Kindle Buyers Beware
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James Joyner | Thursday, April 16, 2009 |
Via Josh Marshall, I see that Chris Walters confirms everyone’s worse fears about Amazon’s Kindle:
Amazon recently banned a customer for making what they considered too many returns, and when they did this they also disabled his Kindle account, although the returns were never related to Kindle purchases. So what happens when your Kindle account is taken away? Your Kindle still works, and the books you already bought for it will work, but you can’t download those books ever again (better have made a backup on your PC!), you can’t receive your magazine, blog, or newspaper subscriptions on it anymore, you can’t email documents to Amazon to have them converted and sent to your Kindle, and you can’t buy any new books for the device. That $360 device only works so long as Amazon decides it will work.
That’s the nasty thing about DRM—it prevents you from really owning things you’ve purchased.
Quite so.
Now, to be fair, I have no idea what this guy’s backstory is. My wife and I (mostly the former) buy a ton of merchandise using Amazon Prime and return a not insigificant amount of it for one reason or another without them batting an eye. So, it’s possible that he was indeed gaming their system. Still, a lot of power to give to one company.
Photo by Flickr user Scurzuzu, used under Creative Commons license.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia with his wife and infant daughter.
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This is the reason to go open-source as much as possible.
My main beef with the Kindle is its inability to read .pdf files!
Given the fact that .pdf is the one of the most ubiquitous type of electronic document files, it is pretty lame that they not include that functionality.
I recognize that the Kindle's appeal is its screen and rendering of words; but there is really no reason that in 21st century America we can't have a decent portable .pdf reader!
Actually, I am guessing that the real appeal of a Kindle is the convenience of being able to connect directly to Amazon's site and download books. Otherwise, I would assume users would opt for the less expensive Sony Librie which seems to be more PDF friendly.
