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18 Jul 2009
Amazon has concerned many by automatically deleting books bought for the Kindle platform at the publisher's request.
Two e-book titles were remotely deleted by the company and their buyers' accounts have been credited with the full purchase cost. Ironically, the two books are George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.
The publisher of the titles decided that it did not wish to continue selling them through Amazon, and pressured the company to delete them. The stealth move has upset many customers, and it is not clear that Amazon acted within its rights under the standard terms and conditions.
"Animal Farm by George Orwell, published by MobileReference (mobi), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell, published by MobileReference (mobi), were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase," said Amazon customer services.
"When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store."
Users on Amazon's forums have been up in arms about the move, with some likening it to a bookseller breaking into a house to retrieve books it has decided it doesn't want to sell after all.
"I would have a serious issue with what they did, and no, I would not delete a paid for book off my PC, regardless of whether or not Amazon refunded my money," wrote one.
"If I bought it legally, I'm not deleting it just because Amazon refunded my money for some unknown reason that had nothing to do with pirating."
Some are now investigating whether Amazon has the right to withdraw books that have been paid for. If the case does come to court, it could be very expensive for Amazon and may permanently sour relations with the Kindle community.
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DRM is about them not you
Repeat this until it sinks in. DRM hurts and inconveniences legitimate purchasers and has no effect on piracy. DRM is not about piracy. DRM is about controlling purchased copyrighted works.
Posted by: Antonio Lorusso 24 Jul 2009
Unacceptable
The irony of this is almost too thick to cut through. This is absolutely unacceptable, and Amazon must recant this position. Once books are legitimately purchased, it is decidedly wrong and completely unethical to even have the power to perform an action such as this. This cannot be tolerated. Please flood the Kindle product page with negative reviews so that prospective buyers can be aware of this jaw dropping breach of trust and display of power: http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Generation/dp/B00154JDAI/ While I have long taken a stance against DRM, this is horrifying and cannot and should not be tolerated by anybody, out of principle if nothing else. I sincerely hope this results in a class-action lawsuit.
Posted by: Anthony 18 Jul 2009
Idiocy
The book publishing industry is repeating the mistakes of the music+movie industries - electronic viewing on such devices IS the future, and if they cripple all legal ways of handling such electronic content, they force us users to illegal means. Its that simple. This is sufficient reason for me to never ever buy e-books legitimately - I am not going to buy something that can just be taken away from me at whim (something which I should also mention is also ridiculously overpriced compared with dead-tree books, considering the zero replication+distribution costs with the e-books) .... Thus, the way I'll be obtaining books to read electronically (which is only way we'll all be reading them soon, just like we listen to all music on mp3 players now) is through illegal downloading without paying ... just like I have never bought a CD from a big music company since the last one I bought was crippled so that I couldn't rip it to put it on my mp3 player, I won't buy any electronic books from publishers like this either (and even if I wanted to buy such e-books legally, it looks like the publisher is here choosing not to distribute them, again forcing me to download illegally).
Posted by: Jeremy McMemmy 18 Jul 2009