Amazon Offers To Return Pulled Orwell Ebooks

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.

Comments

Re:damage

[rtfa-troll]

I think you're missing a key detail, that the books were pulled because the SELLER (that is: not Amazon)

no; I don't think that we're wrong because of that. There are two choices:

1. this is Amazon's buisiness transaction in which case they are responsible for the sale and should make it good
2. this isn't Amazon's buisiness transaction in which case they should not interfere.

If you are right, then Amazon has made a big tactical mistake. They turned on the DRM features too early. They have shown that there is no way no know if you have a Kindle book or not. At any time, Amazon can take it away. Compare that to a normal book, where, if you buy an illegal copy which is identical to the legal one and which you thought was legal, it is the person who copied it who has a problem. Not you.

This is a tactical, not strategic mistake, however. The only thing they did wrong was to delete a book early enough that there is still non-DRM competition. A feature like "remotely delete books" does not get created by accident. You can't risk using it without extensive testing that it will delete exactly the book that you want it to delete and no others. The FSF has been right all along; you can't trust DRM. In some years, Amazon hope to be able do this kind of stuff and you won't complain because all their competition will do it at the same time too.