
Student sues Amazon after Kindle eats his homework - pmikal
http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/30/student-sues-amazon-after-kindle-eats-his-homework/
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conorgil145
The fact that he is suing over his lost homework is almost totally irrelevant.
It is just a brilliant way to hold Amazon responsible for their actions. Once
a book is purchased he owns the rights to that material and he did not
initiate or consent to the removal of the book.

If you read the PDF draft of the lawsuit it clearly says that Amazon does not
tell users in the Terms & Agreements that they have the ability to remotely
delete e-books and in fact says that "...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..."

Amazon should never be allowed to change data on an individual's kindle
without their express written consent. Its criminal.

~~~
andreyf
_Once a book is purchased [the customer] owns the rights to that material
[indefinitely]_

According to most people's common sense, maybe, but certainly not according to
US copyright law. Copyright law is very clear about under what what terms
authors may license their work, and licensing it for indefinite time is not a
requirement.

Edit: I'm just stating facts, not saying it's right. Personally, I see both
sides. But if one argues that copyright law should be changed, I don't see why
Amazon, a public corporation, should take away rights from publishers which
have granted to them by the laws passed in a government supposedly
representing the will of the people.

~~~
gojomo
For physical books, you're wrong. See the first sale doctrine.

For digital goods, the precedents are mixed.

Despite the claims and agenda of copyright lobbies, US law has always had
limits and exceptions on a rightsholders' ability to dictate all terms of
their works' use and reproduction.

The resolution isn't fixed; it's up to us: what we tolerate, what we
legislate, what we build.

~~~
timwiseman
Excellent point. Once they have sold me a copy of a work, I cannot then
reproduce and distribute that work without permission (or waiting a very long
time indeed for the copyright to expire), but there are a great many other
rights that I have without any need for permission.

And that is under current law, the laws can be changed.

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e40
I didn't realize that kindle users could make notes on books. That makes what
amazon did even more egregious.

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billswift
According to the Wall Street Journal article
([http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-
my...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-my-
homework/)) about the suit, he did not lose the notes; he is upset because the
notes are no longer linked (or whatever) to the text they refer to. >>Amazon
didn’t delete the file containing Gawronski’s notes on the Kindle device. But
since the book text "no longer exists, all my notes refer back to nothing," he
said. "I can’t really use it for much."<<

Also, they are supposedly suing to prevent Amazon from doing this again, which
Amazon has already said they will not. This is just a sleazeball lawyer going
for his own benefit and a teenager trying to stretchout his 15 minutes of
fame.

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jamesbritt
More information at [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-
ate-my...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-my-
homework/)

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jacquesm
Proof that children should not be able to bring suit until they are of age.
Losing your homework is not reason for a lawsuit, if you get a device like the
kindle you should learn how to make backups. And if your chosen device for
your homework can not make backups you only have yourself to blame, you should
use something else.

Personal responsibility seems to be in short supply, blame somebody else is so
much easier. Electronics can fail, the kindle is no exception. If you made
your homework on a piece of paper I'm sure it would not be lost so easily, but
then again pieces of paper can blow away, burn, get lost and so on. The kindle
- and any other piece of complex tech - is not infallible. At that price point
it can't be expected to be infallible. The fact that amazon initiated the
failure is a systemic issue with the kindle, nothing to be surprised about. If
you choose a medium with all kinds of weird DRM then you can't really blame
the vendor.

Is it frivolous lawsuit week or did I miss the memo ? First that real estate
company over a tweet and now this.

Personally I think amazon deserves a boycott for the kindles DRM but you can't
really sue them over a 'feature' that has been well advertised. The kindle is
broken by design.

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pmichaud
This is like saying that someone who takes notes on paper, then subsequently
loses those notes when the paper manufacturer steals the paper back, is to
blame for losing the notes because they didn't take a photo copy. It's a total
cop-out.

~~~
andreyf
_This is like saying that [...] the paper manufacturer steals the paper back_

No, it's really nothing like that. Semantics aside, intellectual property is
_not_ like physical property: it's not subject to the laws physical property
is subject to, nor to the right of physical property.

~~~
ekiru
You're absolutely right. A better comparison would be if you bought a computer
from Apple and were using iWork to write some notes, and then Apple decided to
delete the notes you had been writing without your permission and without
warning.

Regardless of the legality of deleting the 1984 ebook, it's ridiculous to
assert that Amazon should be able to destroy anyone's annotations for any
reason. Those annotations belong to the user who created them.

I don't really understand what you mean when you say "semantics aside". Are
you intentionally saying something that is equivalent to "Ignoring the meaning
of 'intellectual property' and 'physical property', intellectual property is
not like physical property?" I assume not, but I'm not sure what you meant to
say there.

~~~
jamesbritt
"Regardless of the legality of deleting the 1984 ebook, it's ridiculous to
assert that Amazon should be able to destroy anyone's annotations for any
reason. Those annotations belong to the user who created them."

The annotations were not destroyed. The work they referenced was removed. The
claim is that, absent that work (with its particular page numbers , etc. I'm
guessing) those notes are essentially useless, since they now refer to a void.

~~~
ekiru
Are you sure the annotations weren't removed as well? Not having a Kindle, I
don't know, but some of the articles covering the matter have said that they
were.

~~~
jamesbritt
[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-
my...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/07/30/lawsuit-amazon-ate-my-homework/)

'Amazon didn’t delete the file containing Gawronski’s notes on the Kindle
device. But since the book text “no longer exists, all my notes refer back to
nothing,” he said. “I can’t really use it for much.”'

