Hi All
Picked this item up.
From DIGITAL DIGEST | LiveUpdate Newsletter - Issue 156
26 July, 2009
"
In Copyright news, the week's major talking point has been about Amazon's
SNAFU and the implications it has regarding DRM. As you may have heard, some
third party reseller on Amazon sold several Orwell e-books for Kindle, but it
turned out they did not have permission to do so. So what did Amazon do? They
used a not so well known DRM feature of Kindle to, without the permission of
the user, erase all copies of the unauthorised books off people's Kindle
devices <3>. Without permission. Without warning. This, my friend, is DRM at
its worst.
Sure, in this particular situation, the erasure was probably justified,
although ironic in the extreme considering the titles that were erased
('1984?, in particular – Big Brother must be so proud). But that's not the
point. The point is that Amazon at a moment's notice can erase all of your
purchases. Now why would they do that? They wouldn't, not unless they want to
be hit with hundreds of thousands of lawsuits all at once. But the point is
that they could, and they have proved that they can this time, and there will
be many similar future situation which will force Amazon or publishers to do
this again. They wouldn't be able to do the same with hard copies, and so it
would be the seller or Amazon that will have to pay damages, rather than the
customer who bought the item in good faith. The truth is that with these kinds
of DRM, you're not buying, you're only renting or licensing, as you are bound
by the license agreement which you agreed to when purchasing the books. Any
way, the whole thing caused quite a stir, even though this isn't the first
time Amazon has done this, but the media just loved the '1984? references.
Amazon's boss had to issue a public apology <4>. DRM again shows it's true
evilness.
"
