Amazon DRM and VAT
Monday, October 22, 2012 at 6:34PM I love my Amazon Kindle and I love the shopping experience, but...
A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst. More at Bekkelund.net.
and
Amazon is making British publishers pay 20 per cent VAT on ebook sales, despite their true VAT cost for UK ebook sales being closer to 3 per cent.
From 2006, the online retailer has been based in Luxembourg, where the company only has to pass 3 per cent VAT to the government for UK ebook sales. (There is no VAT on printed books in this country.) Despite this, Amazon starts negotiations with UK publishers on the basis that the UK VAT rate of 20 per cent must be lifted from the cost price. More at The Telegraph.
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Reader Comments (13)
Yep. A good reason to make sure one uses DeDRM on one's Amazon purchases, to ensure that one can always read them. DRM stripping is not for sharing, just empowering oneself.
Not good.
Reminds me of an eBay listing I had that got removed because speck products decided I contravened their copyright or whatever. eBay would have nothing to do with it, I had to go via speck to get resolved. Only took 6 months to sort out. These big companies shouldn't be allowed to screw over the consumer this easily.
I'd see that as slightly different, Gavin — I wouldn't see it as eBay's fault that Speck was over zealous.
Speck, on the other hand...
Neil's in trouble!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_200699130_storeTOU1?nodeId=201014950
"In addition, you may not bypass, modify, defeat, or circumvent security features that protect the Kindle Content."
I trust you'll have the decency to turn yourself in ;op
Problem is if they drive people to break the rules this way then it pushes them closer to breaking the rules further by downloading illegally (which is actually easier).
When they started putting crap like Cactus Shield and root kits on CDs to stop us ripping them to our iPods I switched to downloading mp3s illegally. I didn't stop until Spotify et al came along.
If the publishers had been a little less dense then Amazon wouldn't be in the dominant position it is.
If music publishers hadn't tried to kill online music they wouldn't be getting bent over and shafted by Apple and others.
I shed no tears for the publishers. I don't like to see content producers (musicians, writers etc.) being shafted, which unfortunately also happens but usually it's the publisher doing it.
If amazon wiped my account and I lost any music I paid for, I would go through old credit card statements and charge back anything I recognised as a music purchase.
Although I've spent only a few pounds at most on MP3s from Amazon, and perhaps less than £20 on ebooks from them, what worries me about this is that Amazon could attempt to wipe content off my phone which wasn't downloaded with the Amazon mp3 app, as well as destroy any eBooks.
In fact, I am genuinely worried about this as I do have multiple Amazon logins for specific reasons, mostly good for me and Amazon.
Removing DRM is an infringement of copyright, and, given that clause, likely a breach of contract too.
I am not sure what damages Amazon or the copyright owners have suffered, though, if one removes DRM for one's own use of the work (and does not share it around).
I suspect if it came to court, the consideration that you paid, have not copied / distributed etc, would be taken into account. Are you stealing etc? Is the "artiste" loosing money?
Perhaps if Amazon could prove you did it, cancelling your account would be hard to challenge, but legal action for doing the removal I doubt would get far. Publicity for one.
Has anyone actually been done for ripping a DVD to their iphone just for themselves?
This wiping thing generally gets to me though. Right now, google, amazon, etc, require you to lock yourself into them for some of their products/services, and apparently retain the right to cut you off with no appeal etc, and with signficant loss to yourself (apps, books, etc). How is depriving someone of what they've paid for not as bad as illegal downloading that is getting as bad a vibe as murder these days?
In my case, I've had enough of all these companies setting things up in Luxembourg and Ireland to pay little taxes here, and am not buying from them any more. Yes they may be within the law, but they know what they're doing, and maybe if enough of us stop paying they'll finally take note.
I think the consideration would be part of it, but a relatively small part — the lack of damage is probably the most compelling point to me.
Have I dishonestly appropriated property belonging to another with intention to permanently deprive? No.
If Amazon sold a non-DRM version for a higher price, then this could be a possibility. I am not sure that Amazon could claim that, if you had not removed the DRM, Amazon wiping your account would mean that you had to buy everything again, so removing the DRM causes harm to the full cost of repurchasing, but it's an interesting, if scary, thought...
Not that I am aware. Still an infringement in the UK — and in the US, even — but it's just not worth actioning. If anything, it would lead to an even stronger drive to modernise copyright law.
IIRC in the UK it was cleared up (Commons committee or somesuch) that ripping your own CD for your own use is not a breach of anything. Unfortunately they didn't go as far clearing that up for ripping a movie.
Neil you only rent DRMd material. By removing the DRM you've gone from renting it to owning it and you've bypassed all the restrictions and protections that Amazon (and the publishers) built in to protect themselves and give them all the power and you none.
So just because they won't prosecute you it's alright to do it? You know you done wrong! ;op
Not as far as I know (unlike the Library of Congress determination on jailbreaking) — but happy to hear otherwise. There's no difference in law between ripping a CD and ripping a DVD, absent the DRM circumvention element of DVD ripping, as far as I can tell.
In this case, yes.
I can't find the thing I remember from many years ago; it was a news report on TV.
Closest I can find is that in 2006 the BPI said they wouldn't pursue anyone for ripping: http://www.macworld.co.uk/digitallifestyle/news/?newsid=14870
I guess they're still waiting for that iTunes interoperabillity...
But coming back to more recent news, apparently the government is looking to make 'format shifting' legal: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14372698
That's been in the cards ever since the Hargreaves review, but there's a bit if a fight over whether this requires an extra payment to rights holders - I may be paraphrasing slightly, but the EU copyright directive permits a government to introduce effectively personal use rights subject to an appropriate payment to the rightsholder. I think the government proposal was that rightsholder had received enough already, and no further payment was necessary.
I'm of the view that, if the logic behind Eldred (a US case) is sound, no payment should be required, but that flies in the face of the wording of the law in the EU.
Note that "personal use" would be unlikely to trump circumvention of DRM, so people get the right on one hand and have it almost immediately taken away on the other...
Call my cynical.