Sherry Chandler

What? They can do that?

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

The books they deleted? 1984 and Animal Farm.

Via tinydoctor

Gin Petty, on her way to a bonsai workshop, sent this link to Amazon’s explanation:

Amazon said late Friday that it recalled two Kindle e-books because the publisher lacked the rights to the book. However, in the future, it says it won’t pull already downloaded material from customers’ devices.

The removal of two George Orwell books from the accounts of those who had already purchased them sparked an outcry from customers, bloggers, and mainstream media outlets.

“These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books,” Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said in an e-mail. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers.”

Herdener said Amazon won’t handle things the same way in the future. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”

For me, the issue remains, not whether they will do it again, but that they can do it.

Not that I’m in the market for a Kindle anyway. I spend a lot of time at the computer but when I read a book I still want it to feel, smell, and look like a book.

BTW, this site is out there, legal or not. And then there are the Orwell Diaries. And on Twitter.

Update from The Bookseller:

It is not the first time Amazon has removed titles that were offered via Kindle in breach of copyright and sold illegally through its store. Other examples include pirated copies of Twilight books by Stephenie Meyer, Harry Potter books and the works of novelist Ayn Rand.

But Amazon’s actions have caused a backlash, with customers learning that when they purchase a book using Kindle they do not necessarily own it for life. One wrote on Amazon.com’s forum: “When I buy a book, I own it. Today i find that when I ‘buy’ a Kindle book, I am leasing it and it is subject to recall by the issuer.” One Kindle user even had his notes on the book removed: Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading 1984 on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he is reported to have said.

Update via