Lendle: Amazon has revoked Lendle's API access

[Joykins]

Amazon has no legal standing to stop people from lending books that were bought with the lending feature, whether such loans are to friends, strangers or anyone at all. All it can do is make it slightly--and I do mean slightly--more difficult for people to access authenticated information about the book offered for lending.

It sounds like Lendle was a bit more sophisticated than most lending sites, now it is more like on an even footing with them once the get back up.

I agree with others that lending sites aren't the obvious and best place for pirates to meet up. More likely, you meet someone who has tastes like yours and you lend books--legally--back and forth, that's what's happened for me.

[anijh]

Originally Posted by kennyc

But this is your mistake. They are not changing/modifying/revoking the lending feature, but the API to Amazon.com from that website which is in their opinion going beyond their terms of use.

You are correct on this point.

I hope whatever it is that caused Lendle to run afoul of Amazon's TOS is something that can be worked out so that they can return. IMO, they added value to the Kindle. However, I doubt they will be able to get it worked out given that Amazon notified them of the revocation through a no-reply address which is a bit callous.

According to Lendle, the reason given by Amazon as to why their API access was revoked was because they did not "serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site.” Vague as that statement may be it doesn't sound like Amazon is really open to the idea of people sharing stuff.

[queentess]

It'd be one thing if "lending" was unlimited... then Lendle users could read any lendable book for free, much like a library scenerio with a wait list. But since it's a one-and-done "lend", I really don't see the issue with matching up lenders and lendees.

[DiapDealer]

Amazon has no legal standing to stop people from lending books that were bought with the lending feature, whether such loans are to friends, strangers or anyone at all. All it can do is make it slightly--and I do mean slightly--more difficult for people to access authenticated information about the book offered for lending.

Which is all Amazon did to Lendle. Amazon didn't shut Lendle down... Lendle shut Lendle down -- because they foolishly built their infrastructure on a rug (a non-essential rug, I might add) that Amazon was free to pull out from under them any time they wanted to.

The Product Advertising API was never necessary for what Lendle wanted to do. They just made the mistake of putting too much emphasis on bells, whistles and shiny-flashy baubles. B&N has no API and as such, lending networks based on their lending feature will never be affected in the same manner.

Build a better (smarter) mousetrap and Lendle will be right back in business... even if I wish they weren't.

Whichever side of the piracy argument you fall on; the fact remains that Amazon didn't shut down anyone's ability to operate and maintain a perfectly-legal, functioning lending website. As you said... they'd have no legal standing to do so.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Which is all Amazon did to Lendle. Amazon didn't shut Lendle down... Lendle shut Lendle down -- because they foolishly built their infrastructure on a rug (a non-essential rug, I might add) that Amazon was free to pull out from under them any time they wanted to.

The Product Advertising API was never necessary for what Lendle wanted to do. They just made the mistake of putting too much emphasis on bells, whistles and shiny-flashy baubles. B&N has no API and as such, lending networks based on their lending feature will never be affected in the same manner.

Actually, it seems as if they went down it's because their software built a critical dependency on the bells & whistles. If the feature had been more isolated, they'd be back up in a jiff.

[kjk]

Booklending.com says their access to the Amazon API is uninterrupted.
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/20...-are-no-go.ars

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Keep the lending casual... unorganized. Otherwise... everything that publishers feared about ebook lending will have come true. Piracy's going to happen... it can't be stopped, but we don't have to build the pirates a brand new ship and give them a crew to sail her with.

This had nothing to do with "piracy". Lendle wasn't doing anything illegal, as far as I can see. The only thing they "violated" was Amazon's business model. Amazon certainly isn't required to support them, but it's also probably not the smartest move to try and stop them. I'm sure a certain percentage of the Lendle users will probably end up on real "piracy" sites now.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Shaggy

This had nothing to do with "piracy". Lendle wasn't doing anything illegal, as far as I can see. The only thing they "violated" was Amazon's business model. Amazon certainly isn't required to support them, but it's also probably not the smartest move to try and stop them. I'm sure a certain percentage of the Lendle users will probably end up on real "piracy" sites now.

The piracy issue was my own concern, admittedly, and I'm certainly open to being proven wrong -- in fact several posts in this thread have gone a long way toward easing my mind about it.

I agree completely that Lendle wasn't doing anything illegal -- I've stated this already. I think that Lendle was doing something stupid. That something stupid was building an infrastructure that relied on Amazon's Product Advertising API.

Plus I was taking issue with any suggestion the Amazon "shut them down."

As someone else has mentioned; with a little more foresight... the pulling of their API access would have been a minor glitch and they would have been up and running in a short amount of time.

They should suck it up, retool and re-open instead of whining about how Amazon was mean to them.

[leebase]

Amazon acting like "Apple" -- but wait...they ALWAYS have.

Lee

[bhartman36]

Unless I'm really misunderstanding something being said here, Lendle appears to be back up. I just put in a request for a book.

[kjk]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Unless I'm really misunderstanding something being said here, Lendle appears to be back up. I just put in a request for a book.

They just went back live this evening

http://lendle.me/amazon-api-revocation/

Update, March 22nd, 2011: We’re thrilled to report that Amazon has reinstated our api access, and Lendle is back up and running. Welcome back, Lendlers!

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by kjk

They just went back live this evening

http://lendle.me/amazon-api-revocation/

Awesome!

[anijh]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

Unless I'm really misunderstanding something being said here, Lendle appears to be back up. I just put in a request for a book.

Originally Posted by kjk

They just went back live this evening

http://lendle.me/amazon-api-revocation/

Great news.

[alsaan]

Late today, we received an email from an Associates Account Specialist at Amazon informing us that their concern only relates to our Book Sync tool, which syncs a user’s Kindle books with their Lendle account.

Well, that makes sense. The sync tool did some suspicious parsing of your private order history and was a potential security risk.

[DiapDealer]

I liked this bit:

We’ve learned a lot through this process, and have come to realize we need to work towards a Lendle product that does not rely on APIs provided by Amazon or any other third party. To that end, we’ve already begun brainstorming the next version of Lendle. Suffice it to say, we’ll continue to make good on our promise to keep Lendle the easiest, fastest, fairest, and best way to lend and borrow Kindle books.

It's almost like they read my previous post.