This is straight Stallman: if you don't fundamentally control your computing environment, you don't own it, and you have no freedoms within it save those granted by the entity that does control that environment.
A Lessig might modify that slightly and say that your freedoms are actually balanced between four influences: Law, Norms, Market, Architecture. In the case of DRMd works on proprietary hardware, law and architecture are both opposed to the rights of the individual. Presumably Amazon responded to social norms and market pressures.
I prefer having more power on my side. It's a key reason I've avoided the e-reader game to date, despite some interest in going there.
I don't get what you mean in this context. I have complete control over what I put on my Kindle and what I don't. I don't use any DRM of any kind, ever, so that's a non-issue.
No, I don't have the power to program the thing myself, so Stallman wouldn't approve it, but then again he wouldn't approve of most computer operating systems or the vast majority of laptops sold either, so I don't see why e-readers are different....
Depends a little on what you run on the Kindle. It's perfectly possible to run 100% open source. Amazon isn't exactly making it super convenient, but they're doing very little to prevent it. Stock, of course, they retain the ability to do so but on the other hand A) sponsor the hardware and B) provide updates and very good support.
I consider it a pretty fair tradeoff. They're not stopping you from churning your own butter, so to speak, but do count on you deciding it's easier to just run their stock stuff. Like a lot of semi-locked hardware, it's not like they'd be such floozies about proliferating the hardware if they weren't making a lot of it back in book sales.
(Edit: It's never hooked up to the Internet, except when plugged into my computer, so I don't see how Amazon or anyone else is going to be able to touch it.)
This is straight Stallman: if you don't fundamentally control your computing environment, you don't own it, and you have no freedoms within it save those granted by the entity that does control that environment.
A Lessig might modify that slightly and say that your freedoms are actually balanced between four influences: Law, Norms, Market, Architecture. In the case of DRMd works on proprietary hardware, law and architecture are both opposed to the rights of the individual. Presumably Amazon responded to social norms and market pressures.
I prefer having more power on my side. It's a key reason I've avoided the e-reader game to date, despite some interest in going there.