Sarah over at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books forwards a complaint about Barnes & Noble’s customer service regarding e-books. A customer named Melinda writes in with a story of a book by Anne Stewart called Ruthless that has the correct sample chapters, but when she purchased the book itself it turned out to be Rich, Rugged…Ruthless by Jennifer Mikels. I received the wrong book on Aug 1 (pub date of Stuart’s “Ruthless”) via my Nook, and dutifully wrote to Customer Service, and of course haven’t heard anything back from them yet.  Certainly the problem hasn’t been...

The New York Times has an article looking at the controversy caused by Amazon’s recent removal and refund of an illicit copy of 1984. The removal sparked an angry backlash and a number of discussions in e-book forums across the Internet that still continue even now. On one side are people who hold that, since the book was sold by a publisher who did not have the right to do so, Amazon had every right to remove it. “Because copyright infringement was poor and lax in the offline world, it should also be that...

In the latest news of Apple’s silliness, it has rejected a BitTorrent client remote control app because “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights”, and an app that allows one to replace Jesus’s face with one’s own in a photo cut-out for being “offensive.” It should be noted that there is nothing illegal per se about the BitTorrent protocol or app itself. Even though it is far and away most used for illegal music, TV, and movie downloads, it is also used for legitimate distribution of large files such as...

Engadget looks at Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor’s response to Apple’s rejection of an update to NIN’s iPod Touch app (which we previously mentioned here). (Note that the app itself currently remains available in the store even though you can still access the same “offensive content” from it; it’s just the update that has been rejected.) Much like the rejections of David Carnoy’s book Knife Music and Tweetie 1.3, it seems that this one comes because of the “f-bomb” appearing in some of the content within the app. (The f-bomb also appears several times in the Engadget...

As Circuit City commences liquidating its remaining 567 stores this weekend, it might be worth TeleReaders' while to check out the sales and see if there are any good bargains to be found on e-book readers or PDAs or netbooks that can be used as such. But it is also worth considering the lessons to be learned from Circuit City's failure. Divisive DIVX Some would say that Circuit City's road to bankruptcy began ten years ago, when it bankrolled DIVX (Digital Video Express), a digital video disc format that semi-competed with the fledgling DVD. An expensive...

Wow, I have just tried the last 15-20 minutes trying to send a support email to Sonystyle about ebooks. The telephone reps won't let me purchase an accidental coverage 2 year extended warranty and I wanted to ask for confirmation in writing. I wanted to know if those chronic display problems would be covered under the normal extended service plan (which I am still eligible to buy apparently). I am used to dealing with malfunctioning support contact pages. But with Sonystyle I've tried everything! Go to this customer support page. Choose the tab, Email a question. I didn't remember if I had registered...

Computer users know of the contempt of many software companies for consumers. "Blame the end user" is the mantra of many a tech support staff. It's great to see consumer protection bills introduced in Congress to warn the public of copy-cop schemes that could interfere with the usability of various kinds of products. Be interesting to see how this concept could affect, say, e-books in the future. Lest one doubt the need for precautions, consider a wonderful article by Lee Dembart in the International Herald Tribune, Companies fine-tune the art of fending off complaints. The first part: PARIS--Years ago, the story...