Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 26, 2012

Amazon delete’s a user’s entire Kindle library, restores it and then starts lending ebooks for free to Prime members

Filed under: Books Related / Reviews,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:28 PM

A few days ago Amazon deleted the entire e-book library of a kindle user without explanation and the internet was in an uproar with multiple people including prominent author’s protesting against the move by Amazon; then a few days later the account was mysteriously re-enabled without any explanation. This is the *one* reason I don’t own a kindle even though its a fantastic device. I almost bought it last month during my US trip but ultimately decided not to because I don’t want the usability of my device to be on the whim & fancy of Amazon. They have deleted stuff from accounts in the past without notification and even after promising not to do it again they went ahead and wiped out this user’s kindle. I anyways don’t support DRM so that is another reason I don’t buy ebooks from Amazon (They are awesome for other stuff but not ebooks/mp3’s/online movies etc).

If you own a kindle I seriously suggest you keep a local copy of all the books you buy ’cause you never know when the book might disappear. There was an article on Lifehacker.com on how to remove the DRM that makes interesting reading as this article was prompted by the same news story as what I am talking about. Check it out, but remember only use it to break the DRM from stuff you own, don’t use it to pirate stuff ’cause that is not cool.

Today while surfing the web I saw an article on the Reg that Amazon UK will lend e-books for free to it’s Prime subscribers. I guess it could be a planned move that just coincidentally came at a time when Amazon was getting a lot of heat for their bonehead move earlier but the timing is suspicious….

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Additional articles on the Kindle Wipe: Gizmodo.

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