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Amazon reopen wiped Kindle account

293 points by EwanToo 14y ago

lambada 14y ago
Explanation/ update here: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-y...
- thomaslutz 14y ago
  "We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help. Thank you for your interest in Kindle."
  - kmfrk 14y ago
    It's astonishing that they persist with the robotic language in their clarification. Something tantamount to "We fucked up, sorry, dude" would help them so much more. I guess it just reflects their attitude towards customers.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      The odd thing is that with it's physical world stuff, Amazon has, at least in my experience, always been great when it comes to customer service. I'm sure with any business that size there will be people who say otherwise but I can't say that I've heard anyone bad mouthing their customer service which given how many people use them and how much is pretty remarkable. Long way of saying - I don't think Amazon have a culture which discourages good customer service, I think that they have a problem in this specific area.
      - DanBC 14y ago
        I agree that with shipping product, and making sure people can return faulty product for replacement, Amazon is fantastic. And this stuff about auto-detection of supposedly bad accounts, and closing of those accounts with very little detail or ability to appeal is worrying, but not limited to Amazon. (That doesn't make it any more acceptable!) Where Paypal (or their honest customers) are at risk of losing many thousands of dollars from fraud I can understand that some[1] people are going to be innocent victims of heavy handed policies. [1] For some values of 'some' including 'too many'.
      - gnufied 14y ago
        Depends on where you are. It might be pretty good when dealing with Amazon in US, but I have been on the receiving end more than once when I order stuff to India. One of books I ordered, I never received and yet it was marked delivered in their history. I did not know what to do back then and case got closed just like that.
        nfg 14y ago
        A while back I broke the screen of my kindle while traveling. Not only was I surprised that Amazon covered this under the warranty, but the service I received was really fantastic. The Kindle had originally been shipped to Ireland (where I live), but I was in India when it was broken. I phoned Amazon and they had a replacement shipped to Kathmandu (the next stop on my itinerary with dates certain enough that I was happy to have something shipped there). It was shipped fine and they reimbursed the cost of shipping back the broken unit (I sent a scan of the distinctly dodgy receipt issued by a Kathmandu shipping agent) and they also paid me back the import charge that Nepalese customs levied on the "new" Kindle. All told I was blown away by the quality of the service given the funniness of what I was asking them to do (shipping to random locations etc).
        Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
        You hear a lot of stuff like this, though it makes sense - keep the happy user's Kindle working, they keep buying books.
    - mikeash 14y ago
      Big companies persist in corporate-speak even though everyone hates it. I never have understood why. They must think that it's the best way to go, somehow.
      - calinet6 14y ago
        It's the legal department. Each public statement has to be carefully evaluated for its potential to open up lawsuits or bad press. The neutral, robotic tone with ambiguous statements is absolutely required to protect them from the masses.
        nodata 14y ago
        "Thank you for your interest in Kindle." This line is not from the legal department. You see it everywhere: * "Thank you for not smoking." * "Thank you for your understanding." The unintended effect (for me at least) is that sentence stands out and I pay less attention to the poor excuse written directly before it. A bit like the way a politician does not answer a question.
      - lmm 14y ago
        I don't think everyone hates it. On a site like this obviously the cool thing is to claim to prefer startup-style error messages like "oops, everything's fucked, sorry dude". But fashions change fast; a big company writing in that style would (by the time they'd approved the procedures) likely come off like your parents trying to sound cool by using the hip phrases they've read about. And that's without even getting into how older people (the HN readership is overwhelmingly, unrepresentatively young) tend to care a lot more about politeness.
        mikeash 14y ago
        There are plenty of good alternatives out there besides useless lawyer-speak and profanity-filled startup-speak. It is possible to write a message which is polite, official, and doesn't sound like it came from a robot.
      - brown9-2 14y ago
    - calinet6 14y ago
      This is what any company with global brand recognition would say. Anything more would open them up to horrendous lawsuits, and anything less might cause more criticism. It's a well-crafted statement of fact with an invitation to solve issues through their customer service department—basically admitting they were in the wrong (but not too much), and that their policy has been clarified. The robotic language is a legal necessity for corporations and it does not reflect on their attitude towards customers in the least.
      - chucknelson 14y ago
        Exactly. The bigger you get, the more you need to protect yourself, especially in customer relations communication. You can't keep the casual startup mentality forever (well, in many cases anyway).
      - kmfrk 14y ago
        I still think there is plenty of legal wiggle room to sound like a carbon-based lifeform. I am not really sure what legal case this would open them up to, but we have to assume they've consulted with their attorneys prior to writing the statement. There is also an opportunity cost to going all legal, which is the attrition of brand perception and customer relations. Apple managed to pull both off during Antennagate. Maybe Amazon cut the cord to US-East as a diversion and hoped that and the Apple keynote would distract from this screw-up. :P EDIT: Which is not to even touch on the subject of assuaging the fear that consumers might suddenly lose all access to their entire library in the cloud. There is a lot at stake here, and Amazon have done nothing to dispel this apprehension arisen in light of this event. It's not just a customer catastrophe, it's an e-book/Kindle catastrophe.
      - TillE 14y ago
        "Thank you for your interest in Kindle" at the end is absolutely not necessary and comes across as patronizing, clueless, and robotic.
      - DodgyEggplant 14y ago
        Amazon can handle the possible legal issues of human like messages
    - jmilloy 14y ago
      My sense is that any time a company issues a statement or response about a customer service issue, someone will dislike the tone and comment about it. This gives an inflated appearance of dissatisfaction with statements by large companies and over-perpetuates the corporate PR-speak meme. That's not to say that companies never dodge key issues, refuse to own up, or spin things in their favor. But in this case, it sounds like someone at Amazon simply fixed the mistake, admitted the mistake, and clarified their position. Just because they didn't use profanity and an informal tone doesn't change the content.
    - coliveira 14y ago
      I much prefer the English explanation than a "sorry dude". First I am not a "dude".... and don't even get me started with the f* word, please.
    - Agathos 14y ago
      "The problem has been resolved. There was never any problem. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia."
  - piquadrat 14y ago
    Because contacting customer service worked so great the first three times...
    - alan_cx 14y ago
      That is the exact problem, and one they seem to have very much avoided addressing. I have absolutely no doubt that 99% of these sort of problems would be quickly and easily resolved, IF one could adequately contact a responsive customers services department. Yeah, this is about DRM, but IMHO, the bigger issue is that of getting hold of some one to help and resolve these issues. I don't think any of us mind thongs going wrong, that happens, its what these people do or don't do that counts. (Yes, I see the typo, it amused me so I left it :) )
  - conradfr 14y ago
    This reply contradicts the original story.
  - tjoff 14y ago
    Yeah, and we saw how well that worked yesterday...
thomaslutz 14y ago
Like e.g. with Google actions without explantations, but the refusal to give them are the worst for me as a customer.
- smoyer 14y ago
  It's a standard "big-corp" thing. I can understand why they'd avoid saying why a credit card transaction was rejected, but they're missing an opportunity to remind the world that their corporation is actually made up of humans.
  - ihsw 14y ago
    It's simply a shitty attitude, and being a large corporation is irrelevant.
    - smoyer 14y ago
      Perhaps, but it's easier to hide behind the "corporate veil" when you're part of a huge company. You can get away with saying "that's not allowed" at every turn, while the CEO of a 20 person company is much more accessible to help deal with these problems. The reality is that most big companies would be much better off if their CEOs actually knew about issues like this ... I think most of them care about customer satisfaction quite a bit but are insulated from that level of detail.
Aardwolf 14y ago
Does anyone know if Kindle supports reading normal (by which I mean without DRM or so) PDF files, even PDF files where each page is an image rather than text? Is it possible to put PDF files on it through USB as "mass storage device", or at least in some way that supports doing it from Linux through USB? Is it possible to do this without Kindle account? Because, the hardware of the device looks nice to me, especially if you'd add a water proof cover around it. Thanks!
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  Yes it does but it's not great at displaying them. They don't scale brilliantly on the eInk screen so you tend to want to zoom and pan which is clunky to say the least. From my perspective I'd look at an iPad or Android tablet for PDFs for this sort of thing - it's really not the Kindle's strong suit. In terms of moving stuff over - yep, you can just mount it as a drive and copy stuff across, or use one of several readily available tools for managing content (I use Caliber on the Mac, not sure if it's available for Linux).
  - shrikant 14y ago
    Yep, Calibre is available for Linux (I used it under Ubuntu 12.04, and now 12.10), and IMHO, is one of the more well-behaved cross-platform apps.
- arnoooooo 14y ago
  It does. PDF is not the best format though, as it has rigid formatting which makes it unpractical on a small screen. You can convert it to mobi with a program like Calibre though, which is much better (for text at least). And I don't know if you can use your kindle at all without an Amazon account.
- SeanDav 14y ago
  I bought a second hand Kindle DX to read PDF's. I installed Duokan on it, which a 3rd party OS that has much better PDF handling and allows dual booting with Kindle OS. It also supports epub format. It is very easy to use Kindle without an Amazon account as there are all sorts of tools to allow you to do pretty much anything you want on your Kindle. AFAIK you can install Duokan on every Kindle version.
jiggy2011 14y ago
So moral of the story? Make sure you have a blog with significant readership if you want good customer service?
- _pferreir_ 14y ago
  Quite so. Or that you have a friend who can do that for you.
- thejosh 14y ago
  Same as problems for pretty much any tech, such as Google.
- jmilloy 14y ago
  Does anyone have any data about how often [Amazon] ignores or fixes customer service issues despite a lack of high-visibility blogging? My 10th grade world history teacher had a small segment on the rainmaking rituals of some group of people. When rain was needed, they would continue the rituals until it rained. From their view, the rituals worked. I don't think clouds drift around waiting for the rituals to build up, and I don't think customer service departments sit around waiting for blog entries about their company. I'm not suggesting that large companies are blind to signal from the public, or that they ignore it. But why do we think that without such signal from the public these fixes wouldn't have happened, other than a cultural aversion to large companies and their PR departments?
  - TillE 14y ago
    > I don't think customer service departments sit around browsing the internet for blog entries about their company This story bubbled up through HN, BoingBoing, and many other tech news outlets. Someone at Amazon inevitably saw it. Nobody's claiming they randomly stumbled across the original blog entry.
    - csixty4 14y ago
      Specifically, Computer World UK and Jeff Jarvis (currently of Buzz Machine but formerly of People, Entertainment Weekly, and the SF Examiner) got in touch with Amazon PR directly for a statement. There were likely more big publications contacting them for a statement that I didn't see. You can't write it off as "just some blogger" at that point. Someone needed to rectify it ASAP.
deleted 14y ago
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- dmbaggett 14y ago
  The big deal, I think, is that it's scary for people who buy all their books on Amazon to realize that all those books can be taken away for no obvious reason, and with no recourse other than to make a public stink.
- smackfu 14y ago
  Really? Amazon takes back paid for content, doesn't refund it, customer service is no help and stonewalls, and Amazon only fixes it after it gets a lot of press, and that's no big deal? What if it happened to you?
- nodata 14y ago
  > I don't understand the problem. It's a customer service issue, not a front page news story. Amazon did the right thing here in the end and that's that. What's the big deal? Don't act naive, [username removed, you deleted your comment]. Amazon did something bad which will affect lots of people. What did they do wrong? Lack of clear intent; communication: they didn't explain why they did something wrong, they didn't express why that wrong thing happened, they didn't explain how they will prevent this happening again.
- gnufied 14y ago
  Not many have fortitude or resources to make it to the front page of HN, Wired etc. I can somehow relate (http://gnufied.org/2011/08/30/the-applecare-story/ http://gnufied.org/2011/08/30/the-applecare-story/) how powerless an individual feels when faced with a large corporation offering no explanation or help at all. In the end Amazon corrected the mistake without offering any explanation makes it worse.
Nursie 14y ago
They reopened it because people heard about it and then started talking about stripping DRM and resorting to piracy, so somebody, somewhere decided to make this go away as fast as possible and as quietly as possible. /cynic
- tomrod 14y ago
  I've never understood how DRM can be stripped from a mobi file. I've never been able to find the files when I looked on my ipod. (I think I've shown my lack of hacking on the ipod with this comment--eep!).
  - jmount 14y ago
    Usually you use a general computer to strip the DRM. On a Mac or PC you have a program masquerade as a client (like Kindle for PC) and then remove the DRM from the contents it get. MyTunes was for Itunes was like that in the past.
  - jmount 14y ago
    Usually you use a general computer to strip the DRM. On a Mac or PC you have a program masquerade as a client (like Kindle for PC) and then remove the DRM from the contents it get. MyTunes was for Itunes was like that in the past.
- dromidas 14y ago
  Yeah it's a good idea to do that for anything you 'lease', at least when there isn't supposed to be an expiration on that lease.
deleted 14y ago
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sodomizer 14y ago
This is the real outcome: "Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library." Amazon has realized that they can quarantine suspect accounts, but not cut off the customer's right to their purchased books. Every other manufacturer is now going to follow suit. The end result is a win for the consumer.
- danteembermage 14y ago
  Thank you for pointing out this important aspect of the story, when these public shamings lead to structural change it is much different than just switching the particular use case the produced the embarrassing result. Welcome to the community! I would like to point out that sexually explicit usernames are not the norm here. Since your comment history and karma are tied to your user account and that account may persist for a long time, you might consider changing to a different name before you get too invested in this one and regret it later when it's too late to easily switch. Many users are known here by their handle and it is not uncommon for people to say things like "Send up the Patio11/Cpercival/Grellas/TokenAdult bat signal!" because users remember who made valuable comments and may recognize you by name. You are of course free to choose for yourself, your call.
- revscat 14y ago
  > Every other manufacturer is now going to follow suit. The end result is a win for the consumer. Perhaps, for now. But there is nothing preventing them from changing their policies later, or even doing so capriciously. Consumers will not be safe from similar events until the law is changed to prevent companies from doing this.
- tjoff 14y ago
  Nah, that has always been the case. What happens if you mod your xbox? You get banned from xbox live, MS don't brick your device or remove your games. Amazon is just doing their best to fuck their customers, and boy they are good at it. I can barely conceive a workplace so fucked up to come up with something as ludicrous as this shit.
- mcguire 14y ago
  You do realize that "Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library." was a restatement of their existing policy, not a change in that policy.
axx 14y ago
I bet it was exactly like this: 1. Kindle-wipe Story on Hackernews. 2. One engineer at Amazon saw the story, told it some Executive above him 3. The Executive "nerds, let them talk THIS is real business!" 4. One day later "How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others (wired.com)" on Hackernews 5. The Executive "OH SNAP! REOPEN REOPEN REOPEN!!11"
- jmduke 14y ago
  Ha ha! Executives are dumb and also terrible people! /sigh
cletus 14y ago
This is a good outcome and something that should probably be enshrined in law: if you've purchased ebooks (or in fact any digital media) then you should absolutely have access to it regardless of the state of your account. The only time this shouldn't apply (IMHO) is when the payment itself is in question (eg you used a credit card that got reported stolen so any items bought on suspect transactions may be suspended pending investigation). It shouldn't surprise me that some give credence to conspiracy theories but it does. Amazon panicked and reversed itself because a story about removing DRM was on the front page of HN? Seriously? What you'll find with customer service departments is that what they do is largely prescribed by scripts. Call centers work like this (to the point of there being checking to see that people don't deviate from the script). They will have procedures that must be followed. The Mark Fiore example [1] springs to mind. Some saw some global conspiracy. The more likely explanation is that the procedures defined for those approving apps just hadn't taken such a scenario into account when being written ie it was an oversight (a "mistake" as Steve Jobs called it). We're all too willing to accept bugs in software. Procedures that humans need to follow--particularly if they need to follow them rigidly--have bugs too. The more discretion you give those following the procedures, the more you tend to just add inconsistency. [1]: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/pulitzer-winners-app-is-approved-finally-by-apple/ http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/pulitzer-wi... EDIT: to clarify, I think the original story getting as much of an audience as it did certainly helped and may well have been instrumental. It's kind of sad that that's the case. I was referring to some commenters putting forward theories about the DRM removal story being the catalyst for action here, which is ludicrous.
- edanm 14y ago
  You really don't think the article getting published has anything to do with Amazon's about-face? I'm surprised. I usually assume that these kinds of stories do cause companies to change their behaviour in specific cases. Why do you think otherwise? Note: I love Amazon and agreed with your defending of them in the original post. I'm honestly surprised that it isn't obvious that the article influenced Amazon here.
  - danso 14y ago
brador 14y ago
If the writer wanted to make Amazon pay for the wipe she has certainly achieved that with her post. My Kindles hit Ebay a few hours ago. I'm out of the Amazon digital ecosystem.
- codewright 14y ago
  What are you replacing them with?
  - brador 14y ago
    I was already splitting my ebook purchasing between the Apple bookstore and Amazon. From this point, ebook purchases will be through Apple or a purchase of the real book. I kinda miss the feel of a real book too so that's a nice change. If I need a digital copy, and it's Amazon exclusive, then I'll be using "other sources".
    - alex_c 14y ago
      Out of curiosity (I haven't purchased ebooks from either source), what makes Apple more reliable than Amazon?
      - codewright 14y ago
        I'm a little dubious too, but Amazon has a track record of doing things like this (The Animal Farm/1984 fiasco), whereas Apple seems to respect that they've sold their customer something.
      - brador 14y ago
        They have yet to pull a stunt like this. As far as I'm aware, they are unable to remotely modify Apple devices. Until proven otherwise, I trust them.
        0x0 14y ago
        Just wait. https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps Edit: And don't forget the remote wipe feature in Find My iPhone. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-hona...
donniezazen 14y ago
I am just surprised the way these companies work. They don't even owe as little as information to their customers and our government enable them to do that.
dkrich 14y ago
I'm guessing one Michael Murphy is polishing up the old resume right about now.
pasbesoin 14y ago
I find the lack of transparency on Amazon's part entirely unacceptable. (I can imagine and understand -- although not always agree with -- the desire to e.g. keep some technical aspects of fraud detection private. Beyond that, I have zero sympathy. And even in the event of some so-called "fraud detection", we have powerful entities who on the one hand want to benefit from a "global market" while on the other hand simultaneously seeking to restrict same when doing so is to their benefit. For example, taking advantage of lower "third world" production costs while insisting upon receiving "first world" prices for their own goods.) P.S. I've had two friends communicate that they are backing out of pending Kindle purchases, since I shared this story with them. (In case any Amazon types are browsing by here.)
podperson 14y ago
It's astonishing to me how Amazon, which is more of a monopoly in many respects than Apple has ever been or Microsoft currently is, is essentially walmarting entire industries and gets almost no negative press over it. (It's even getting help from friendly congresspersons to strengthen its ebook monopoly.) I've been forced to withdraw my $20 ebook from Amazon because I simply cannot afford to price it at $20 in the kindle store (Amazon pays the same royalty for books priced at $10-20 as books priced at $10, and it pays lower royalties than BN or iBooks). I'm not allowed to price my ebook so that I effectively get paid the same (which entails selling the book at $40 for Kindle and $20 for everything else) because that violates Amazon's "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rules. Similarly, Amazon sells book readers that are incompatible with rival book formats, including ePub. No-one complains.
- javajosh 14y ago
  Well, I for one was unaware of this state of affairs. It takes people like you to bring these observations into light, and to do so repeatedly, because it's important. Indeed, I would request that you write up this analysis in a blog post so that it can hit the front page of HN. [Edit: I just realized how incredibly generic this sounds, haha. But I am a fan of investigative journalism in general, and investigations of abuses by power in particular, and Amazon is a juicy target here.]
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  Upon reading your comment I went to look up Amazon royalty information. Let me know if I got this right. A book that is 3-10 dollars, sold in the first world, gets you 70% royalties minus a few cents for delivery. If you want to set a price over $10, then you only get 35% royalties. So it's not that Amazon flat-out gives much lower royalties, it's that they give much lower royalties for books that cost more than ten dollars. They don't want to give you more than seven dollars per sale.
  - alanfalcon 14y ago
    That's basically all true, except it's not always just "a few cents" for delivery, especially if you have full color photos or illustrations as a part of your eBook. On other platforms there is no delivery fee and no price range required to receive the 70% royalty rate. So there is a window for certain books where the Amazon rates are competitive, and of course they have the largest marketplace for eBooks so it's usually advantageous to play within those bounds.
chanux 14y ago
It's good to hear Linn has her stuff back but this doesn't guarantee future situations like this would have similar good endings. What I infer from 'no explanations' is it's mostly a PR plaster. It's sad that such problems will be solved only by huge exposure to the story. Not something everyone can have all the time. Happy but sad.
doki_pen 14y ago
Support Policy: If you feel that your account has been erroneously disabled, then got viral with your story, only then will we investigate your claims.
- rhizome 14y ago
  More like, "if you have trouble with customer service, please contact customer service."
  - tytso 14y ago
    ... and after customer service has blown you off saying that from their perspective, the case has been closed and you have no avenues of appeal, then try to make the story go viral....
sgt 14y ago
That's a very bad translation - although I'm still impressed because it's programmatic and the technology has come pretty far (and I am grateful to Google for providing Google Translate in general!). So "Amazon did an about-face" actually means "Amazon did a change in direction" or even "Amazon did a 180 degree turn".
- re 14y ago
  Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but "did an about-face" is a good translation; it's a common English idiom: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/do+an+about-face http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/do+an+about-face
- sukuriant 14y ago
  How is it a bad translation? I was headed to the comments with the intention of applauding Google for a truly incredible translation service! Reading that wasn't blocky or painful, like reading programatically translated texts used to be. Is the idea of what is said wrong? Did they make a huge mistake in any section? Or small mistakes everywhere? As already commented, "did an about-face" is an English idiom
  - gizzlon 14y ago
    I'm not GP, but I also though "about-face" was an error. I'm impressed as well, but there are errors like: "e-bokgiganten" (the e-book giant), "type IT consultant Linn.." (wrote the IT consultant..) and I don't think "Spread Monday blog post" is correct either? (On Monday the blog-post about .. spread) etc.. Still impressive though :)
    - sukuriant 14y ago
      Ah yes. I saw a few of those too. It's certainly not perfect. I actually skimmed the article rather than reading the details; and I was honestly impressed that I could skim the article.
wissler 14y ago
Doesn't matter to me. The fact that Amazon can break and enter into my devices with impunity is completely unacceptable. The fact that I can't back up my own purchases without hacking is completely unacceptable. I'll continue using Kindle for free content but I'll be buying only real books unless there is very clear legislation, or a change in Amazon's technology, supporting my right to keep and control my own purchases. Amazon (and not just Amazon) has too much power here and has repeatedly demonstrated that they will abuse it.
- hobbes 14y ago
  You can backup your purchases using copy-and-paste to your hard drive. Or do you mean "remove DRM"? I agree with your second paragraph.
yason 14y ago
If I were her, I would so immediately copy the ebooks that are available again, for now, then find a way to free them from DRM and close my Amazon account myself. Then I would go lobbying for a law that would make it a legal requirement to make digitally restricted products available to the user in unencumbered format if the user's account gets terminated or if the company goes out of business. So, basically the user would buy the song/book/movie but hand over the appropriate storage to the company for as long as the account remains open. Then, if the storage gets shut down the user would still own copies of his/her files.
zizee 14y ago
Some people might be thinking "Well done Amazon for correcting this mistake" or "Amazon just caved due to pressure of bad press" but I am thinking that if Amazon can wipe a kindle remotely, I do not want such a device and will purchase a product which does not have this "feature". Seriously, fuck them.
- alecco 14y ago
  Better: buy a subsidized unit but don't buy their DRM ebooks ;) It's trivial to do.
zvrba 14y ago
Meta-comment: I've read the article in english and norwegian side-by-side, and I'm impressed by google's translation.
eykanal 14y ago
Have any native english publications covered this story? Strange that the only new source to publish a follow-up to what was a very popular story would be some random Norwegian newspaper.
eykanal 14y ago
Have any native english publications covered this story? Strange that the only new source to publish a follow-up to what was a very popular story would be some random Norwegian newspaper.

293 points by EwanToo 14y ago

Explanation/ update here: http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-you-have-no-right-to-your-ebooks/index.htm http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2012/10/rights-y...

thomaslutz 14y ago
"We would like to clarify our policy on this topic. Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library. If any customer has trouble accessing their content, he or she should contact customer service for help. Thank you for your interest in Kindle."
- kmfrk 14y ago
  It's astonishing that they persist with the robotic language in their clarification. Something tantamount to "We fucked up, sorry, dude" would help them so much more. I guess it just reflects their attitude towards customers.
  - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    The odd thing is that with it's physical world stuff, Amazon has, at least in my experience, always been great when it comes to customer service. I'm sure with any business that size there will be people who say otherwise but I can't say that I've heard anyone bad mouthing their customer service which given how many people use them and how much is pretty remarkable. Long way of saying - I don't think Amazon have a culture which discourages good customer service, I think that they have a problem in this specific area.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      I agree that with shipping product, and making sure people can return faulty product for replacement, Amazon is fantastic. And this stuff about auto-detection of supposedly bad accounts, and closing of those accounts with very little detail or ability to appeal is worrying, but not limited to Amazon. (That doesn't make it any more acceptable!) Where Paypal (or their honest customers) are at risk of losing many thousands of dollars from fraud I can understand that some[1] people are going to be innocent victims of heavy handed policies. [1] For some values of 'some' including 'too many'.
    - gnufied 14y ago
      Depends on where you are. It might be pretty good when dealing with Amazon in US, but I have been on the receiving end more than once when I order stuff to India. One of books I ordered, I never received and yet it was marked delivered in their history. I did not know what to do back then and case got closed just like that.
      - nfg 14y ago
        A while back I broke the screen of my kindle while traveling. Not only was I surprised that Amazon covered this under the warranty, but the service I received was really fantastic. The Kindle had originally been shipped to Ireland (where I live), but I was in India when it was broken. I phoned Amazon and they had a replacement shipped to Kathmandu (the next stop on my itinerary with dates certain enough that I was happy to have something shipped there). It was shipped fine and they reimbursed the cost of shipping back the broken unit (I sent a scan of the distinctly dodgy receipt issued by a Kathmandu shipping agent) and they also paid me back the import charge that Nepalese customs levied on the "new" Kindle. All told I was blown away by the quality of the service given the funniness of what I was asking them to do (shipping to random locations etc).
        Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
        You hear a lot of stuff like this, though it makes sense - keep the happy user's Kindle working, they keep buying books.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    Big companies persist in corporate-speak even though everyone hates it. I never have understood why. They must think that it's the best way to go, somehow.
    - calinet6 14y ago
      It's the legal department. Each public statement has to be carefully evaluated for its potential to open up lawsuits or bad press. The neutral, robotic tone with ambiguous statements is absolutely required to protect them from the masses.
      - nodata 14y ago
        "Thank you for your interest in Kindle." This line is not from the legal department. You see it everywhere: * "Thank you for not smoking." * "Thank you for your understanding." The unintended effect (for me at least) is that sentence stands out and I pay less attention to the poor excuse written directly before it. A bit like the way a politician does not answer a question.
    - lmm 14y ago
      I don't think everyone hates it. On a site like this obviously the cool thing is to claim to prefer startup-style error messages like "oops, everything's fucked, sorry dude". But fashions change fast; a big company writing in that style would (by the time they'd approved the procedures) likely come off like your parents trying to sound cool by using the hip phrases they've read about. And that's without even getting into how older people (the HN readership is overwhelmingly, unrepresentatively young) tend to care a lot more about politeness.
      - mikeash 14y ago
        There are plenty of good alternatives out there besides useless lawyer-speak and profanity-filled startup-speak. It is possible to write a message which is polite, official, and doesn't sound like it came from a robot.
    - brown9-2 14y ago
  - calinet6 14y ago
    This is what any company with global brand recognition would say. Anything more would open them up to horrendous lawsuits, and anything less might cause more criticism. It's a well-crafted statement of fact with an invitation to solve issues through their customer service department—basically admitting they were in the wrong (but not too much), and that their policy has been clarified. The robotic language is a legal necessity for corporations and it does not reflect on their attitude towards customers in the least.
    - chucknelson 14y ago
      Exactly. The bigger you get, the more you need to protect yourself, especially in customer relations communication. You can't keep the casual startup mentality forever (well, in many cases anyway).
    - kmfrk 14y ago
      I still think there is plenty of legal wiggle room to sound like a carbon-based lifeform. I am not really sure what legal case this would open them up to, but we have to assume they've consulted with their attorneys prior to writing the statement. There is also an opportunity cost to going all legal, which is the attrition of brand perception and customer relations. Apple managed to pull both off during Antennagate. Maybe Amazon cut the cord to US-East as a diversion and hoped that and the Apple keynote would distract from this screw-up. :P EDIT: Which is not to even touch on the subject of assuaging the fear that consumers might suddenly lose all access to their entire library in the cloud. There is a lot at stake here, and Amazon have done nothing to dispel this apprehension arisen in light of this event. It's not just a customer catastrophe, it's an e-book/Kindle catastrophe.
    - TillE 14y ago
      "Thank you for your interest in Kindle" at the end is absolutely not necessary and comes across as patronizing, clueless, and robotic.
    - DodgyEggplant 14y ago
      Amazon can handle the possible legal issues of human like messages
  - jmilloy 14y ago
    My sense is that any time a company issues a statement or response about a customer service issue, someone will dislike the tone and comment about it. This gives an inflated appearance of dissatisfaction with statements by large companies and over-perpetuates the corporate PR-speak meme. That's not to say that companies never dodge key issues, refuse to own up, or spin things in their favor. But in this case, it sounds like someone at Amazon simply fixed the mistake, admitted the mistake, and clarified their position. Just because they didn't use profanity and an informal tone doesn't change the content.
  - coliveira 14y ago
    I much prefer the English explanation than a "sorry dude". First I am not a "dude".... and don't even get me started with the f* word, please.
  - Agathos 14y ago
    "The problem has been resolved. There was never any problem. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia."
- piquadrat 14y ago
  Because contacting customer service worked so great the first three times...
  - alan_cx 14y ago
    That is the exact problem, and one they seem to have very much avoided addressing. I have absolutely no doubt that 99% of these sort of problems would be quickly and easily resolved, IF one could adequately contact a responsive customers services department. Yeah, this is about DRM, but IMHO, the bigger issue is that of getting hold of some one to help and resolve these issues. I don't think any of us mind thongs going wrong, that happens, its what these people do or don't do that counts. (Yes, I see the typo, it amused me so I left it :) )
- conradfr 14y ago
  This reply contradicts the original story.
- tjoff 14y ago
  Yeah, and we saw how well that worked yesterday...

thomaslutz 14y ago

Like e.g. with Google actions without explantations, but the refusal to give them are the worst for me as a customer.

smoyer 14y ago
It's a standard "big-corp" thing. I can understand why they'd avoid saying why a credit card transaction was rejected, but they're missing an opportunity to remind the world that their corporation is actually made up of humans.
- ihsw 14y ago
  It's simply a shitty attitude, and being a large corporation is irrelevant.
  - smoyer 14y ago
    Perhaps, but it's easier to hide behind the "corporate veil" when you're part of a huge company. You can get away with saying "that's not allowed" at every turn, while the CEO of a 20 person company is much more accessible to help deal with these problems. The reality is that most big companies would be much better off if their CEOs actually knew about issues like this ... I think most of them care about customer satisfaction quite a bit but are insulated from that level of detail.

Aardwolf 14y ago

Does anyone know if Kindle supports reading normal (by which I mean without DRM or so) PDF files, even PDF files where each page is an image rather than text? Is it possible to put PDF files on it through USB as "mass storage device", or at least in some way that supports doing it from Linux through USB? Is it possible to do this without Kindle account? Because, the hardware of the device looks nice to me, especially if you'd add a water proof cover around it. Thanks!

Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
Yes it does but it's not great at displaying them. They don't scale brilliantly on the eInk screen so you tend to want to zoom and pan which is clunky to say the least. From my perspective I'd look at an iPad or Android tablet for PDFs for this sort of thing - it's really not the Kindle's strong suit. In terms of moving stuff over - yep, you can just mount it as a drive and copy stuff across, or use one of several readily available tools for managing content (I use Caliber on the Mac, not sure if it's available for Linux).
- shrikant 14y ago
  Yep, Calibre is available for Linux (I used it under Ubuntu 12.04, and now 12.10), and IMHO, is one of the more well-behaved cross-platform apps.
arnoooooo 14y ago
It does. PDF is not the best format though, as it has rigid formatting which makes it unpractical on a small screen. You can convert it to mobi with a program like Calibre though, which is much better (for text at least). And I don't know if you can use your kindle at all without an Amazon account.
SeanDav 14y ago
I bought a second hand Kindle DX to read PDF's. I installed Duokan on it, which a 3rd party OS that has much better PDF handling and allows dual booting with Kindle OS. It also supports epub format. It is very easy to use Kindle without an Amazon account as there are all sorts of tools to allow you to do pretty much anything you want on your Kindle. AFAIK you can install Duokan on every Kindle version.

jiggy2011 14y ago

So moral of the story? Make sure you have a blog with significant readership if you want good customer service?

_pferreir_ 14y ago
Quite so. Or that you have a friend who can do that for you.
thejosh 14y ago
Same as problems for pretty much any tech, such as Google.
jmilloy 14y ago
Does anyone have any data about how often [Amazon] ignores or fixes customer service issues despite a lack of high-visibility blogging? My 10th grade world history teacher had a small segment on the rainmaking rituals of some group of people. When rain was needed, they would continue the rituals until it rained. From their view, the rituals worked. I don't think clouds drift around waiting for the rituals to build up, and I don't think customer service departments sit around waiting for blog entries about their company. I'm not suggesting that large companies are blind to signal from the public, or that they ignore it. But why do we think that without such signal from the public these fixes wouldn't have happened, other than a cultural aversion to large companies and their PR departments?
- TillE 14y ago
  > I don't think customer service departments sit around browsing the internet for blog entries about their company This story bubbled up through HN, BoingBoing, and many other tech news outlets. Someone at Amazon inevitably saw it. Nobody's claiming they randomly stumbled across the original blog entry.
  - csixty4 14y ago
    Specifically, Computer World UK and Jeff Jarvis (currently of Buzz Machine but formerly of People, Entertainment Weekly, and the SF Examiner) got in touch with Amazon PR directly for a statement. There were likely more big publications contacting them for a statement that I didn't see. You can't write it off as "just some blogger" at that point. Someone needed to rectify it ASAP.

deleted 14y ago

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dmbaggett 14y ago
The big deal, I think, is that it's scary for people who buy all their books on Amazon to realize that all those books can be taken away for no obvious reason, and with no recourse other than to make a public stink.
smackfu 14y ago
Really? Amazon takes back paid for content, doesn't refund it, customer service is no help and stonewalls, and Amazon only fixes it after it gets a lot of press, and that's no big deal? What if it happened to you?
nodata 14y ago
> I don't understand the problem. It's a customer service issue, not a front page news story. Amazon did the right thing here in the end and that's that. What's the big deal? Don't act naive, [username removed, you deleted your comment]. Amazon did something bad which will affect lots of people. What did they do wrong? Lack of clear intent; communication: they didn't explain why they did something wrong, they didn't express why that wrong thing happened, they didn't explain how they will prevent this happening again.
gnufied 14y ago
Not many have fortitude or resources to make it to the front page of HN, Wired etc. I can somehow relate (http://gnufied.org/2011/08/30/the-applecare-story/ http://gnufied.org/2011/08/30/the-applecare-story/) how powerless an individual feels when faced with a large corporation offering no explanation or help at all. In the end Amazon corrected the mistake without offering any explanation makes it worse.

Nursie 14y ago

They reopened it because people heard about it and then started talking about stripping DRM and resorting to piracy, so somebody, somewhere decided to make this go away as fast as possible and as quietly as possible. /cynic

tomrod 14y ago
I've never understood how DRM can be stripped from a mobi file. I've never been able to find the files when I looked on my ipod. (I think I've shown my lack of hacking on the ipod with this comment--eep!).
- jmount 14y ago
  Usually you use a general computer to strip the DRM. On a Mac or PC you have a program masquerade as a client (like Kindle for PC) and then remove the DRM from the contents it get. MyTunes was for Itunes was like that in the past.
- jmount 14y ago
  Usually you use a general computer to strip the DRM. On a Mac or PC you have a program masquerade as a client (like Kindle for PC) and then remove the DRM from the contents it get. MyTunes was for Itunes was like that in the past.
dromidas 14y ago
Yeah it's a good idea to do that for anything you 'lease', at least when there isn't supposed to be an expiration on that lease.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sodomizer 14y ago

This is the real outcome: "Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library." Amazon has realized that they can quarantine suspect accounts, but not cut off the customer's right to their purchased books. Every other manufacturer is now going to follow suit. The end result is a win for the consumer.

danteembermage 14y ago
Thank you for pointing out this important aspect of the story, when these public shamings lead to structural change it is much different than just switching the particular use case the produced the embarrassing result. Welcome to the community! I would like to point out that sexually explicit usernames are not the norm here. Since your comment history and karma are tied to your user account and that account may persist for a long time, you might consider changing to a different name before you get too invested in this one and regret it later when it's too late to easily switch. Many users are known here by their handle and it is not uncommon for people to say things like "Send up the Patio11/Cpercival/Grellas/TokenAdult bat signal!" because users remember who made valuable comments and may recognize you by name. You are of course free to choose for yourself, your call.
revscat 14y ago
> Every other manufacturer is now going to follow suit. The end result is a win for the consumer. Perhaps, for now. But there is nothing preventing them from changing their policies later, or even doing so capriciously. Consumers will not be safe from similar events until the law is changed to prevent companies from doing this.
tjoff 14y ago
Nah, that has always been the case. What happens if you mod your xbox? You get banned from xbox live, MS don't brick your device or remove your games. Amazon is just doing their best to fuck their customers, and boy they are good at it. I can barely conceive a workplace so fucked up to come up with something as ludicrous as this shit.
mcguire 14y ago
You do realize that "Account status should not affect any customer's ability to access their library." was a restatement of their existing policy, not a change in that policy.

axx 14y ago

I bet it was exactly like this: 1. Kindle-wipe Story on Hackernews. 2. One engineer at Amazon saw the story, told it some Executive above him 3. The Executive "nerds, let them talk THIS is real business!" 4. One day later "How To Strip DRM from Kindle E-Books and Others (wired.com)" on Hackernews 5. The Executive "OH SNAP! REOPEN REOPEN REOPEN!!11"

jmduke 14y ago
Ha ha! Executives are dumb and also terrible people! /sigh

cletus 14y ago

This is a good outcome and something that should probably be enshrined in law: if you've purchased ebooks (or in fact any digital media) then you should absolutely have access to it regardless of the state of your account. The only time this shouldn't apply (IMHO) is when the payment itself is in question (eg you used a credit card that got reported stolen so any items bought on suspect transactions may be suspended pending investigation). It shouldn't surprise me that some give credence to conspiracy theories but it does. Amazon panicked and reversed itself because a story about removing DRM was on the front page of HN? Seriously? What you'll find with customer service departments is that what they do is largely prescribed by scripts. Call centers work like this (to the point of there being checking to see that people don't deviate from the script). They will have procedures that must be followed. The Mark Fiore example [1] springs to mind. Some saw some global conspiracy. The more likely explanation is that the procedures defined for those approving apps just hadn't taken such a scenario into account when being written ie it was an oversight (a "mistake" as Steve Jobs called it). We're all too willing to accept bugs in software. Procedures that humans need to follow--particularly if they need to follow them rigidly--have bugs too. The more discretion you give those following the procedures, the more you tend to just add inconsistency. [1]: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/pulitzer-winners-app-is-approved-finally-by-apple/ http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/pulitzer-wi... EDIT: to clarify, I think the original story getting as much of an audience as it did certainly helped and may well have been instrumental. It's kind of sad that that's the case. I was referring to some commenters putting forward theories about the DRM removal story being the catalyst for action here, which is ludicrous.

edanm 14y ago
You really don't think the article getting published has anything to do with Amazon's about-face? I'm surprised. I usually assume that these kinds of stories do cause companies to change their behaviour in specific cases. Why do you think otherwise? Note: I love Amazon and agreed with your defending of them in the original post. I'm honestly surprised that it isn't obvious that the article influenced Amazon here.
- danso 14y ago

brador 14y ago

If the writer wanted to make Amazon pay for the wipe she has certainly achieved that with her post. My Kindles hit Ebay a few hours ago. I'm out of the Amazon digital ecosystem.

codewright 14y ago
What are you replacing them with?
- brador 14y ago
  I was already splitting my ebook purchasing between the Apple bookstore and Amazon. From this point, ebook purchases will be through Apple or a purchase of the real book. I kinda miss the feel of a real book too so that's a nice change. If I need a digital copy, and it's Amazon exclusive, then I'll be using "other sources".
  - alex_c 14y ago
    Out of curiosity (I haven't purchased ebooks from either source), what makes Apple more reliable than Amazon?
    - codewright 14y ago
      I'm a little dubious too, but Amazon has a track record of doing things like this (The Animal Farm/1984 fiasco), whereas Apple seems to respect that they've sold their customer something.
    - brador 14y ago
      They have yet to pull a stunt like this. As far as I'm aware, they are unable to remotely modify Apple devices. Until proven otherwise, I trust them.
      - 0x0 14y ago
        Just wait. https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps Edit: And don't forget the remote wipe feature in Find My iPhone. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/ http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-hona...

donniezazen 14y ago

I am just surprised the way these companies work. They don't even owe as little as information to their customers and our government enable them to do that.

dkrich 14y ago

I'm guessing one Michael Murphy is polishing up the old resume right about now.

pasbesoin 14y ago

I find the lack of transparency on Amazon's part entirely unacceptable. (I can imagine and understand -- although not always agree with -- the desire to e.g. keep some technical aspects of fraud detection private. Beyond that, I have zero sympathy. And even in the event of some so-called "fraud detection", we have powerful entities who on the one hand want to benefit from a "global market" while on the other hand simultaneously seeking to restrict same when doing so is to their benefit. For example, taking advantage of lower "third world" production costs while insisting upon receiving "first world" prices for their own goods.) P.S. I've had two friends communicate that they are backing out of pending Kindle purchases, since I shared this story with them. (In case any Amazon types are browsing by here.)

podperson 14y ago

It's astonishing to me how Amazon, which is more of a monopoly in many respects than Apple has ever been or Microsoft currently is, is essentially walmarting entire industries and gets almost no negative press over it. (It's even getting help from friendly congresspersons to strengthen its ebook monopoly.) I've been forced to withdraw my $20 ebook from Amazon because I simply cannot afford to price it at $20 in the kindle store (Amazon pays the same royalty for books priced at $10-20 as books priced at $10, and it pays lower royalties than BN or iBooks). I'm not allowed to price my ebook so that I effectively get paid the same (which entails selling the book at $40 for Kindle and $20 for everything else) because that violates Amazon's "you cannot sell for less elsewhere" rules. Similarly, Amazon sells book readers that are incompatible with rival book formats, including ePub. No-one complains.

javajosh 14y ago
Well, I for one was unaware of this state of affairs. It takes people like you to bring these observations into light, and to do so repeatedly, because it's important. Indeed, I would request that you write up this analysis in a blog post so that it can hit the front page of HN. [Edit: I just realized how incredibly generic this sounds, haha. But I am a fan of investigative journalism in general, and investigations of abuses by power in particular, and Amazon is a juicy target here.]
Dylan16807 14y ago
Upon reading your comment I went to look up Amazon royalty information. Let me know if I got this right. A book that is 3-10 dollars, sold in the first world, gets you 70% royalties minus a few cents for delivery. If you want to set a price over $10, then you only get 35% royalties. So it's not that Amazon flat-out gives much lower royalties, it's that they give much lower royalties for books that cost more than ten dollars. They don't want to give you more than seven dollars per sale.
- alanfalcon 14y ago
  That's basically all true, except it's not always just "a few cents" for delivery, especially if you have full color photos or illustrations as a part of your eBook. On other platforms there is no delivery fee and no price range required to receive the 70% royalty rate. So there is a window for certain books where the Amazon rates are competitive, and of course they have the largest marketplace for eBooks so it's usually advantageous to play within those bounds.

chanux 14y ago

It's good to hear Linn has her stuff back but this doesn't guarantee future situations like this would have similar good endings. What I infer from 'no explanations' is it's mostly a PR plaster. It's sad that such problems will be solved only by huge exposure to the story. Not something everyone can have all the time. Happy but sad.

doki_pen 14y ago

Support Policy: If you feel that your account has been erroneously disabled, then got viral with your story, only then will we investigate your claims.

rhizome 14y ago
More like, "if you have trouble with customer service, please contact customer service."
- tytso 14y ago
  ... and after customer service has blown you off saying that from their perspective, the case has been closed and you have no avenues of appeal, then try to make the story go viral....

sgt 14y ago

That's a very bad translation - although I'm still impressed because it's programmatic and the technology has come pretty far (and I am grateful to Google for providing Google Translate in general!). So "Amazon did an about-face" actually means "Amazon did a change in direction" or even "Amazon did a 180 degree turn".

re 14y ago
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but "did an about-face" is a good translation; it's a common English idiom: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/do+an+about-face http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/do+an+about-face
sukuriant 14y ago
How is it a bad translation? I was headed to the comments with the intention of applauding Google for a truly incredible translation service! Reading that wasn't blocky or painful, like reading programatically translated texts used to be. Is the idea of what is said wrong? Did they make a huge mistake in any section? Or small mistakes everywhere? As already commented, "did an about-face" is an English idiom
- gizzlon 14y ago
  I'm not GP, but I also though "about-face" was an error. I'm impressed as well, but there are errors like: "e-bokgiganten" (the e-book giant), "type IT consultant Linn.." (wrote the IT consultant..) and I don't think "Spread Monday blog post" is correct either? (On Monday the blog-post about .. spread) etc.. Still impressive though :)
  - sukuriant 14y ago
    Ah yes. I saw a few of those too. It's certainly not perfect. I actually skimmed the article rather than reading the details; and I was honestly impressed that I could skim the article.

wissler 14y ago

Doesn't matter to me. The fact that Amazon can break and enter into my devices with impunity is completely unacceptable. The fact that I can't back up my own purchases without hacking is completely unacceptable. I'll continue using Kindle for free content but I'll be buying only real books unless there is very clear legislation, or a change in Amazon's technology, supporting my right to keep and control my own purchases. Amazon (and not just Amazon) has too much power here and has repeatedly demonstrated that they will abuse it.

hobbes 14y ago
You can backup your purchases using copy-and-paste to your hard drive. Or do you mean "remove DRM"? I agree with your second paragraph.

yason 14y ago

If I were her, I would so immediately copy the ebooks that are available again, for now, then find a way to free them from DRM and close my Amazon account myself. Then I would go lobbying for a law that would make it a legal requirement to make digitally restricted products available to the user in unencumbered format if the user's account gets terminated or if the company goes out of business. So, basically the user would buy the song/book/movie but hand over the appropriate storage to the company for as long as the account remains open. Then, if the storage gets shut down the user would still own copies of his/her files.

zizee 14y ago

Some people might be thinking "Well done Amazon for correcting this mistake" or "Amazon just caved due to pressure of bad press" but I am thinking that if Amazon can wipe a kindle remotely, I do not want such a device and will purchase a product which does not have this "feature". Seriously, fuck them.

alecco 14y ago
Better: buy a subsidized unit but don't buy their DRM ebooks ;) It's trivial to do.

zvrba 14y ago

Meta-comment: I've read the article in english and norwegian side-by-side, and I'm impressed by google's translation.

eykanal 14y ago

Have any native english publications covered this story? Strange that the only new source to publish a follow-up to what was a very popular story would be some random Norwegian newspaper.

eykanal 14y ago

Have any native english publications covered this story? Strange that the only new source to publish a follow-up to what was a very popular story would be some random Norwegian newspaper.