As most of you probably read here, I recently purchased a new Kindle 2 from Amazon.  And I have to be honest and tell you that I love it (review coming soon).  But I have to say that I have been less than impressed by some of Amazon’s recent actions.  Many of you may have read recently about the restrictions Amazon placed on the text to speech function of the Kindle 2, bowing to pressure from the industry and publishers.  Well, hit the jump to hear about the latest legal entanglement caused by the Kindle 2.

In 1998, then President Clinton signed into law the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  This law was designed to protect the copyrights on written and recorded works in the United States.  Specifically,  Section 1201 of the law states:

No person shall… offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology… is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

Enter Mobileread.com, an online forum which posted detailed instructions for users of a utility called kindlepid.py.  It is important to note here that Mobileread did not write the kindlepid tool, nor did they even host it.  They provided instructions and linked to the tool.

Well, last week, Mobileread received a DMCA notice from Amazon instructing them to remove the offending post (which they did voluntarily.)  Based upon Amazon’s reaction, kindlepid.py must surely have been pretty nefarious.  Maybe it allowed you to unlock and download books without paying for them, or share books illegally (a problem which the music industry has fought for years).  Not exactly.  Here is how Mobileread described the program:

kindlepid.py is a small Python script allowing you to derive a Mobipocket-compatible personal identifier (PID) for your Kindle reader. This PID in itself has nothing at all to do with reading any copyrighted content. It is only used to make legitimate e-book purchases at stores other than Amazon’s.

So, if you are scoring along at home.  Amazon got its proverbial panties in a bunch over…a tool which essentially allows you to legitimately purchase books from other sites and view them on your Kindle 2. 

Now, I think it is pretty obvious why Amazon would prefer you not use this tool.  Their whole business model is based upon maintaining a closed book store.  If you can purchase books from other sources, then they stand to lose the $9.99 you would have spent at Amazon.  Or perhaps they are worried about the ten cents it would have cost you to convert the document by emailing it to your Kindle 2. 

So, yes, Amazon may stand to lose some control in the short term.  But the reality is that this move seems to me to make little long term sense.  This is a tool which makes the Kindle 2 more useful and usable.  It allows users to read additional formats on their Kindle; which could make the Kindle even more attractive to those users who might otherwise not have spent their hard earned $350 on a device like this. 

Additionally, I think it is pretty clear from reading the law that it is really designed to protect the artists and publishers.  And this is what really bothers me here.  Amazon is neither an artist nor a publisher.  They are a distributor.  Nothing I have seen in the DMCA indicates an intention to protect distributors.  Yet, Amazon hides behind this statute in order to demand the removal of the tool.  The other thing that irks me here is that Amazon did not go after the people who wrote the tool or even distributed it.  They targeted a forum who posted instructions about the tool. 

So, here we are, with a law designed to protect artists and publishers against illegal distribution and copying of their works – being used to protect a distributor from people discussing a tool which allows you to view lawfully purchased eBooks on their devices.  Did I miss anything, Amazon?

To me, this whole thing feels like Apple and its ongoing (and losing) struggle against jailbroken iPhones.  The truth is, the more control companies like Amazon and Apple attempt to exert over their respective industries, the less control they prove to actually maintain.  In this case, I think Amazon would have done better to adopt the approach typically taken by companies like US Steel (yes, I mean Andrew Carnegie) and Microsoft.  Railroad, discredit, or simply purchase the tool, and make it their own.  Adding technology like this to the Kindle 2 could only have made it a more effective, stronger device.

Let us know what you think.  Do you agree with Amazon’s actions here?  do you think the tool in question was overreaching or even a violation of the MDCA?  And how about Mobileread.  Do you think they did anything wrong?  Or were they just innocently caught in the middle of this one?  Use the comments to chime in on the debate.

[sources: cnet news and mobileread]