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Amazon Offers To Return Pulled Orwell Ebooks

Posted by Soulskill on from the act-of-contrition dept.

Back in July, Amazon faced public outrage over their decision to delete ebook copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from the Kindles of customers who purchased them. Shortly thereafter, CEO Jeff Bezos offered an apology, acknowledging that Amazon handled the situation in a "stupid" and "thoughtless" manner. Now, they're offering something more substantial: anyone who had an ebook deleted can now have it restored, apparently with annotations intact. Any customer who isn't interested in a new copy can get either an Amazon gift certificate or a check for $30.

9 of 256 comments (clear)

  1. damage by wizardforce · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think that the damage has already been done. Amazon handled the situation poorly and when confronted about the situation took a lot more time to attempt to remedy the problem than was necessary to degrade their image.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
    1. Re:damage by SputnikPanic · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And Amazon also did the right thing by not going taking the typical non-acknowledgment position and instead admitting -- quite publicly -- that they screwed up big. I still have some problems with how Amazon does particular things (read: Kindle DRM), but it's refreshing to see a company fess up in no unequivocal terms when they do something that upsets their customers.

    2. Re:damage by Falcon4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And somehow, them actually doing the best-possible thing is "handling the situation poorly"?

      Let's recap.
      - Amazon automagically pulled books from peoples' Kindles that were unauthorized copies (sold, yes, but apparently not legally by the "publisher").
      - Amazon provided everyone with a refund.
      - People got pissed.
      - Amazon's CEO apologized profusely in public and swore to make it right.
      - Amazon put the books back even though they were never - and still aren't - entirely legitimate copies. Again... paid for, yes, but that's like paying zomgdownloadlimewirenow.com $9.95 a month to download songs (and viruses) through a scam copy of Limewire.
      - People get free books.

      Instead of:
      - Amazon pulled books.
      - People got pissed.
      - Amazon craps out standard form-response of "that book wasn't legally purchased by the reseller" and refunds money.
      - People sue Amazon.
      - Amazon wins.
      - Whine, whine, whine.

      Somehow what Amazon actually did is considered being handled "poorly"?

    3. Re:damage by FireFury03 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In essence, they shipped out stolen property.

      Not quite. If you (the customer) purchase stolen goods then you can lose them without compensation as they are returned to their rightful owner. I'm not sure the same is true if you purchase goods which infringe copyright.

      They were never free to just shrug their shoulders, say "Oops!", and pretend nothing happened.

      If they had shipped an infringing physical book, they would have said "Oops!" and simply paid damages to the copyright holder. They wouldn't break into the homes of all their customers and retrieve the books.

      --
      http://blog.nexusuk.org
    4. Re:damage by digitalunity · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nobody is saying they should have redistributed the copies illegally.

      The proper course of action would have been to never have a remote kill-switch in the first place. The fact that Amazon remotely deleted everyones copies of the copyrighted work did not remove their civil liability for copyright infringement. It might have made the copyright owner more palpable but had they chosen to sue Amazon, Bezos would have found himself none the safer.

      From a simple customer fairness perspective, Amazon's customers purchased the book in good faith. Amazon should have no more right, let alone capability to forcibly take the book away than a brick and mortar store has to force you to return a physical book. If you buy a physical book from Barnes & Noble and it turns out that the printer didn't have copyrights to produce it, B&N doesn't call you demanding you return the book-they resolve the issue between the copyright holder and publisher behind the scenes.

      Amazon should be no different.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
    5. Re:damage by arkhan_jg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No-one would have criticised them for withdrawing the books from new sales when they discovered they didn't actually have publishing rights for that book.

      They're angry that after a sale was completed, and with the slimmest of justifications from the EULA, they deleted books already sold - something just not possible with real books. Last I checked, people who purchase illegally copyrighted works are not held liable, it's the producer that's commited copyright infringement; though they may have them confiscated by the police if they 'should' have known the goods were infringing. What amazon should have done is stop sales, leave the copies sold already in place, then work with the copyright holder to recompense them for the copies already sold.

      Amazon acting like copyright cops after the sale, and on very iffy legal grounds - especially by destroying people's annotations - that damage to their reputation is done, and no amount of backtracking, apologising, or 'here, have it back' fixes it, for me.
      Who knows when they'll next decide to use a remote kill switch on what I've already paid for?

      This has long been one of the criticisms of ebooks and ereaders; DRM and the ability to retroactively render a purchase unusable. It's why I didn't buy a kindle, and seeing amazon so handily demonstrate their power, I'm amazed anyone with half a brain would willingly do so either.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    6. Re:damage by oliderid · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From a simple customer fairness perspective, Amazon's customers purchased the book in good faith.

      And for potential buyers like me, the perspective is even simpler.

      • They can enter into my "computer" (kindle) anytime they wish.
      • They can delete any material they find offensive/inappropriate (for legal reasons or not) without asking me anything
      • And leave.

      Even my government hasn't such a power.

    7. Re:damage by khchung · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Exactly.

      They have actually demonstrated that they have both the ability and the will to delete books from your kindle.

      It is no longer a hypothetical situation when people say "Amazon could delete books you have paid for on your Kindle". It is now a FACT that Amazon had deleted paid-for books on customers Kindle, and they could do it again if they wish to.

      This is the best example for showing what harm DRM could do from customers' point of view.

      No amount of apology or refund is going to cover this up, unless they publicly send out an update to all Kindle to disable this ability to delete books, and then they have to hope people actually believe it.

      --
      Oliver.
  2. Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me by Wingfield · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I would really like to see Amazon make a commitment to not allowing purchased e-books to ever be pulled from the e-book readers of it's customers. I would like for them to think of e-books like people think of physical books in terms of ownership. If a bookstore sells me an illegal or stolen copy of a book by mistake, they damn sure can't come into my house and take it back.