Amazon DMCAs vendor of ebooks for Kindle

According to Declan McCullagh Amazon has threatened to sue MobileRead.com under the DMCA to stop the latter company making available electronic books that could be read on the Amazon Kindle ebook reader.

"This week, an e-book Web site said Amazon.com invoked the 1998 law to prevent books from some non-Amazon sources from working on its Kindle reader.

Amazon sent a legal notice to MobileRead.com complaining that information relating to a computer utility written in the Python programming language "constitutes a violation" of the DMCA, according to a copy of the warning letter that the site posted. MobileRead.com is an e-book news and community site.

MobileRead.com forum moderator Alexander Turcic said in a post on Thursday that although he did not believe the program violated the law, the site would "voluntarily follow their request and remove links and detailed instructions related to it." Turcic said that, contrary to Amazon's claim, his site never "hosted" the software.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment on Friday."

As ever IP-land is like groundhog day - same story repeated over and over with some variations. Shades here of Apple v RealNetworks ("ethics of the hacker...breaking into the iPod" etc. - Apple loves and extensively threatens the DMCA from iPods to iPhones), Lexmark v Static Control (blocking competitor selling cheap printer cartridges for Lexmark printers), and Chamberlain Group v Skylink (the DMCA and garage door openers).