Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices -NYTimes
Evidently, a company that did not own the copyright to the books “1984” and “Animal Farm” somehow managed to start selling those works on Amazons Kindle website. When the company that does hold the copyright discovered this, they notified Amazon who proceeded to act in the most Big Brotherly way possible by not only to removing the book from their store, but also to deleting it from every customers Kindle who had ever purchased it. They did this without the customers knowledge or permission, and without any explanation of the theft.
Only after an enormous Internet backlash did Amazon offer up an admission that what they did was wrong “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.” But this statement in no way settles major concerns that have now arisen with the company and it’s publishing practices. Not only does the statement imply that they will take they books they sell you away under other circumstances but according Amazons own terms of service customers are entitled to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.” They were already prohibited from destroying their customers property in the first place, they just did it anyway. There is no reason to believe that they won’t do it again whenever they feel they can get away with it.
As far as I’m concerned Amazon has crossed a line that is extremely important to maintain as more and more of our lives transfer to the web. Prior to this story I regularly bought mp3s, Cd’s, and books (both print and Kindle versions) from Amazon. I used both their Kindle and Store apps on the iPhone. I payed for a yearly Amazon Prime account, and just recently signed up to explore their S3 services. I’ve discontinued using all of those services.
Those of you who read my blog regularly know I’m not prone to rants like this. But screw those assholes. Deleting your customers files without their permission is extremely serious. Everyone deserves to know that if you do business with Amazon, regardless of what their terms of service say, they will do whatever they please.
