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Comment by Elessar | Hacker News Reader

What an irrelevant article. There are two major points:

1) Amazon did something stupid.

Changing the adjective is clever, but it's still an outrageous act. They went on YOUR machine and they DELETED something YOU PURCHASED. You BOUGHT IT. There is nothing more to say here.

2) Apple had the same problem with DRM and bent over backwards to accommodate labels. Now we're all happy.

Apple never DELETED files straight from people's computers. They never took the step of taking away what you bought. There is absolutely no comparison here.

The blogger also pleads for people to target the publisher. As if I can only be outraged at one company! I'll target both, thank you very much.

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That's because Apple never sold an mp3 it didn't have the right to sell. Amazon did, it realized it did, and it refunded people with an apology.

Think of it like a doctor selling you a medicine, then calling you up and saying, "Oops, I wasn't authorized to give you those pills. I need them back, and I'll refund you entirely."

There's a difference between removing an e-book and refunding it.

I agree with your analogy, and it indicates the right thing to do here. Give the refund and ask people to delete the ebook themselves.

The doctor wouldn't break into your house and take the pills out of the medicine cabinet.

But "breaking in" indicates some disorder. I wouldn't trust a doctor to go into my house without asking me first. I would trust Amazon only to remove the thing they're legally obligated to remove.

Perhaps I don't have the same feelings regarding owning a copy of somebody else's work. I don't feel ownership towards ebooks. I feel ownership towards the money I spend, but if I get that back I wouldn't be mad at what Amazon did. That's a minority opinion, and I think it would be worth debating somewhere that's not here.

And this software recovery system Amazon has in place is foolproof? It can't be hacked, it cannot be misused or accidentally cause harm? Then I applaud their software expertise -- the rest of us have a hard time making such perfect software.

This of course implies that the doctor would be within his rights if he caused no disorder. "I wouldn't trust a doctor to...". You didn't trust Amazon to either -- they just went in and did it, at someone's request.

Hmm.. why does this prescription bottle have an antenna on it...

But see, I do trust Amazon, and I trust that if they got hacked they would fix their systems. I trust Amazon to handle my data more than I'd trust a doctor to handle my house.

It's preposterous to compare copyright protection to the authorization of a doctor to prescribe you drugs.

Only if I assume the doctor knows what's good for me and Amazon doesn't. I think that in this case, Amazon does and that they've been perfectly genteel about the entire situation.

If the pills do you good, I don't see why you'd have to return them as long as you legally bought them.

If you give somebody drugs that they aren't prescribed to take, the drugs are not legal to have, even if they were purchased in a legal sale.

are you saying that gay marriages that took place in california should be annulled now that the law prohibits them?

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