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posted by [personal profile] benlehman at 06:56am on 22/07/2009
Apparently the Kindle does a thing with pirated PDFs where it makes them disappear and then refunds you your money.

Now, this isn't really a bad thing. If it were possible to make all trafficked stolen goods in the world disappear and be replaced by a pile of cash that was exactly equal to the purchase price, that'd absolutely be a good thing. But it has electronic freedom hobbyists, uh, acting like total ninnies. Doing things like posting long off-topic screeds to role-playing game sites.

I read this and I think about all the people who write about the death of newspapers with a certain amount of glee: yeah, well, there you go... It's a new electronic world out here. Bits are not like physical objects: there are new rules. Adapt or die. This goes for individuals as well as for corporations. Don't like it? You could always just buy a paper copy.
There are 11 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] the-tall-man.livejournal.com at 12:00am on 22/07/2009
I don't like owning tools where someone else has executive control over them. They bug me.

So, uh... I don't buy such tools.

Seems simple.
 
posted by [identity profile] benlehman.livejournal.com at 02:23am on 22/07/2009
Word.
 
posted by [identity profile] yeloson.livejournal.com at 01:41am on 22/07/2009
I'm wondering where all electronic freedom folks were a few months back when Amazon shunted LGBT or women's health books off their radar. Or continued issues with similar books getting availability on Kindle.
 
posted by [identity profile] benlehman.livejournal.com at 02:24am on 22/07/2009
Slightly different iss, I think. What's with the continued availability problems?
 
posted by [identity profile] yeloson.livejournal.com at 03:42am on 22/07/2009
There's a couple of authors whose books were being "unavailable" through Kindle, despite supposedly set up to be available through it. This was almost a year before the drama this year, and still hasn't been resolved.

(one author resubmitted her work except took out any reference to "lesbian" and it was up the next day...)
 
posted by [identity profile] misuba.livejournal.com at 05:14pm on 22/07/2009
I'm wondering where all electronic freedom folks were a few months back when Amazon shunted LGBT or women's health books off their radar.

Weren't they screaming like hell? That's how I remember it, but maybe that was just Twitter.
 
posted by [identity profile] yeloson.livejournal.com at 08:58pm on 22/07/2009
It was primarily LGBT activists - the electronic freedom folks were mostly absent.
 
posted by [identity profile] apollinax.livejournal.com at 02:45am on 22/07/2009
I actually think Slate had a good article on the Kindle fiasco:

http://www.slate.com/id/2223214/

I.e., the transition to a world where do not own any media, and so any of it can be revoked at any time.
 
posted by [identity profile] aumshantih.livejournal.com at 04:28pm on 22/07/2009
The fact that it was Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" makes it even zanier.
 
posted by [identity profile] majcher.livejournal.com at 09:24pm on 22/07/2009
I love my Kindle, but I do hate the iTunes-y control they have over the content. So, I treat my electronic reading material the same way I treat my graphics/audio/video media - buy it when I can, then grab copies of it for my own personal use. Especially with game books on the Kindle, I buy the PDF (and the physical book, usually, because I like a full game shelf) and then use MobiPocket Creator or something to convert the PDF to Kindle format, and just move it over. Totally owned by me, Amazon could nuke their entire catalog and go out of business, and I'd still be good. Granted, you can't do this with everything, but I'm confident that very soon, you will be able to.
 
posted by [identity profile] sirogit.livejournal.com at 12:57am on 23/07/2009
Man, by trafficked stolen goods I hope you mean AVI's of MacGuyver and canadian children's D&D gameshows, because then I would be suddenly covered in money.

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