High schooler sues Amazon over homework mishap with Kindle device
A high-school student is on a rampage against Amazon after his book was deleted off Kindle. The student has filed a lawsuit against the company, indicating that his school report has been rendered useless as a result of Amazon’s actions. However, the heart of the issue runs deeper then a case of a student’s school work assignment.
According to CNET, a 17-year-old Michigan high school student filed a lawsuit against Amazon after the company recalled some books earlier last month. The recall basically meant that the books would be automatically deleted from the Kindle device.
The student, Justin D. Gawronski filed a lawsuit against Amazon in a Seattle court alongside another resident, Antoine K. Bruguier. They are currently seeking a class action status, which may free up the suit to other claimants. The suit is specifically over Amazon’s decision to recall George Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm” after it was found that the books were unauthorized for distribution.
Gawronski indicated that he was reading “1984″ as part of a summer reading assignment for an advanced-placement class. The deletion of the book from his Kindle device meant that his assignment notes, which were tied to every one hundred pages, would be rendered useless since the page count differed from the traditional book.
Although the suit may seem frivolous over a school assignment, the deeper issue here is that Amazon did not give the consumers a clear indication that the company would be deleting the book of Kindle remotely. Customers only found out later while receiving a refund for the recall. The lawsuit indicates that, “the power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely is a power no one should have.”
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, publicly issued an apology for the mishap. It will be interesting to see what steps Amazon will take to prevent similar issues form happening again in the future.
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August 2nd, 2009
Unfortunately it took something like this to bring light to the public the problems with DRM and the ability for a company to remotely go into your own computer without your knowledge and delete something you bought outright.
The rub here is that if the person in question obtained the book via a P2P or a torrent instead….they would still have the book in their computer.
It will be interesting how this plays out.
August 2nd, 2009
“A high-school student is on a rampage against Amazon after his book was deleted off of Kindle.”
“[...] off of [...]“? The “of” is *redundant*, and it should simply be “off”. In any case, one does not “delete off”, one “deletes from”.