[p2p-research] The Kindle and Corporate Lockdown

[Kevin Carson]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kevin Carson <free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com>
Date: Apr 19, 2009 12:18 AM
Subject: Dead Media Beat: No Amazon?  No Kindle Library
To: free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com





Sent to you by Kevin Carson via Google Reader:


Dead Media Beat: No Amazon? No Kindle
Library<http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/wiredbeyond/%7E3/-h7U7BfWuYY/dead-media-be-4.html>
via Wired: Beyond the Beyond <http://blog.wired.com/sterling/> by Bruce
Sterling on 4/17/09

*Don't say you weren't warned.  That's not a "library" -- that's a dot-com
enterprise.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/04/amazon-kindle-incidents-highlight-drm-limitations-once-again.ars

(...)

Kindle users have been grumbling lately about Amazon locking them out of
their accounts, reportedly due to an overly high volume of returns on their
Kindle books. ChannelWeb <http://www.crn.com/retail/216500680> draws
attention to the plight of one user who admitted to three "high-priced
returns," though he denied abusing Amazon's return policy. Despite this,
Amazon banned him from making more purchases from the online store, which
also locked him out of accessing his already-purchased Kindle items.

This particular user eventually got his account reinstated, with Amazon
warning that it could revoke access again in the future. Though the
phenomenon isn't common enough to be considered an epidemic, a number of
other users reported that they had a similar account lock-out from
Amazon<http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44350&highlight=amazon+banning>,
turning their Kindles into $360 paperweights.

Certainly, this is the type of thing that gives old-school
bibliophiles<http://arstechnica.com/authors/nate-anderson/>reason to
continue trashing the Kindle. A bookstore that locks you out
because you treated it like a library doesn't take away the collection
already sitting on your bookshelf, after all.

Incidents like this remind us of what happened in the digital music realm
when MSN Music<http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2008/04/drm-sucks-redux-microsoft-to-nuke-msn-music-drm-keys.ars>,
Yahoo Music<http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/07/drm-still-sucks-yahoo-music-going-dark-taking-keys-with-it.ars>,
and Wal-Mart<http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/09/wal-mart-latest-to-shut-down-drm-key-servers.ars>decided
to turn off their DRM authentication servers. This still left users
with playable music files, but no DRM servers meant that they couldn't
authorize any new devices in the future, therefore limiting them to the
devices (and operating systems) they had already set up. Ultimately,
customer complaints got loud enough that all three companies decided to leave
the servers online<http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2008/10/wal-mart-joins-msn-and-yahoo-leaves-drm-key-servers-online.ars>for
a while longer, but to pretend this couldn't happen with
already-purchased Kindle books would be an act of willful ignorance. (...)

*The Kindle fan here is complaining that it's not as bad as all that:

http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2009/04/banned-amazon-user-loses-kindle-access.html

*Yeah? Well, I still say that Amazon is a dot-com enterprise, and I further
allege that a Kindle, as a physical device, will have the working lifespan
of a hamster.

*Real Dead Media fans are now pondering what happens to the entirety of
Western Cybercivilization when Taiwan, the source of all planetary chips,
gets metabolized by the People's Republic of China.


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-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
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