"Steal Back This E-Book!" - Amazon Channels Big Brother

[tbyg52]

I am fully aware that this sounds like it can't possibly be true, but it is - I Googled it on the news as well.

Greetings. In a turn of events so ironic that even the seediest Hollywood porn producer would have rejected the plot as ridiculously unrealistic, Amazon.com has demonstrated that the worlds of electronic vs. paper books are universes apart, and in one fell swoop magnified the worst fears of e-book detractors around the world.

The script sounds so ridiculous that it's almost embarrassing to recount. To retroactively satisfy a demand from one of their suppliers, Amazon reportedly reached electronically into privately-owned Kindle electronic book readers and deleted recently purchased copies of -- get this -- 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell.

The irony drips so thickly that it practically coagulates on spinning disk drives. Just as 1984's Winston Smith's role was to delete and change unacceptable points of history from information databases, Amazon -- without any warning and without asking for permission from Kindle owners -- destroyed e-books that had been legally purchased, replacing them with a purchase credit.

This is precisely the functional equivalent of Barnes & Noble -- or Amazon itself for that matter -- using a crowbar or lock pick to break into your home or business, then stealing back a previous physical book purchase, replacing it with the equivalent value in cash.

More:
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000597.html

[and-justice-for-all]

1. I await Amazons, uh, well, 'explanation'...

:eyes:

[kirby]

2. Basically...

The e-books in questions were sold by someone using the 'self publish feature'. The books are still copyrighted and thus Amazon was basically selling stolen/unauthorized books. When the Orwell estate protested that some third party was selling books they held the copyright to without permission, Amazon used the technology to remove the stolen goods.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles.ars

[tbyg52]

3. Yeah, but the way Amazon handled it was pretty dumb.

Analysis and comments here:
http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218501227

I agree with this comment:

Forget the fact that their approach was not customer friendly. The bigger question is why are they not validating content ownership in the first place? It's akin to the author's example of Barnes & Nobel buying inventory from some guy who drives up with a truck and cuts them "a great deal".

They could have resolved this by paying the legitamate content owners at physical book price, removing the books from further sales and taking legal action against the party who was dealing in stolen goods.

This demonstrates that Amazon processes are broken on many fronts, not just customer sensitivity.

[kirby]

6. It was very bad PR...

They should have handled it better. It is disturbing that they did not validate the content ownership to begin with. However, it is a stretch to say it could have been resolve with the content owner. The content owner may not want their books published in e-book format and may have refused. (Oddly however, the 1984 e-book for Orwell is still on Amazon for $9.99 - perhaps this is the legitimate version. Amazon should have eaten the cost and switched everyone's ownership to the legitimate version. However, as the link I posted said, Amazon claims their systems are automated but they are going to work on fixing this for the future. We will see. I still enjoy my Kindle.

[lame54]

4. Fahrenheit 451...

start memorizing 1984 and Animal Farm page by page

[BolivarianHero]

5. WTF?

I thought those books were in the public domain. I've never needed Torrents or anything to find Orwell.

Besides, it's not wrong to download books by dead authors: especially not dead leftist authors who wouldn't want those parasites getting rich off their work when doing so keeps their works from the masses.