Californian leaders want to make it compulsory for smartphones or tablets sold in the state to have built-in "kill switches" to counter the rocketing number of thefts of the devices.

State senator Mark Leno and other elected officials on Friday unveiled legislation requiring that new smartphones or tablets have technology that could be used to remotely render them useless.

Backers called the bill the first of its kind in the United States; opponents fear it may allow hackers to shut down people's devices.

"With robberies of smartphones reaching an all-time high, California cannot continue to stand by when a solution to the problem is readily available," said Leno, a Democrat representing San Francisco.

"Today we are officially stepping in and requiring the cell-phone industry to take the necessary steps to curb violent smartphone thefts and protect the safety of the very consumers they rely upon to support their businesses."

The legislation would leave service providers or manufacturers, including iPhone maker Apple, facing fines if smartphones or tablets sold in California beginning next year don't include mechanisms to instantly disable them.

The bill will be introduced within a few months, according to Leno.

More than half of robberies in San Francisco involve mobile devices, and that share is three-quarters across the bay in the city of Oakland, according to Leno's office.

"The wireless industry must take action to end the victimization of its customers," San Francisco district attorney George Gascon said.

"This legislation will require the industry to stop debating the possibility of implementing existing technological theft solutions and begin embracing the inevitability."

Amazon pulls mangled ebooks from Kindle shelves
San Francisco (AFP) Feb 07, 2014 - Amazon on Friday yanked gibberish translations of classic works from the shelves of its online ebooks shop.

An array of titles including "Treasure Island" and "War of the Worlds" billed as translations of famed books into French, Italian, and Spanish and offered by an "M Angelo" for 99 cents each were gone after complaints that they made no sense.

The seller had "direct published" the books, which are in the public domain and no longer under copyright protection, and even added his or her name as co-author next to renowned authors such as Robert Louis Stevenson and H.G. Wells.

The digital books appeared to have been translated using the kind of automated program available as a free service online.

"The books are no longer available," Kindle team spokesperson Brittany Turner said in a brief email reply to an AFP inquiry.

Amazon declined to disclose information about who was behind the translations or how many of the ebooks were sold.

Amazon Direct publishing platform rules bar the sale of public domain content that is freely available online by anyone other than the original copyright owners.

Kindle also reserves the right to reject ebooks that are outright awful.

"We don't accept books that provide a poor customer experience," Kindle Direct Publishing content guidelines stated.

"We reserve the right to determine whether content provides a poor customer experience."

The posted list of what constitutes a lousy reading experience includes books being shabbily translated.

Other Kindle self-publishing taboos included pornography, offensive content, and violating copyrights.