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Yes, the details matter. The FSF is once again using aggrandizing to present their case. Amazon did not go in without cause and revoke the book. There was a sp

Yes, the details matter. The FSF is once again using aggrandizing to present their case. Amazon did not go in without cause and revoke the book. There was a specific reason they did so, and they did refund the customers' money. There was no back door in to the Kindle, it was all done through the account management services. The way the FSF is presenting it is intentionally done to make Amazon appear malicious, when the reality is it what a mistake on their part and they corrected it. This is typical of Stallman and his organization. They have good points, but the presentation of them is over the top to the point where people just stop caring.

boomlinde 11y ago
How is it over the top? Is any of what they say false? That Amazon are able to remove a book from your reader is exactly the kind of contrast to physical books that the list intended to point out, regardless of their reason for doing so or the fact that they refunded their customers. The effect of these differences is that less power is in the hands of consumers, regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise or how they mitigated it.
- fixermark 11y ago
  I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    The probabilistic chance that Amazon will do something untoward with your purchased content is completely irrelevant. The fact that they have that ability in the first place is. That is not a thing that they should have the ability to do. Full stop, end of story.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      Why not? It's a business-necessity to offer the catalog they offer.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do: https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/ https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/
    - fixermark 11y ago
      What is the viable alternative, right now?
  - boomlinde 11y ago
    > I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. I don't mean to say that these effects are irrelevant in any general sense, I am saying that in the context of listing disadvantages of Amazon e-books, it's relevant to mention that the contract that their customers have with them allows them to delete their books at their discretion, and that they have been doing so. I certainly don't see how they went "over the top" by just mentioning it. > [...] you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Just in the interest of not being extremely vague about what exactly those benefits are, let's look at the case in point. Amazon pulled two books from customers that had paid for them, from what I understand over a rights dispute. The books were not only "in the cloud", but had already been retrieved and stored on the customers' devices for consumption, and Amazon went out of their way to delete them from the devices as well, using a backdoor. What exactly was the collective benefit of the cloud in this case? How did the shared, administered, cloud-based technologies empower the users in this instance, if we take "users" in this case to mean the affected customers? Is a deliberate backdoor into your device an inevitable aspect of cloud based technologies? Who did benefit from the action? The winners in this were probably Amazon and the claimant in the dispute. It certainly wasn't the customers. If it was your intention to address the case in point in the above quote, I think that you are conflating "cloud-based technologies" with a generally shitty customer rights, as if the two need to go hand in hand. Meanwhile, tons of people are using "cloud-based technologies" illegally to download books in without agreements and format and device lock-downs that completely screw them over at the whim of the distributor. > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. Some are not, or may not be if they had the effects detrimental to their rights listed to them. > That's not evil; it's the nature of progress What do you mean by progress here? In the most general sense of the word this is a rather meaningless conclusion. I don't see how the tax analogy explains it. When I pay taxes, I do it for the benefit of society. The money I pay actually go towards infrastructure and welfare. When Amazon removes a book from my library, how does it benefit society? Would Amazon go bankrupt if they did not do these things?

boomlinde 11y ago

How is it over the top? Is any of what they say false? That Amazon are able to remove a book from your reader is exactly the kind of contrast to physical books that the list intended to point out, regardless of their reason for doing so or the fact that they refunded their customers. The effect of these differences is that less power is in the hands of consumers, regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise or how they mitigated it.

fixermark 11y ago
I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  The probabilistic chance that Amazon will do something untoward with your purchased content is completely irrelevant. The fact that they have that ability in the first place is. That is not a thing that they should have the ability to do. Full stop, end of story.
  - fixermark 11y ago
    Why not? It's a business-necessity to offer the catalog they offer.
- jordigh 11y ago
  > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do: https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/ https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/
  - fixermark 11y ago
    What is the viable alternative, right now?
- boomlinde 11y ago
  > I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. I don't mean to say that these effects are irrelevant in any general sense, I am saying that in the context of listing disadvantages of Amazon e-books, it's relevant to mention that the contract that their customers have with them allows them to delete their books at their discretion, and that they have been doing so. I certainly don't see how they went "over the top" by just mentioning it. > [...] you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Just in the interest of not being extremely vague about what exactly those benefits are, let's look at the case in point. Amazon pulled two books from customers that had paid for them, from what I understand over a rights dispute. The books were not only "in the cloud", but had already been retrieved and stored on the customers' devices for consumption, and Amazon went out of their way to delete them from the devices as well, using a backdoor. What exactly was the collective benefit of the cloud in this case? How did the shared, administered, cloud-based technologies empower the users in this instance, if we take "users" in this case to mean the affected customers? Is a deliberate backdoor into your device an inevitable aspect of cloud based technologies? Who did benefit from the action? The winners in this were probably Amazon and the claimant in the dispute. It certainly wasn't the customers. If it was your intention to address the case in point in the above quote, I think that you are conflating "cloud-based technologies" with a generally shitty customer rights, as if the two need to go hand in hand. Meanwhile, tons of people are using "cloud-based technologies" illegally to download books in without agreements and format and device lock-downs that completely screw them over at the whim of the distributor. > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. Some are not, or may not be if they had the effects detrimental to their rights listed to them. > That's not evil; it's the nature of progress What do you mean by progress here? In the most general sense of the word this is a rather meaningless conclusion. I don't see how the tax analogy explains it. When I pay taxes, I do it for the benefit of society. The money I pay actually go towards infrastructure and welfare. When Amazon removes a book from my library, how does it benefit society? Would Amazon go bankrupt if they did not do these things?