Do you love your Kindle? Or not?

[prairie rose]

I'm with you on all points except that I consider their motivation to be suspect. But I will ask two further questions: 1) Are the rights of the publisher more important than the rights of the individuals who purchased the book?

 

In my opinion, which I believe is what you asking, yes, the publisher's right to fair compensation, which in turn compensates the author, is more important than my right to purchase bootleg material, knowingly or unknowingly.

 

 

2) Does Amazon have the right to delete the ORIGINAL material that an individual has generated on their Kindle?

 

Can I ask for compensation from the water company if my house floods, by their mistake, and ruins my hard copy of a book with my notes in it? Do they owe me anything for that? Not usually.

 

I hope the 17yo in the article has learned that you can't put all your eggs in an electronic basket. Electronic devices fail, if it's important, you need to either use the old standby of pen and paper or create hardcopies of your electronic work. Both in the dinosaur computer days when I started college and the recent courses I've taken, electronic device failure is not a reasonable excuse for being unable to complete an assignment on time. You were/are warned of this at the beginning of each term. In other words, I have no pity for him. Nothing was stolen from him, he was compensated for the purchase of the book. If he didn't keep hardcopies of his notes, that's his problem IMO. Amazon does not have a copy of his notes, they were destroyed with the illegal copy of the book. No different than a college dean confiscating and destroying illegal copies of books.

 

All that said, I would be leary of putting notes in my Kindle books anyways if they were not extractable in someway from the book, like a notepad function. Or electronic sticky notes. I would not like the idea of if the book file somehow became corrupted and unusable or deleted, I could not maintain my notes. I find this to be a file design flaw.

 

But you asked does Amazon have the right to delete your notes, no, I don't believe they do but like I said, this is an easy problem to remedy. Either keep your notes in hard copy or Amazon can update the design so this is not a problem in the future. Amazon has already said that they made a mistake and will approach it differently in the future. Also from the article I linked:

 

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

As a previous poster has said, it is possible that future generations will ONLY read material in electronic format. As such, it is imperative that OUR generation ensures that the systems that are set up today for creation and distribution of future reading materials do not permit the type of abuse of power predicted in "1984". This is not an unimaginable outcome in my mind.

 

Yes, I agree but I don't think open format is the most effective way to achieve this at this time. While open format would make it much easier for the consumer, it would cause no end of headaches for publishers and copyright holders. Open format would make it much easier to obtain bootleg copies. Ultimately, I'm sure open format is the way e-readers will go eventually but right now, we don't have the proper laws or technology to protect publishers and authors in electronic open format. I don't believe my rights as a consumer trump the rights of authors and publishers to copyright their materials and enforce the copyright.

 

They refunded those who purchased the bootleg copy, Amazon admitted that they didn't handle this particular incident well and they have stated that they will be changing their systems so that books will not be deleted in the future. Sounds to me like they are trying to ensure that this kind of censorship does not occur in the future. What more do you want?

Edited January 6, 2010 by prairie rose

[Mekanamom]

I was just surfing around looking for Apple Tablet vs Kindle info, and see that the rumored Apple Tablet price point is $1000. UGH! Too much. For that price, I'd just get a new laptop.

 

So, maybe I'll just go ahead and get the Kindle....:001_smile:

 

I have been very very happy with my Kindle! I'm sure you will love it too, if you go that route. :001_smile: I use a Mighty Bright light with it at night. (Best book light I've ever used!)

 

Oh, and check out this forum (tons of great info, book recommendations, and Kindle accessories discussed here): http://www.kindleboards.com/

 

The price rumor I heard for the Apple Tablet was $600... but of course there is no real way to know until they announce it. And it is still just a rumor that they will even announce it at all this month! Since I use all the features on my iPod Touch and I use my Kindle all the time, I'm just totally excited about a possible device that would sort of merge the two. (And even those features are just rumors and speculation at this point. LOL.) Assuming they do actually announce something this month...Only a couple more weeks to wait and find out if the rumors are correct! :lurk5: