Re: Update on Kindle book removals

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Gene Gaines <gene.gaines () gainesgroup com>
Date: July 18, 2009 4:53:04 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Update on Kindle book removals

Amazon is making a big push into cloud computing (EC2) and backup  
services .

What if I had backed up the electronic copy of something purchased  
from Amazon or one of the thousands of suppliers associated with  
Amazon.  Would they have reached into my backup account and deleted  
the copy there, in addition to the copy on my Kindle, if I owned one?   
Would they cancel a computer job I had running on their Amazon Elastic  
Compute Cloud Service that was performing an analysis of the works of  
George Orwell processing the electronic book text I had purchased?

I am sure Amazon would say "Oh no, we would never do anything like  
that ..."

I no longer trust Amazon.  I have purchased a variety of physical and  
electronic items through Amazon, and I had entrusted account  
information for 4 charge cards.  No more.  I have deleted my charge  
account info. Next I will delete my EC2 account.  I will avoid all  
Amazon in the future.

Gene Gaines


On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:26 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: July 18, 2009 10:37:26 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Update on Kindle book removals


Dave,

I find it very helpful in these sorts of situations to compare against
a similar scenario in the "brick and mortar" universe.  It's really  
quite
simple in this case.

Let's say that due to some sort of administrative foul up, Amazon  
shipped
customers physical books to which Amazon discovered they did not have
appropriate distribution rights (for whatever reason).

Would Amazon:

a) Immediately cease sales of those books and make appropriate financial
 compensation to the rights holder(s)?

or:

b) Do (a), plus send a letter to all customers who had already
 received the shipped physical books, demanding that the books be
 returned immediately due to Amazon's liability concerns, and
 perhaps follow up with legal action when most of those customers
 ignored them?

I'm willing to bet that they'd never even consider anything like (b).
Just because new technologies make particular actions possible,
doesn't mean that they are appropriate to actually be used.  In this
case, Amazon has undermined the concept that an e-book "purchase" is
as "concrete" as a physical world purchase, and validated the concerns
of many persons who consider these kinds of closed DRM environments to
be an invitation to exactly this sort of overreaching and unacceptable
behavior on the part of vendors.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
 - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
 - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
 for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein

- - -




On 07/18 02:18, David Farber wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: David Ian Hopper <imhopper () gmail com>
Date: July 17, 2009 9:42:02 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Update on Kindle book removals

Doesn't sound as nefarious as first considered.  Instead, Amazon seems
to be protecting itself from a copyright claim.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/17/amazon-remotely-deletes-orwell-e-books-from-kindles-unpersons-r/

Update 2: Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, pinged
us directly with the following comment, and now things are starting to
make a lot more sense. Seems as if the books were added initially by an
outfit that didn't even have the rights!
These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by
a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were
notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies  
from
our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are
changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from
customers' devices in these circumstances.




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--
Gene
-- I am Neda Agha Soltan ---




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