[e-privacy] Libri elettronici

[Anonymous]

qualcuno davvero pensava che i libri elettronici fossero uguali agli altri?

Non hanno neanche cominciato a diffondersi e subito Amazon ha cancellato dai
lettori dei propri clienti alcuni libri senza ovviamente avvisare.

Il contrappasso ha deciso che i libri in questione fossero di Orwell....


da http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

Pogue's Posts - The Latest in Technology From David Pogue

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
July 17, 2009, 12:57 pm

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

EDITOR’S NOTE | 8:41 p.m. The Times published an article explaining that the Orwell books were
unauthorized editions that Amazon removed from its Kindle store. However, Amazon said it would not
automatically remove purchased copies of Kindle books if a similar situation arose in the future.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous
author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had
bought and paid for—thought they owned.

1984A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen
Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and
apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically
deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it
can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just
like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once
we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales
may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the
night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on
the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And
the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Scary.

da http://www.pasteris.it/blog/2009/07/18/ironia-della-sorte-la-strage-digitale-dei-libri-di-orwell-su-kindle/

Ironia della sorte: la strage digitale dei libri di Orwell su Kindle

Via David Pogue

    1984This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain
    famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that
    they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.
   
    A screen shot from Amazon.com The MobileReference edition of the novel, “Nineteen
    Eighty-four,” by George Orwell that was deleted from Kindle e-book readers by Amazon.com.
   
    But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and
    apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It
    electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their
    accounts for the price.
   
    This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that
    it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know,
    just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in
    that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn
    that all sales may not even be final.
   
    As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of
    the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a
    check on the coffee table.
   
    You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony? The author who was the
    victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were
    “1984” and “Animal Farm.”
   
La notizia sul NYT

    In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted
    some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.
   
    An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the
    Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function.
    “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,” he said.
   
    Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our
    systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these
    circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.
   
    Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had
    sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not
    immediately returned.
   
    Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also
    use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them
    vanish.
   
    An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin
    Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version
    of “Animal Farm.”