The authors who were clued in to what this site was actually about were upset that it allowed their works to be lent to anyone in the world and not just "friends and family" which is what they believe the spirit of the Kindle Lending program via Amazon is about.
If their works were able to be lent to anyone and everyone in the world they wanted higher prices for their books to be charged, just like what libraries have to pay since they can also lend to anyone off of the street.
Sure, but they signed the contract to specifically allow this behavior. If they don't like it, then they should complain to Amazon, or perhaps should read the terms a little more carefully.
Either way, it's hard to see how any of this was LendInk's fault.
The only truth is power. Legally the site was in the clear, and yet the authors had enough power to shut it down.
Many of the authors understood that it was legal but still did not like it because it skirted the spirit of the contract which that lending is for family and friends.
The strangest part of this story is that some outraged people were able to close a website they didn't have any claim to.
Did they shut it down? I have yet to find a source that explains the mechanism of the shutdown. Everybody keeps repeating the fact that it's been killed, but how?
The ISP received complaints and advised he shut the site down, so he took it offline. Honestly the best place for actual info related to this seems to be their Facebook page where the owner has updated what is happened and also all of the comments reveal how many authors feel about the site (however misguided).
The CRTC lawyers, "armed with the rules of grammar and punctuation" decided
that a comma setting off an adjunct clause from a conjoined structure
necessarily gives it matrix scope, and if Rogers' contract lawyers didn't know
that, too bad for them.
From a court's point of view, I'm sympathetic to the idea that contracts should be read as they are written as much as possible. The shear erosion of contract law if psychological intent delivered by testimony overruled the written word of a contract, not to mention the cost to the court system of hearing all that out, makes me cringe.
Contracts are already interpreted against the drafter(s), because they are in the best position to have written their intentions. Businesses are also held to the express language of a contract because they are regarded as having the resources to hire legal advice. However, individuals are not held to the same standards, because they usually lack the knowledge, experience, and resources to understand the import of the language in most contracts, expecially those drafted by lawyers for large businesses. In such case, they will simply be required to show that their interpretation of the contract was reasonable.
The authors did not write the Amazon publishing contracts. Most of them aren't lawyers, and a lot of them may not even be college graduates. They cannot, and legally will not be held to a strict reading of the contract if they can prove that they reasonably believed that the Lendle program was limited (or marketed as limited) to friends and family of the ebook purchaser.
BTW, that's not the most expensive comma. Check out the comma in the Cleveland Browns contract that cost Cleveland a Superbowl-winning franchise. (The current Browns are an expansion team.)
It's actually a clearly-marked checkbox in the Kindle publishing portal: "Allow lending for this book". It's not like it's buried somewhere deep in subclause J of paragraph 97. The authors who have their books put on Amazon through a publisher may not have known about this, but there's zero excuse for the indies.
> If their works were able to be lent to anyone and everyone in the world they wanted higher prices for their books to be charged, just like what libraries have to pay since they can also lend to anyone off of the street.
1. They don't.
2. I don't either, I can lend physical books to whoever I damn please even in an other country if I want, and the author won't get any more direct money out of that.
3. Hell, companies can buy a book for all employees to read, they're not charged more because they're companies.
Note that LendInk had no contract, either with Amazon, authors, or users of the service.
If anything, if this was the route intended, said authors COULD try to claim "tortious interference" (whereby a third party induces or enables the breaking of a contract between the first and second parties), but in order to do so, they'd first have to establish that a) the spirit of the contract with Amazon was 'friends and family lending', something that is not at all hinted at in the letter of the contract, and b) such a thing was known by LendInk and they knowingly set forth to do business regardless - and I think there would be a nebulous case with difficulty proving either.
On the other hand, perhaps there are some defamation cases floating around that LendInk could win, possibly also interfering with someone's livelihood?
I kind of get this... but without some technology behind it, I don't see how they'd expect some guarantee that eBook lending would be restricted to certain parties.
I'm surprised the AG has not come out against services like BookCrossing which allows individuals to trade physical books and works similarly to LendInk. (Maybe there was and I just didn't hear about it).
There is technology behind it, Amazon only lets you lend book once and only to one person. You can't read the book while the person you lent it to is reading it. The lend period expires in 14 days. So the lending is pretty limited compared to a physical book. About the only thing good about it is that you automatically get the book back in 14 days. I'm still waiting on some physical books I have lent to others to be returned...
Does Kindle lending limit you, in some way, to lending to certain people, though?
It sounds like there were two objections:
1. OMG, this site is pirating my content!
2. I didn't want people to lend to anyone, just their friends and family
Case #1 is clearly an issue of authors being misinformed or technologically unsophisticated.
Case #2 is that authors probably thought that they were buying into a particular scenario, but the technology did not actually serve that scenario. The scenario I'm guessing the second camp thought they were buying into was one where lending would actually not be widespread --- where one would have to personally know someone in order to read a book without purchasing. It didn't limit who could be lent to by forcing users to declare "friends and family". I'm guessing that authors felt that LendInk was increasing the amount of lends actually happening above what would have happened had LendInk not been present.
Note: I'm not passing judgement on LendInk. Just that I don't think many people are able to make the technical distinctions that many HN readers or readers of tech sites are able to make.
"Does Kindle lending limit you, in some way, to lending to certain people, though?"
Nope. That would require that Amazon have some way to investigate whether someone was really your "friend" (how is "friend" defined?) and be willing to spend the money to carry out the investigation. Not likely for a $1.99 ebook.
Perhaps they could limit you to a list of friends (a maximum of ten or whatever) but that wouldn't allow you to (e.g.) lend programming books to one set of friends and novels to another.
When I launched BookCrossing in 2001, some in the press called us "the Napster of books," but 11 years later and I can count the number of complaining authors on one hand. We never heard from any of the guilds. I think our focus on serendipitous book releases and catches helped in that regards.
Well, they could come out against such services all they like but wouldn't have a legal leg to stand on because of first sale doctrine. And they know that.
If their works were able to be lent to anyone and everyone in the world they wanted higher prices for their books to be charged, just like what libraries have to pay since they can also lend to anyone off of the street.