I’ve been reading ebooks for years, since I had a Palm IIIe. It’s probably approaching ten years, looking at the sale date of the IIIe. Now I read them on my mobile phone (see app 7).
One common thread all the way through has been my scepticism of locked ebooks. I won’t buy paper books that require a secret decoder ring and I won’t buy locked ebooks. For all the (deserved?) criticism he’s been getting this month for a bizarre personal appearance, Richard Stallman’s 1997 Right to Read essay was an inspiring illustration of where that road leads.
For years, I’ve been told I was worrying about something that would never happen. No locked ebook vendor would ever be stupid enough to delete books that their customers had bought. Well it happened: Amazon unsold some Orwell books that they hadn’t really got permission to sell in the first place. I feel this is the tip of the iceberg, though. DRM and Rogue Employees | etbe – Russell Coker highlights just one more of the possible problems. Amazon has lost their unselling virginity now. If they’re not punished, they’ll do it again and again and again.
Have you bought locked ebooks? What do you think of the Amazon Un-selling Scandal? Has it changed your view at all?
[…] Published Amazon Kindle Un-selling Books http://www.news.software.coop/amazon-kindle-un-selling-books/721/ […]
BTW, you do know that Amazon apologized last Thursday, right? Sure, that doesn’t undo everything, and they have to follow through with a system that doesn’t allow them to delete books even when they want to (probably one that doesn’t have DRM), but their intention is clear and their past actions, save for this one fiasco and their inexplicable grasping on 1-Click patent, they have been on the right side (for one, Amazon never sold DRM’d music).
You do your cause no favor by “punishing” allies for unintentional mistakes for which they have given a sincere apology. We should make sure that they follow through on the apology, but there is no point in making a villain out of someone just for the sake of making a villain out of someone.
No, I hadn’t spotted Amazon apologising buried in their forums. Thanks for pointing that out.
However, while Amazon aren’t villains, their long-standing absurd business method patent attempts mean they aren’t allies either. And Amazon did sell technologically-protected music – it was corrupt CDs rather than online files, though.
I’m not going to touch a kindle or any device that uses drm with a bargepole, ok a revised copy of say a newspaper every day might be good but it does sound it big bezos has the power to make the truth into untruth.
LONG LIVE BIG BEZOS!
@Mr. Park
So they apologize, then everything is alright, isn’t it? Are you kidding me? Apologies are meaningless and worthless. Every kid knows that, that’s why they are so quick to apologize.
So Amazon apologize and then asked us to trust them, after what they’ve just done and you believe them. [*]
We, the consumers, shouldn’t have to trust the seller just because they say so, in fact we shouldn’t have to trust the seller at all. That’s why there are so many consumer protection laws in the EU (European Union). Any one that does business in the EU has to obey those laws.
As for you defense of Amazon buy saying they don’t sell mp3 with DRM; it falls flat on its face. Like the man said: they sold and sell CD/DVD/Blu-rays with CP; they sell digital downloads with DRM: video, software, games, etc.
Allies!? Are you kidding me? [*]
They are only allies of themselves. Period.
Governments around the world must create laws so that this doesn’t happen again. Making DRM and other forms of copy protection illegal would be a good place to start. But that will never seeing the level of political corruption from lobbies in both Europe and America.
Just look at the copyright extension for audio from the [*] McCreedy European commissioner…
I find it sad that there are so many apologists of DRM and of the Companies that support DRM.
Their normal response is the imbecile: “so what?”
This new generation will sold out the rights that our parents and grandparents fought so hard to win even with their own lives.
Not only consumers but normal citizens are being deprived of their natural rights so that the Content Mafias can be accommodated.
This goes beyond selling defective products, this was outright censorship.
As anyone notice that despite digital files being cheaper to create, store, duplicate and distribute, the price of those products are the same or higher than their traditional equivalents despite being of lower quality?
Just look at the prices of music: everyone sells at the same price; it’s a clear case of price fixing and cartel behaviour!
Is pathetic that people [*] are so eager to excuse their and even go to great lengths to praise then for doing evil, it’s just a consequence of our human education system that produces “sheep” instead of individuals of strong character and personality…
[* – MJ Ray removed text at these points in line with comments policy.]
[…] Amazon Kindle Un-selling Books was the most-viewed news item on my blog this year. Once again, a lock-out/bad-business story takes the top spot. I don’t think that one got as much coverage in the mainstream media as they usually do, which probably contributed to the relatively high reader numbers. I feel like I get criticised often for commenting about business ethics, but it does seem to attract a fairly big audience. […]