Slashdot Mirror
Student Suing Amazon For Book Deletions
Stupified writes "High school student Justin Gawronski is suing Amazon for deleting his Kindle copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four (complaint, PDF), because doing so destroyed the annotations he'd created to the text for class. The complaint states: 'The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as "remember this paragraph for your thesis" is useless if it does not actually reference a specific paragraph.' The suit, which is seeking class action status, asks that Amazon be legally blocked from improperly accessing users' Kindles in the future and punitive damages for those affected by the deletion. Nothing in Amazon's EULA or US copyright law gives them permission to delete books off your Kindle, so this sounds like a plausible suit."
Not all schools have it as required reading. I read it on my own while in High School, and currently re-reading it. We were assigned Brave New World, but not 1984. Kind of odd. I wonder, when this goes to court, will it be tried in Room 101? And if he loses, will he be deleted, or re-educated.
I'm so awesome I don't need a sig file -Me
If they didn't have the right to sell it, and it's illegal to reposess such a work through legal means, then they need to pay the copyright owner for the copies distributed. The lawyers can hammer out an agreement which will make Jeff & Co. look just a little harder the next time they go publishing a work. Of course, since Amazon knows how many they sold, that will make it easy for the copyright holder to sue for damages based on statutory infringement should the talks break down
Why is this so hard?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Won't work. If a contract is one-sided, with a huge benefit to one party but little benefit to the other ("fair exchange"), a judge will typically null the contract (in this case, a EULA).
Completely agree - and you missed out China. Also, the RIAA's "educational campaign" sounds Orweillean too.
I believe that applies to the service of providing ebooks and such as well as the wireless connection. The content already on the device might be a hard sell to a judge as a service that may be modified.
I generally agree with your post. But this comment shows that you aren't very clear on how Kindle works. It's all wireless magic. I briefly used Kindle on iPhone. You "buy" a book and it just appears. If you have multiple devices they all know what page you're on. If you drop your Kindle in the tub, presumably you buy another one and all of the content reappears.
It's all DRMed to high-heaven, and backup isn't on Amazon's agenda.
-Peter
PS: I'm also a generally happy Amazon customer. I'll buy their digital music, but not their digital books!
If someone buys stolen property in good faith, never believing that it was stolen then the police inform them, they have absolutely no right to keep it and in all likelihood will not get their money back.
Agreed they have no right to keep the goods, but they did enter into the sale contract in good faith assuming the goods were legitimate. If the seller had no right to sell them, the buyer has every right to compensation from the seller.
Sounds like Gawronski had a change of heart. On Sunday he was quoted in the New York Times saying:
(emphasis added)
Except that, reading the EULA, the book is independent of the Service. The buyer has a license to read the book on the Kindle OR in other ways as provided by the Service. Bear in mind that, in licenses and contracts like this, any ambiguities will be resolved in favor of the people who didn't write the license or contract. That's how free agency came about in Major League Baseball: the reserve clause was unclear, and the courts ruled that the interpretation that favored the players was preferred, since it was a standard MLB contract. (For the baseball-deprived, individual teams used to hold players' contracts, so that they could only play for one team. The "reserve clause" gave the team the option to renew a player's contract for a year, and the courts ruled that this allowed player to play out that year and then be free agents, free to negotiate with any team.)
Even if the language was clear, the courts could rule that it was part of a contract of adhesion, and therefore invalid. They could also rule that something that looks like a sale is an actual sale. Both sorts of rulings have happened in the past.
No, I'm not a lawyer either, but I do read Slashdot.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Neil Postman. Quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World and a ref to "Postman, Neil (1985). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. USA: Penguin USA. ISBN 0-670-80454-1" is provided there.
Yeah, the Australian site has it.
Wikipedia says it's public domain in Canada, Australia, and Russia, and apparently other unnamed countries. However, it will not be public domain until the year 2044 in the US and 2020 in the E.U.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
While you might have the technical ability to do something, it does not necessarily mean you have the legal right to do something.
Gary McKinnon had the technical ability to get into certain computer systems and look at the data (he did not delete stuff), but he didn't have the legal right to do it, so he's facing extradition to the USA and potentially quite a number of years in prison.
Amazon had the technical ability to get into certain computer systems (Kindles) and delete the data. And Amazon deleted data without permission from people who thought they owned those certain computer systems.
I'm not a lawyer but whether that's legal depends on who owns those Kindles, and whether Amazon has been given extra special powers to delete data from systems they don't own.
FWIW, Amazon says "buy" Kindle, they don't say "rent".
Car repossessors still have to follow certain steps to repossess a car - they typically cannot break into garages to repossess the car - it has to be in an open area, in some cases they have to notify the buyer that they are going to repossess the car.
Similarly when a Bank seizes back property there are certain procedures they have to follow.
Another thing - the initial problem was with Amazon's _Partner_ selling stuff they shouldn't have, not Amazon themselves.
Just because a shop in Amazon Mall sells me stuff they shouldn't have doesn't mean that Amazon can send their Mall Guards to sneak into my house and remove it on behalf of that shop, even if Amazon Mall is afraid they might get sued.
If the shop has done something illegal, Amazon Mall could report it to the police - the cops are the ones who have powers to seize and destroy stuff. Lets all only have to deal with one bunch of thugs running around ok?
This about law and order.
For more research, google "contract inequity"
Parent is correct. A contract can be Unconscionable under US law.
FreeBSD.org - The power to serve