The upside of the Kindle’s tether could be that when lost or stolen, Amazon would use its technology to help you get it back. Don’t count on it. The NYTimes:
Samuel Borgese, for instance, is still irate about the response from Amazon when he recently lost his Kindle. After leaving it on a plane, he canceled his account so that nobody could charge books to his credit card. Then he asked Amazon to put the serial number of his wayward device on a kind of do-not-register list that would render it inoperable — to “brick it” in tech speak.
Amazon’s policy is that it will help locate a missing Kindle only if the company is contacted by a police officer bearing a subpoena. Mr. Borgese, who lives in Manhattan, questions whether hunting down a $300 e-book reader would rank as a priority for the New York Police Department.
He began to see ulterior motives when he twice sent e-mail messages to Amazon seeking an address to send a police report and got no reply.
“I finally concluded,” Mr. Borgese said, “that Amazon knew the device was being used and preferred to sell content to anyone who possessed the device, rather than assist in returning it to its rightful owner.”
More discussion at Techmeme.
In other Kindle news… You might remember that in July Amazon remotely deleted unauthorized George Orwell titles from Kindles over copyright violations. Last week’s Kindle news was that Amazon emailed an offer to return the deleted books – or to give owners a $30 Amazon gift certificate.