November 20, 2007
The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts)
Mark Pilgrim nails the fundamental truth of the Amazon Kindle:
Even if the 1970's era industrial design may be forgiven (though even that's a stretch), the terms of service are too much, too restrictive, too ripe for 1984-style abuse.
Act I: The act of buying
When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.
Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002
You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party...
Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007
You would think, given Amazon's stature in the book-selling world, that they could demand better terms from publishers. Apparently they couldn't even demand reasonable pricing and will be losing money on every best-seller sold.
Update: I just watched Amazon's Kindle introductory video, wherein is contained the information that Amazon charges "a small fee" for each file you email yourself to read on your Kindle. You can't even read your own documents without paying Amazon.
There is USB built into the Kindle and no word on Amazon about whether you can also transfer files that way. If that is the case, it's unfortunate that customers will have to know that depending on their choice of transfer mechanism, they'll be receiving a bill at the end of the month. That's not very user-friendly, Jeff.
Posted by brendan at November 20, 2007 9:07 AM
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