Jim Henderson wrote:
> That's interesting, I had been led to believe that with Kindle, you were 
> more or less at the mercy of Amazon (probably because of the whole 1984 
> thing).

Technologically, yes, you are. But it's not something they're going to do, 
or at least so they say.  In the case of 1984, it was because they weren't 
authorized to actually sell that copy. I.e., they were violating copyrights 
by selling you the book that way.

> The idea of the retailer being able to 'unsell' something to me 
> really turned me off of buying one of their devices - in fact, if I had 
> won one in a drawing, I'd have sold it because of that...

Ehn. You have to balance it out. I have lots of worries in my life. Amazon 
pulling a book off my kindle and giving me the money back so I can go buy it 
on paper is low on my list of worries.

I was reluctant for a long time to buy DRMed books, until I realized I'll 
likely always have the non-DRMed version available if I really want it. I 
can pick which books I'll buy cheaper with less access and which books I'll 
spend more on to be able to keep for 20+ years.

That book on C# 4.0?  The likelihood of me having to refer to that in 3 
years is really, really low.  :-)

> Not that I think Bezos didn't ultimately do the right thing, but really, 
> something like that should've never happened in the first place.

True, and he acknowledged that *and* gave people back the book as well. Not 
sure what more you could ask for.

Amazon's licensing at least isn't obnoxious. You can put it on up to five or 
six devices simultaneously, and if you delete it off your kindle, it frees 
up a license for use somewhere else. (Assuming you eventually turn on the 
radio, of course.) And there's readers for pretty much every popular 
electronic device except the direct competition.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Quoth the raven:
        Need S'Mores!

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