I hate to be the one to tell you all this but this story has one problem with it, his notes weren't deleted! If he plugs the Kindle into his computer he can grab all the notes from the file it is still stored on since all notes taken on the kindle get stored inside of a single text file. It just wont have the placement in the book nor can it be accessed through the kindle since notes can only be accessed inside the books on the device.
Chris, Amazon went in and deleted anything associated with the George Orwell books, including annotations... they were deleted from both the system and the online backup server.
I just did this with my own Kindle 2. I annotated several spots across four books, got one of the books wiped off (as in remote), and the annotations file was still intact and had the annotations on all four books still present. Perhaps if you only have one annotated book it will wipe it out, but I cant see Amazon moving into that file and selectively deleting this and that paragraph scattered through out the large un marked up text file. If someone enters in a annotation that is equal to the book ID it may wipe out a lot more then what Amazon intended... and I don't think they implemented the annotation subsystem and remote wipe that poorly.
Ok got even more info. The annotations file is called My Clippings and is under Kindle(the drive)->documents There are two files, a .txt format that has the annotation with source (not a markup language, more like a sources sited guide). The second file is a .mbp file which looks like it helps format and construct the page as you see it on the device when you pull up an annotation. Might even work as a kind of a database to keep track of everything and act as a type of hyperlink to process the .txt file on the device. Looks like the .mbp file may have been deleted but I bet he still has his .txt file unless he panicked and tried a erase or reformat. P.S. annotations also backup to a server at amazon.... what would you bet they have the originals of both files with the kids work on it sitting on the servers or in a datacenter back-up anyways? ^.~
From the linked PDF: The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate form the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as "remember this paragraph for your thesis" is useless if it does not actually reference a specific paragraph.
Chris, unless you had notes on the books in question you don't know what happened and you are simply speculating that when you delete something you are doing exactly what Amazon did. Amazon more than likely has much more access than you do when using their system and it wouldn't surprise me if they in fact do have the ability to delete annotations when deleting a book, even if you can't do it when you delete a book. But either way I don't know for sure and NEITHER do you. Regardless, even if he still has the notes they have very little relevance without the markup to put them in the location in the book he annotated them. Annotations are often short and without the context of location quickly become meaningless. Even if he has the notes the effort to re-associate them to the correct location isn't going to be trivial. That alone is worthy of suit, but if in fact they did delete annotations as well he has a very strong copyright claim. IMO even if he does still have the notes the loss of location information is a severe alteration of a copyrighted work and still a rather strong claim. Either way I wish him success and a large verdict. Such a verdict would put the fear into any other retailer expecting to do the same thing and would alter the marketplace in a better
Even if the notes are available they may be useless. I do not know the format of the notes but the notes themselves will probably be connected to the text of the book that it was from. For example:
"Page 48, Line 17, Word 3 to Line 21, Word 17 : Note how W.S. has accepted that the war has been against Euroasia all along"
Remember that Page 48, Line ... etc is tied to the pages, lines and words of the original book. Will the pages, words and lines of the replacement copy be the same? Probably not, this means that all his notes are messed up.
This is assuming that the notes made against one book can be attached to another book. A Kindle user will have to confirm if this is even possible.
I am justins cousin and to let everyone know...HIS NOTES HE STILL HAS BUT NO BOOK TO REFERR BACK TO ON HIS KINDLE...it was not his idea to sue it was just a blog until a lawyer saw it. he is not in it for the money. and he now has to come up with a whole new report before the start of his senior year for his AP class.
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AMAZON DIDNT DELETE HIS NOTES!!!!!!!
I hate to be the one to tell you all this but this story has one problem with it, his notes weren't deleted! If he plugs the Kindle into his computer he can grab all the notes from the file it is still stored on since all notes taken on the kindle get stored inside of a single text file. It just wont have the placement in the book nor can it be accessed through the kindle since notes can only be accessed inside the books on the device.
If that's true, there is no case.
Really? Anyone care to test this?
That's interesting. That's certainly how it should be done, if it's not done like that he has a strong case. Someone check this :P
Chris, Amazon went in and deleted anything associated with the George Orwell books, including annotations... they were deleted from both the system and the online backup server.
No one can get them back.
He's not talking about the annotations, but the raw text. If the text's still there, then he has his notes. Case closed.
I just did this with my own Kindle 2. I annotated several spots across four books, got one of the books wiped off (as in remote), and the annotations file was still intact and had the annotations on all four books still present. Perhaps if you only have one annotated book it will wipe it out, but I cant see Amazon moving into that file and selectively deleting this and that paragraph scattered through out the large un marked up text file. If someone enters in a annotation that is equal to the book ID it may wipe out a lot more then what Amazon intended... and I don't think they implemented the annotation subsystem and remote wipe that poorly.
Ok got even more info. The annotations file is called My Clippings and is under Kindle(the drive)->documents
There are two files, a .txt format that has the annotation with source (not a markup language, more like a sources sited guide). The second file is a .mbp file which looks like it helps format and construct the page as you see it on the device when you pull up an annotation. Might even work as a kind of a database to keep track of everything and act as a type of hyperlink to process the .txt file on the device. Looks like the .mbp file may have been deleted but I bet he still has his .txt file unless he panicked and tried a erase or reformat.
P.S. annotations also backup to a server at amazon.... what would you bet they have the originals of both files with the kids work on it sitting on the servers or in a datacenter back-up anyways? ^.~
From the linked PDF:
The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate form the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as "remember this paragraph for your thesis" is useless if it does not actually reference a specific paragraph.
Erik: Thank you, that makes sense.
Chris, unless you had notes on the books in question you don't know what happened and you are simply speculating that when you delete something you are doing exactly what Amazon did. Amazon more than likely has much more access than you do when using their system and it wouldn't surprise me if they in fact do have the ability to delete annotations when deleting a book, even if you can't do it when you delete a book. But either way I don't know for sure and NEITHER do you. Regardless, even if he still has the notes they have very little relevance without the markup to put them in the location in the book he annotated them. Annotations are often short and without the context of location quickly become meaningless. Even if he has the notes the effort to re-associate them to the correct location isn't going to be trivial. That alone is worthy of suit, but if in fact they did delete annotations as well he has a very strong copyright claim. IMO even if he does still have the notes the loss of location information is a severe alteration of a copyrighted work and still a rather strong claim. Either way I wish him success and a large verdict. Such a verdict would put the fear into any other retailer expecting to do the same thing and would alter the marketplace in a better
Even if the notes are available they may be useless. I do not know the format of the notes but the notes themselves will probably be connected to the text of the book that it was from. For example:
"Page 48, Line 17, Word 3 to Line 21, Word 17 : Note how W.S. has accepted that the war has been against Euroasia all along"
Remember that Page 48, Line ... etc is tied to the pages, lines and words of the original book. Will the pages, words and lines of the replacement copy be the same? Probably not, this means that all his notes are messed up.
This is assuming that the notes made against one book can be attached to another book. A Kindle user will have to confirm if this is even possible.
I am justins cousin and to let everyone know...HIS NOTES HE STILL HAS BUT NO BOOK TO REFERR BACK TO ON HIS KINDLE...it was not his idea to sue it was just a blog until a lawyer saw it. he is not in it for the money. and he now has to come up with a whole new report before the start of his senior year for his AP class.