The Orwellian Kindle Mystery

[kimmer]

Amazon Erases Orwell Books from Kindle

Pogue’s comments: Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

I was close to asking for a Kindle for my birthday, but disappearing books and broken Kindle's due to the protective case are giving me great pause. (Or should that be paws? )


edited to add: Yes, I'm aware these were pirated copies, but I'm more concerned with the whole notion that Amazon can just wipe a book off your Kindle and refund you money if the publisher changes their mind, they find a mistake in the copy, etc. No one takes back printed copies of books that have typos in them. And if they can come delete a book from the Kindle, are they going to reach out to my computer and delete music I've purchased?

edited on 6/24 to add: see my post at the end.

[Xairbusdriver]

Becoming a little PARANOID are we?

Best no get an iPhone, His Steveness has a magic button on his key fob that lets him erase any iPhone!

"Any hand that giveth can also taketh."

[tacit]

QUOTE(kimmer @ Jul 18 2009, 05:11 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

edited to add: Yes, I'm aware these were pirated copies, but I'm more concerned with the whole notion that Amazon can just wipe a book off your Kindle and refund you money if the publisher changes their mind, they find a mistake in the copy, etc.

When you buy a Kindle, you accept the End User License Agreement. The EULA is a legal contract in which you specifically give Amazon the right to do this.

Amazon has decided to change their policies and not do it in the future, but the fact remains that the people who use Kindles do give Amazon this legal right.

Honestly, if someone buys an illegal copy of a copyrighted work, then he gets a refund and the copyrighted work is recalled, it seems pretty equitable to me. No harm, no foul; I see no problem with this.

[kimmer]

Thanks, tacit. I read the EULA that is posted online a while back and don't remember there being a "we can disappear your books at any time for any reason" clause in it; and it seems an awful lot of Kindle owners never caught it either. If it was there, it was in mighty fine print in the stuff that comes in the package.

My concern at this point is why buy digital if someone can revoke it at any time? They can't do that with a printed copy? So I'm better off NOT being green, and wasting all those trees.

And ABD, yeah I'm becoming majorly paranoid!

[gunug]

Obviously you must steal your Kindle (hopefully directly from Amazon) then you don't have to sign that pesky agreement; that should work!  

If everyone refuses to accept such things then the companies involved will have to back off on this stuff!

[kimmer]

An interesting take from Slate dot com

Amazon Apologizes

[Highmac]

Interesting response on the Slate site, that begins

QUOTE

This is why the first thing I do when I buy things from iTunes or Amazon MP3 download sites is to rip a CD from them as a backup.

Amazon is forcing us to figure out a way to "pirate" their stuff even if we buy it fair and square. It kind of defeats the point of being an upstanding citizen by buying the Kindle downloads if the first thing I have to do is break the contract to make sure that I have continued access to the things I just purchased.

[Xairbusdriver]

Interesting or hypocritical? I assume the only "pirates" are the other people who do such things, certainly not the people at Slate..."Hello, Pot, I'm white, why are you black?!"

[sandbox]

If the solution was stupid, what was the smart solution?
The right thing to do is to return the property to the holders those online books and make a deal with the writers and publishers. That is being thoughtful and in line with their principles. An apology is only one step, the first step, not the last.
this is a good lesson for folks who make purchases that they do not take ownership of. If the contract states that you have use of this product and can not download it or make a copy for yourself, I wouldn't bother. This is not the Internet that I want. I can use my Library card a borrow books. I don't have to rent the books at full cost only to have someone remove it from my hands.

I am in some agreement with Jonathan Zittrain position and I suspect that not promoting this business model is more than likely a better approach.

QUOTE

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

QUOTE

In The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain argues that such "tethered" appliances give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function.

QUOTE(kimmer @ Jul 25 2009, 12:13 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

An interesting take from Slate dot com

Amazon Apologizes

[tacit]

QUOTE(kimmer @ Jul 20 2009, 08:50 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, tacit. I read the EULA that is posted online a while back and don't remember there being a "we can disappear your books at any time for any reason" clause in it; and it seems an awful lot of Kindle owners never caught it either. If it was there, it was in mighty fine print in the stuff that comes in the package.

My concern at this point is why buy digital if someone can revoke it at any time? They can't do that with a printed copy? So I'm better off NOT being green, and wasting all those trees.

That last paragraph is the problem.

You ask "Why buy digital?" The answer is, "you can't." The EULA makes it clear that it is impossible to buy an eBook for the Kindle. All transactions are rentals, not purchases; Amazon retains all property rights in all eBooks and your money only gets you a license to read the book, which can be revoked without notice at any time.

I think that what happened is two things. First, people didn't read the full EULA; and second, people didn't realize that  eBooks are licensed, not sold. So people who had their illegal eBook disappear felt an emotion of violation, as if Amazon had come into their house and taken away property they owned.

I understand that emotion and understand why people were angry, but the fact is that when you make a purchase for your Kindle, you do not buy anything but a license and you don't own the book. I think maybe if people understood that better, they might not react with the same emotion (or they might not buy a Kindle at all).

I'm wondering what the people who were upset thought Amazon should do. Amazon became aware that a seller was illegally selling pirated copies of a book through their store. The legal owners of the book asked Amazon to take action. Amazon vaporized the illegal copies of the book and gave everyone their money back. What (aside from communicating more clearly that that is what they were doing) should they have done differently? I can see getting angry if Amazon didn't give people their money back, but they did, so what should they have done differently?

[kimmer]

Two points and I'll go backwards.

QUOTE

I'm wondering what the people who were upset thought Amazon should do.

From what I read some of them felt they should have been allowed to keep the books, and some felt Amazon was fair. Of those who felt Amazon was fair, most of them simply wanted an explanation before they discovered the deleted books. Apparently no email was sent to Kindle owners. If it had been me, I would have liked an explanation being posted or emailed. I think Amazon now realizes that they should have done this. And I have no beef with Amazon removing what was illegally sold. I hope they are more diligent in what they allow to be sold through their Kindle store in the future.

My only other thought on the illegal aspect is that if I'd purchased a printed copy, I'd still have it; and that brings us to the second point: Digital downloads.

QUOTE

You ask "Why buy digital?" The answer is, "you can't." The EULA makes it clear that it is impossible to buy an eBook for the Kindle. All transactions are rentals, not purchases; Amazon retains all property rights in all eBooks and your money only gets you a license to read the book, which can be revoked without notice at any time.

Here's a few snippets from their selling page for the Kindle (and the bolding is mine for emphasis):

QUOTE

Now you can always have your entire library with you.
A copy of every book you purchased from the Kindle Store

Purchased isn't the same as leased, not as far as I understand the terms. Then I went back to their EULA and found this (again the bolding is mine for emphasis):

QUOTE

3. Digital Content
The Kindle Store.
~Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

So I'm guessing that "keep a permanent copy" is voided by "will be deemed licensed to you"?

All in all, I now look at the Kindle differently, and don't think I'll be spending money for one. I'd rather own fewer books, use the library for others and do without for the rest. At least I get up every morning and my printed books are still here.

But it's always an interesting discussion, and now I need to go double check the EULA for all my digital music from Amazon.

BTW, when you get back here (if you do) ... have you melted in the heat and WELCOME to sunny, warm Oregon. Although we are wearing jackets on the coast.

[tacit]

Yep, the "keep a permanent copy" is contingent on the "licensed to you." In this case, there was no legal license to the work, so the people who downloaded it weren't allowed to keep it. The license says "Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon;" when Amazon learned that the book was being sold illegally, that invoked the "unless otherwise expressly provided" part. By refunding the money, the license was voided.

Legally, Amazon could not allow the buyers to keep copies. The legal copyright owners contacted Amazon and instructed Amazon to yank the illegal copies, which Amazon was obligated to do. The only way Amazon could have let people keep copies is if Amazon would have purchased licenses from the original copyright holders and then downloaded those legal copies onto users' Kindles.

Some folks say they should have done that. I'm not sure I agree. The book was (and still is) available in the Amazon Kindle store for $9.99. The person who was selling illegal copies was selling them for 99 cents, with a disclaimer that they were in the public domain according to the laws in Eastern Europe and other non-US countries. I think this should probably have been a tip-off to users that something hinkey was going on.

Now, in a situation where a user in good faith purchases a work at full price and then it is later discovered that Amazon didn't have the right to distribute that work for whatever reason, then yes, I think that Amazon should pony up whatever costs are involved in making things right. But in this particular case, I would say that I believe there were enough warning signs that users really ought to have known something was fishy with what they were buying. If something seems too good to be true...

Amazon has promised not to do this if something similar happens in the future, but they may not actually have that choice. Amazon is legally obligated to comply with the wishes of the copyright holders of all the works they distribute; if another situation were to arise where illegal copies of books were ending up on people's Kindles, the copyright holders could and very well might get a cort order to compel Amazon to remove the illegal copies. So I wouldn't recommend putting too much stock in the fact that they say they won't do this in the future--a situation could arize where it wouldn't be their choice to make.

[sandbox]

I wasn't aware of the details, it just didn't seem right. Since it's one of those "too cheap to be true bargains" with a disclaimer and not a copy leased at regular price there is plenty of wiggle room for Amazon to make their case.

I still don't care for the business model, from a consumers point of view. I really hope it fails and a model with more control and ownership takes its place.  

language like this

QUOTE

Now you can always have your entire library with you.
A copy of every book you purchased from the Kindle Store

is misleading and I suspect its because they don't want to fully inform the customer in LARGE print that they're only Leasing and not purchasing.

It is not a purchase, it is a lease and they should make that point perfectly clear, no matter what it cost them. Its a bait and switch tactic, hoping that the customer will grow accustom to the service and overlook the contradictions in language and transactions.

I've been involved with amazon from their inception and these sort of shady contracts will only cost them and their stock holders in the end.