
How Amazon Deleted Me and All My DRM Without a Second Thought - softwaredoug
https://gist.github.com/softwaredoug/6f74748822bf52728545
======
hga
As this emphasizes, You don't own these items, you're merely leasing them.
That's why I've spent exactly $3.98 on two Amazon Kindle books (a bunch more
at $0), both in part to tell me if I want to buy more from the respective
authors. Vs. a few hundred in non-DRMed digital books and music, the latter
all though Amazon (would be a lot more if I didn't have a massive bias towards
physical media and a very good insurance policy).

A good example of one of the own goals of Google+: their Real Names policy +
account consolidation meant violating, in their view, the former meant loss to
all of the latter, including most catastrophically GMail.

Oh, yeah, per his tweets, he lost the remaining balance of his Prime account.
Nice way to reward loyalty.

~~~
hawleyal
In general, one cannot revoke a lease without recourse.

~~~
howeyc
yeah, but what are the terms of the license/lease. I haven't read it/don't
know, but what if the terms are basically "you have access for as long as we
feel like giving you access"

~~~
hga
Take it to court and terms that ... convenient to the vendor very possibly
would not hold up. For something like books, with versions that are tangable
and massively litigated on over half a millennium, I suspect Amazon would lose
badly, after of course the other side spent many times the losses.

At least in the case of Amazon, with its reputation being such a big factor in
its success, if you had to go to court the bad PR from such a white line case
would almost certainly result in a quick and favorable settlement.

------
ChuckMcM
It is a cautionary tale. And one where, like people who "bought" their
original DivX disks learned, and other folks have learned.

That said, Amazon will fix this. They are still in business and you can sue
them both for breach of contract and to collect legal costs of suing them.
Sometimes just a letter will fix it. But the next course of action is to
create a new account as they asked you to do, and then provide proof of your
previous purchases on the old account and tell them to transfer them all to
the new account. I would do that in a letter (written).

------
rrss1122
This is an extreme way to handle unauthorized access. Just have him change his
passwords, don't destroy his account.

It also shows the perils of DRM. Thousands of dollars can disappear in an
instant for whatever reason, and often there's little we can do about it.

~~~
ProAm
> often there's little we can do about it

They could issue a refund, unless Amazon thought his previous purchases were
also unauthorized.

------
thaumaturgy
Companies continue to store more and more customer data and property online,
out of direct control of the customer, and in increasingly proprietary
formats, all governed by vague and often unfriendly terms of service, and all
of it at risk of compromise and theft, and all of these companies are racing
to provide less customer service than their competitors so that they can
operate at slightly lower cost. The only way to resolve disputes is to raise a
big stink on discussion sites and social media and hope the story gets enough
traction that somebody somewhere at the company can be moved to care.

Everybody keeps doing it because, "Hey, it's always worked out fine for _me_.
_I_ have never had any trouble with Amazon's | Apple's | Paypal's | Google's |
Facebook's | LinkedIn's | Microsoft's | Github's | Craigslist's | YouTube's
customer service."

(A few people think this situation isn't too great for the consumer and try
not to participate, but we're crazy.)

It's too bad this happened to him, but this isn't exactly news. This story has
been repeating itself for a decade at least, just the names and details keep
changing.

~~~
cautious_int
Here's to the crazy ones.

( Sorry, I couldn't resist. I found it funny in a sad/ironic way. )

------
astannard
Hope this gets sorted, Amazon clearly need to improve how they handle such
situations. If all else fails complaining to your credit card company should
get a refund.

~~~
a3n
Clearly they don't need to improve. "BWA HA HA HA" and all that.

------
fapjacks
You know... I'm thinking about all the times I've heard people laugh that I
have four full shelves of computer books. Hardcopy books. Actual books.

It reminds me of how people used to laugh at me for wearing my neck protector
on my body armor in Iraq and the Philippines. It wasn't required to wear it,
but I always did. People laughed, until they heard about a friend of mine
whose neck was ripped open by shrapnel that would have been stopped by the
same protector. He bled out on a random, dirty street in Baghdad.

I'll take hardcopy, thanks.

~~~
hga
As someone who started using tape backup in 1978 (sic) and first bought body
armor in 1984 (sic), yeah, I hear you. And my personal anecdote is how
multiple forms of backups saved my critical data from this:
[http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/](http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/) (rsync.net, since the disk backups
in the bathroom got trashed). Fortunately haven't had to put body armor to
real use.

But between the way I prefer to use many computer books (multiple windows on a
big screen), the ease of saving them to multiple backup sites (every time I
buy digital media I upload copies to rsync.net and ironically Amazon's free
(5GiB?) service, plus they're in my normal backup systems), how fast their
content gets obsolete, and their lower price, I tend to buy them. But only for
the perishable stuff, I get e.g. CS books in hard cover.

As I noted elsewhere, you also want those physical shelves backed up by a good
insurance policy, and for you I recommend USAA, my father started with them in
the 50s, and especially due to tornadoes and the like we've had to make a lot
of claims.

~~~
teddyh
(Note: “Sic” doesn’t mean what you think it means.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic)

------
jccalhoun
When you buy files with drm, you get what you pay for: nothing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I download my Kindle books, strip the DRM, and store them in Calibre with
backups in AWS' Glacier.

Doesn't work for everyone, but its easier than lugging a book collection
across the world. I'm paying for convenience.

------
davidgerard
Piracy: The Better Choice(tm).
[http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043337/hd-disk-
for...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1043337/hd-disk-format-wars)

Seriously. If there's any book you've paid actual money for, then an ePub copy
as well is a sensible backup. Don't let your stuff be hostage to DRM.

------
hawleyal
Could there be legal recourse via small claims court? They basically revoked
$1,000 dollars worth of media licenses without recourse.

~~~
Bartweiss
Since Amazon locked him out of the account and apparently can't access its
contents, he can't even present any information about what was on it. He'd
have to get into discovery or get some court order against Amazon just to
recover a record of what he wants to sue over.

~~~
tjl
He'd have records in e-mail as to what he's purchased.

~~~
hga
Good point, but the Kindle has been out for 8 years, and I'll bet a lot of
people have lost at least some of the email over that time.

(Of course, I say this as someone who during that period used rsync.net and
LTO-4 tape to make sure that didn't happen even in the face of a tornado that
trashed my apartment.)

------
voltagex_
When I do buy Kindle books, I make sure I can remove the DRM and backup
offsite. I should not have to do this.

------
mirimir
> In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon
> remotely deleted some digital editions of [ _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ ] from
> the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.[0]

That's when I stopped leasing DRM stuff from Amazon and other sellers.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0)

------
cautious_int
Why do we have to resort to public outcries to get attention from a company?

If the user agreement really allows this, then it is time to stop supporting
them.

~~~
hobarrera
He's probably trying to warn others thinking it's something nobody knows. Of
course, we've all been warned about DRM for years now, but people seems to
ignore the risks.

------
a3n
I only read the tldr, but really, hasn't this been obvious since these schemes
existed? It's at once the ultimate lock-in (can't rage quit) and the ultimate
lockout.

------
otterley
Did you ask the account team to restore your purchases to the replacement
account? If so, what was the response?

The mere fact that they didn't think to do it for you honestly doesn't seem
like it's as serious as you make this sound.

~~~
solidpy
Apparently there's no way
[https://twitter.com/softwaredoug/status/628911762105049088](https://twitter.com/softwaredoug/status/628911762105049088)

~~~
otterley
Follow-up: "We have re-opened your account and everything is intact." Amazon's
customer service came through after all.

------
itsdrewmiller
This seems annoying but it's clearly still in progress - Amazon didn't tell
him to fuck off, and are still working on a resolution. For the digital haters
- houses burn down too.

~~~
hga
There is no sign from his writings about this that Amazon is working on a
resolution, no doubt that's why he's thrown it into the court of public
opinion. ADDED: just checked his linked Twitter feed and Amazon restored his
accounts with no explanation to speak of:
[https://twitter.com/softwaredoug/status/628978794129436672](https://twitter.com/softwaredoug/status/628978794129436672)
The tweet with the largest number of retweets got only 15....

As for "houses burn down too", tornadoes trash them as well, e.g.
[http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/](http://www.ancell-
ent.com/1715_Rex_Ave_127B_Joplin/images/) and I lost over 200 physical books,
records, CDs and DVDs. But since I had a good insurance policy, I got them
replaced or otherwise covered, which I seriously doubt is possible with DRMed
digital media (just tried some searches with no luck).

------
solidpy
Write a song about it.

