Apparently in this case, someone overseas ... where the shorter
copyright for the books in question had expired ... legally published
the books in question on Amazon (although agreeing at the outset via
Amazon's honor system that they held the right to do so for the
world)... but some people like David Pogue bought the Kindle book from
Amazon in the US where the US copyright laws are longer and not expired yet.
I know some of the Amazon Kindle dev crew.
It's their impression ... they don't know either ... that the recall was
not a high level decision ... just an everyday office screw up and that
the technical ability to do it is a simple function of all networked
file systems ... of which Kindle is one.
Another issue involved is Kindle users can create and store notes with
each book so pulling a book by Amazon is also to remove someone's
notes. A real clue that no big picture executive was involved..
But the vexing administrative part of problem is inherent not only to
digital file management but to the easy to digitally self-publish
capability that amazon offers. An inadvertent problem created by a new
medium.
Can't be cheap, easy or quick to self publish digitally if you have to
go through a long bureaucratic copyright search and proofing process.
If Amazon were to regulate it, then ALL the self publishers would have
to pay someone to perform the process (and wait the time it takes)...
thereby in essence removing the self publishing option for many doing
nothing more than publishing their own poems etc.
However, it sounds like the new medium that Kindle has spawned a new
occupation of "publishing scroungers" ... who search for works out of
copyright, find or create digital copies of them and sell them/ publish
them for profit in a time honored value added way via Amazon's Kindle.
Probably some of them are either unscrupulous, ignorant of the many
differing worldwide copyright statutes, or careless and something does
need to be done but it does pose a real head scratcher on how to
regulate the digital publishing process in this new electronic file
system medium without essentially killing the capability for the small guy.
db
Jeff Miles wrote:
Remember this. The bank bailout will only happen once. And I have
an axe to grind. Where's my 850 Billion? I've been finically stupid in
the past, so I should qualify.
Jeff M
On Jul 19, 2009, at 7:28 AM, t.piwowar wrote:
On Jul 19, 2009, at 9:23 AM, [email protected] wrote:
I do not find such an explanation to be any excuse whatsoever.
Sounds like what the banks and mortgage companies were saying in the
wake of the sub-prime loan crisis.
You compare a one time event to repeated and systematic abuse?
Perhaps you have a axe to grind?
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