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.

Re:damage

[digitalunity]

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.

Re:Nice gesture, but that's not what worries me

[Anonymous Cowar]

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.)

Re:Annotations??

[Anonymous Cowar]

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.

Re:Annotations??

[Anonymous Coward]

Each Kindle has a setting to "back up annotations", which defaults to "on". You can get at your own annotations from http://kindle.amazon.com/ [amazon.com], sync them to another device, and get them back if you delete the book and redownload it from your "archived" items at a later date.

Re:Fuck you, Amazon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Break into my device and delete a product that /I PAID FOR/, refund the original purchase price, and then, months later, apologize and offer either a coupon , or a check for $30, or a restoration of the original product, in addition to the refund?

Fixed that for you.

Seriously, did you even read the summary? Amazon could have handled it better, yes, but the way they did handle it is hardly as bad as everyone's making it seem.

Re:damage

[jpmorgan]

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.

Re:damage

[Quothz]

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 [nytimes.com].

Re:Scary that they can restore the annotations.

[schwaang]

In the "run ubuntu on a kindle [slashdot.org]" story, the guy said the kindle uploads syslogs twice a day. That's probably more about monitoring errors and basic usage than any individual tracking, I hope.

It's a normal part of the kindle's operation to sync the last position read in your books. That's what lets you pick up where you left off on another device tied to the same account.

So in theory they know how fast a reader you are, and more interestingly, they could see for any particular book if there are parts where a lot of readers get bogged down or give up at. No idea whether they keep any of those stats, or whether the privacy policy/TOS permit/allow that.

It's also normal to backup to the cloud any annotations, but you can turn that feature off.

It also has gps, and I have no idea whether it ever sends that back to amazon. But potentially it knows that sometimes I read in the bathroom.

The thing that distinguishes the kindle from any other ereader I've seen is that it fully incorporates the cloud for downloading and backing up books, annotations, blog updates, etc. Which is really really cool, and also an honest potential threat to privacy.

Re:damage

[psm321]

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.

Public domain content here.

[BrokenHalo]

I'm not sure the same is true if you purchase goods which infringe copyright.

In this case, I'm not sure how copyright comes into it, since the books concerned are clearly derivative works. The original text of both books is now well and truly available in the public domain, and in fact are available in clear text at Project Gutenberg here [gutenberg.net.au] and here [gutenberg.net.au].

All you would be paying for is someone else's annotations.

Re:damage

[selven]

No, it's pro consumer! It allows Amazon to deliver high-value content!

Re:damage

[easyTree]

Until we get that, I have no interest in a Kindle.

Me either; I'm very happy with my iliad reader [irextechnologies.com]

Re:Public domain content here.

[jonbryce]

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:damage

[Darkness404]

Amazon shouldn't have had an ability to remotely pull books in the first place. Would I want a book with a small lighter attached to it that could be remotely activated and the book would burn? Amazon should have simply paid the publisher the rights, or gave them another "legal" copy of 1984 that is virtually the same. Not only was the book erased but also the notes. So heres what should have happened:

-Amazon removes the offending books from sale
-Amazon offers to allow each customer to download a non-offending book but allows them to keep the offending book already on their Kindle
-Everyone is happy