Image Via
via BoingBoing (the best part of this post are the comments, some of which I'm including below):
From Pogue's Posts:
This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
This kind of bullshit will encourage readers to visit Web sites in countries where the copyright has expired on Orwell's books so they can get free un-stealable electronic copies.
see: Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others
Discussion
Come on, 1984? Could they have picked a more ironic title to stuff down the Kindle's memory hole?
'There are five downloaded ebooks there. Do you see five downloaded ebooks?'
'Yes.'
And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five donwloaded ebooks, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment -- he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps -- of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of Amazon's had filled up a patch of emptiness and become absolute truth, and when two and two could have been three as easily as five, if that were what was needed. It had faded but before Amazon had dropped its hand; but though he could not recapture it, he could remember it, as one remembers a vivid experience at some period of one's life when one was in effect a different person.
Some said it would never happen; I get to go beat them with the "I Told You So" stick.
It's lonely being right all the time.
This is outrageous. I can understand blocking further sales (even if it is a dumb idea) but not taking back what has already been sold.
Wow, I was contemplating buying a kindle, but was hesitating because of it's closed nature. Not any longer though, now it's time to look for something from another manufacturer.
It's good they don't put "all sales are final" up anywhere.
This is why I still buy CD's and Blue Ray movies. A good lock and a shotgun can keep the corporate goons from repossessing things "just because."
Corporate power is so run amok these days. Rather then taking away their personhood, I fear someday they will replace the personhood of regular people with consumerhood.
As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
Actually it's not like this in at least one very important way. There is no physical invasion of privacy, and the intentional creepy/terror factor of that language is unnecessary here.
I don't know if the poster has been one of the voices decrying the music/film industry's witch hunt for "pirates," but I know a lot of the Boing Boing crowd has been, and you can't have it both ways. An electronic copy of something is not the same thing as a physical object, and so amazon's offense here is less heinous than a forced retrieval of a physical object.
It's still a terrible idea from a customer satisfaction perspective, but don't go overboard. Make your protest and move on.
I find it somewhat amusing that 1984 was one of the pre-loaded titles on my Sony Reader.
It also appears to have survived after a quick manual sync (no
WhisperNet, yo!) so I guess Sony used a 'legitimate' copy. Good thing
too, as a new copy costs about $16 bucks at the Sony Connect Store.
Egregious rent-seeking and overpricing, surely not the best ways to grow the ebook market...
At least they got their money back.
I don't have a Kindle, but I've bought a few books through the Kindle store so that I could read them on my iPhone, and to be quite honest, that experience has stirred my interest in the Kindle itself.
As long as they're pulling these sorts of shenanigans, though, no Kindle for me.
How does the publisher just "change its mind" about offering the book electronically, anyway? I'd think there would be some sort of legal agreement involved in the process of making that happen in the first place. If Amazon left room in the contract for publishers to just pull out on a whim, well... that was stupid, Amazon.
And yet people still buy the Kindle.
I use a service that allows me to check out a large selection of books and I get to keep them for weeks upon weeks before returning them to a local location. I can checkout as many books as I like with my plan, and I pay a small tax to use this service.
Its called a library, seriously, they are pretty freaking awesome.
How...Orwellian.
The irony is obscene.