Amazon refuses to say when it will delete customers' books from Kindles

phisrow

#1 – 8:22 AM July 21, 2009

Well, you wouldn't really expect Kafka to be able to provide comfort and clarity.

Amazon seems to be doing its best to play up the unnerving and combustion related overtones of the "kindle" name.

dculberson

#2 – 9:16 AM July 21, 2009

Hey, the Kindle is a good device even without the wireless radio and Kindle store. I'm not 100% sure I'm willing to shell out for a DX with these shenanigans going on, though.

bardfinn

#3 – 9:50 AM July 21, 2009

It's No Child Left Behind being enacted - Amazon knew that each of those copies of 1984 and Animal Farm were bought by school children, and knew that they had reports to write about them, and knew that they had not even begun reading -- so in order to save their GPAs, they issued them an object lesson on the books' morality play!

GENIUS, AMAZON! HOW I TRUST YOU SO!

Anonymous Anonymous

#4 – 11:58 AM July 21, 2009

So don't buy the f'ing things then. End of problem.

Adam Fields

#5 – 12:06 PM July 21, 2009

I maintain that licenses that masquerade as sales are antithetical to civilization. They encourage people disregard laws, and without shared laws, we're all just barbarians.

http://www.aquick.org/blog/2008/03/24/coming-to-a-rational-first-sale-doctrine-for-digital-works/

Anonymous Anonymous

#6 – 1:35 PM July 21, 2009

Amazon sold something that wasn't theirs to sell. Example: I sell you an iPod. Cops come to your door, tell you said iPod is stolen, show you the serial number of the stolen iPod and it matches the one I sold you. Cops take back iPod, give it to rightful owner, You're out the money you paid me. Was the iPod ever yours? no, no, no, a thousand times no.

Be mad at Amazon for not doing their due diligence. Be mad at a royally fsck'd publishing industry that has had their paradigms shifted by a digital brick thrown through their windows. Don't be mad because a company use the means they had available to defend themselves from a potentially massive lawsuit. Amazon is also apparently reversing the charges for anyone who bought one of the offending books.

This ZOMFGWTFBBQ!!! Amazon be stealin' mah bookz! This iz Teh 198fourz!! outrage is hilarious.

styrofoam

#7 – 2:13 PM July 21, 2009

Having read the articles now, I understand why Amazon yanked the books.

In short: Amazon didn't do their due diligence beforehand- and if they did, they didn't do a very good job of it.

It's possible for anybody to submit a book to be published on the Kindle, and it sounds like somebody submitted 1984. They got the payola and that didn't make the real rights holder happy. What would have happened if somebody were to have taken Corey's books and submitted them to the Kindle store for $0.99 each? I can see Corey getting bent out of shape over that. How to remediate that?

Amazon says "they're taking steps to ensure that future situations won't result in deletions". I'm guessing that this means increased legalese around the third party publishing submission process. If you submit it, not only are you stating that you're the rightsholder, but you're legally liable for any damages that might occur due to copies sold by Amazon. So no Amazon won't find itself in the ugly situation where deleting is probably a preferable solution than being sued for a large pile of money.

When I first heard the story, I thought that the original rights holder had submitted for publishing on the kindle then changed its mind. That made no sense at all. This makes more sense. I still get sqeamish over it and wish Amazon were a bit more forthcoming. They need to get their PR machine in gear.

O_M

#8 – 2:45 PM July 21, 2009

...Mark my words, kids: this *will* result in a major court case, which regardless of whether the publishing industry wins or loses will result in damage that they will never be able to recover from. And it serves them right.

Rob Beschizza

#9 – 4:47 PM July 21, 2009

Anonymous:

Amazon can yank the book from its own store, but just because it didn't have to right to sell you it *doesn't* mean it has the right to take it back.

Your argument supposes that the downloaded copy is "stolen goods." But it's isn't. It's actually an instance of copyright infringement, in which case it would be incumbent on the copyright proprietor to pursue individual kindle owners in civil courts. Good luck with that, copyright proprietors!

Even if it was stolen goods, Amazon isn't a court or a police officer, or even a repo man.

The interesting thing about this situation is that even if you're a total water-carrier for Amazon in this matter, what it did was wrong. Which is why it has promised never to do it again. In these circumstances.

styrofoam

#10 – 4:58 PM July 21, 2009

"in which case it would be incumbent on the copyright proprietor to pursue individual kindle owners in civil courts."

I'm guessing that this was the situation Amazon is trying to prevent- having to turn over the names and addresses of the people that purchased the information to a third party is perhaps MORE scary to me.

It was a cluster. It's still messy. IMHO, they should have yanked it from the store and stood firm on leaving it as is. The deletions were a lousy idea, but I can see the large corporation that makes lots of its money from publishers as perhaps a bit too eager to try to please their source of income.

Still doesn't make it right. means they could perhaps set the bar even higher (lower) next time around. They really need to explain what the hell is going on, and how this was perhaps the most attractive of all the alternatives, and how distasteful some of them were.

Anonymous Anonymous

#11 – 6:11 PM July 21, 2009

@Rob

#10 and #7 pretty much hit it on the head. Amazon screwed up, and took the most logical, if least desirable, steps to correct what was their error.

This isn't some orwellian nightmare, it's business in the 21st century. The businesses that would *not* have done exactly what Amazon did are few and far between.

#10 nailed it. What would have been worse? Amazon pulling the book from kindles, or amazon selling the book, taking the money, then turning over the list of people who bought it (which they have, tied to accounts and credit cards) and telling the owners "hey man, tough shit, you're on your own." (which is what you're proposing was somehow the right solution).

How exactly is "copyright infringement" not theft? Maybe in the philosophical sense it's not, but from a civil sense, (and to a lesser degree, the criminal sense) the RIAA and MPAA have created plenty of legal precedent for digital copyright infringement. In this case, your stance would put Amazon taking money for content that wasn't theirs in the same league as the money that Napster or Kazaa made during their tenures.

I firmly believe that the only reason amazon doesn't have a firm stance on this yet is because they know how important it is to get this policy right, now that they know what they did was a PR nightmare. Now they're working their legal teams overtime trying to seal up what looks like a pretty big hole in their business practice.

At the end of the day, the books were fruit of a poison tree.

Butch Arthur

#12 – 6:30 PM July 21, 2009

More than swiping your copy of a book, Amazon also revealed that (as I understand it), they have the ability to access your device and alter content on it without your knowledge or consent (and, I believe, without spelling this out overtly in their EULA).

I think that might be what upsets people. I don't think that they bought the Kindle intending for Amazon to be able to access their data.

Ictus75

#13 – 9:56 PM July 21, 2009

This was a good thing to happen, because now we know that Amazon can at will delete books from your Kindle without telling you first! Now people will be better informed when they think about buying one, and will wonder who really owns the 'books' they download, or is it really just a 'license to read'???

Rob Beschizza

#14 – 10:55 PM July 21, 2009

I expect that Amazon might not have been able to turn over those buyer records anyway, but also that in any case the legitimate publisher would never dream of going after the customers.

It would have gone after Amazon for facilitating infringement, which is why Amazon did what it did. Negative publicity, it seems, simply got the point where it's decided it would rather cut unadvantageous post-infringement deals with publishers, and invest in more rigorous oversight of what gets approved.

I wonder if the terms of submitting books to the Amazon store are about to get much more punishing.

styrofoam

#15 – 6:31 AM July 22, 2009

I think you're exactly right- Amazon did what it did to choose the perceived least costly issue.

Obviously, this storm of publicity isn't exactly 'free'. But copyright infringment could have been a bit more expensive, at least to their bottom line.

I'm guessing that the vague "this will not happen in the future" was directly tied to the "Submitted through our third party reseller program" statement, and yeah, I'm guessing that the third parties are going to become the liable parties in the future. The legalese as written probably didn't cover them.

Still nasty- but I think it's more likely that somebody at Amazon made a bad decision, rather than a malicious one.

Rob Beschizza

#16 – 3:30 PM July 22, 2009

"How exactly is "copyright infringement" not theft? "

In the context we're interested in (Amazon's liability and that of its customers) the very meaningful difference between copyright infringement and theft is that they are different offenses. The former is vanishingly unlikely to result in prosecution, and has complex standards of evidence and various defenses, including triviality, first sale and fair use. Theft, however, is usually a matter for the police and criminal courts regardless of context or severity.

"In this case, your stance would put Amazon taking money for content that wasn't theirs in the same league as the money that Napster or Kazaa made during their tenures."

Not quite, because in any case, Amazon should be settling with those publishers for making available. The problem is that it shouldn't be slyly buttering up the publisher that it screwed, by deleting books on that publisher's behalf. The deletions would limit Amazon's damages should it get taken to the cleaners by the U.S. proprietor of 1984.

"Now they're working their legal teams overtime trying to seal up what looks like a pretty big hole in their business practice."

Right -- but again, the problem with defending Amazon here is that since the books weren't stolen goods and the customers have practically no exposure to legal sanction, all that's left is justifying what it did on moral grounds.

But to do that, we have to establish "keeping the infringing books" as so immoral that it justifies Amazon having court-like legal powers to confiscate them, even if doing so is obviously only to smooth out its own liabilities with publishers. Most people find deleting the books to be a greater sin.

Brandon West

#17 – 3:36 PM July 22, 2009

There is a VERY clear distinction between copyright infringement and theft - if there weren't, they'd just call it theft and the laws would be the same.

Theft: I have an ice cream cone. You take it. I am deprived of my ice cream.

Copyright infringment: I make a song. You copy it without permission. I am deprived of nothing other than the potential money I could've charged you for the song. Copyright is an attempt to create scarcity where there is none.

Onetimetraveler

#18 – 7:06 AM August 4, 2009

Spend a year of your life writing a book and than have someone else steal it and profit from it! we can grey line anything! stealing is stealing! there is no distinction between copyright or patent. Because both establish ownership!
The fact that kindle "took back" the book is their right to correct an injustice! when you pay bills on line...you give others access to your account, to debit or credit! never forget that every entity or business is a person.