Amazon won’t delete ebooks from your Kindle again
After their Orwell ebook deletion debacle of the day before, Amazon has now promised that will never again remotely delete a book from their Kindle ebook readers in a similar situation.
Yesterday, Amazon erased all copies of two particular George Orwell ebooks (99 cent editions of 1984 and Animal Farm) from the Kindle ebook readers of customers who had purchased them. That action was very eerie considering the nature of those books, and their references to evil big governments and corporations.
Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman offered the following explanation: “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers.” Kindle owners, Amazon customers by default, were not amused by either the occurrence or the explanation.
A bit later, Herdener said, “These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books…When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers….We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”
This was obviously not a good experience for Amazon customers. It was high-handed and much less than user-friendly. A New York times story today opened with the following two lines:
In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”
On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.
Not only did it seem like the literary 1984 had just moved a little closer to reality, but it almost forced owners of Kindles to recognize the difference between actual books and ebooks. When you buy the book itself, you have a number of freedoms: you can read it, loan it to a friend, donate it to a charity, whatever; that book is yours. When you purchase an ebook, all you have purchased is a license to read the book on a single device.
People have not been good about understanding that difference, which is critical. Nor has Amazon been very good at understanding their own terms of service, which do not appear to allow such deletions once a book has been purchased. Perhaps it is time for a much freer ranging debate around the rights issues surrounding digital books. It would seem that everyone needs a lesson.
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July 25th, 2009
Six months ago bloggers (notably Stephanie at UrbZen) warned about this kind of thing.
See:
http://notionscapital.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/kindle-see-we-told-you-so/