Amazon, Kindle and the "cloud."

[Illusionss]

Just a little head's up.

I have owned an Amazon Kindle Fire for about a year, and had BOUGHT digital copies of many books. These were not free downloads or trials, I actually bought the books.

Last week Amazon decided, for whatever reason, to redact my access to all my book because they "are protected by DRM." Truly: WHUT? I am not having much luck with Customer Support, who declare themselves stymied by a problem "We have never seen before, not once!" Yeah, sure. I believe that one.

This is why I dislike "clouds." Be aware that anything you have on your Kindle can be yanked away at a moments notice, and when you mention the idea that perhaps they owe you some money for your books you PURCHASED, crickets begin to chirp.

Just sayin'.

[GuyPerfect]

I always get hard copies of stuff I want to keep. Even if it's an iTunes purchase, there are ways to take the DRM off. Granted, this also makes things easier to give away, but I also happen to be against piracy.

[Shenku]

Things like this is why I prefer physical copies, rather than digital downloads. Digital downloads are fast and easy (too easy, you might say), but there's no guarantee of permanency with such things.

A physical disk can be installed from as many times as you want, but some download services only allow you to download a specific thing like 5 times...

Computers crash, hard drives can get corrupted, and data can be accidentally deleted at any time, but heaven forbid you from being able to legitimately re-download software you paid money for because the publishers think you might have a wooden leg and prefer words with Arrrrs in them...

[dwturducken]

Which books, if you don't mind? Do you not remember this happening a year or two ago, when this happened with an edition of, of all things, 1984? Turned out they didn't have the rights to sell it in that format, but this was after they'd sold a few hundred copies.

[TimtheEnchanter]

It's not anti-piracy. It merely changes who does the pirating.

[General Idiot]

Things like this is why I prefer physical copies, rather than digital downloads. Digital downloads are fast and easy (too easy, you might say), but there's no guarantee of permanency with such things.

This is why Steam is the only digital download service I willingly use. If Valve were to vanish off the face of the planet tomorrow and take all their servers with them, your copy of Steam would still let you launch it in offline mode and play anything that was unlocked on the last account that was logged in. Which is about as good a deal as you can get without tossing out DRM entirely, I think.

[Shenku]

This is why Steam is the only digital download service I willingly use. If Valve were to vanish off the face of the planet tomorrow and take all their servers with them, your copy of Steam would still let you launch it in offline mode and play anything that was unlocked on the last account that was logged in. Which is about as good a deal as you can get without tossing out DRM entirely, I think.

I'm still iffy on Steam. It's got its upsides, but it's also got its negatives as well. For starters, I hate having to install and load third party "loading gate" software (My term, cause I can) to run a game that should be able to run on its own. In that regard, Steam feels kinda pointless sometimes (I had the same issue with NCSoft when they changed the updater for CoH to require that stupid launch program...). "Launch/Loading Gate/Downloader" Software feels too much like bloatware to me, so I hate having to use it... Let me just download the game with my web browser, or update it with the game's updater, don't make me download and install more crap that just takes up space for no real reason...

[General Idiot]

That argument against Steam I'll give you, but CoH always had a seperate updater. Even before NCSoft made us all use their launcher, the CoH updater was a seperate program. All NCSoft did was trade one for another. They could've done much worse, which is to say they could've done what the new SimCity did and made you load their launcher, which then loads the game's updater, which then loads the game itself.

And personally I felt much the same way about steam when I first got it until more recently when I realised first that buying games on there is both easier and cheaper than trying to find them at any store in the ass end of nowhere town I live in, and second that most of the games I play these days are on there. I suppose it just becomes a lot more forgivable when you're not using this software for just one game, but for several.

I could go on, but Valve isn't paying me to sing their praises (And even if they did I wouldn't actually sing) and you're entitled to your opinion. So I'm just going to shut up.

[Surelle]

Did you check your cloud purchase contract?  Weed through your Amazon online account purchase receipts.  Did it stipulate access for only a year, or only until a certain date? 

Because DRM shouldn't have anything to do with anything, as you bought the downloadable books.  DRM only covers trying to share what you buy with other devices.  If you buy songs from iTunes, they have DRM built into them.  It only restricts you from putting them on a certain number of devices.  DRM should never block you out altogether on the original device you purchased things for.

Make doubly sure those particular downloads weren't part of a time-restricted bundle or free trial; make sure you really paid for each one, and originally downloaded them onto your current device and not some other e-reader, phone or what-have-you.

Because DRM sure can and will prevent you from "sharing" what you bought on multiple devices.  That's its whole purpose.

And by the way, you should do a general google search on Amazon kindle, cloud and e-reader drm like I did.  I fished up this:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/drm-be-damned-how-to-protect-your-amazon-e-books-from-being-deleted/

[Rotten Luck]

Like someone else said Amazon had sold books they didn't have rights to sell.  I agree check your receipts (I always save the ones I buy for my NOOK both digitally and hardcopy).  Books I really live (Lord of the rings) I get physical copies.  Stories I want to read, but don't really care to have on my shelf I do digital.  Fahrenheit 451 a book about when people burn books, now it can be done with a few keystrokes.  So far I haven't had anything like this happen on my Nook, but I don't expect it wouldn't happen.

E-books, stream, and other such things give us ease of access to what we want.  The flip side is the reverse by using those devices we give ease of access to our records of what we buy and the fact those items can be patched, changed, or even deleted by the supplier.  The old trade off Freedom at the cost of Security, Security at the cost of freedom.

[Taceus Jiwede]

It's not anti-piracy. It merely changes who does the pirating.

Man how did no one cyber high-five you for this.  Brilliant.

This is why Steam is the only digital download service I willingly use. If Valve were to vanish off the face of the planet tomorrow and take all their servers with them, your copy of Steam would still let you launch it in offline mode and play anything that was unlocked on the last account that was logged in. Which is about as good a deal as you can get without tossing out DRM entirely, I think.

Valve is like the exception for everything.  One day they will rise up and show everyone else the errors of their ways.  I think the best example of Steam is when people made mod's for their games like TF 2 and CS.  They find these people, and hire them!  Allowing them to turn their popular mod's into it's own game.  I guess I am going off topic  but I just love Valve. 

[Illusionss]

Update: I did finally get all my books back, but it took some doing.

I do prefer actual books, but I like having some of them all in one spot so I can take 'em to work and NOT have to explain "what's that you're reading???" People are so nosy! You should have seen the flap when I tried to sneak God's Demon by Wayne Barlowe in there. [Its a novel about Hell as detailed in Barlowe's seminal "Barlowe's Inferno" art book.] It has a demon on the cover and it was all round-eyed curiosity from everyone who saw it, even as I tried to keep it on the down-low. Who needs this!?

Plus I'd like to not keep adding to the 50,000 paperbacks already here that my husband complains so much about. "You are lucky you have an intellectually active wife, not many can say the same" I always retort.

.... But yeah, clouds.... in the sky great, as storage devices me no likey, really.

[General Idiot]

I guess I am going off topic  but I just love Valve.

Even they're not without their faults, though. Where my Half Life 2 Episode 3, Valve? I'm starting to think it's the new perpetually 'in development' vaporware to replace Duke Nukem Forever since that finally actually got made a few years back. Maybe the game industry just needs something like that to point and laugh at and Valve decided they'd be the ones to make the noblest of sacrifices. :p