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THE SMART NEWS SOURCE | Nov 21 2009 22:42 | LAST UPDATED Nov 21 2009 22:42 |
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Christmas is coming and you're wondering what to put on your wish list. How about an Amazon Kindle – the gizmo that enables you to download books, magazines and newspapers and read them on the move? According to the publicity blurb, this cool device "can hold 1 500 books and be read for up to two weeks on a single charge. Its electronic-ink display looks and reads like real paper and has no glare, even in bright sunshine". Sounds good, doesn't it? No more worrying about whether the piles of hardbacks you want to bring to Provence/Tuscany will fit within the miserly Ryanair baggage allowance. And if you ever find yourself stuck for something to read in the train, you can wirelessly order a book from the Amazon store and be reading the opening paragraph in just over a minute. And all for just under $260 (R2 000). You're just about to click the "Place my order" button when a small, niggling thought pops up. Wasn't there something about Amazon and George Orwell a few months ago? Some kind of a row about consumer rights? Google those words and the first result is a Guardian story headlined "Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move". Ah, yes: now you remember. The report reads: "Owners of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge. The books – downloaded from Amazon.com by American Kindle users – were remotely deleted after what the US company now says was a rights issue regarding the publisher, MobileReference.com." It seems that Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were no longer available. Here's the translation: you go to Waterstone's, buy a copy of Orwell's 1984 and take it home. Two days later you get up and find that agents of Waterstone's have entered the house during the night and removed the offending volume. They've left a terse note explaining what they've done and enclosing a credit note for the cost of the book. Enraged, you phone the manager of Waterstone's, who explains that everything is in accordance with the service agreement you accepted when you bought the book. You don't have to be a lawyer to know that this would not be tolerated in the real world of physical objects.Yet it's commonplace -- indeed universal -- in the world of information goods. And what makes it possible is the "End User Licence Agreement" (EULA) that most of us click to accept when we first use hardware, software or online services. The Kindle EULA is a good example. Section 3, which deals with "Digital Content" (such as downloaded books), says that "Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content." In other words, you are forbidden to lend or sell the book you've just "bought". In real-world terms, you can't lend your copy of 1984 to a friend or donate it to the school jumble sale. Under the subsection on "Use of Digital Content', the Kindle EULA says: "Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorised by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use." Translation: you can't back up your electronic books on to any other device – which means that if your Kindle packs up, or if Amazon moves on to another technical standard, you're screwed: your entire digital library has effectively been vaporised. Then you look round your house and note the number of electronic devices that no longer work.  CONTINUES BELOW I could go on, but you get the point. Verily, technology giveth, but also it taketh away. And sometimes we don't realise until it's too late. Caveat emptor. - guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009 TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Comments
And... Terrible article. Waste of time.
Jonathan Waddell on November 8, 2009, 9:37 am
Copyright law in the digital age is a legal quagmire. The removal of "1984" from Kindles had no sinister political motives; it was a legal cock-up.
Granted Amazon might have handled the problem more gracefully by providing its customers with advance warning but I suspect there were legal constraints which prevented that. The salient point is that the copyright problem could have arisen with ANY re-printed e-book where permissions and 'ownership' of rights between publisher and distributor may clash. Amazon are constantly negotiating re-print rights which vary from country to country as well as from publisher to publisher. Right now Kindle owners in South Africa do not have the range of choice available to Kindle owners in the US but that is not because Amazon is limiting our access: it is because of copyright laws HERE. Despite the limitations, I love my Kindle for its virtues which include completely wireless functioning and access to books for a fraction of what they cost to produce on paper. And they transfer to my KIndle within ONE MINUTE of my purchasing them! I will still buy hardcover editions of books that have great personal meaning for me but for general reading and informational reading, Kindle is perfect.
Rory Quinn on November 8, 2009, 11:30 am
DRM is the devil. I say again, information wants to be free.
Sinudeity @gmail.com on November 8, 2009, 2:50 pm
Screw Amazon - Barnes and Noble too have an ebook reader which looks better. I'll be ordering that for Christmas.
frank black on November 8, 2009, 9:20 pm
@Rory
Of course you're correct regarding the copyright problem. There is no dispute. It is simply the fact that Amazon were willing and able to violate what most of us regard as our personal space that is the thing that puts me off. The author is quite correct to compare the incident to a physical burglary, because that is exactly what it was; and whether Amazon apologised or not, the fact remains that they have not "given back the keys" - they retain the ability, and what's more, the right, to invade and modify our libraries at will. It is a situation that taints the Kindle irretrievably and will continue to do so until they concede the irreversibility of a sale, and remove their ability to access the Kindle uninvited.
Havelock Vetinari on November 9, 2009, 7:38 pm
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