Google Books Mysterious Deletions

[shalym]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

When buying a pbook in a store, I do not expect that the store stole it somewhere. They may have bought it legally in another country, and then resell it in the Netherlands. For most goods, this is no problem, but it could be that the publisher doesn't want the book to be sold in the Netherlands and finds a way to legally summon the store to take it out of their inventory.

That is not my problem. I saw the book there, I paid for it, so it's mine now, whatever happens between the store and the publisher. If the store or publisher wants to take it away in exchange for some perks such as extra money or coupons, then they have to either *ASK* me to agree, or do it through the police, quoting some law that makes it legal for them to do that.

Actually, for this particular incident (the Amazon case), think of Amazon like a consignment shop. If a consignment shop sells something for a person, and that thing is later determined to be stolen, then the police absolutely have the right to come in and take the object from the buyer, with no compensation at all.

Not if these books are on a device that needs to be in contact with the seller at all times to be able to open the book. I don't know if there are such devices or apps already, but on computers, this is normal practice with games and many programs, nowadays. If the seller goes broke, the authentication server goes down, and your game or program won't start.

To be honest, I fully expect the Kindle, Kobo and Sony readers to start functioning like that. I wouldn't even be surprised if they scrapped the capability to side-load books, or your own documents, for that matter, and only accept DRM-ed books that are continually checked over the internet.

If Amazon were to make their books dependent on an always on connection to authenticate, they would have to change it so that all ebooks on Amazon use DRM. Why would they do that? If they were truly concerned about tying people to the device like that, they wouldn't allow things to be sold with no DRM in the first place.

Also, for the sofa analogy used earlier, think of it more like this--you don't lose access to your sofa if the store goes out of business, you just lose access to any warrantee that you may have had.

Shari

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If the store has no legal right to sell you an item you cannot legally take possession of it. It doesn't belong to you, even though you paid for it and you have to give it up. You really have no choice in the matter. The store that sold it to you must compensate you for any losses, of course.

You are probably right, but even so, it's not the store owner that can come and take the book back. I won't give it to him, and he has no right to take it. He will have to do it through the police.

Originally Posted by shalym

Actually, for this particular incident (the Amazon case), think of Amazon like a consignment shop. If a consignment shop sells something for a person, and that thing is later determined to be stolen, then the police absolutely have the right to come in and take the object from the buyer, with no compensation at all.

The police, yes.
The shop owner, no.

As I said above.

[OldGunbunny]

Originally Posted by mrscoach

I'm stuck at "iPad apps" and updating Google Play. Does Google do iPad apps now? How did I miss this?

Yes, Google does iPad apps. A quick search of the iStore shows about 20 or so apps.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

If the store has no legal right to sell you an item you cannot legally take possession of it. It doesn't belong to you, even though you paid for it and you have to give it up. You really have no choice in the matter. The store that sold it to you must compensate you for any losses, of course.

That is true in some countries and not true in other countries. So it is not something that is a trivial truth in a legal system.

[tomj777]

I was thinking of the Norwegian lady who, in 2012, had her kindle wiped and account closed, rather than the understandable Orwell removal. That incident highlighted the problem with the concept of ownership denied/enforced through DRM and the common man's understanding of the ownership of, say, a material book.
The link in my mind was the cross border aspect, combined with Amazon's rumoured arbitrary account policing.
Perhaps unfair of me.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by tomj777

I was thinking of the Norwegian lady who, in 2012, had her kindle wiped and account closed

Account closed; yes. Kindle wiped: no. I don't, for a second, believe that Amazon reached out and "wiped" her Kindle. If I recall correctly, SHE wiped her own Kindle and then had no access to redownload past purchases. Still an issue, yes, but Amazon's not wiping Kindles.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by tomj777

I was thinking of the Norwegian lady who, in 2012, had her kindle wiped and account closed,

The Kindle was not wiped. The Kindle broke and the replacement Kindle could not be loaded since the account was closed.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by tomj777

The link in my mind was the cross border aspect, combined with Amazon's rumoured arbitrary account policing.

In every single case we've had reported here on MR of accounts being closed by Amazon, there's been an awful lot more to the story than at first appeared, and a very good reason for the actions that Amazon took (eg there was one guy who had his account closed and it turned out that he had flagrantly abused Amazon's returns policy by repeatedly buying and returning big-ticket items). Amazon do not arbitrarily close accounts (or at least, if they do, we haven't heard about it here).

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In every single case we've had reported here on MR of accounts being closed by Amazon, there's been an awful lot more to the story than at first appeared, and a very good reason for the actions that Amazon took (eg there was one guy who had his account closed and it turned out that he had flagrantly abused Amazon's returns policy by repeatedly buying and returning big-ticket items). Amazon do not arbitrarily close accounts (or at least, if they do, we haven't heard about it here).

Indeed. Amazon mainly seems to close accounts belonging to serial returnees. These are folks who pushed way beyond any reasonable level of returned items.

[DiapDealer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the woman in question eventually gain access to her past ebook purchases even though her account remained "locked"? I could be imagining things, but I seem to recall some such.

[latepaul]

They re-opened her account after the publicity it got.

Like the 1984 incident it was not perhaps Amazon's finest hour but not as straightforward as it's often portrayed.

Here's an account of what happened

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HarryT

In every single case we've had reported here on MR of accounts being closed by Amazon, there's been an awful lot more to the story than at first appeared, and a very good reason for the actions that Amazon took

That's just not true.

Ian in April 2009
jrw93 in February 2012
mccarrsw in March 2012

All three got their account reinstated after being polite but persistent with customer services. That wouldn't have happened unless the account closure was a mistake.

[Fbone]

Is there a way for Amazon to close accounts while leaving the purchased digital content in tact?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Is there a way for Amazon to close accounts while leaving the purchased digital content in tact?

Originally Posted by latepaul

Here's an account of what happened

From the article:

and Amazon’s public relations department has said “account status should not affect any customer’s ability to access their library.”

I've no idea if the PR department's "should not affect" has been implemented in any practical way. But I suspect it probably has. Especially after that incident.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Is there a way for Amazon to close accounts while leaving the purchased digital content in tact?

Technically, it's not hard to put a flag into the database that signals that a customer may not buy anything. In that case, the customer could still log in, see all previous purchases, access the entire library... basically, do anything at Amazon they could normally do, except buy new stuff.