Despite What You Heard Amazon Did Not Steal Anyone’s Books

5 Responses to “Despite What You Heard Amazon Did Not Steal Anyone’s Books”

1. Mack writes
   July 18th, 2009 8:50 pm

   Theft, like any crime, requires intent. There is a story out about a young man who had copious notes deleted from his kindle when Amazon flipped out. There was a better way to do this.

2. Mack writes
   July 18th, 2009 8:59 pm

   From the NYT article:

   Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

   Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

3. Mack writes
   July 18th, 2009 9:00 pm

   And:

   While the copyright on “1984” will not expire until 2044 in the United States, it has already expired in other countries, including Canada, Australia and Russia. Web sites in those countries offer digital copies of the book free to all comers.

4. Mack writes
   July 18th, 2009 9:01 pm

   Course, I’m pretty shady by nature.

5. R. Neal writes
   July 19th, 2009 6:02 am

   Hook your Kindle up to your PC via USB and you can copy all the content files to your PC where Amazon can’t get to them. You can’t read them on your PC but you can copy them back to the Kindle.