Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kindle. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Kindle e-book piracy accelerates; CNet.com, 2/18/11

David Carnoy, CNet.com; Kindle e-book piracy accelerates:

"You can argue whether it was Napster or the rise of the iPod--or most probably both--that led to the huge amount of music piracy, but the book business will also take its share of big losses as it moves further into the digital realm."

Monday, June 21, 2010

E-Reader Prices Are Slashed; New York Times, 6/22/10

Brad Stone, New York Times; E-Reader Prices Are Slashed:

"A price war is brewing in the growing market for electronic reading devices.

Barnes & Noble, the national bookseller, announced Monday that it was dropping the price of its six-month-old Nook e-reader to $199 from $259 and introducing a new version of the device, which connects to the Internet only over Wi-Fi networks, for $149.

Responding rapidly, Amazon.com then cut the price of its popular Kindle e-reader below the Nook, to $189 from $259.

The price cuts were made as manufacturers of e-readers faced a mounting threat from Apple’s iPad. Even though it is far more expensive than the e-readers, the iPad, which starts at $500, performs a range of functions with a versatile, colorful display that contrasts sharply with the static, monochrome screen of e-book readers. Apple said it sold more than two million iPads in the two months since the tablet’s introduction.

“It was obvious that the price of stand-alone e-readers had to come down,” said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research, citing the threat by Apple and other tablet makers. “We just never thought it was going to happen this rapidly.”

Analysts had expected the prices of e-readers would gradually fall because of the natural decline in component costs and the increased profitability of e-books themselves...

With recent software upgrades, Barnes & Noble has improved the Nook, which now has features to counter Amazon’s aggressiveness on e-book prices and the brand power of the Kindle. Barnes & Noble allows Nook owners to read entire e-books within stores and lend e-books to friends for up to two weeks. Now, with yet another software upgrade, Nook owners have free access to AT&T’s nationwide Wi-Fi network.

“I don’t see more than two, or maybe three dedicated reading companies in the market for selling e-books,” said William J. Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, in an interview. “I think you are starting to see a shake-out now.”

Mr. Lynch also predicted that within 12 months, e-reading devices “that people will actually want to buy” could be available for less than $100."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/technology/22reader.html?hpw

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight; New York Times, 2/8/10

Motoko Rich, New York Times; Publishers Win a Bout in E-Book Price Fight:

"Google’s e-book retail program would be separate from the company’s class-action settlement with authors and publishers over its book-scanning project, under which Google has scanned more than seven million volumes — mostly out of print — from several university libraries. That settlement was recently imperiled by a filing from the Department of Justice that said it still had significant legal problems with the agreement, even after a round of revisions. The settlement is subject to court approval.

Google users can already search up to about 20 percent of the content of many new books that publishers have agreed to enroll in a search program. According to publishers, Google originally said it would automatically enroll any book sold through Google Editions in the search program. An executive from at least one of the six largest publishers said the company did not agree with those terms. Mr. Clancy said that Google would not require books sold through Google Editions to be part of the search program.

Last May Tom Turvey, director of strategic partnerships at Google, told publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York that Google’s program for selling new e-book editions would allow consumers to read books on any device with Internet access, including mobile phones, rather than being limited to dedicated reading devices like the Amazon Kindle.

Google, without its own e-reader, wants to be a Switzerland of sorts, competing with Barnes & Noble and other e-book sellers to become the preferred digital bookstore on devices other than the iPad or the Kindle, such as Android smart phones.

In general, publishers are eager for Google to enter the e-book market because they want more competition. “We would love to have a diverse marketplace for e-books,” said Maja Thomas, senior vice president for the digital division of Hachette Book Group, which publishes blockbuster authors like James Patterson and Stephenie Meyer. Since Google would contribute to such diversity, Ms. Thomas said, “we welcome them.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/books/09google.html?scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

A New Electronic Reader, the Nook, Enters the Market; New York Times, 10/21/09

Motoko Rich, New York Times; A New Electronic Reader, the Nook, Enters the Market:

"As widely expected, Barnes & Noble unveiled its Nook electronic reading device at a splashy news conference on Tuesday to generally positive views from the publishing community, and offered some details about its whispered-about lending capabilities.

The Nook electronic reading device from Barnes & Noble was unveiled Tuesday, offering a competitor to the Kindle.

As much as anything, publishers seemed relieved that Barnes & Noble, which operates the nation’s largest chain of bookstores, had produced a credible alternative to Amazon’s Kindle. The Nook, priced at $259, went on sale Tuesday afternoon at nook.com, at a price that matched the latest edition of the Kindle. The Nook will ship starting in late November.

Amazon currently dominates the market for electronic readers. Estimates vary, but according to the Codex Group, a consultant to the publishing industry, Amazon has sold about 945,000 units, compared with 525,000 units of the Sony Reader...

One of the differentiating factors of the Nook is that customers can “lend” books to friends. But customers may lend out any given title only one time for a total of 14 days and they cannot read it on their own Nook while it is lent."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/technology/21nook.html?scp=1&sq=nook&st=cse

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Amazon Kindle 2: Centuries of evolved beauty rinsed away; Guardian, 10/10/09

Nicholson Baker, Guardian; Amazon Kindle 2: Centuries of evolved beauty rinsed away:

This week Amazon announced the UK launch of its latest generation of e-reader. But don't all rush at once, warns one American writer – despite the hype, the Kindle 2 is still no match for the book

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/10/amazon-kindle-uk-launch-book

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Amazon.com Offers to Replace Copies of Orwell Book; New York Times, 9/5/09

Miguel Helft via New York Times; Amazon.com Offers to Replace Copies of Orwell Book:

"Amazon invited some unflattering literary analogies earlier this summer when it remotely erased unlicensed versions of two George Orwell novels from its customers’ Kindle reading devices.

Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, apologized to customers for the deletions in July. And late Thursday, the company tried to put the incident behind it, offering to deliver new copies of “1984” and “Animal Farm” at no charge to affected customers.

Amazon said in an e-mail message to those customers that if they chose to have their digital copies restored, they would be able to see any digital annotations they had made. Those who do not want the books are eligible for an Amazon gift certificate or a check for $30, the company said."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/technology/companies/05amazon.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=amazon%20orwell&st=cse

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Coolerbooks.com gets 1M books from Google scans; Associated Press, 9/2/09

Rachel Metz via Associated Press; Coolerbooks.com gets 1M books from Google scans:

"Interead, a British company that sells the COOL-ER e-book reader, is adding more than 1 million free public-domain books to its online bookstore. The texts are available from Google Inc. through its book-scanning project.

However, the online store won't be able to show half of the books outside the U.S. because of copyright restrictions, Interead said."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hhYsP5iV7KbmDgpo-bFJ030Q_o0QD9AF6TE80

Thursday, August 6, 2009

New Entry in E-Books a Paper Tiger; New York Times, 8/6/09

David Pogue via New York Times; New Entry in E-Books a Paper Tiger:

"You get five free out-of-copyright books to start you off (“Dracula,” “Sense and Sensibility” and so on)...

Besides, if you want free, out-of-copyright books, you can get them on the Kindle, too. They await at Gutenberg.org and other free sites...

And remember, you can never lend, resell or pass on an A or B e-book. You’re buying into proprietary, copy-protected formats — which can have its downsides. Last month, for example, Amazon erased “1984” and “Animal Farm” from its customers’ Kindles by remote control, having discovered a problem with the rights. Amazon refunded the price, but the sense of violation many customers felt was a disturbing wake-up call...

Buying a “free” book entails a 1-cent charge on your credit card, which is refunded at checkout (huh?)...

Barnes & Noble’s e-book initiative has some bright spots: the iPhone and Windows apps are mostly excellent, the concept of free access to public-domain books is sound and being able to read your e-books on your laptop is a no-brainer.

But over all, this is a 1.0 effort — which, incidentally, the company acknowledges. It vows to address the shortcomings."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/06/technology/personaltech/06pogue.html?_r=1&hpw

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds; Ars Technica, 8/4/09

Nate Anderson via Ars Technica; New petition demands an end to Kindle DRM, faces long odds:

"It was that decision to link the Kindle hardware and store with a new DRM scheme that led the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to add the Kindle to its "Defective by Design" anti-DRM campaign.

The group has now launched a petition asking Amazon to "remove all DRM, including any ability to control or access the user's library, from the Kindle... Whatever Amazon's reasons for imposing this control may be, they are not as important as the public's freedom to use books without interference or supervision."

The Foundation took particular exception to two decisions that Amazon made. First was the company's decision to address publisher concerns about the Kindle's text-to-speech feature by giving book publishers a way to disable the automated reading of their titles. Second was Amazon's almost unimaginably bad decision to remove already purchased books from customers' devices—and not just any books, but the George Orwell titles 1984 and Animal Farm...

These issues are certainly troubling, and the FSF is right to call Amazon to account for them. But to most consumers, the bigger concern about DRM is vendor lock-in...

The shift to electronic books provides obvious advantages in convenience and portability (every Ars staffer who owns a Kindle swears by it), but those books can only be read on devices that support Kindle DRM. Just as with music, people run the risk of making a significant investment into a product that they cannot resell and which may well become obsolete or unreadable in a decade—or whenever they decide to switch e-reader brands. "

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/08/new-petition-demands-an-end-to-kindle-drm.ars

Sunday, August 2, 2009

My Kindle ate my homework: lawsuit filed over 1984 deletion; Ars Technica, 7/31/09

John Timmer via Ars Technica; My Kindle ate my homework: lawsuit filed over 1984 deletion:

A suit filed on Amazon's home turf claims that the company's recent deletion of e-books from consumers' Kindles violates its contract with users and constitutes computer fraud.

"Amazon attracted a lot of unwanted attention when it used its Kindle e-book reader's always-on network connection to delete copies of works by George Orwell that had been sold without a proper license. The company has since apologized to its users and promised that it will never happen again, but those steps aren't enough for some. A lawsuit has been filed in Seattle that seeks class action status for Kindle owners and Orwell readers, alleging that Amazon has done everything from committing computer fraud to eating a high school student's homework.

One of the plaintiffs, Justin Gawronski, has a compelling story about his experience with Amazon's memory hole. Apparently, he was reading his copy of 1984 as a summer assignment for school, and had been using one of the Kindle's selling points—the ability to attach notes to specific parts of the e-book text—to prepare for his return to school. Since he was actively reading the work when Amazon pulled the plug, he actually got to watch the work vanish from his screen. He's left with a file of notes that are divorced from the text that they reference. A second plaintiff is named, but he just seems to have gotten poor customer service when he complained about the deletion.

But the firm that filed the suit clearly expects that these two individuals are hardly alone, and it seeks class-action status, with three different degrees of harm. The first is simply Kindle owners, who have allegedly seen their device's resale value drop due to Amazon's actions. The second is those that lost a copy of a digital work, and the final class are those, like Gawronski, that have put effort into annotating a work, only to see the underlying text vanish."

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/07/my-kindle-ate-my-homework-lawsuit-filed-over-1984-deletion.ars

Friday, July 31, 2009

Amazon sued over Kindle deletion of Orwell books; Yahoo News, 7/31/09

Tim Klass, AP Writer, via Yahoo News; Amazon sued over Kindle deletion of Orwell books:

"A high school student is suing Amazon.com Inc. for deleting an e-book he purchased for the Kindle reader, saying his electronic notes were bollixed, too.

Amazon CEO Jeffrey P. Bezos has apologized to Kindle customers for remotely removing copies of the George Orwell novels "1984" and "Animal Farm" from their e-reader devices. The company did so after learning the electronic editions were pirated, and it gave buyers automatic refunds. But Amazon did it without prior notice.

The lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of Justin D. Gawronski, 17, a student at Eisenhower High School in Shelby Township, Mich., as well as Antoine J. Bruguier, an adult reader in Milpitas, Calif."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090731/ap_on_en_ot/us_tec_amazon_kindle_lawsuit

Monday, July 27, 2009

Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books; New York Times, 7/27/09

Brad Stone via New York Times; Amazon Faces a Fight Over Its E-Books:

"A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.

“As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation.

The foundation, based in Boston, is soliciting signatures from librarians, publishers and major authors and public intellectuals. This week it plans to present a petition to Amazon asking it to give up control over the books people load on their Kindles, and to reconsider its use of the software called digital rights management, or D.R.M. The software allows the company to maintain strict control over the copies of electronic books on its reader and also prevents other companies from selling material for the device.

Two years after Amazon first introduced the Kindle and lighted a fire under the e-books market, there is increasing awareness of how traditional libraries of paper and ink differ from those made of bits and bytes. The D.R.M. in Amazon’s Kindle books, backed up by license agreements with copyright holders, prevents customers from copying or reselling Kindle books — the legal right of “first sale” that is guaranteed to owners of regular books.

D.R.M. has created a new dynamic between consumers and the vendors of digital media like books and movies. People do not so much own, but rent this media. And the rental agreement can be breached by the manufacturer at any time, sometime with little or no notice.
People are also worried that the very architecture of network-connected devices like the Kindle, TiVo or iPod give tech companies unprecedented control over digital media and by extension, the free exchange of ideas.

Once upon a time, retailers sold customers a product and then walked away after the transaction. Today’s specialized devices often keep an umbilical cord to their vendor, loading updates and offering convenient ways to make purchases. These devices also limit the extent to which people can load independent software and customize their experiences.

Such tethered systems provide significant advantages to the consumer. Companies can keep their own records of what people buy and restore the content if it is inadvertently lost. Device software can be kept up to date, and vendors can track what people buy and make personalized recommendations for new material they might like.

Randal C. Picker, a law professor at the University of Chicago, says he thinks Amazon was right to delete the improperly sold versions of “1984” and argues such systems can also allow companies to better enforce copyright laws. He notes that the harm to the Orwell book buyers was minimal, since their money was refunded after copies were deleted from their Kindles.

“Because copyright infringement was poor and lax in the offline world, it should also be that way in the online world? I don’t understand that logic,” Mr. Picker said. “The whole point of moving online is that it creates new opportunities.”

But critics say that any device capable of interfering with how its owner uses media is potentially dangerous. “I worry that systems like these tethered appliances are gifts to regulators,” said Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School and author of the book, “The Future of the Internet — and How to Stop It.” Mr. Zittrain predicts that governments in some parts of the world will want to use it “like a line item veto for content,” removing objectionable sentences or chapters in some books.

“It could happen first in jurisdictions like the United Kingdom, where there isn’t as rich a First Amendment tradition and where libel suits happen much more frequently,” he said.

Whether or not people are bothered by these possibilities may in part be a function of their age, as a new generation grows up with an implicit understanding of the rules around these networked devices and learns to live with them.

“I’d like to live in a perfect world where I own this content and can do whatever I want with it,” said Justin Gawronski, a high school student whose copy of “1984” was erased by Amazon, but who recently declined when a lawyer asked him to join a class-action lawsuit over the incident. Mr. Gawronski said, “This is probably going to happen again and we just have to learn to live with it.”"

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/technology/companies/27amazon.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=e-books&st=cse

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Amazon Chief Says Erasing Orwell Books Was ‘Stupid’; New York Times Bits Blog, 7/23/09

Vindu Goel via New York Times Bits Blog; Amazon Chief Says Erasing Orwell Books Was ‘Stupid’:

"On Thursday, Amazon’s chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, posted a statement on a customer forum, publicly apologizing for his company’s handling of the situation:

“This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of ‘1984′ and other novels on Kindle. Our ’solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/23/amazon-chief-says-erasing-orwell-books-was-stupid/?hp

Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon's Kindles?; Guardian, 7/22/09

Bobbie Johnson via Guardian; Why did Big Brother remove paid-for content from Amazon's Kindles?: Kindle users were left seething when Amazon removed paid-for content from their devices, while the Popfly and GeoCities services are to close. How did we lose control of the digital products we use?:

""Amazon offered a product, which I legally purchased, and had in my possession until their electronic burglar stole it from me," said another affected user. "Amazon has no right to go into my Kindle's memory and delete something without my knowledge or permission."

Why were people so offended? Customers weren't really angry about the gadget, or the legality of the booksin question – they were furious with the sleight of hand Amazon performed by secretly removing them from their machines. They were aggrieved because they thought they had bought the books when in fact, it turned out, they were merely renting them.

"We have long been concerned that digital rights management is essentially tricking people," says Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the campaign group based in San Francisco. "It's creating a situation where people think they've purchased something – in the way you might purchase a pair of shoes, for example. But from the perspective of the seller, and often from the perspective of the law, it's quite a lot less."

Digital wrongs

No wonder Amazon customers were so annoyed: it's as if they walked into a bookshop to pick up a new best-seller, only to discover later that the shop was actually a library and they had to give it back.

In the past, arguments over these sorts of issues have focused heavily on the use of digital rights management (DRM), the copy protection software that makes it difficult to rip DVDs to your computer, for example, even for personal use.

But the Kindle debacle is more than just book-banning or copyright infringement. There is something even more pernicious going on: not only do these systems restrict your ability to do what you want with your media – they also change the basic DNA of the thing you're purchasing.

So what exactly are we buying into these days?

"If you think of a book as a piece of data, the idea that you own it but then it can be zapped or taken away at any time – I think that's extremely counter-intuitive," says Jonathan Zittrain, professor of internet law at Harvard Law School, who has been watching the situation closely. "Yet it's the way the architecture can work, unless we build in protections."

In his 2008 book The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, Zittrain warned that devices to store data and code are increasingly becoming information appliances that are controlled by the manufacturer, not the user – precisely the situation the Kindle has presented...

Ed Felten, professor of computer science at Princeton University, says the problem is a "lack of transparency".

"If customers had known this sort of thing were possible, they would have spoken up against it," he wrote on his blog, Freedom to Tinker."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/kindle-amazon-digital-rights

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore; New York Times, 7/21/09

Motoko Rich via New York Times; Barnes & Noble Plans an Extensive E-Bookstore:

"In an announcement on Monday, Barnes & Noble said that it would offer more than 700,000 books that could be read on a wide range of devices, including Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry and various laptop or desktop computers. When Barnes & Noble acquired Fictionwise in March, that online retailer had about 60,000 books in its catalog.

More than 500,000 of the books now offered electronically on BN.com can be downloaded free, through an agreement with Google to provide electronic versions of public domain books that Google has scanned from university libraries. Sony announced a similar deal in March to offer the public domain books on its Reader device.

Barnes & Noble is promoting its e-bookstore as the world’s largest, an implicit stab at Amazon.com, which offers about 330,000 for its Kindle device. Currently, Google’s public domain books cannot be read on a Kindle."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/technology/internet/21book.html?_r=1&hpw

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Future of Newspapers: Profitless? Go Wireless; Wired's Duel Perspectives Blog, 7/14/09

Douglas Wolk via Wired's Duel Perspectives Blog; Future of Newspapers: Profitless? Go Wireless:

"The Wall Street Journal's publisher Les Hinton has called Google a "digital vampire," but even his paper, one of the last holdouts of subscription-based online content, has made its articles' full text accessible via Google searches. Using free content as bait for paying customers doesn't work for newspapers. And the revenue from internet advertising is less a stream than a dribble — nowhere near enough to support a robust paper (or paperless paper) on its own.

Still, there's a crucial distinction that might yet save news organizations. Users are pretty clearly uninterested in paying for content on the open internet, but what they are, in practice, willing to pay for is mobile content...

One possible future of news as a commodity is hyperlocal information — the sort of thing that's already becoming popularized by services like Yelp, whose incarnation as an iPhone app offers directions to nearby restaurants and services, complete with with user reviews."

http://www.wired.com/dualperspectives/article/news/2009/07/dp_newspaper_wired0714

Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move; Guardian, 7/17/09

Bobbie Johnson via Guardian; Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move:

"It is not the first time that Amazon has removed titles that were produced in breach of copyright and sold illegally through its store. Examples include pirated copies of Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer, Harry Potter books and the works of novelist Ayn Rand.

Although the work of Orwell - who died in 1950 - has entered the public domain in some countries, it is not yet free of copyright restrictions in the United States or Europe.

Although Amazon is believed to be in negotiations with a number of European mobile manufacturers to support the Kindle, the device has only gone in sale in the US. This means that any copy produced for it would need to have been officially licensed by the Orwell Estate - which has been careful to protect its rights in the past."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984

Why Amazon went Big Brother on some Kindle e-books; Ars Technica, 7/17/09

Ken Fisher via Ars Technica; Why Amazon went Big Brother on some Kindle e-books:

"As it turns out, the books in question were being sold by Amazon despite being unauthorized copies. The works weren't legit. It was all copywrong. In other words, Amazon was selling bad books. Hot letters. Pilfered paragraphs.

MobileReference, the publisher in question, formats and sells public domain books on Amazon. The only problem is that George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 are not yet in the public domain, at least not in the US. According to Amazon's statement to Ars Technica, "These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books." When the publisher informed Amazon of this, Amazon moved to rectify the situation. The two books are no longer listed on MobleReference's website, either.

But does Amazon's Terms of Service even allow for this kind of “rectification”? Peter Kafka examined the ToS and believes that there is no backing for this move. The ToS makes it sound as if all sales are final:

Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

One possible loophole would be in the licensing: Amazon cannot license to you something for which it has no rights to license. Also, we suspect that some indemnification clauses in the third party contracts also put the publisher, not Amazon, on the hook for possible infringement problems."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles.ars

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle; New York Times, 7/17/09

Brad Stone via New York Times; Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle:

"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.

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

On the Internet, of course, there is no such thing as a memory hole. 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."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=1