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As you said, it was the worst response from them.

But I remember it was due to something odd, but forgot what. But the point is, they sold you the book. So if they were scammed they should eat the cost, not delete it from your device.

At the time I was getting interested in these readers, that activity turned me off every getting/using an electronic reader.




Amazon have said that in the future if this happens again they will not remove the books from customer devices.

https://mashable.com/archive/amazon-remote-delete

> The statement, from Amazon's Drew Herdener, reads:

> These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books...When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers....We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.

My Kindle is jail broken because I prefere using KOReader over Amazons own reader software. But even before it was jail broken if I ever brought books from Amazon I would use the "Download book to your computer" function and then run it though the DeDRM plugin for Calibre. https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

That way even if Amazon decide to no longer host the book (so you can't redownload them) or go back on their word about not remotely removing content I still have a DRM Free copy of the content I can put on the book. However it is a shame we as consumers have to go though these steps, our other option is to buy content from store that do not apply DRM to the books, but that as decision that is basically forced by the publishers.


> Amazon have said that in the future if this happens again they will not remove the books from customer devices.

This isn't exactly comforting since they've since done things just as abusive, like remoting into people's devices and replacing their purchased products with different products.

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/03/04/0521244/roald-dahl-e...


I wouldn't word it as harshly as "remoting into customers devices" simply because we are used to auto updates, The publisher updated the title on the store, kindles then downloaded the updated title.

If an app dev did the same, completely rework their app into a completely new product and allow auto update replace the app installed on users devices, would you lay the blame on Google/Apple or on the publisher?

IMO its not a black and white case and I would say neither party are completely in the clear, more an assignment of blame, but I would put more blame on the publisher than on Amazon, but that doesn't mean Amazon are in the clear either. Amazon should have either a) required the publisher to issue the new book under a new ASIN b) give the owner of the book the ability to choose which revision they would like to read.


I think we are missing the forest the trees. The issue is not that they took action. The issue is that this action was even possible and an option to begin with.

If there was ever an argument for an analog library, this is it.




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