8 ms·

Sure, but they signed the contract to specifically allow this behavior. If they don't like it, then they should complain to Amazon, or perhaps should read the t

by ender7 14y ago

Sure, but they signed the contract to specifically allow this behavior. If they don't like it, then they should complain to Amazon, or perhaps should read the terms a little more carefully. Either way, it's hard to see how any of this was LendInk's fault.

forensic 14y ago
There's that word again.. "fault" The only truth is power. Legally the site was in the clear, and yet the authors had enough power to shut it down. Many of the authors understood that it was legal but still did not like it because it skirted the spirit of the contract which that lending is for family and friends. The strangest part of this story is that some outraged people were able to close a website they didn't have any claim to.
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Did they shut it down? I have yet to find a source that explains the mechanism of the shutdown. Everybody keeps repeating the fact that it's been killed, but how?
  - sp332 14y ago
    The ISP got cease and desist orders, plus some hatemail including threats of violence. So they took the site offline. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626
    - Turing_Machine 14y ago
      Also hundreds of DMCA complaints.
  - res0nat0r 14y ago
    The ISP received complaints and advised he shut the site down, so he took it offline. Honestly the best place for actual info related to this seems to be their Facebook page where the owner has updated what is happened and also all of the comments reveal how many authors feel about the site (however misguided). https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk
danielweber 14y ago
Well, are contracts about the spirit of the law or the letter of the law? You can choose to strictly be on one side or the other, but the problem is that once you commit, you lose the ability to appeal to the other side.
- sunir 14y ago
  Depends on the court ruling on the matter. Here's a case where a single comma cost $2 million. http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and-ambiguous.html http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and... Here's a choice paragraph: The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know that, too bad for them. From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.
  - rprasad 14y ago
    Contracts are already interpreted against the drafter(s), because they are in the best position to have written their intentions. Businesses are also held to the express language of a contract because they are regarded as having the resources to hire legal advice. However, individuals are not held to the same standards, because they usually lack the knowledge, experience, and resources to understand the import of the language in most contracts, expecially those drafted by lawyers for large businesses. In such case, they will simply be required to show that their interpretation of the contract was reasonable. The authors did not write the Amazon publishing contracts. Most of them aren't lawyers, and a lot of them may not even be college graduates. They cannot, and legally will not be held to a strict reading of the contract if they can prove that they reasonably believed that the Lendle program was limited (or marketed as limited) to friends and family of the ebook purchaser. BTW, that's not the most expensive comma. Check out the comma in the Cleveland Browns contract that cost Cleveland a Superbowl-winning franchise. (The current Browns are an expansion team.)
Turing_Machine 14y ago
It's actually a clearly-marked checkbox in the Kindle publishing portal: "Allow lending for this book". It's not like it's buried somewhere deep in subclause J of paragraph 97. The authors who have their books put on Amazon through a publisher may not have known about this, but there's zero excuse for the indies.

by ender7 14y ago

forensic 14y ago

There's that word again.. "fault" The only truth is power. Legally the site was in the clear, and yet the authors had enough power to shut it down. Many of the authors understood that it was legal but still did not like it because it skirted the spirit of the contract which that lending is for family and friends. The strangest part of this story is that some outraged people were able to close a website they didn't have any claim to.

tedunangst 14y ago
Did they shut it down? I have yet to find a source that explains the mechanism of the shutdown. Everybody keeps repeating the fact that it's been killed, but how?
- sp332 14y ago
  The ISP got cease and desist orders, plus some hatemail including threats of violence. So they took the site offline. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360626
  - Turing_Machine 14y ago
    Also hundreds of DMCA complaints.
- res0nat0r 14y ago
  The ISP received complaints and advised he shut the site down, so he took it offline. Honestly the best place for actual info related to this seems to be their Facebook page where the owner has updated what is happened and also all of the comments reveal how many authors feel about the site (however misguided). https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk https://www.facebook.com/pages/LendInk

danielweber 14y ago

Well, are contracts about the spirit of the law or the letter of the law? You can choose to strictly be on one side or the other, but the problem is that once you commit, you lose the ability to appeal to the other side.

sunir 14y ago
Depends on the court ruling on the matter. Here's a case where a single comma cost $2 million. http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and-ambiguous.html http://heideas.blogspot.ca/2006/08/case-of-2000000-comma-and... Here's a choice paragraph: The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know that, too bad for them. From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.
- rprasad 14y ago
  Contracts are already interpreted against the drafter(s), because they are in the best position to have written their intentions. Businesses are also held to the express language of a contract because they are regarded as having the resources to hire legal advice. However, individuals are not held to the same standards, because they usually lack the knowledge, experience, and resources to understand the import of the language in most contracts, expecially those drafted by lawyers for large businesses. In such case, they will simply be required to show that their interpretation of the contract was reasonable. The authors did not write the Amazon publishing contracts. Most of them aren't lawyers, and a lot of them may not even be college graduates. They cannot, and legally will not be held to a strict reading of the contract if they can prove that they reasonably believed that the Lendle program was limited (or marketed as limited) to friends and family of the ebook purchaser. BTW, that's not the most expensive comma. Check out the comma in the Cleveland Browns contract that cost Cleveland a Superbowl-winning franchise. (The current Browns are an expansion team.)

Turing_Machine 14y ago

It's actually a clearly-marked checkbox in the Kindle publishing portal: "Allow lending for this book". It's not like it's buried somewhere deep in subclause J of paragraph 97. The authors who have their books put on Amazon through a publisher may not have known about this, but there's zero excuse for the indies.