Comments on: Orwellian indeed

By: 1984, veinticinco años después

1984, veinticinco años después — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 05:06:29 +0000

[...] virtual del Kindle por una compañía que no tenía los derechos suficientes para hacerlo. Primero se justificó y luego pidió abiertamente disculpas calificando de “estúpido” su comportamiento. Pero en los [...]

By: Kindling « The Book Report

Kindling « The Book Report — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 00:56:15 +0000

[...] do you buy when you buy a “book” on Kindle? This is a big question (with a nice recent scandal). As Baker says, “You buy the right to display a grouping of words in front of your eyes for [...]

By: Consumer Centric » Blog Archive » Amazon Jungle: Apology Nicely Done, But Orwellian Slip Invites Important Debate

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:21:24 +0000

[...] I’m intrigued by commentary from Jonathan Zittrain, author of “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It”, about this situation almost a week before Bezos’ apology. Zittrain writes in his blog: [...]

By: Benlog » The erosion of our expectation of autonomy, and the Kindle Pledge

Benlog » The erosion of our expectation of autonomy, and the Kindle Pledge — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:21:02 +0000

[...] bought a book in a store operated by Amazon, and a few days later it was gone. Jonathan Zittrain saw this coming. Ed Felten makes a solid point that a central issue is transparency, which is very insightful. [...]

By: Amazon Goes All 1984 on Kindle Owners — The Late Age of Print

Amazon Goes All 1984 on Kindle Owners — The Late Age of Print — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:35:00 +0000

[...] such as Jonathan Zittrain have rightly pointed out that you don’t actually own Kindle content. Instead you basically [...]

By: ::: Think Macro ::: » Reading blogs #16

::: Think Macro ::: » Reading blogs #16 — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:43:16 +0000

[...] “Orwellian indeed” – Here are Jonathan Zittrain’s thoughts about the accident where he highlights the fact that content is leased in the cloud rather than purchased, which in turn raises an additional set of concerns. [...]

By: Andrew Martin

Andrew Martin — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:35:04 +0000

Surely there are several quite distinct issues here.

One is the durability of purchases of eBooks: I can imagine being quite relaxed about this. If Amazon gets a reputation for quietly deleting your Kindle content, I suspect they will not sell many more Kindles. So, provided they do not attain a monopoly position, the consumer protection issues seem fairly minor.

The general case, that all content may reside in the cloud, and be rented and not owned, is a much more profound issue for society. It seems to me hopeful that we will continue to have a mixed economy, with the option of buying content to own (aka a perpetual licence), as well as having many things available on a subscription basis. This does need technological support, and the ideal solutions do not yet exist. Whether regulation is needed in the foreseeable future is not clear: could you frame a requirement that perpetual licences were incapable of being revoked/annulled by technology? – or would that just provoke more vendors into selling subscription licences only?

And then there’s the Orwellian vision of content being subject to silent revision (or deletion). Clearly, this is the most sinister, and broadly plausible (it would never be perfect, but convincing most of the people most of the time would suffice). One of the most profound failures of the digital age is that we have not updated the concept of legal deposit libraries. Is it too late to develop a requirement for content to be deposited – in such a way as to be perpetually available to the “library”’s readers, and freely available when the copyright expires?

By: Maligna licenser och den digitala äganderättens död < Nicklas Lundblad

Maligna licenser och den digitala äganderättens död < Nicklas Lundblad — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:03:48 +0000

[...] och inte längre vill tillhandahålla digitala utgåvor av sina böcker har mött kritik, för att uttrycka det milt. Det intressanta med tilltaget är dock att det illustrerar ett exempel på en konflikt som inte [...]

By: Herbert Kanner

Herbert Kanner — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:32:56 +0000

I wonder if this could be the subject of a class action suit. Here is my point: suppose a customer gets halfway through a book and then the book disappears from his/her Kindle. So, despite the refund, there is actual damage to that customer, namely the time already invested in reading that portion of the book.

By: Yvette Wohn

Yvette Wohn — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:29:01 +0000

I feel companies should be obliged to inform their customers of the deletion before it happens. Although a different case, money that I had invested in a Second Life bank “disappeared” because Linden Lab decided not to host financial institutions. I couldn’t even get a refund from the bank. I don’t know much about consumer protection laws, but we should be thinking of consumer protection for virtual assets too.