But isn’t that exactly what the article author had trouble doing?

If you need to deregister a Kindle from your account you can do that either from the Kindle or on your “Manage Your Kindle” page on Amazons site.

Your “Manage Your Kindle” page allows complete control over your devices and you can resend any book you have purchased to any of your registered devices at any time.

My issue is that a) the Amazon customer service staff was not well trained on this issue at all; and b) there appears to be no way for the customer to know if a book is limited to n devices until they try downloading it to n+1 devices.

Really what this is, is evidence to present to the Library of Congress to allow for a DMCA exception for ebooks so that consumers can remove the encryption for one copy for their personal use.

I had to exchange my first Kindle 2 because of the fading-in-direct-sunlight display issue. Before I received the replacement, I backed everything in the documents folder on the Kindle up to my desktop — a mix of items bought from Amazon and a lot of free texts from Feedbooks and Project Gutenberg — then moved those items over to the new Kindle once it arrived. I didn’t have very many purchased items, but what I did have didn’t open. Those downloads are keyed to be read on specific Kindles and only on those specific Kindles. So backing up your files may let you put a purchased book back onto a Kindle from which it was erased, but it won’t let you migrate it to a second device.

I agree that Amazon needs to disclose this information BEFORE its customers buy Kindle versions of books, especially since they advertise the idea of “Automatic Library Backup” right on the Kindle front page. If this function is limited or non-existent on certain titles, that needs to be made clear from the very beginning. And if it is being driven by publishers, it’s coming across more as a money grab than a serious attempt to fight “piracy”.

For all its faults, the iTunes store, before it dropped DRM altogether, was at least very clear and consistent throughout the catalog on how many computers you could authorize for playback, as well as how much each track cost. While I am very fond of the Kindle hardware and the reading experience using it, I am growing increasingly wary of buying anything much from the Kindle store itself. Between the variable pricing and this new DRM wrinkle, I’m not likely to buy anything that I can’t afford to suddenly and inexplicably lose outright.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if the publishing industry has a death wish. Either that, or they just enjoy believing themselves to be a perpetual victim, wringing their hands and complaining that they are abused, and wondering how “the culture” can survive without them. Everything happens to them, despite their noble efforts, because their customers, the readers, won’t do what is expected of them.

I’m hoping Aaron is right – that public outrage will force publishers to get rid of DRM. It’ll probably take a while and might even involve an act of congress, but I just can’t see companies like Amazon getting away with stuff like this forever.