DRM: Help! Amazon is robbing my home!

Well, not my home, but, effectively, that of certain people. Let me explain.

If you're at all into the e-reader scene you would have to hiding under a rock not to know about Amazon's Kindle. Originally hailed as a wondrous device and essentially the herald of the true future e-reader, opinions of the new version have done somewhat of a 180. With the company's remote access to the new Kindle, opinions are now more of the mind that the Kindle is the harbinger of true corporate invasiveness. On the chance that you've not heard, while the Kindle allows very convenient access to Amazon's online store from anywhere in the region (U.S. atm), it also allows the company to access your Kindle. And disable it, should they feel the desire. And, apparently, that desire can grow from something as relatively innocuous as returning too many items. Once disabled, you lose access to everything stored on the kindle.

Now, music and movie companies have, for almost a decade now, been trying to convince us that copying a DVD or CD or recording a movie is like stealing it from the store. And the courts agree, which is why movie and music 'piracy' is now illegal in most of the developed world. However, Big Business is trying to eat their cake and sell it too. Somehow, they believe that by selling a product they gain the complete rights over how and when it is used. WRONG. Once we buy the product, it's OURS to do with (legally) as we'd like. If we want to take it apart, that's fine. If we want to sit it on the shelf and admire it, that's fine. If we want to use it constantly, while returning other items that we don't deem to be to our standards, they may not like it, but tough, that's still fine. In parallel with the DVD/CD copying analogy, we have the idea that e-books are still books and still subject to the same rules--be that copyright or ownership. If I buy a book in a store and take it home and put in on my shelf, I don't expect the bookstore to come by a few days later and remove it from my shelf. If they do, I'll call the police. Likewise, if Amazon feels the need to inactivate a legally purchased Kindle, thus preventing access to legally purchased e-books, they have essentially come into the book owner's house and robbed them. And Amazon should be taken to court for every time it happens.

It's time to make big business realize that the street runs both directions.