invaded your house.
And did it by clicking a mouse.
Something’s there. Then it’s not.
(An Orwellian plot?)
You’re surely entitled to grouse.

The fact that your money’s returned.
Doesn’t mean that you haven’t been burned.
Your privacy rights
Are gone with those bytes.
This vendor deserves to be spurned.

[Potemkin]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-10294586-248.html

July 23, 2009 4:18 PM PDT
Amazon CEO apologizes for Kindle book deletions
by Josh Lowensohn

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued an apology Thursday to customers over last week's surprise deletion of a number of books that Kindle owners had purchased and downloaded to their devices:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

Bezos issued the apology on Amazon's Kindle Community forum, where users are able to respond with their own replies--many of which simply thank Bezos for broaching the subject.

Last week the company made waves after deleting several books from Kindle devices without the permission of their owners. The move was attributed to Amazon's self-service uploader, where a third party had added e-books to be sold on Amazon's store despite not having have the rights to sell them.

As part of the deletion process Amazon credited those who had purchased the book with refunds. Regardless, many users became upset at the idea that anything else they had purchased could be taken back without their permission.

[Ter]

George Orwell, the author of 1984, died in January 1950.
Someone, somewhere, is still making money from his writings.

Ter

[Mama Alanna]

Copyright (in the US) stands for 75 years from the death of the author. His heirs are good until 2025.

[BirdGuano]

Even more scary is the wireless feature of the Kindle (provided by Tmobile and paid for by Amazon out of sales) is tied into the cellphone system, so they can not only track what you read and when, but also where, and they can then sell that database info to the highest bidder since they pay for connectivity.

One of the reasons I will never own an e-book with a wireless link back to the "mother ship".

demonoid.com is closed to new registrations BTW.

[Ter]

Copyright (in the US) stands for 75 years from the death of the author. His heirs are good until 2025.

I thought it was 70 years, it used to be 50 years. But whatever, I don't live in the US and I do not follow that legislation. It seems to me that the copyright extensions are just another ploy to milk money away from the rest of the world into the US and Europe. Poor countries are not "on the ball" when it comes to patenting. A famous example is some clever people in the US tried to patent basmati rice and even the medical qualities of the neem tree, used since thousands of years in the Indian subcontinent. Then I say "bullshit".

demonoid.com is closed to new registrations BTW.

You can get an invite from a registered user if you promise to keep your upload/download ratio positive. I believe they also open registrations on Friday if I am not mistaken.

Ter

[Mama Alanna]

Copyright is a major can of worms, depending on where you are. And if an author was living or dead at the time of certain pieces of legislation. Wikipedia has dozens of articles on it. And you are right, it is life of the author + 70 years if something was under copyright at the time of the relevant legislation. (That is, legislation doesn't retroactively pull something out of public domain if copyright had lapsed previous to the legislation.) Orwell's works are still under copyright for another 10 years. But Gone With The Wind, as one example, should become public domain at the end of this year.

[jason]

http://gizmodo.com/5326724/high-scho...rom-his-kindle

Forget blaming it on the dog, thanks to Amazon students have a 21st century excuse for lost homework. When Amazon foolishly yanked 1984 from thousands of Kindles, Justin Gawronski's electronic notes for a summer assignment became useless.

Now a class action lawsuit has been filed that seeks punitive damages for those affected by the deletion as well as an injunction that forbids Amazon from improperly accessing Kindles in the future.