Amazon deletes purchased copies of 1984 from Kindle
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
pogue.blogs.nytimes.com
1. This might focus people's attentions on the problems of buying DRM books - I am still astonished how little it bothers people.
2. For the love of all your deities, can we please revisit copyright laws. The man has been dead for 59 years. Surely we can all agree those books should be public domain by now. Death+70 is just too long.
Another option would be to create a branch of IP "in between" copyright and trademark (which is indefinitely renewable).
But IMNAL, so it might as well be my ass talking.
But I suspect Disney isn't actually that powerful itself, but it has sufficient resources and motivation to argue its case strongly before the appropriate committees - and then the many other powerful parties with similar interests rally round it.
But I'd like to point out that the phrase "special interest" is very loaded. If you're going to use the phrase, can you differentiate between a "special interest" versus just a plain old regular interest?
It seems that people use "special interest" to denote interests with which they disagree. Those entities that they agree with are overlooked, despite the fact that all entities manifestly have their own interests.
(I hesitate to cite specific examples for fear of forking out an off-topic thread for an OP that's already marginal)
I would agree that getting too specific is best left to discussions on another site.
1. According to utilitarianism - the idea that the moral worth of an action is determined solely by its contribution to overall utility: that is, its contribution to happiness or pleasure as summed among all people [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism]
I claim that in all but the most obvious cases, you can't. It's a fool's errand, and thus the term "special interest" has no use but in propaganda.
While used in propaganda, I meant to explain that "special interest" == "not in the public interest". I agree that the latter is clearer.
Interestingly, there are strong economic incentives for democracies to create policy that benefits special interests at the expense of the general interest.
A: Special interests.
The best format, IMO, is plain HTML. It can come with a custom style sheet, or can be overridden to taste on the client. It can be read by anything, it can be endlessly adapted .. it's just the best overall solution, IMO.
So while "buy" isn't the right word, neither is "lease". It's a whole different beast altogether.
You can buy a car but you can't drive it 100 miles per hour. You can buy 1000 smoke detectors, but you can't harvest the radioactive isotope and make a nuclear reactor. You can buy a book on paper, but you can't re-publish it as your own work, etc.
If a song costs $0.99 with DRM then it would cost more without DRM. Very simple. In most cases the DRM terms of use are acceptable to me, which is why I don't hesitate to buy DRM'ed content.
Of course, many DRM implementations are highly annoying, but that is a design issue not a core issue with DRM technology.
In the vast majority of cases, DRM is only an annoyance. It doesn't stop anybody who really wants to share content from sharing it. The only things DRM does is give undue power to content sellers (like Amazon) and make content completely worthless when whatever technology is used to verify ownership stops working (or gets turned off like MSN Music, Yahoo Music...)
Why shouldn't I be able to plug my iPod into someone else's computer, pick the songs I want, and confirm a popup for the amount I'll be billed? Or why shouldn't it let me listen to the songs for a few days free of charge?
DRM should let comtent owners think of extremely creative ways to virally market digital goods, while still preserving ownership and the ability to make a profit.
Sadly, there has not been a good DRM yet. Even Apple's DRM is so stupid that if you get a hard drive failure you can't re-download the songs free of charge (or for the price of bandwidth). I happen to have had two hard drive failures, and only the first one was covered. This is bad business, not bad technology.
Since when does price have to do with how much something cost to build? If I spend $10 building a shitty chair, it's still a shitty chair. DRM-protected music costs less because you're buying the right to listen to a song with restrictions not present in non-DRM-protected music.
It seems that RIAA and MPAA are the luckiest of these middle men and the most persistent, and that is why they came to make such a huge profit from what was relatively obscure nook of an intellectual property regulation. After all, the concept of an artist having the privileged right to his, already published, work comes first, and all the delegations and copyright issues come second.
DRM is designed to keep power in the hands of rights holder, the creator, and, by necessity, away from the consumer, and only the monstrous bulk of MPAA allowed them to effectively pretend that they are not the simple middle men, but the focus and origin of all the rights that anybody can ever have on IP.
DRM is the sort of technology that could enable this kind of free, expressive creation. That we don't have it is a failure of businesses to come up with creative licensing terms, not a failure of DRM technology.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showAr...
Somebody (third-party) decided to sell 1984 and Animal Farm on the Kindle Store without owning the copyright to it. Amazon is of course forced to take down said illegal posting. The only questionable part here is whether or not they should be allowed to delete purchased copies (with refund).
Then instead of informing the buyers of it's mistake, Amazon decided to delete the copies outright, without any notice and of course without any talk of refund to the buyers.
That's what I understand of this situation.
I think they handled it as well as anyone can handle this particular situation.
The book is 1984 for f sake. Does it have to be 451 before someone at amazon realizes this would be a PR nightmare? There were better ways to handle this issue, but they can still fix it, as they must have a record of which books from which customers they revoked & refunded.
1. Someone still has a copyright on this book. 2. That person can demand that everyone that bought a copy of it have their copy deleted.
...should prove that without question.
As a copyright holder of course you have the right to go after people who have illegally copied your work. I see nothing wrong here. What I see wrong is the ability to preemptively delete this material without notifying the user first.
Someone had the copyright and they were clearly able to have the works deleted. QED.
Maybe they weren't in their immediate legal rights merely by virtue of their copyright but their possession of the copyrights gave them enough other leverage to force Amazon to take the actions that they did. So by having the copyright, they were able to get the books erased.
The illegality of the book here has nothing to do with political pressure or information control. It is a simple matter of someone who didn't own something trying to sell what he didn't own.
1984 is literally my favorite book. I was happy to have it on my Kindle, readily available at all times. You would think, then, that I would be outraged by this. To be honest, after I got over the initial creepy "they went into MY device and deleted something" feeling, my (positive) feelings about either Amazon and the Kindle itself were unchanged. It's still an amazingly useful device that I get a ton of mileage out of, and they made a dumb mistake that just happened to affect me. I've been fully reimbursed for the title (all $0.99 of it), so no harm done.
The concerns about Amazon randomly deleting content on your Kindle seem overblown. The ostensible purpose of the Kindle is to drive sales of Amazon's e-books. How would deleting customers' purchases on a frequent basis further that goal? I'm willing to write this off as a one-time occurrence, albeit an unfortunate and somewhat frustrating one.
I feel like too many people are speaking up on HN just to speak (I wonder if the demographic has changed lately). I like this comment because it adds some data, not just an opinion or crafted argument.
I come to HN to hear first hand accounts from people. jknupp's comment is a good example. Other great examples are when founders comment on articles about their companies, or programmers about their code, or authors about their articles. But above this comment, with 40+ upvotes, are a couple of comments where the commenter doesn't even own a kindle, nevermind having 1984. sigh.
Maybe a lot of people didn't buy the Kindle because they have compelling, well-argued positions on why they don't accept the limitations imposed on you by the product's terms and conditions. If anything those people are probably more informed on the issue than someone who just bought the latest gadget.
Speaking up just to speak is a problem, yes. But if you're going to impose barriers to participation, let's have them be a little less arbitrary than "owns a Kindle".
I am not trying to criticise jknupp. I liked his comment. But I reject the suggestion that only Kindle owners can legitimately comment on this matter.
Say you bought a non-fiction book exposing some company's practices, or the Church of Scientology, or whoever, and they come after the publisher with defamation lawsuits. The publisher withdraws the book because it can't afford the legal battle, and Amazon deletes it off your Kindle. You don't get a say, Amazon doesn't get a say, Amazon's general desire to drive up its sales, which you base your optimisitic assessment on, plays no role whatsoever.
Or maybe it's not a defamation lawsuit, it's a copyright case over 10 lines of quotations in a novel you bought on your Kindle. And the publisher is just threatened with a suit, and decides to withdraw the book.
Or maybe you bought some memoirs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces), and later there's a scandal over how the author made it all up. To hush up the scandal, the publisher simply withdraws the book.
Etc. etc.
Its too late after they have sold the commodity to go ahead and forcibly reverse the sale. And they have to take some flak associated with this whole issue.
I do not understand the comments which say that "Amazon is blameless and blame the publisher". Sure they are less to blame than the publisher for this whole mess, but they do have some responsibility. As a large corporation, they should have checked it out with the publisher BEFORE they sold the book.
Also, they could have told the publishers that "the book is sold and we cannot reverse the transaction". Why make the world aware of the fact that they control the kindle content to such a large extent? It is simply opening a door to the publishers, who can later on make such demands in other cases also.
I understand what happened here, but I honestly don't see it happening too frequently.
They have lost it today, utterly and likely irredeemably. There is no excuse for taking back what a customer has already purchased. None.
And that they did so without even asking the customer? It should be considered outright criminal.
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"
Is that "or" a get-out clause? Because the first part seems to quite definitively rule out what they did.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/article838...
That said, I'm sure their lawyers will be able to spin it as meaning that they grant you the right to keep the copy as authorized by them.
When you "purchase a book" from the kindle store, all you are actually purchasing is a license to view the book that is bound by amazon's terms of use.
1) You can sue anyone for anything. The US does not have a "loser pays" rule, though frivolous lawsuits can include attorney's fees.
2) Class action lawsuits are very profitable for lawyers when they win. They need to convince a jury of 12 people who couldn't get out of jury duty that "Big Corporation" was wrong. They get a percentage of the total judgment.
My guess is that some lawyer will pick this one up. They'll sue Amazon based on "common sense" and Amazon will realize that a jury isn't going separate a "book" from an "e-book". The plaintiff's lawyers will equate it to removing a book from your bookshelf in your house.
Amazon will argue commas in their TOS or Amazon will settle. On top of it all, Amazon demonstrates why I purchased a netbook instead of a Kindle for my e-book reading pleasure ... and why I don't buy e-books that I can't remove the DRM from.
I still think they stand a good chance of a class action lawsuit. The likelihood of it succeeding is less since it sounds like the issue relates to "who really owned the copyright" and they had to take down the content due to that ambiguity or fraud.
Amazon needs to make its licensing policies clear up front and not bury them in fine print.
I may not like it when I only get a license that might be yanked, but I'll be a lot less upset about it the day it is yanked if I did the deal with open eyes at the start.
Though Amazon may be technically correct, it deserves the drubbing it is getting by failing to make its DRM policies clear up front to its customers.
It obviously obscured this issue to ensure that the issue would not harm Kindle sales. Now that this bomb has exploded, Kindle sales will be hurt anyway.
Believe me, amazon hates this as much as you do. They had to credit a bunch of people's accounts for the books. Amazon is a company. One that spends money. The publisher is not the ONLY person that is seeing a taste of the $9.99. They're out the money they had to give to sprint (is it sprint that provides the connectivity? somebody correct me if I'm wrong), and every other cost that was covered by the money you spent on the book.
This was a horrible horrible move for all parties involved.
Amazon didn't have to put that ability in the Kindle. Without it, it'd still have a huge list of titles. Amazon wanted to have that kind of control.
(1) Amazon makes money when it sells books
(2) Amazon loses money when it "recalls" them
(3) Amazon is a public company, hence it tries to maximize (1) and minimize (2)
---
Hence, Amazon is really on the customers' side here when it comes to "buying" versus "refunding random books, rubbing hands together, and laughing manically". The only reason Amazon would want this kind of control is to extend it to publishers.
How is that being on the customers' side again? No Kindle owner is interested in the publishers' being able to delete books of their device.
The stuff about maximizing profits is just a red herring. Any time any public company is criticized for anything it does there's always a chance someone'll pop out with "they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
Well, a reply doesn't have to be a contradiction, but I didn't (and don't) agree with your implied assumptions. One being:
"they're a public company, so they're just trying to maximize their profits". It's a sorta-meaningless universal excuse
That's kind of like saying that gravity is a universal excuse for rocks falling on your head. They aren't excuses, they're physical/economic realities.
"Public corporations" are institutions in which decisions are made by individuals not just a contractually obliged to maximize shareholder value (meaning they'll be fired if they don't), but also a legal obligation to do so (meaning they can be sued and go to jail). Add to that the extraordinary competition for those positions and the over-abundance of people willing to take those jobs, and you'll get very simple behavior - profit maximization.
If I may, allow me (humbly) point out the fallacy in your thinking - you're personifying corporations. But they're nothing like people - they're economic entities defined and reacting to laws, just as moths are defined by physical laws.
Just a moth doesn't "know" any better than to fly towards light, corporations can't "know" any better than to maximize shareholder value. I don't mean that as a criticism of corporations, but rather of the ways in which their legal environment (copyright laws in particular) drives them to maximize those profits. Also worth criticizing: the ways in which the legal environment allows them to affect (via lobbying) it in ways which hurt the public good.
No, that's almost entirely unlike that. Gravity is well-understood and can be calculated and predicted. Predicting how a public company will behave based on the principle that it's going to maximize its profits is impossible. There's an enormous range of attitudes and behaviors that are used in practice and not considered to run afoul of this principle. This is why appealing to it is a sorta-meaningless universal excuse.
If you look at what actual public companies are doing, you will see all around you kinds of behavior that cannot be explained as maximizing the profits in any realistically predictable sort of way. Granted, for any such behavior you can come up with a plausible story about how it's somehow still going to contribute to profits by, for example, improving the company's public image, or betting on a long-shot breakthrough. But then, you can come up with such a story for virually any possible behavior, so it's, again, meaningless.
Some companies contribute to charity; others don't. Some companies spend huge amounts of money giving to their employees bonuses not mandated by contracts; others don't. Some companies (Yahoo) reject buyout offers based on higher-than-market evaluations - a decision that by definition robs shareholders of profit. Others don't. Some companies pay dividends. Others state upfront that they never will. Some companies follow established net standards when creating their applications. Others willfully break them. Some companies have a privacy policy for their users and stick to it; others have one and ignore it; others don't have one. Some public companies (Amazon, in fact) spend years racking up huge debt and ensuring they won't bring profit to their investors for many years to come. Some public companies (Microsoft) invest in a huge resource department that's poorly publicized (meaning little to no PR benefit) and almost certainly doesn't justify itself economically.
For all that, board takeovers for not maximizing profits, much less criminal persecutions, are very rare, because nearly any kind of behavior, including all enumerated above, can be justified with some sort of appeal to maximizing profits in some roundabout way or another, at some future or present point of time, according to some executive's judgement that's assumed to have been made in good faith. Yahoo's management had a good faith belief that Yahoo is really worth more than Microsoft was offering, even if the marker didn't recognize this. Spending lavishly on your employees is justified by claiming that otherwise the talent will leave and hurt profits; on the other hand, being a real cheapskate with your employees is justified by cutting costs and maximizing immediate profits. And so on and so on.
Given that just about any behavior can be explained as a way of maximizing profits, it's a useless explanation. It usually gets cited in defense of some objectionable behavior that can be seen to maximize profits in some easily-identifiable scope. The fact that other public companies (often) somehow manage to avoid doing the objectionable, or that this company (like just about any large company) routinely does things that hurt profits according to the same kind of simplistic explanation, is ignored. As I said in my original comment, it's a red herring.
I now know I'll never get a Kindle. Also I will not buy any more digital books from Amazon. It's a shame. I liked it.
http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/dp/B002A9JO9W
So, it looks to me like this was a case of a publisher illegally distributing a book to which they had no license. As an analogy, think of people who buy a bootleg DVD from a flea market while traveling overseas, only to discover it won't play in their region-locked DVD player at home. Yes, it sucks that DRM prevented them from using media they thought they had bought, but they also knew perfectly well that they were getting a deal that was just a little too good to be true.
I disagree with your argument that people should have known this was too good to be true. Orwell has been dead for almost 60 years, 1984 will be public domain soon enough.
Remember the Sony rootkit debacle a few years ago? No end users were really affected by it, but it was a huge PR disaster for them. Not saying that the current case is analogous but we cannot fortell how people will react to such sneaky behavior.
Regardless of the feasibility, I wouldn't expect Amazon to have any interest in creating a precedent of them paying to cover up for the mistakes of publishers on the Kindle store. Unlike many people, I actually think that yanking unauthorized books after download is totally reasonable, provided Amazon offers a detailed explanation of the reason.
Enter TEH T00Bz... We don't need these jack asses anymore. If I write anything, I'm going to e-publish.
Obligatory link to Stallman's Right to Read essay: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Deleting the books is actually one of the more benign things they can do. What is truly scary is them or others changing the content of books Ministry of Truth style, without us realizing it.
Imagine some little guy writes a controversial tell-all book, it's published. People buy it on Kindle. The guy is sued by The Man, loses, and any unsold books are pulped - plus, now, any Kindle books are recalled, or possibly revised.
We have the technology ...
We might be giving away more than we bargained for when we replace paper for mutable digitalia. We need to at least think about how we can address this systemic risk.
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html
This could be because the copyright has expired almost everywhere.
Not that it matters, as you pointed out.
Of course IANAL, I'm just speculating, and am 95% certain what I just said wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
strikes Kindle off "to buy" list
(I have both devices. The Sony is more usable while the Kindle DX handles full size business and engineering PDFs.)
Yes, 12. 64mb storage =]
I wonder what xterm would look like on e-paper...
I want a full-size e-paper display so I can edit code/use command lines outside in full sunlight. Think software development in a grove of trees from a hammock.
http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/04/west-coast-mob...
You're right though. Coding in full sunlight on the beach would be a nice thing.
Hey, so maybe an xterm would look ok!
(http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5003507/1984_-_George_Orwell, for people in a rebellious mood.)
I'd rather just live without it until something better and more open comes along. It's like deciding to use Linux instead of pirating Windows.
Step 2 - Remove books that cannot be identified as legitimately purchased.
The "whispernet" functionality is often talked about as this great feature of the Kindle. It's the single biggest reason that I won't buy one.
Owners of those titles were robbed by Amazon. Amazon broke into their libraries, took the books and left some money on the table. All through the backdoor they had installed when you purchased your book case.
Taking the iPhone Kindle app out of the picture (though it's probably relevant, I just don't know much about it, so I'll leave it alone for the moment)... Whispernet and software that is in the complete control of Amazon gives them a capability it can't have on my Netbook.
The thing that always concerned me about the Kindle/Whispernet is that they could use it to control all of the content on the Kindle. Lets say Amazon decides that only Kindle purchased e-books are allowed on the device ... one software update later and your imported PDF files are gone (legally or otherwise). I don't think they'd really be that nasty, but it's not as though the software installed is available for inspection. If the publishers push hard enough and the circumstances are right, who knows?
I'm not begging for a GNU/Linux e-book reader. I paid about the price of a Kindle for a low-end Eee PC with a big battery. It lasts about 7 hours (not 9.5 as advertised, but enough). To me, the Kindle is something undefinable. What do I get for $300?. Text to speech on all of my books? Sometimes. The ability to import PDF files? So far. Getting to read the books you purchased... unless...
I "get" that Amazon lives at the whims of their publishers. Unfortunately, the book publishers live at the whims of the consumer and the conditions of the marketplace. They should take notes from what's going on with music today. Scanners are cheap, and OCR software is very good with print. Compressed, text-only renditions of a book are tiny and bandwidth to the home is plentiful. Top that off with an inexpensive device that gets acceptable battery life and offers convenience and an acceptable screen for reading text... It certainly sounds a lot like Napster and mp3's to me.
1. The Kindle is a GNU/Linux e-book reader -- it runs a Linux kernel + userland atop an ARM chipset. The only thing "proprietary" about the system is the actual GUI tools for browsing/buying/reading books, and the radio firmware (pretty much mandated by the FCC).
2. The Kindle "experience" is very much different from what you get from reading on a laptop, even when suing a very compact model like the Eee. I've been reading book-length text on LCDs for years, but the Kindle is the first device that has allowed me to totally forget that I'm not reading a printed volume. If you haven't used one for at least 15 minutes, you really haven't had a chance to evaluate it fairly.
3. Finally, Amazon has never asserted any right to so much as examine what non-Kindle-store content you have on the device, much less delete it without your permission. Conversion of content from non-Amazon sources has been a feature of the Kindle from day 1, and any documents you acquire from other sources can simply be copied by using the Kindle as a USB mass storage device.
Like any hardware/software bundle manufacturer, Amazon has the option to render a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. However, like other companies possessing such power (Microsoft, for the XBox 360; Apple, for the iPhone; not to mention basically every smartphone on every carrier) they have to weigh any potential change against the risk that their customers will go elsewhere.
Point 1: You clearly have a better understanding of the software than I do and I appreciate the clarification. I still stand by the outcome, though. My own ignorance: has anyone managed to install firmware that eliminates the radio and makes it a simple GNU/Linux device (either generation)? That would make it more appealing to me assuming it has acceptable storage.
Point 2: Agreed that the experience is much different than an Eee. I rarely read text on paper. Most of my reading is on inexpensive, large LCDs with uneven back-lighting. The Eee display is an improvement to my eyes, though I've read on the eSlick (foxit's product) for well over 15 minutes and it is pleasant (minus the black and white which is unnecessary for books usually).
Point 3: Here's where I have to disagree: Amazon announced that the latest iteration of the Kindle would have Text to Speech, and had to back down. What I know is that if I purchase this device, I am purchasing something that I cannot control without an exceptional effort (hacking it myself, time I don't have). They own the front end and the back channel.
As to your final point: Yes. I'm a PC gamer, not an Xbox 360 guy for precisely this reason. I don't like mandatory game updates or a "sanctioned" selection of DLC. I'll concede on the iPhone comment since all mobile phones in the US suffer from the same disease to a greater or lesser degree.
The difference is that I believe Amazon has already rendered a large portion of the installed base of devices less useful via over-the-air provisioning. GNU/Linux on the Kindle aside, the GUI is the functionality and whispernet is the control when the two are married in a device. Assertions (or lack thereof) and promises are as good as the screen they're read on.
[edit] So I'll make one more point, which is that it looks like Amazon may well have removed and refunded due to fraud perpetrated upon them because they expected that the copyright belonged to the person signing the rights over.
It's nice to know that Amazon didn't respond to the whims of a publisher but tried to make a wrong right again. But the outcome was still a serious wrong for the customer.
If they had been printing copies of the book based on the claims of permission from someone who didn't own the copyright, they would have sued that individual after being sued themselves. I'd get to keep my book that was purchased in good faith.
Nobody wins here.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/
The copyright has expired here, in Canada and any number of other places. You poor Americans really got screwed by the Mouse.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sell illegal copies of Fahrenheit 451 on Amazon...
Also: I'd rather buy a physical book than either of those.
I really wish somebody would make an ebook reader that's easily hackable, reasonably priced, good on battery life, and displays PDF's well. The eSlick gets 3/4.
My ideal device would be one that can read RSS feeds and sync with Dropbox over wifi. Maybe the easy-on-the-eyes netbook screens are the answer?
Somebody commented on my blog about this the other day, and nailed it pretty well: http://www.gibsonandlily.com/comments/4043/
This sort of move really scares me; I have been contemplating moving some of them to the kindle (I have the books in .txt format).
From: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...
The last 1.5 sentences seem to nullify the rest of the paragraph for all intents and purposes...
IANAL, etc.
edit: why the downvotes? It's a sincere comment! When Sony installed frickin' rootkits on people's computers, did anyone say "wait, wait, let's wait for their side of the story"? Of course not.
"Why" doesn't matter. What matters is that it can be done, that it has been done, and it might well be done again. Nothing Amazon says changes any of that. I stand by what I said.
Think of it this way - there are a couple of parties here. Both Amazon and most publishers are public corporations. That means they have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. The law allows publishers certain rights, and, in order to follow the law (maximize shareholder value), they must take advantage of those rights.
Amazon, in turn, has a choice of forcing the publishers give up their rights under the law. Doing so would decrease the number of publishers that sell books. I imagine they did an economic analysis and figured that to maximize shareholder value, they must protect the publishers' legal right at the expense of common understanding of "readers' rights".
So, where exactly is the problem here? Is it in people following the laws?
I would say no: the problem is with the laws themselves. Which laws is an interesting question, one that is very much lacking discussion on this forum :(
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-...
but this screams out EPIC FAIL.