Amazon deletes legally purchased Kindle books

[Flyndaran]

As it was the process of syncing the Kindle that did it (ie "checking in with the library,"), no, my analogy is accurate. It wasn't that Amazon forced a connection and deleted it.

That makes it slighter better for Amazon. It still is a nasty attack on our privacy.

[BroomJockey]

It still is a nasty attack on our privacy.

How? It has nothing to do with your privacy. It's an automated process to remove ebooks. No one digs through your Kindle to remove it, or connects to it without your permission to send a delete command. At absolutely no time does a person other than you do anything.

What this is, is a DRM issue. Not a privacy issue, not a theft issue. It's DRM, and Amazon putting too much faith in people to not break others' copyright.

[Flyndaran]

...
What this is, is a DRM issue. Not a privacy issue, not a theft issue. It's DRM, and Amazon putting too much faith in people to not break others' copyright.

It means that it is fundamentally different and less yours than physical products. That alone means people will consider it less wrong to steal information. They should be making them similar enough to squash that reasoning.

[Dreamstalker]

As it was the process of syncing the Kindle that did it (ie "checking in with the library,"), no, my analogy is accurate.

That still seems to me like 'no warning', especially if a sync would not normally do that (the user has no reason to think that something would be deleted).

IMO, Amazon is responsible in some fashion for deleting the student's notes.

[violetyoshi]

Well whoever is responsible, it's extremely ironic it would be Orwell's books eh?

[gremcint]

I fail to see what any of Amazon's actions has anything to do with copyright law, except for the one student. Amazon had the right to sell it, it was given to them by the publisher. The publisher then changed their mind and revoked the right to sell further copies and then demanded the other copies be destroyed. Right up until that last part noone did anything wrong. Even if you hold the copyright to something that means you determine who can copy it, not who can own it. When Mike Tyson's Punchout became Punchout Nintendo didn't hunt down everyone who bought it beforehand. They bought it, and the agreement they have while not being full ownership does guarantee them a permanent copy, and this is a contract.

To go with the physical object analogy if you take what I legally bought and give me money, unless there is a new contract or terms in the old contract allow to do this then the money really has nothing to do with it at all. You took my property without my permission (theft) then left a stack of money. I never signed an agreement of any kind that said I agreed to let you have it back in exchange for those funds so therefore you just randomly left money somewhere. I'm not going any further with the analogy because I am not a lawyer so I can't really carry it further. Though I must say refunding money directly onto a credit card is different from leaving it somewhere because you guarantee they get it and they know who it is from but even if they send a message about it they still didn't give you a chance to agree or not.

As for the student being stupid and not backing up his notes, well doesn't matter. Whether or not he had a backup doesn't matter, why he doesn't have a backup doesn't matter. Ask yourself what would happen if you had very valuable data on a harddrive, then I chose to do something to that drive without your permission that had the side effect of destroying your data, what would you do? well you'd probably make me pay for the recovery and then if not having that data for a while cost you money you'd probably have me pay for that too.

I never had any plans at buying a kindle anyways, I planned on a 9 inch laptop that I would turn into a combination: ebook reader, portable video player, telephone (skype), mp3 player and if they come with it: gps. I'm just waiting for money and for one of the companies making them to wiseup and put a touchscreen on one. There are apparently modkits you can buy but I have to wait until I have money anyways.

[BroomJockey]

Amazon had the right to sell it, it was given to them by the publisher.

Except it wasn't. It was uploaded to Amazon by people who had no rights to put the book up for sale in the first place.

[gremcint]

oh, the first article said that the publisher changed their mind, so I assumed they had given amazon permission.