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

Lee W McKnight lmcknigh at syr.edu
Tue Oct 23 14:47:28 EDT 2012 

Hi Deirdre,

Since I was discussing this in my Information Policy class yesterday, I will try to help.

First, free yourself from the notion that you ever 'bought' any e-content at any Amazon site.

And of course you never owned anything on any Kindle.

Second, read the fine print.  In the very very very fine print, you will realize that what you paid for was the right to use X on Y device with Z conditions.

If you are outside the bounds of what you paid for the right to use - in other words, you have a rental and not a sales agreement - then unfortunately, in real life, the customer is not always right.

So sounds all perfectly legal, even if perfectly annoying.   And not wise practice for firms relying on repeat customers, given their content rental business model.

Lee
________________________________
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] on behalf of Chaitanya Dhareshwar [chaitanyabd at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:09 PM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Deirdre Williams
Cc: Riaz K Tayob
Subject: Re: [governance] Amazon Allegedly Deletes Customer's Kindle; Incident Triggers Discussion About Ebooks, DRM

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<mailto: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<mailto: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.

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t




--
“The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org<mailto:governance at lists.igcaucus.org>
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20121023/137d9789/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t

More information about the Governance mailing list