Ian bought a Kindle, then had his Amazon account closed down because he was suspected of returning too many items and gaming the system. He then discovered that without an Amazon account he could not manage his Kindle or buy new content.

He concluded “please let this be a lesson to all of us - when you buy a Kindle, you are really buying a service - and that service can be turned off at a whim. Not cool at all.”
It transpired eventually that after some arguing with customer service Amazon has made a one-off change and reinstated his account, but the whole sorry story does point up the fragility of DRM-laden and proprietary digital reading formats in comparison with the (on the surface at least) much more inconvenient paper variety.

Not saying I’m agin e-readers exactly, just that I ride a fixed-wheel bike because to me less moving parts means less maintenance. As with my wheels, so with my library.

(Via Boing Boing)