4 ms·

His point is that Amazon's not the company we should be pissed off at right now. If they want to provide us with their Kindle store, which 99% of the time is e

His point is that Amazon's not the company we should be pissed off at right now. If they want to provide us with their Kindle store, which 99% of the time is excellent and wonderful (I just got the Kindle iPhone app and I love that it syncs with my Kindle and with the web reader), they have to deal with publishers that are antique and ignorant and full of themselves. Think the RIAA is tyrannical? The publishing industry is ten times worse. It sucks that Amazon had to do this, but given a choice between a terrific store that's subject to the whims of publishers and no store at all, I'll take the terrific store, and hope that my Shakespeare and Austen remain intact. Amazon is one of the few companies that I trust almost wholeheartedly. I don't think they're fuck-something-up-proof, but I believe firmly that the company as a whole cares about its users and about giving them the best experience possible, even when it's at cost to them. I've never had a bad experience with Amazon, whether it was as a customer or as a seller. I understand the kneejerk impulse here, which is to call Amazon an Evil Big Corporation, but I find it sad that a decade of building trust can be so quickly thrown out the door.

randomwalker 17y ago
That summed up my position better than I did. Thank you :-)
TweedHeads 17y ago
I don't care if the kindle store is excellent. I don't care if amazon is good 99% of the time. I don't care if BigPrint is the devil and amazon was coerced. Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. If it was your mistake to allow that to happen you should ask politely and we should be able to decide what to do. I hope Apple takes notices, I know they have a remote shut-down switch in every iphone. They better never use it.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  "I'm sorry, but we sold you a book that we didn't have rights to and violated copyright. Can we please have it back?" Doesn't work like that. If you're a major digital salesperson and somebody's transmitting data illegally, as they were in this case, then it's your responsibility to withdraw the book. Amazon should have been much more polite about what was happening, but letting people keep illegal content was out of the question here. I understand that. If this had been a legal publisher of 1984 suddenly switching positions, I'd agree that the user should have the choice. Considering it wasn't an authorized publisher, Amazon did the one thing they could. Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. Really? Because I've always thought that deleting pirated content would be a great punishment for piracy. If I've stolen something, I have no right to it. That's implicit in the idea of piracy. Deleting the stuff I pirated seems like a harmless punishment.
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    Scary-looking guy with tire iron and Barnes & Noble-embroidered balaclava, when caught breaking into your house at 3 AM: "I'm sorry, but we sold you a book whose North American rights the publisher failed to secure in time for publication. I'll just take it back now, and be on my way. Thank you for shopping at Barnes & Noble, here's your $6.95 back." What's unacceptable in meatspace is unacceptable in DRM-space. Stay out of my computer.
    - zimbabwe 17y ago
      I couldn't disagree more with that. With the greater freedom of the electronic world comes a greater ability for people working within the law to do their jobs. We should firmly be on the lookout for abuses of this power, but in this case: * Amazon found out that they were accidentally distributing something illegal * Amazon happened to have the power to fix their problem entirely, without missing a single copy of the illegally-published book * This happened near-instantaneously, without anybody's time being wasted * Amazon refunded every single person their money back, so they lost no money whatsoever Amazon doesn't look scary, they didn't come in armed with weapons, they didn't illegally access anything. If I was in Barnes & Noble and bought a book, then was approached by an employee saying "We weren't actually allowed to sell you that copy of the book, here's your money back," I might be disappointed at not having the book, but Barnes & Noble retains the right to take that book back from me if they're also returning my money. You know how we like to loudly trumpet that PIRACY IS NOT STEALING! because there's no physical copy and therefore no cost to how many times a file can be replicated? Well, that works both ways. When you're dealing with a thin sliver of data which can be modified without even a chance of damage to any other data, and when you have a moral imperative to remove that data and can do it without harm to anybody, then you have every right to jump back in and edit that data, precisely because it isn't meatspace.
    - CamperBob 17y ago
      If I was in Barnes & Noble and bought a book, then was approached by an employee saying "We weren't actually allowed to sell you that copy of the book, here's your money back," I might be disappointed at not having the book, but Barnes & Noble retains the right to take that book back from me if they're also returning my money. That argument would make more sense if Barnes & Noble owned my computer, or if I were still physically present on their store's property.
- CamperBob 17y ago
  I still have a copy of the NetShare tethering host that the App Store accidentally posted for about two hours soon after they opened for business. Apple yanked it from the store in a hurry but they've made no attempt to delete it from my phone. I have to believe that AT&T tried very hard to talk/threaten them into doing just that.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    I'm quite glad Apple decided that myself, and I'd have liked Amazon not to delete this book. What I'm saying, though, is that if Apple had wanted to delete NetShare remotely and offer a refund, I wouldn't have considered them doing that to be at all offensive. It would have been their right.
  - andreyf 17y ago
    Have you tried yours lately? I think they disabled the functionality with a software update :-/
    - CamperBob 17y ago
      No, but that is their right. They're not required to continue to support the app forever with their own network resources, but they don't get to physically (logically?) yank it off my phone.
    - troubledwine 17y ago
      Yup, mine works perfectly. They never messed with it. I'm using a 1st gen. iPhone with 3.0 software.
      - sahaj 17y ago
        i have tris (the tetris game that got pulled because of rights issues) and it still works like it did back in OS1.0.
- patio11 17y ago
  Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. Is this different from flipping a bit on a server when I discover your registration key is illegit? If so, why exactly? How about if flipping the bit constructively deletes your file, i.e. if I disable your access to my encryption keys it might as well be 600MB of /dev/rand? I really don't have too much sympathy for people who think they have absolute property rights because they're putting the data they stole on hard disks they own, darn it.

randomwalker 17y ago

That summed up my position better than I did. Thank you :-)

TweedHeads 17y ago

I don't care if the kindle store is excellent. I don't care if amazon is good 99% of the time. I don't care if BigPrint is the devil and amazon was coerced. Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. If it was your mistake to allow that to happen you should ask politely and we should be able to decide what to do. I hope Apple takes notices, I know they have a remote shut-down switch in every iphone. They better never use it.

zimbabwe 17y ago
"I'm sorry, but we sold you a book that we didn't have rights to and violated copyright. Can we please have it back?" Doesn't work like that. If you're a major digital salesperson and somebody's transmitting data illegally, as they were in this case, then it's your responsibility to withdraw the book. Amazon should have been much more polite about what was happening, but letting people keep illegal content was out of the question here. I understand that. If this had been a legal publisher of 1984 suddenly switching positions, I'd agree that the user should have the choice. Considering it wasn't an authorized publisher, Amazon did the one thing they could. Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. Really? Because I've always thought that deleting pirated content would be a great punishment for piracy. If I've stolen something, I have no right to it. That's implicit in the idea of piracy. Deleting the stuff I pirated seems like a harmless punishment.
- CamperBob 17y ago
  Scary-looking guy with tire iron and Barnes & Noble-embroidered balaclava, when caught breaking into your house at 3 AM: "I'm sorry, but we sold you a book whose North American rights the publisher failed to secure in time for publication. I'll just take it back now, and be on my way. Thank you for shopping at Barnes & Noble, here's your $6.95 back." What's unacceptable in meatspace is unacceptable in DRM-space. Stay out of my computer.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    I couldn't disagree more with that. With the greater freedom of the electronic world comes a greater ability for people working within the law to do their jobs. We should firmly be on the lookout for abuses of this power, but in this case: * Amazon found out that they were accidentally distributing something illegal * Amazon happened to have the power to fix their problem entirely, without missing a single copy of the illegally-published book * This happened near-instantaneously, without anybody's time being wasted * Amazon refunded every single person their money back, so they lost no money whatsoever Amazon doesn't look scary, they didn't come in armed with weapons, they didn't illegally access anything. If I was in Barnes & Noble and bought a book, then was approached by an employee saying "We weren't actually allowed to sell you that copy of the book, here's your money back," I might be disappointed at not having the book, but Barnes & Noble retains the right to take that book back from me if they're also returning my money. You know how we like to loudly trumpet that PIRACY IS NOT STEALING! because there's no physical copy and therefore no cost to how many times a file can be replicated? Well, that works both ways. When you're dealing with a thin sliver of data which can be modified without even a chance of damage to any other data, and when you have a moral imperative to remove that data and can do it without harm to anybody, then you have every right to jump back in and edit that data, precisely because it isn't meatspace.
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    If I was in Barnes & Noble and bought a book, then was approached by an employee saying "We weren't actually allowed to sell you that copy of the book, here's your money back," I might be disappointed at not having the book, but Barnes & Noble retains the right to take that book back from me if they're also returning my money. That argument would make more sense if Barnes & Noble owned my computer, or if I were still physically present on their store's property.
CamperBob 17y ago
I still have a copy of the NetShare tethering host that the App Store accidentally posted for about two hours soon after they opened for business. Apple yanked it from the store in a hurry but they've made no attempt to delete it from my phone. I have to believe that AT&T tried very hard to talk/threaten them into doing just that.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  I'm quite glad Apple decided that myself, and I'd have liked Amazon not to delete this book. What I'm saying, though, is that if Apple had wanted to delete NetShare remotely and offer a refund, I wouldn't have considered them doing that to be at all offensive. It would have been their right.
- andreyf 17y ago
  Have you tried yours lately? I think they disabled the functionality with a software update :-/
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    No, but that is their right. They're not required to continue to support the app forever with their own network resources, but they don't get to physically (logically?) yank it off my phone.
  - troubledwine 17y ago
    Yup, mine works perfectly. They never messed with it. I'm using a 1st gen. iPhone with 3.0 software.
    - sahaj 17y ago
      i have tris (the tetris game that got pulled because of rights issues) and it still works like it did back in OS1.0.
patio11 17y ago
Nobody should EVER under any circumstance delete ANYTHING from my computer, even if I bought it or not, if it is pirated or not, if it is stolen or not. Is this different from flipping a bit on a server when I discover your registration key is illegit? If so, why exactly? How about if flipping the bit constructively deletes your file, i.e. if I disable your access to my encryption keys it might as well be 600MB of /dev/rand? I really don't have too much sympathy for people who think they have absolute property rights because they're putting the data they stole on hard disks they own, darn it.