From the New York Times:
But no, 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.
I’ll admit up front and say that the idea of elecronic books has jsut never really appealed to me. I just viscerally prefer to have an actual paper book than an electronic one. The numerous times that I’ve downloaded reports or books and read them, I read them off of printouts (and yes, I recognize the irony, since I sell an electronic format magazine and electronic format books and reports and whatnot). So when the latest generation of e-book readers started coming around, they just didn’t appeal to me. This incident really doesn’t help me change my mind.
<> To me, the idea that a seller can, after the fact, decide that a sale wasn’t actually a sale is more than a bit disturbing ; more so since the seller in this case was actually able to reach out across the aether and delete books. It would be akin to Borders Books sending ninjas into my house to swipe the copies of “Analog,” “Fine Scale Modeler” and “Skeptic” I recently bought. But ninjas would almost certainly be more expensive than a team of web geeks who sent out a “delete” command.
Kindle? No friggen’ thank you.
7 Responses to “Why technological advancement isn’t always wonderful”
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It’s too bad Microsoft appears to be letting the .lit format die. It’s by far the best I’ve ever used. Works great for reading paperbacks on my smartphone. Instead of two bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks I can have them all and many more in the palm of my hand. Of course that doesn’t work so well with other book formats. . .
Oh, and they’re MINE. No worries about Big Brother snapping up 1984 off my smartphone (there’s irony).
I was under the impression that you purchased books and the data was on a card that you put into the reader. This completely eliminates any, ANY, possibility that I will be getting a Kindle. Ever. Period.
I am a bookaholic, I buy books of all kinds, though I have a real jones for encyclopedias and scifi, and I buy text books. Yea. I’m weird.
> I was under the impression that you purchased books and the data was on a card that you put into the reader.
Clearly it’s some sort of download
The most disturbing thing here is not that Amazon tried in a PR-damaging way to rectify a copyright problem. The disturbing thing is that Amazon has shown that they have the ability to essentially break into your library and take books that they feel you should not have. Never mind this specific incident… imagine that power in the hands of the CIA, the FBI, the fricken’ *Chinese* or, perhaps most disturbingly, the Obama administration.
While I’ve no doubt that there are some members of the current regime who would not balk at sending thugs to bust down your door to confiscate un-PC works (“Ayn Rand?!?! To the burning pile!”), the simple fact is that doing so on a nationwide scale is impractical in the extreme. But doing so at the push of a few button… hell, you *know* that there are people trying to do exactly that with other things. That investigative report on corruption at the highest levels that you’re nearly done with? Why… it’s just been replaced with a file folder full of kiddie porn!
…and this is the best bit…
>You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?
The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
I’m with the admin. on this, I print off my eAPRs and read ’em like that.
Has anyone noticed that these eBook readers don’t handle PDFs well?
We’re being forced use their proprietary formats.
I think until these things use an open-source format like PDF, we should leave them well alone.
That’s the main reason [until now] that I wouldn’t get one.
For the price of an eBook reader, I got an office-qualty printer/scanner/copier that I’m using to digitise 20 years worth of aeroplane magazines, and it only costs a tiny amount to print off what I want to read.
Scott, those ninja’s might be in the ‘pre-positioning’ stages…. Lets not forgot the looks on those ninja-kittins cute little mugs… Maybe Borders and other book sellers are planning further ahead than we might ever suspect…
Keep an eye on those kitten…
Randy