Amazon Offers To Return Pulled Orwell Ebooks

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Amazon Offers To Return Pulled Orwell Ebooks

Posted by Soulskill on Friday September 4, 2009 @04:10PM 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.

32 of 256 comments (clear)

damage by wizardforce · 2009-09-04 16:14 · 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 · 2009-09-04 16:23 · 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 digitalunity · 2009-09-04 16:26 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  No, it's not significant. I've worked for a few very large companies, larger than Amazon and apathy for the customer isn't acceptable no matter how big you are.
  Yes, acknowledgment of the colossal stupidity of their decision months later is nice, but that doesn't resolve the bigger problems.
  1) It takes months for Amazon complaints, even serious ones to reach a decision point and have action taken.
  2) Amazon retains remote kill-switch features in the Kindle and they have shown their willingness to use it.
  
  --
  You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
3. Re:damage by Falcon4 · 2009-09-04 16:35 · 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"?
4. Re:damage by digitalunity · 2009-09-04 16:45 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  How else would you explain the 2 month time period that elapsed before a decision was made?
  Both very large companies I have worked for in the past corrected decisions that affected the customer in hours, not months. When you do something hilariously stupid, you fix it immediately and ponder the ramifications later. That's just good business.
  
  --
  You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
5. Re:damage by wizardforce · 2009-09-04 16:52 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Somehow what Amazon actually did is considered being handled "poorly"?
  instead of paying the proper royalties for having sold the book they decided to retroactively void a contract between Amazon and the consumer. Only now are they realizing what they have done and attempt to repair the damage the way they should have done in the first place.
  
  --
  Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
6. Re:damage by petermgreen · 2009-09-04 17:08 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  My understanding is that the annotations are stored seperately and could indeed be accessed after the book dissapeared. The trouble is without the context provided by the exact version of the book they are meant to go with the annotations lose a lot of thier meaning.
  So if amazon has restored the exact version of the book they killed then I don't see the annotations regaining thier context as too serious.
  
  --
  note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
7. Re:damage by bhartman34 · 2009-09-04 17:31 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  How else would you explain the 2 month time period that elapsed before a decision was made?
  You may be over-simplifying the situation. The thing you have to remember here is that this wasn't a simple matter of Amazon shipping people the wrong color sweater. In essence, they shipped out stolen property. They were never free to just shrug their shoulders, say "Oops!", and pretend nothing happened. Their ebook business model depends on them rigorously defending the rights of IP owners. If copyright holders get the idea that anyone can just upload a copy of a work to Amazon without their permission, and start making cash off of it, the Kindle will fail. Of course, none of this is to say that Amazon handled the original situation well. What they probably should've done was to first make a statement about what happened, and then explain that customers should delete the books on their own, but if the user chose not to do that, it would be automatically deleted in an "update" after some predetermined date. (Of course, they would need to point to the part of the user agreement that allowed them to do this, but in this case, giving notice to users would've been the right thing to do, even if they weren't actually required to do it, legally.
  
  But, as to the original question: The reason Amazon took so long to react after they made the mistake they did was simple enough to understand: There was undoubtedly some behind-the-scenes maneuvering with the copyright holder, and some bean-counting in terms of how much they could afford to pay out in credit should someone not want to re-download the book.
8. Re:damage by jpmorgan · 2009-09-04 17:56 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  The situation originated because Amazon did not have the legal right to distribute copies of 1984 in the first place. They refunded the purchase, but they could hardly turn around and knowingly redistribute illegal copies. I mean, you can rightfully criticize them for the original circumstance, but to be fair it may have taken them 2 months to acquire the rights to legally restore those copies.
9. Re:damage by mwvdlee · 2009-09-04 18:04 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The bigger damage is that they've demonstrated that no matter what book you buy for it, they can take it away at any time and you're powerless to stop it. Paper copy is still the best option.
  
  --
  Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
10. Re:damage by Quothz · 2009-09-04 18:06 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I think you're missing a key detail, that the books were pulled because the SELLER (that is: not Amazon) was selling the books illegally via Amazon.
  
  You are mistaken. The publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version. The copies were sold legitimately from a publisher with the rights to do so. Linky.
11. Re:damage by jim_v2000 · 2009-09-04 18:21 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A small vocal handful of people actually give a shit about this whole thing. The rest of us are happy with the apology from Bezos and the refund/restore of the book. They're not going to do this again.
  
  --
  Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
12. Re:damage by FireFury03 · 2009-09-04 18:45 · 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
13. Re:damage by digitalunity · 2009-09-04 18:50 · 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.
14. Re:damage by psm321 · 2009-09-04 19:15 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Copyright violation is not theft, it's copyright violation. And no, the distinction is not academic. Stolen property can be taken back by the rightful owner, but the remedy for copyright violation is a civil suit or settlement for damages.
15. Re:damage by arkhan_jg · 2009-09-04 19:46 · 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.
16. Re:damage by oliderid · 2009-09-04 20:54 · 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.
17. Re:damage by khchung · 2009-09-04 21:09 · 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.
18. Re:damage by maxwell+demon · 2009-09-05 00:35 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  If you (the customer) purchase stolen goods then you can lose them without compensation as they are returned to their rightful owner.
  But even then, the seller cannot forcibly take it back from you. Only the police can.
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
19. Re:damage by ultranova · 2009-09-05 01:06 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Somehow what Amazon actually did is considered being handled "poorly"?
  
  The mistake was in designing Kindle with the ability to "pull" material in the first place. I'm sticking to paper and text files for this exact reason. That the first already-published thing to vanish without a trace was 1984 is irony, dire warning and a giant big "fuck you serfs" all in one action.
  Heck, for all I know it could be some moral Amazon employee trying to make a point who made the decision. It's a rather big coincidence otherwise.
  
  --
  Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Nice, but... by Kufat · 2009-09-04 16:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

...this would make it better:
"The new firmware update for the Kindle removes the remote deletion capability. We pledge [in some legally binding fashion] that this capability will never be reactivated."
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening.
Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me by Wingfield · 2009-09-04 16:16 · 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.
1. Re:Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me by Anonymous+Cowar · 2009-09-04 16:33 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If you buy a stolen stereo on the street, it can be confiscated by the government. Same for a stolen car, that's why we have chop shops that launder parts from stolen cars back out into the market. So, granted IP rights may be different than real world stuff (did anybody suffer harm because unauthorized copies were distributed? was anybody deprived of anything? don't quote anything in parentheses, or this sentence, this isn't what i'm here to discuss), if you are in possession of a stolen item, it can be confiscated. It looks like amazon was just trying to jump the gun and possibly assumed that the copies would equate to 'stolen'.
  
  Other side of the coin, let's say that these were just counterfeit copies. I.E. unauthorized copies of a protected item. I feel that this is closer to the truth. Current law says that it is NOT within the government's rights to seize a single counterfeit item if that is the only copy in your possession and you do not intend to sell it. That's why you never hear about a non-seller's collection of bootleg dvd's or fake-gucci purses being siezed. So had amazon realized that, it would have classified the re-seller as a digital counterfeiter and possibly resolved the matter by shutting off transfer rights (to another account, not another device within the account.)
2. Re:Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me by itsme1234 · 2009-09-04 17:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  If you buy a stolen stereo on the street, it can be confiscated by the government. Same for a stolen car, that's why we have chop shops that launder parts from stolen cars back out into the market. So, granted IP rights may be different than real world stuff (did anybody suffer harm because unauthorized copies were distributed? was anybody deprived of anything? don't quote anything in parentheses, or this sentence, this isn't what i'm here to discuss), if you are in possession of a stolen item, it can be confiscated. It looks like amazon was just trying to jump the gun and possibly assumed that the copies would equate to 'stolen'.
  Other side of the coin, let's say that these were just counterfeit copies. I.E. unauthorized copies of a protected item. I feel that this is closer to the truth. Current law says that it is NOT within the government's rights to seize a single counterfeit item if that is the only copy in your possession and you do not intend to sell it. That's why you never hear about a non-seller's collection of bootleg dvd's or fake-gucci purses being siezed. So had amazon realized that, it would have classified the re-seller as a digital counterfeiter and possibly resolved the matter by shutting off transfer rights (to another account, not another device within the account.)
  I think the first problem is that while the government can (legally) do many things (from taking your goods to killing people) Amazon can't . After they sold you the stolen or fake or infringing or whatever goods they can't (legally) just reach to your computer/kindle and "correct" the mistake by helping themselves just because this is the way they designed the system.
  Plus I'm sick and tired of this DRM double dipping. Copyright gives rights not only to authors but also to customers AND all other people. With DRM authors are giving themselves technologically rights they don't have legally. Copyright owners don't have the legal right to stop you from selling your music collection. They don't have the right to take back what they sold to you. They don't have the right to prevent you from playing your US DVD in Europe. They don't have the right to forbid you to take small parts to use them in a research work (fair use). They don't have the right to kill your collection because they don't think maintaining the authentication servers is profitable for them (yes, Yahoo, Microsoft, Wallmart I'm looking at you). And above all they don't have the right to keep their creations from falling into public domain (although they are very close to their desired "forever less one day" in extending the copyright terms).
  Not that there's any chance in hell for this to happen but I vote to have any (legal) copyright protection removed for any material that has DRM. You, author, want to break the deal with customers and with general public by not giving them all the rights they have (via technological means). FINE. There's no deal then. No (legal) copyright protection for whatever DRMed crap you sell.
3. Re:Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me by FireFury03 · 2009-09-04 19:23 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Actually, in most cases, they do have a right to do all of those things that you mentioned...you just didn't read the license agreements.
  The parent was talking about the legally enshrined rights provided by the copyright legislation. Whatever the EULA says is pretty moot because there is no legal requirement for you to agree to an EULA.
  However, even if you were to assume that the consumer agrees to whatever licence they are presented with and that the licence is enforceable, you are still wrong: When I buy a DVD, I am never presented with a licence agreement - I go into the shop and say "I want to buy this DVD", hand over some money and get given the DVD in return. You cannot argue that this doesn't constitute the sale of the DVD (which would give me all the rights and restrictions granted by copyright law). Iff I were to go into the shop and say "I want to buy this DVD" and they said "you can't buy it, you can only licence the content, here's a licence for you to sign" then you could argue that I didn't buy the DVD and that I am therefore bound by the licence terms, but that never happens.
  
  --
  http://blog.nexusuk.org
Annotations?? by Geoffrey.landis · 2009-09-04 16:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

... can now have it restored, apparently with annotations intact.
Wait a second-- where are these annotations coming from? When they erased the text of the books from Kindles, they didn't erase the annotations, but apparently archived them somewhere?
Does this imply that Amazon can remotely access (and read?) any private notes anybody makes using their Kindle?

--
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
1. Re:Annotations?? by Anonymous+Cowar · 2009-09-04 16:38 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  the annotations were stored elsewhere in the kindle but were rather worthless without the context provided by the nearby book-text. They could still be accessed, but weren't much good alone. I.E. you can talk about how This Passage would be good to discuss for My Paper, but without This Passage, your annotation is worthless. So now that the book is returned, hopefully it will be smart enough to tie the old annotation attached to This Passage with the corresponding This Passage in the new text.
The real reason they probably did it by mysidia · 2009-09-04 17:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

It was coming to bite them in the a**... with a student suing them and everything.
They finally realized they were getting widespread negative publicity, poorer reviews, more people recommending to stay away frmo kindle and get something else, and maybe, just maybe, it put a small dent in their sales.
Enough for them to stand up and take notice...
If it were just a few customers effected by the deletion and hasn't been widely publicized in the news, I have my doubts that Amazon would have ever done something to right the situation.
$30 is nice by gooman · 2009-09-04 17:44 · Score: 5, Funny

I would have suggested $19.84

--
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Re:Soooooo... by thePowerOfGrayskull · 2009-09-04 17:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

Who got fired?
Hopefully nobody. I've worked for companies that liked to fire people for making one mistake -- the air of paranoia was such that nobody was willing to do anything, for fear of screwing up and not being able to find someone else to blame. Companies that do that tend to stagnate until there's a culture shift or they go under (or get bought out, as with the place I worked).
Re:Public domain content here. by jonbryce · 2009-09-05 01:10 · Score: 4, Informative

They are public domain in Australia, but not the US. Copyright in Australia expires 50 years after the author's death, in this case 21st January 2000. In the US, it won't expire until 70 years after the author's death, which is 21st January 2020. Most likely the copyright term will have been extended again by that time, so it won't actually expire.
Re:The lesson here is. by Abcd1234 · 2009-09-05 02:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

If over 50% of their 2 million employees have no health insurance and average an income of just $1100 per month, that puts almost their entire work force near poverty levels relying on all us other wealthier taxpayers to foot the bill for their medical expenses.
Uhuh. And if there was no Walmart? They might *not having a job at all*. Furthermore, for all those people who *don't* work at Walmart while living on a low income, Walmart has made it possible for them to fund a lifestyle they couldn't otherwise affort, which is a *good* thing. But, of course, you're too blinded in your irrational hatred to consider that Walmart *might* just have some positive effects on the economy.
That is kind of a callous position considering many have little choice because WalMart put local competitors out of business through their cutthroat pricing and megachain distribution agreements.
Uhuh. And those local competitors? a) You have absolutely no evidence proving they would've paid more or provided a better health plan... and in the current economy, the precise opposite would've likely been true, with local businesses firing people or putting them part-time, and cutting or reducing health benefits b) Wouldn't hire as many people as Walmart does, c) Charged higher prices, thus making it more difficult for those poor people you're so worried about to actually support their standard of living.
Thus, in the end, for a local person living near the poverty line, at worst, Walmart is basically a wash... the trade off is a possibly lower salary for definitely lower prices.
I know you're apathetic to the situation because well hell, this is just the way capitalism works right?
Apathetic? No, of course not. I happen to believe that Walmart, while not a perfect corporate citizen, is a net positive force for the economy. They hire millions and they act to stifle inflation by keeping prices down. For the poor that you seem so very deeply concerned with, that's a positive thing, not a negative one.