Kindling, Copyright, Catastrophe

Saturday, November 23, 2024

I’ve used a Kindle as my main book-window since the Kindle Voyage was launched in 2014 and since that time I’ve read many a controversy about the way Amazon manage the platform. Most of the reports are actually about copyright law, not Amazon, not directly. I thing which most anti-eBook/anti-Kindle crusaders point at is the time that everyone had their copy of 1984 taken away, one morning in 2009. Rarely does anyone bother asking why Amazon did this, they usually just point and yell. If you’re interested in the minutiae that surrounded this then I suggest you read more than one article as most people are still outraged about it.

The reality is that someone who didn’t own the copyright was selling the book and because of the law around the selling of stolen goods, when the problem was identified it has to get removed. I am all for using this event as a platform to debate the usefulness and fairness of copyright law but the reality is that Amazon didn’t have a lot of choice. They had already given the money for the purchases to the dicey dealer of dystopia, so it was not legally their responsibility to refund anyone. They absolutely should have paid everyone the couple of dollars they spent, I agree. As the business responsible for not checking copyright, they really should have held themselves responsible, yes. But they didn’t, and didn’t legally have to.

Since that time they have been actually pretty careful about copyright. I once had a problem having them list one of my own books because they thought I stole it… from my own website… which was confusing, for me, mostly.

I am no Amazon defender but I have used a Kindle as my main platform for eBooks since that Voyage, which by the way, was at the time, simply the best eReader on the market.

The reason I have always stayed with kindle has been because they have the highest quality devices, and have the most well stocked digital shelves.

It is rare that I have to go outside of the build-in book store for a purchase and when I do, it’s trivial to get the file to my device.

When I looked at alternative hardware in the past, it usually costs about the same and offered a less premium experience. This is less true in recent years if course, there are a lot of options out there now that are all very good, but now I have a large Kindle library as well as being exceptionally familiar with the platform, I don’t want to leave anymore.  I know, thats on me.

The DRM debate has always been an abstract argument to me. I read on Amazon hardware, and I use the Amazon store. I have never had to think about DRM in functional, real world terms. I only want to read my purchase on my device and it’s been fine, forever.

But, like all things which are ‘fine’ they are only ‘fine’ until they are not. The kindness of my Kindle finally expired.

I couldn’t figure out why I kept pressing the button to download the book I wanted to read. It kept going ‘dark’ as it does a moment before it begins downloading but then it would flash as if it was done, a moment later, without downloading anything.

I tried on different wifi connections, restarted my device and searched the storage list on the off chance there was a ‘bad’ download half finished or something.

It was only when I finally searched for it in the store, and clicked ‘read now’ that I got an actual error message. This message informed me that I had reached my device limit. To be clear I own two Kindles. A paperwhite and a Scribe. I also use the Kindle app on my iPad mini, from time to time.

I know, opulent!

The really frustrating thing here is that the platform has no capacity to actually expose this information to me outside of the store page. Something of an oversight.

I went to the devices page on the web and removed everything but my two Kindles and tried again. It would appear after some investigation that it was the iPad which pushed me over the license limit for this work. What is extra annoying is that of my large library, no other title has had an issue with my habits.

Now, I don’t know how astute you are, but it’s somehow worse to me that the book in question is the NKJV Bible, printed my Thomas Nelson. A book which is a modern translation of a public domain document, which was released in 1979, and is freely available to read online in at least five places I cant think of without Googling for more. Add to add to that, it’s the Word of God we are talking about here. You can see why I growled at my Kindle, I assume.

As much as I wanted to bark at Amazon, in the moment, I have to remember that it’s the copyright holder who has all the power here. But, before we shrug and blame old Tommy Nuisance for all the problems I had, Amazon make no effort at all to tell you there is a license limit when you buy a book. Actually you are not buying a book at all, you are buying a license to read a book. I am someone who basically understands this principle and doesn’t really object to it, not really, however a great many of the people who use Kindle don’t know or understand, and, that’s not their fault. Amazon doesn’t explain it at any point during the process of setting up a device, or pressing checkout.

Just because a purchase is digital it should not automatically be transient. Any ‘license’ or ‘rental’ or ‘limited access’ is essentially a subscription and we should expect organisations offering subscriptions to make it clear that you are buying access not ownership.

The scam here is the same as it’s always been. Sooner or later if there are enough copies of book in the physical world, everyone can get one for free by asking someone. But if you have a license, then every person who wants the book has to pay for it. You can’t saturate market when a product is tied to a person, and new people keep getting born. You can saturate a market when they can just read their mates book. It really is a scam.

I’m personally okay with this because I just want to read the book, not get involved in political discourse, but… Just because we live in a world where this is normal we should not act like it’s ‘fine’ because eventually its not going to be. That activation limit will lower as companies try to squeeze more money out of us all.

People should be given the chance to understand this before they can’t read their Bible anymore.