[TriLUG] [OT] Kindle jeers? [Was e-mail suckback]

[Paul McLanahan]

On Wed, Aug 5, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Allen Freeman<knieveltech at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It's not only true, it's already been done. See also: 1984.

Yeah.

It turns out that publishers just sell directly through Amazon's
Kindle store. Amazon had apparently not checked the credentials of one
such publisher enough, and allowed them to sell works they didn't own
the rights to sell: namely Animal Farm and 1984 (an awesome
coincidence I thought).

So, instead of pulling the works from the store and sending a letter
or some such standard thing, they used the DRM on the devices to
remove the books from the people who'd bought them when it next
connected to the net, and credit their account for the amount they
paid.

Many saw this a very intrusive and even draconian. At the very least
it let out of the bag that it was possible for them to do this kind of
thing. But even better, it demonstrated very clearly to people that
they do indeed not own the Kindle books they've "bought".

Jeff Bezos (Amazon CEO) publicly apologized and said it wouldn't
happen again. But you can decide what that's worth for yourself.

http://www.amazon.com/tag/kindle/forum/ref=cm_cd_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1D7SY3BVSESG&cdThread=Tx1FXQPSF67X1IU&displayType=tagsDetail

Apart from all that mess, I really like the device. If I spent a lot
of time traveling I'd definitely have one. It's very convenient and
reading on it is comfortable. The included free "whispernet" access is
the killer feature though. Being able to buy a book when and where
ever you are, and even being able to look something up on wikipedia,
all for free: pretty awesome. It really is a lot like this:

http://xkcd.com/548/

hth,

Paul