[governance] Amazon Allegedly Deletes Customer's Kindle; Incident Triggers Discussion About Ebooks, DRM

Tue Oct 23 14:09:07 EDT 2012

It's a policy induced blindness. Very many MNCs maintain a regional website
and dump the users on there based on what the GeoIP tells them. It's not
nice. Google for example offers a workaround - I do hope Amazon does to -
if there's some sort of location services turning that off could help.

-C

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 9:21 PM, Deirdre Williams <
williams.deirdre at gmail.com> wrote:

> I am still very confused by Amazon's attitude towards the IP address I am
> using at any point in time.
> Last year I was given a Kindle which was probably purchased locally (in
> Saint Lucia, West Indies) or in the United States. Initially I made
> purchases for it from my existing Amazon.uk account, but then was
> re-directed to Amazon.com. Amazon.com lists different books, and anyway
> they don't like my credit card (issued in Barbados) so I declined to go.
> That Kindle was stolen, but obligingly blocked for further use through my
> Amazon UK account.
> In April I was in England where I was given a new Kindle, this time bought
> in the UK
> Using the Internet in the house where I was staying in London I discovered
> with joy that I could retrieve all of the content from the stolen Kindle -
> through my Amazon UK account. I bought several books as well as some other
> things - through my Amazon UK account and was, as they say, happy as Larry
> - until I got home to Saint Lucia and found myself redirected to Amazon.com
> for things to do with my Kindle.
> The single thing that varies is the IP address I am working from, and I
> ask again - is that IP address any business of Amazon? Have I somehow
> become my IP address? Is it of more importance than everything else -
> including the billing address for my credit card? Where does my personal
> privacy stand in this context?
> I have asked the question before - also from Amazon - but I'm still not
> convinced by the answers.
> Can anyone un-confuse me please?
> Deirdre.
>
>
> On 23 October 2012 08:11, Riaz K Tayob <riaz.tayob at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>  Amazon Allegedly Deletes Customer's Kindle; Incident Triggers Discussion
>> About Ebooks, DRM
>>
>>  Posted: 10/22/2012 4:36 pm EDT Updated: 10/22/2012 4:41 pm
>>
>> Linn's story, which appeared on Bekkelund's blog on Monday, has already
>> triggered a heated discussion<http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/11vz4g/amazon_closes_womans_account_and_wipes_her_kindle/>about ebooks and digital rights management (DRM), with some calling this
>> Amazon incident an example of DRM at its worst.
>>
>> "[The incident] highlights the power [DRM] offers blue-chip companies<http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-customers-kindle-deletes-account>.
>> DRM is used by hardware manufacturers and publishers to limit the use of
>> digital content once it has been purchased by consumers; in Amazon's case,
>> it means the company can prevent you from reading content you have bought
>> at the Kindle store on a rival device," the Guardian writes.
>>
>> This is not the first time that Amazon has remotely erased Kindle
>> content.
>>
>> As Andy Boxall of Digital Trends<http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/amazon-account-ban-reminds-us-drm-content-is-only-rented/>notes, the company deleted
>> copies of "Animal Farm" and "1984"<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html>in 2009. It also occured in 2010, "when
>> more dubious titles were removed too."<http://www.teleread.com/ebooks/amazon-removes-incest-related-erotica-titles-from-store-kindle-archive/>
>>
>> "Amazon should not be able to erase content that has already been
>> downloaded<http://consumerist.com/2012/10/22/amazon-erases-customers-kindle-wishes-her-luck-in-finding-somewhere-else-to-shop/>.
>> If the company wants to close your account, fine; refuse future downloads.
>> But unless it has proof that the books on that Kindle had been fraudulently
>> downloaded, we don’t see how the company can justify erasing content that
>> had been paid for by a customer," the Consumerist notes, adding that Amazon
>> had yet to respond to a request for comment.
>>
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>
>
> --
> “The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
> Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
>
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