Today, Amazon Kindle owners who thought they owned George Orwell's
1984 or
Animal Farm have discovered that those books are no longer on their Kindles.
...apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.
…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.
These reminder from the
Reddit discussion thread:
They're not people's Kindles, they're Amazon's Kindles. Amazon grant you an indefinite length license to use the Kindle, but the contents remain theirs. It's like software, you seldom ever actually own it, you just get a license to use it for a lifetime.
However, it is possible to stop them from having this ability. If you turn off your Kindle wireless connection and instead install all books using the USB cable, they can't do anything.
Just another reason for me to hate the things. They are WAY overpriced, extremely fragile, prone to being stolen for being, you know, an expensive gadget, and now...
ReplyDeleteWhereas, even my cheapest paperback novel will last for an age, doesn't break when you drop it and there's no men in black suits breaking into my house to take them back when they decide I'm not good enough for them.
To hell with the Kindle.