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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."
What class has 1984 as required reading and where can I sign up?
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
-Matthew Riley "TofuMatt" MacPherson
I have a website
Given the other absurdities of copyright law, and how the RIAA's lawyer think that disappearing purchases are normal in every area of life, I wouldn't be surprised to see a lawyer claim that the annotations are in fact a derivative work of the book, and that since Amazon had no right to sell the book, then the student had no right to create the annotations.
Also, there's probably some boilerplate legal language included with the Kindle that says they are not responsible for data loss, etc., or if it kills your grandmother or dog.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I thought when I bought something from Amazon, that I owned it!
I get the feeling that this was a decision by Amazon based on what would cost them less. Either delete these and face user wrath, or let users who have the books keep them and settle monetarily with the copyright holder. I think they may have underestimated the true cost of losing reputation with their user base, lawsuit cost aside.
The irony that Orwell's 1984 describes "Children Heroes" who snitch on grown-ups is tasting sweeter with every passing moment.
If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
Bullshit.
The company that sold it didn't have the rights to it in the US. The legal publisher complained and Amazon pulled the book.
Yes, but Amazon's solution to the "books" already sold may have been illegal.
For example, if they had sold a paper copy of 1984 illegally, they aren't allowed to burn down the house of anyone who purchased it. Certain actions remain illegal, despite the fact that they're address the copyright issue.
"If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all." I completely disagree. Let's not give up the right to keep the information we buy entirely - it's bad enough that future generations may not own an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, or, potentially, ANY books/information that cannot be instantly taken away by certain companies or even the government or hackers. Sure, if there was some absolute guarantee that this would only happen in cases where a retailer sold something they did not have the right to sell, few people would care much. It's still bad, in that case, but the real worry is that, to pull a crazy hypothetical out of my *ss, Bush got re-elected for a 3rd term in the last election, decided to invade iran, invoked some war powers act to silence the media from complaining about it, and later started quietly pulling books from the virtual shelves ... books that might start dangerous thoughts. As crazy as it may sound, it's hardly crazy at all. People who want to do this exist - these types have been in power in various countries ... these types are IN power in some countries (N. Korea, anyone? And they're not alone - the media in Iran isn't all that free, is it?)
In my opinion, this ability needs to be removed from the hardware - through the law. Simply having people complain enough that companies don't do this won't solve anything, backdoors will still exist.
I disagree. The end user purchased the book in good faith and had absolutely no reason to even suspect that Amazon didn't have the US rights. What would have happened if Amazon had shipped physical books? Same sort of thing should happen. The end user still keeps the book, Amazon pays the appropriate damages to the rights-holders.
If you illegally sold an item, you can be required to pay punitive damages, and you can even go so far as to notify the buyers, but taking back the product (recalling it) is reserverd only for true "stolen goods" and even then only in rare cases, and usually not for retail products. Counterfeit products are often reclaimed, but not valid products sold simply without license or copywrite.
Amazon should have paid the fine (if one was even imposed by the holder). By themsleves (and not thrhrough the action of a courth or dualy authorized agency) taking back this product, they have violated multiple premises in the doctrine of first sale, the commerce codes of the United States and likely multiple state laws, and the punishment for doing so should be significantly greater than the punishment would have been simply for the infringement.
The customers though no fault of their owen purchaesed legally this unlicenced product. They did not buy it out of a truck or through some black market where a crime might be inferred, but through a well known and trusted retailer. Refund of money alone is insufficient in this case as once the product has been sold, the contract of sale is completed, and the product is now OWNED by the customer. Should Amazon want it back, the CUSTOMER becomes the seller, and has every right to set their OWN price for the return. As a student, that electronic copy might be FAR more valuable to me than a physical copy, and even if Amazon offered to replace the elctronic copy with one that WAS authorized for distribution, if it was not compatible with the Kindle, and supported the same notes file taken by the student, then it would not have been an equal value replacement, and asking the student, who was the legal woner of that product, to accept an inferior replacement, even for free after refund, may still not equate to the value of his loss (which can easily be measured in man hours repeating his effort in another form of the book, and correcting and correlating all the notes already takes, using a fair labor rate).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
And you paid for a device which was tethered to its master, which happened not to be you.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
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?
As a country, they're litigation happy. As a teenager, he's probably lazy and opportunistic. Put the two together ...
or maybe he is willing to stand up and fight for his rights, and the rights of others. There is a reason why Slashdot isn't in German. Godwin!
No, it's not. What would be enough? Amazon restoring every last one of these people their copy of 1984, paying whatever they have to to the copyright owners to make it legal. If they then don't reclaim the rebates they sent out, they will have totally redeemed themselves in my eyes, but restoring people their books is the bare minimum.
Amazon didn't know that it was still under copyright in the US, and didn't have the rights to sell it. When they discovered their mistake, they took it back -- removing the books and refunding the buyers' money. Damages paid to rights-holders are given to compensate for the fact that the violator can't remove every copy of the infringing product they sold; but in this case, they were able to. If this was anything except 1984, this wouldn't have been news at all.
Perhaps it would not have been news, but it should be. The problem with e-books is that they can be edited after the fact with no reliable way to know which version is the original. This makes practical the kind of altering of history talked about in "1984".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Really?
FTFS: 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.'
It's a sad day when we don't even bother reading the SUMMARY any more.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
No, that's the procedure for when they sell a paper copy of Fahrenheit 451 illegally.
Amazon, and big corps in general, are NOT the police, and do not have the rights as such.
As cool as Amazon can be, this was a lame move by them from many perspectives, and I hope this guy wins the case. Perhaps it could set a precedent against deleting data from users' devices in general.
Precedent is indeed the right worry here, but not quite in the way you're mentioning.
1984 was not legally sold on Amazon.com's Kindle store. It's legal in almost every other country on Earth -- basically any country without corporate overlords demanding Copyright be extended to "Age of Mickey Mouse +20 years" in perpetuity.
No, the real precedent that is very, very bad and very, very scary is that now, now publishers know that Amazon can remotely delete items from the Kindle, without user input.
Textbook companies want to sell a textbook that's only good for 1 quarter? Why not? Not like you'll need it after this year, since we're gonna release the 351st edition to make sure students can't resell the deadtree back to the bookstore.
Someone sues Amazon cause "Twilight" offends local obscenity laws? "Well golly gee, we're seeing you're connecting to a Cell tower in Bumfuck Idaho, we'll just auto-delete that Twilight book for you to avoid offending the prudes..."
Or better yet. "Hey Apple, Amazon can just delete stuff from their Kindle remotely, why can't you delete any songs with Metallica in their filename / ID3 tags that don't match up with ones they've bought from us off iPods when they dock?"
Amazon played a very bad hand here. They admitted they can screw over users on behalf of 3rd party companies. Worse, they admitted they will if asked.
A very, very bad precedent all around.
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
Hacking laws on the books make it illegal to add, modify, or delete data on another person's computer without their consent. I believe it carries a pretty stiff sentence too, because it is a federal statute. I am pretty sure that Amazon has no consent from anyone when they used their DRM to kill the book, so they could be in some deep water.
Also, since it was an an actual person that punched the enter key when it came time to revoke the DRM license, I wonder if they could be hit with the criminal hacking charge. The fact that invoking DRM controls could land you in the federal pen for 20 years might be a great way get corps to knock that shit off.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!