So plenty has already been said about this, but we’re going to weigh in too because it’s just so ridiculous. Amazon began remotely deleting books from Kindles this morning. Illegal books? Nope. Perfectly legal versions of George Orwell’s “1984″ and “Animal Farm”, purchased through Amazon.
Why? Well, apparently the publisher changed their minds about having digital versions of the books available for the Kindle, reports David Pogue. Okay, that’s up to them — from this point forward. But those who already paid for the books, own them. In a word, this is bullshit.
Seriously, why doesn’t Amazon just come into our houses and burn the print copies as well while they’re at it?
This remote deletion issue is an increasingly interesting one. Last year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs confirmed that the company has a remote “kill switch” to remove apps from your device if it thinks that is necessary. To the best of my knowledge, they have yet to use such functionality, and would only do so if there was a malicious app out there that was actually causing harm to iPhones. They have not even used it to kill some poor taste apps that were quickly removed from the App Store, like Baby Shaker.
That sounds reasonable. What Amazon is doing, is not. Yes, they credit your account with the money you paid for the book, but I don’t want the money. I want the book, which I legally bought. And this follows its poor choice in making certain app makers remove their apps from the App Store that call their APIs in ways they don’t like — that is to say, on mobile devices. Laughable.
Pogue and our own CrunchGear have it right in pointing out the parallels between a move like this and Orwell’s own novels that are being removed. “And of course the fact that this happened to 1984, of all books, makes this even more surreal,” write Gizmodo.
Big Brother is in your Kindle. Watching.
Update: As commenter Edward Virtually notes, this action is likely within Amazon’s legal rights. I think that’s pretty obvious or there is no way they would have done it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not complete and utter bullshit too. Everyone who hears about this and has a Kindle will now think twice about buying a book on there. Legal BS aside, this is Amazon shooting themselves in the foot here. Big time.
Update 2: Amazon has admitted how stupid this was, and says it won’t do so in the future. But InformationWeek is reporting that the FTC may be interested in looking at Amazon’s shady actions.
[photo: flickr/pccorreia]
By destroying the possessions of the property owners, Amazon committed vandalism, and should be sued.
Everyone is overreacting before looking at the facts:
“This looks to be a case of a bad copy of 1984 being removed from the kindle store, not a major publisher changing their mind. If you read the amazon discussion, this has happened before. Which makes sense. I could self publish a book called 1984 on kindle and just upload an ebook I found somewhere else. If people buy it, and amazon finds out, they probably remove those non legit copies and refund the users. If you look here: http://www.amaz...30;..amp;sr=1-2 it looks like the book is still available from a major publisher.”
(Reposted by TristanGlabrio from Gizmodo).
I think we should all calm down. Yes?
LOL. You think so?
Check this out:
http://www.bc.e...1998040801.html
“the first sale doctrine, codified in section 109(a) of the Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. §109(a), limit[s] the right of American manufacturers to control the distribution of their copyrighted products once they are sold to foreign buyers. The first sale doctrine states that once a copyright owner sells a copy of his work to another, the copyright owner relinquishes all further rights to sell or otherwise dispose of that copy.”
Protection of private property is taken pretty seriously in this country. The “first sale doctrine” is famous, goes way back, has been many times recodified, and is consistently upheld.
AMAZON has easily violated the “first sale doctrine”. There is no question. They will surely be sued for this, and it’s gonna be fun to watch.
Not unless the user waived their rights when they accepted the TOS.
EULAs authors aren’t above the law. They can’t magically ‘waive away’ U.S. Copyright laws and 100 years of legal precedent. And EULAs most certainly do NOT entitle any type of bizarre vigilante action as occurred here.
The EULA on my neighbors tree reads:
“Trespassers will be shot”.
My frisbee landed is in his yard. I want it back. I better not because I can get shot, right?
LOL. I’m sorry, no. That’s not how it works. I don’t waive my rights away by disregarding the sign to fetch my frisbee.
Sorry Randy, but Will is probably right. It is permissible to contractually waive most legal rights e.g. when one signs consent forms. I haven’t read the Kindle ToS, but I’m sure Amazon’s lawyers would have examined its legal obligations carefully before taking this action.
That said, legality does not necessarily result in a commercially or ethically sound outcome.
But to what right are you referring? The provisions in Federal copyright laws which protect your ownership of your private property after it has been sold? Then a85, you are flat wrong; that indeed cannot be ‘waived away’. Your ‘right’ to use WHIPSERNET? Perhaps. But not your books. The digital copies you own of your books are private property. They are just as much yours as anything physical.
Regardless, a85, even if you *were* correct, Amazon still has no authority to enforce its EULA — the merchandise was sold! Amazon hasn’t the right to usurp all legal proceedings and deny owners due process, destroying the merchandise they had sold without any legal mandate or owner’s consent. We call that “vigilante justice”.
Folks need to stop mislabeling these books as “services”, and somehow therefore beholden to cancellation or revocation like a membership or subscription. WHISPERNET is the service, NOT THE BOOKS. The books are “permanent”, they are not a service. The books are not beholden to ANY ToS. Once sold, they become exclusively the personal property of the new owner, and can NEVER be ‘revoked’ or ‘cancelled’.
Where software is involved, the first sale doctrine only applies to the physical media which contains the software. (The license is derivative of ownership of the physical media, which is why EULAs can’t restrict resale of the software.)
Courts have not ruled on exclusively digital goods; NONE of the cases below deal with exclusively digital goods.
THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE — If the courts had already ruled that digital goods were covered by the first sale doctrine, THE PLAINTIFFS WOULD ALREADY HAVE MENTIONED THAT AS ONE OF THE CLAIMS OF THEIR CASE.
Well, what can I say, Jim? At least the NYT (7/27/09) seems to agree with me, that the doctrine of ‘first sale’ was infringed by Amazon in this case.
Yes they should be sued. Somebody needs to teach them how to do business.
You are right. And there is indeed a very valid case. My kindle digital copy of the book is now worth much more than what they refunded since it is a scarce resource? I think they should be refunding the current value and not the original cost price.
Except that they didn’t buy the books, they licensed them.
That’s a significant difference, b/c it means that no ownership was transferred.
(And exactly what ownership could be transferred? The bits? no, b/c they aren’t the same bits that were transferred or even stored in memory. The words/content? no, b/c that’s “owned” by the author/copyright holder.)
Doesn’t matter. The “first-sale doctrine” of U.S. Copyright Law protects owners of digital content with EULAs.
http://en.wikip...t-sale_doctrine
As you can see, sellers of digital merchandise who wield their EULA and attempt to steal or destroy digital private property consistently lose in court.
Are you really citing Wikipedia as a source of law?
Are you aware that it won’t hold up in court? It’s frequently wrong, especially when it comes to ideological issues.
I’m just guess here, but this is probably covered by their license and/or terms of service. I still think its absolutely crazy, but legally this is probably okay.
When they are refunding everyone with what they paid, then i dont see any problem in this stuff!
The problem comes in the case that some folks made annotations and notes to their copy of 1984, and now those are gone along with the book. At least one college student has gone on the record reporting this, and others likely are in a similar situation.
Or as it was pithily put on the IP mailing list:
“Some author’s rights are more equal than others”
As techie Orwellian stuff go, this is nothing compared to what goes on in China and what occurred under the Bush Administration, with both using American technology
Yet no reporting here. Welcome to Fox News: you are being distracted.
Per Wikipedia, “1984″, published in 1949, is now public domain in countries such as Canada, Russia, and Australia.
So if you are a Canadian, Russian, or Australian citizen, and you get the Amazon midnight zap treatment, you could sue them for #1) charging you for a public domain work, #2) for zapping it off your Kindle, as in destruction of private property.
Here is a free ebook version of “1984″ on Gutenberg Project Australia: http://gutenber...s01/0100021.txt
I am assuming if you’re a citizen from countries not mentioned above, and you read this free public domain version of “1984″, you are safe from having your eyes gouged out by copyright police, but don’t take my words for it.
You CAN charge for public domain work.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about that.
Go to the store and buy a copy of “Night of the Living Dead” or “Reefer Madness” and enjoy.
When something enters public domain, it just means that it is not controlled by anyone anymore.
You can consume it, sell it or give it away the same way I can.
“Reefer Madness”?
Give it up, grandpa! Smoking that stuff makes you very uncool.
Reading TechCrunch is the new high.
Yes, Amazon & the book publisher should be sued. I hope they get slapped with a class-action suit.
As a kindle owner, I love my kindle but feel that Amazon’s big-brother attitude is just unacceptable. They need to be taught a lesson.
The proper way should have been to just pull the kindle version from the site, and let the existing users keep their copies.
Folks:
Sellers doesn’t “let” us keep our property after they have sold it to us. Even, SG, if it the seller later decides their merchandise wasn’t fit for sale.
Your bought it. IT IS YOURS.
If Amazon wants it back, they have to ASK for it. If you refuse, they have to take you to court.
Anything else is either:
(1) theft, or
(2) vandalism
People must understand this. Apple, RIAA, Amazon — these “Digital content publishers” aren’t stewards of your property, they are PEDDLERS of it, and once they sell it to you, YOU OWN IT!
Were the books sold or was the content issued via a revocable license?
The book was sold. Permanently.
New York Times: “Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”
this touches on the concept of ownership as it relates to digital commodities and activities. Too many do not think ownership of your ID or data is important enough. We need a pervasive change in regards to how the marketplace where service providers and consumers interact functions. There can not be owners and non-owners. Only owners have real substantial rights. We need to eliminate consumers and make all transactions between owners. Own your marketplace represented by your ID and all the account designation you apply it to. Own your companies and the commodities they produce. Then lets set our contracts up to rationally approach relationships on this premise.
#1 Reason why i will not purchase a Kindle
Very fitting it happened for 1984, lol.
LOL seriously
Do they get refunds?
Yeah, all those that purchased the books have a credit on their account for the amount of the purchase.
But that doesn’t make up for it. The local bookstore can’t break into my house, take books off my shelf, and leave some cash behind and call it OK.
right, exactly.
You also didn’t sign terms and conditions at your library that allow them to change the service at any time without liability .
Serious non-issue here people. You signed the contract. Now you’re upset with what’s in it?
Yes. Our leveraging position is not contract law, but Amazon’s desire to have us existing customers continue to purchase from them. We use that position, making Amazon aware that we are unhappy with this policy, so that they might change the policy in order to retain our future business.
@TheFlamingoKing
Most people don’t read the terms when they trust a company. Now that the trust has been broken, I’m sure people will pay more attention – sad but true…
I for one never thought Amazon will stoop so low to appease a stupid publisher… but now that they have done it, I’ll think twice before signing/buying anything from Amazon from now on
If you’re in receipt of stolen goods, even if you were unaware that they were stolen, then the authorities have the right to seize those goods. Try buying a stolen car someday and see how long you get to keep it once the cops find it.
In this case, the books were technically stolen, because the company that sold them through Kindle didn’t have the right to them.
Amazon has no authority. Because a “sale” took place, they can no longer intervene without a legal mandate of some kind. And typically court orders are enforced by the DoJ, not a plaintiff.
This is scary. A real life example of the double edge sword of the digital age. While dispersion of information has become much easier, so can censorship.
This could only be better included Fahrenheit 451
if the money is not returned you might get a “theft by deception” to stick.
@randy
Software is never “owned” It is licensed for cases just like this. In addition the TOS covers this, as stupid as it is.
Actually, my friend, digital content *is* owned. The “EULA” is simply the seller’s forewarning of what actions he may attempt to claim damages for *in court* if he is so inclined.
Once again:
If you violate the EULA, and AMAZON believes they have legal recourse, they must to take you to COURT!
In this case, since no EULA usurps U.S. Copyright law, the foolish company most likely would have lost. Ironic, but beside the point.
Once more time:
Sellers, even of digital merchandise, must either kindly ASK for something back after they have sold it and want it returned, or take you to court and persuade a judge to hand it over.
(1) They cannot destroy the property they have sold you.
(2) They cannot steal it back, vigilante style.
Both are a crime!
‘Digital’ cases of property theft or vandalism don’t somehow become ‘wishy washy’ because of the ephemeral nature of the merchandise. We OWN our private property, plain and simple. EULAs don’t entitle a right to vigilante action! The EULA must be enforced through litigation, not vigilante force.
http://en.wikip...t-sale_doctrine
this is totally bogus!
Amazon scares me.
And the book was 1984. What an irony, lol!!
I’m missing the irony. 1984 is a book about the intrusion of government into our private lives. This is about two willing parties entering into a contract with each other and then one gets upset at the terms and conditions they agreed to. There is no government intervention involved, hence, no relation to 1984 other than the fact that it was the name of the book removed.
Winston Smith also threw documents to the memory hole
“This is about two willing parties entering into a contract with each other and then one gets upset at the terms and conditions they agreed to.”
Your statement requires assumption that the ‘willing parties’ both fully understood the terms of the agreement. If this story is getting this much rise that it must be the case that one party (THE BOOK BUYER) did not know that Amazon has the right to take anything back you legally purchased at anytime without notice….Think of those who were in the middle of reading the book and are now shit out of luck..BTW do you work for Amazon?
Would it be accurate to say … “Hey, you voted for the government .. so bear with what the government does”?
That’s not irony. If it had been a book on Freedom, that would have been irony. Just saying.
If 1984 and Animal Farm aren’t about freedom and the suppression of it, what are they about?
Come on now…. this is just what happens when you have lawyers and computer nerds running the asylum… the truth is these companies need to hire some people who put more care into understanding people and not simply doing knee jerk reactions.. the correct action would of been to replace the books with a letter explaining the action where the book was and a gift certificate for $5 more than the cost of the book or a full refund. The idea being to use this to increase user confidence in the device.
It is easy to look good when things go well but hard to look good when things do not….
Still there is no reason to go hide in the closet.. but hey if need be I wear a tin hat covered in ducktape to protect me from contextual satilite ads… I suggest you do the same..
I’ve always been a big supporter of Digital Content, but lately I’ve been forced to re-think my position. My iTunes Library blew up a few weeks ago when a Consolidation failed, causing me to potentially lose almost a $1,000 worth of music on my computer after several days I was finally able to transfer my LEGAL music from my LEGAL iPod/iPhone back to my Mac. But it was a pain in the butt and iTunes provides no way for you to simply re-download purchased tracks. At least Amazon has the Digital Locker.
Yesterday morning I woke up and discovered my Kindle completely wiped (over 90 purchased books, simply vanished off my Kindle 1). For about 10 minutes my Digital Locker was completely empty – I was really upset, but then it mysteriously came back as “fast” as it mysteriously disappeared.
All of this has completely shaken my faith in the idea of legally purchasing Digital Content – no matter how convenient it might be, because at the end of the day I don’t actually “own” anything that can’t just disappear based on the whim of some company. These companies NEED to make it easier for customers to recover their PURCHASED stuff in case of computer crashes and other issues. Again, at least Amazon does have the Digital Locker so you can manage your digital content on multiple devices. But iTunes, once you purchase a track, that’s it.
Can’t you back up the song files to another drive?
Yeah – you should should probably try that. I copy the entire iTunes Music Folder, so I can just paste it back if anything gos wrong. It works a treat.
That’s what I was trying to do, I have 5,110 tracks – about 32 Gigs, plus another 80 Gigs of Movies from Blu-ray Digital Copy and for some idiot reason I purchased 7 seasons of the X-files when it was on sale. So what I wanted to do was Consolidate my entire Library onto a new 500 Gig External Hard Drive, iTunes crapped out in the middle of the Consolidation process which basically ended up breaking my Library because it could no longer find files. Then my Hard Drive started locking up when I tried to import the Library.Xml files back in.
Other than Library Consolidation, the only other way iTunes will back up data is onto a CD-Rom – which is stupid.
Yah but this is because we all accept so little from apple.. itunes has one of the worst user interfaces.. for all its flashy looks it has a ton of flaws. Its search is very limited… it uses tiny page turner buttons, it is slow, it lacks a playall or at least I don’t know how to set one up where if I download say season 2 of bones and just want to watch them all how come I can’t just click playall.. and as you said it doesn’t allow for digital backup of all files..
That said you really should be using mozy… $5 a month to insure $1000 of music… still it would be nice to have apple create an online locker.. but hey like microsoft is not perfect neither is apple…
@Michelle Alexandria
I believe if Apple could, it would offer a digital locker function. Unfortunately, the deal it made with record labels prevent this to happen, every time a track gets downloaded, even if it’s repeat download, label collect money from Apple.
That been said, I still longing for it to happen, make it happen, el Jobso!!!
BTW: if there still are tracks missing and you can dig the digital receipts out. Contact iTunes costumer service via the account overview page. Explain your situation and when asked provide proof of purchase, usually Apple is very understanding, and it will put the tracks in your available dowloads list. I had encountered a few file system mess-up on my windows machine in the past, Apple let me re-download my lost purchases every time without additional fees.
From what I’ve read, they do get refunds, but it’s still super wrong. This would be especially f-ed up if it happened to a digital textbook that you’d purchased, say, the night before your final.
Yep, they get refunds, but that’s beyond the point, as you note.
This looks to be a case of a bad copy of 1984 being removed from the kindle store, not a major publisher changing their mind. If you read the amazon discussion, this has happened before. Which makes sense. I could self publish a book called 1984 on kindle and just upload an ebook I found somewhere else. If people buy it, and amazon finds out, they probably remove those non legit copies and refund the users. If you look here: http://www.amaz...1828&sr=1-2 it looks like the book is still available from a major publisher.
(Reposted by TristanGlabrio from Gizmodo).
I think we should all calm down. Yes?
If those books are pirated porn or worse. Amazon still can’t remove them remotely from my kindle without my consent or even before knowing.
It’s their store, it’s their fault to put them in there first place.
Apple let some inappropriate apps slipped through in the past year, the apps got removed, but if you downloaded it, it’s your copy! Apple can’t suddenly erase it from your iPhone! And believe me, they had the means to do so.
Bottom line, unless the legally purchased content is a potential security threat to the user or others or some similar scenarios. It’s NOT OK to kill it remotely and pretend it didn’t even exist.
Sounds like a nice way for the publisher to get a lot of free marketing.
I wonder if (print) sales of these two books will go up.
If they do, hopefully not through Amazon.
Woooow. Can’t think of a better way to kill the Kindle – Bezos must have had second thoughts.
And if Jobs ever ‘kills’ an app on my iPhone I’ll trash it publicly.
This is the kind of action that prevents the mainstream from adopting new technologies my friends.
Ridiculous. What a brain fart.
I’m a published author and think this isn’t smart on Amazon’s part. Even if I pulled my book off the market, I wouldn’t want it stolen from people who already bought my book from Amazon.
I have been thinking of getting a Kindle the last 6 months… this is the kind of thing that has me leaning towards sticking with regular books.
I definitely see Amazon losing $ over this.
David Newby
http://www.Fina...Planning202.com
I love my Kindle 1, it recently went on the fritz so I purchased the K2 yesterday, I don’t like it as much as the first 1. I’m an Author as well and getting ready to put our first book on the Kindle.
Michelle Alexandria
I have a general question, not directly related to this post. If I make an app from someone else API and follow the TOS at the time I developed the app and then the company decide to change the TOS an year down the line and my app is not legal based on the new TOS, is their a legal recourse for that?
Sounds like an April Fools joke, it is so absurd.
This only affected 2 books and users got refunds, so what’s the big deal?
please.
Please do some actual journalistic research before you get all high and mighty, MG.
Big deal is people owned those books & Amazon had no right to then just go and take them regardless of the reasoning. Once you purchase & take ownership of the product it’s no longer theirs.
In the case of Apple… that was primarily created to protect the integrity of the iPhone OS, not to censor or remove the apps for whatever the reason. They’ve left that up to the morons running the App Store approval process.
You don’t own the story, just like you don’t own the music or the movies. You’re buying a license to use it, that’s it.
Negative, Bryan. You don’t own books bought on a Kindle. Amazon reserves the right to terminate service, change the service, and has a limited liability clause that prevents people from being able to sue over it.
Don’t like it? Don’t buy a Kindle. Try a paperback, no one’s going to come in your house and take it back because it was an unauthorized sale.
I understand it might be in their TOS, but my point is they should either be more up front about this (which I guess now they’ll have to) or get rid of the “Buy Now” button on Kindle purchases and use another term all together.
When I purchase a book, song or movie I would think a clear representation of what I’m purchasing should be straight forward.
When I “rent” a movie on iTunes I know the terms as they’re clear. Even though I hate the iTunes rental plan I know it before purchasing and didn’t have to sift through 50 pages of legal bs.
The point I was making was they went about this in a bad way and should have at least let the people who purchased the book keep it and if they wanted to get rid of that book for digital download from that point forward, well fine then.
What don’t you like about iTunes rental plan?
I am definitely not buying a Kindle. I am going to buy a BETTER reader from a BETTER company that doesn’t take its customers for granted.
This is disgusting behavior from Amazon’s part.
There is a problem with this logic; Most companies are moving away from ownership being bestowed upon the buyer.
and it happens underneath the noses of the general public.
Ideally, a company doesn’t want you to own anything. It would be better for business if you had to lease everything you paid for, and the cost of you paying buys only a lease on the property that you do not own.
Of course, this upsets customers, but who reads EULA’s?
“… but that was in another country and, besides, the wench is dead.”
Indeed it does sound like a good way to get free marketing. However, it is wrong for Amazon to be deleting books. Does anyone know if these people are at least getting refunds? Amazon should offer to ship them a copy of the actual book. Apparently the customer doesn’t always come first.
Did you contact Amazon and ask why they did this? That’s what any self-respecting journalist would do…
Before everyone cries about this – what does Amazon’s TOS say about it? If this kind of action is clearly allowed by their terms – oh, well – your problem. Lesson learned.
If not – its time to raise hell.
That’s “the cloud” for you.
I believe it’s time for the government to take over the distribution of books. Maybe an amendment to the healthcare bill will be offered so the government can protect us from ourselves. I believe in hope and change.
Wow, that is ridiculous. Your analogy is spot on, that’s like them walking into your house, stealing your books and leaving money on the shelf.
Can they legally do this?
That’s a horrible decision. And to think of all the people that run multi-million businesses on Amazon’s cloud.
WOW! I never thought about it. If they change their cloud terms and suddenly stop providing servers to some companies.
Do they have a right to do that? Is there some obscure text down in the EULA that says they have a right to remove something for you which you purchased lawfully?
I currently struggle with the descission to purchase both an iPhone and a Kindle for this very reason. At which point is the property I purchase mine. Apple limits how you can use the device and Amazon deletes your content without warning. If I’m not violating any law when I make the purchase then I can’t see how anyone has a right to remove/disable something from my personal property i.e. iPhone/Kindle.
Without trying to sound like a wack job, it’s only a matter of time before the insurance companies (Apple) come into your homes and remove your stoves, fire places, cigarettes, water pipes and electrical lines so there will be no more possible liability. What’s to say that Home builders can’t do the same thing. If a fixture company decides they want their lights and faucets back then the home builds will be required to remove them even though you already paid for them.
Honestly, when I purchase a device it’s mine. And if I purchase content to go on that device no one has the right to alter the content I’ve placed on there for any reason, not matter how harmful it may be to myself or others around me.
could this be some sort of INGENIOUS marketing ploy to get 1984 abuzz again?!?!? wow… i’d be so impressed
Legally speaking, you *don’t* own downloaded books, you own a license to read them. Which is why Amazon can and has deleted them when it suits them — your license is subject to any and all terms Amazon put in it, even if you didn’t bother to read it before your “bought” your book(s). This is of course lawyer-created bullshit and a violation of first sale, but since nobody’s been paying attention (technically you don’t own the movies on your DVDs, either), it’s probably too late to do anything about it now other than buy real books and not be suckered into buying unreliable access to their content online. Pity nobody listened to Stallman, who warned about all this decades ago.
All good points, but Amazon had to know this shitstorm was coming if they ever did this. Legal-wording or not, a lot of people will think twice about buying any book on a Kindle now, which strikes at the heart of one of Amazon’s most exciting new businesses.
I just realized I basically said the same thing about App Store as you already stated in the original post.
I saw this story on Gizmodo first, so I didn’t bother to read your post through.
Lesson learned. And it feels rather weird.
Just correcting legal inaccuracies in the parent comment:
As he pointed out, you do not actually “buy” the e-book. Hence, the first-sale doctrine does not apply.
Furthermore, even if the first-sale doctrine did apply, it ONLY applies to PHYSICAL GOODS. E-books are by definition not physical goods.
Not true! I just went to see the purchase page for Kindle books and sure enough there’s a “Buy Now” button plastered right there. Of course somewhere hidden deep within 50 pages of legal bs it probably says you’re licensing it, but still they should be more up front about it.
There is no “physical goods only” clause to the doctrine of first sale, that is an invention of lawyers, as is the whole “license to use” vs owning what you bought nonsense used to violate it. My comment is that by the letter of the law Amazon is untouchable. In terms of its spirit, ethics and PR their move sucks and they will surely pay a heavy price in users deciding they’d rather really own things than be conned into thinking they do.
Jim, you are flat wrong. The ‘first sale doctrine’ has been routinely used to uphold the rights of owners of digital property, even as recently as 2008:
“In 2008, in Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk Inc., a U.S. Federal District Judge in Washington rejected a software vendor’s argument that it only licensed copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constituted copyright infringement. Judge Richard A. Jones cited first-sale doctrine when ruling that a reseller was entitled to sell used copies of the vendor’s software regardless of any licensing agreement that might have bound the software’s previous owners .” (reference.com)
http://www.lawu...autocad_design_
Sorry randy, but your dead wrong as well. RTFC.
That case was about the *physical media* containing the software. The physical media was resaleable, the software was not. The difference from this situation is that there is no physical media containing the e-books which can be sold separately.
Jesus christ. Before you all get up in arms, Learn the fucking law first. Little distinctions like this are important.
Customers don’t care if you can ‘legally’ steal their content.
Even before Amazon should be worried about the legal repercussions, it should be worried about the fallout in the market.
It’s just given some competitor a shot in the arm.
Well technically I would still own my license to read the content, right? But that’s not the case here, these customer’s “license” was still taken from them. I wasn’t aware that they could do that so easily, it’s almost like buying a subscription to Kindle content. I thought you were buying a digital book, that is yours to read whenever. I probably would never buy a Kindle now I that I know that. I would much rather just buy an audio version.
It makes me wonder what other license terms I agreed to that I wasn’t aware of.
Hello Terms of Use, I believe I’ll stop skipping over you from now on.
Only slightly more ironic would have been if it was copies of Farenheit 451
“Kindle” means “set fire to”
unbelievable. was planning on buying one when it launched over here in the uk. forget that idea.
feels like cds vs drm’d music and we all know how that ended up
READ the Terms of Use. You agreed to them. Sure they suck, but whatever. You could buy the real book and then you might have something to bitch about if they burned it. Otherwise you live by Amazon rules.
I’m just really glad this wasn’t another Twitter/google/iphone post. There really is other news out there.
Fahrenheit 451!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Would have been a better analogy than 1984
Either way deleting purchased content from someone’s personal property sucks. Amazon would have been better served to pay the publisher a premium to avoid having to delete. Any amount of money to the pub would have been better than this pr blunder.
Fahrenheit 451 is a good analogy indeed. Amazon really blew it on this one.
Oh! That is sick :S
Yes, this is pretty sucky and probably shouldn’t be happening, however, this boils down to a mere fact.
Are we purchasing the material, or digital rights to the material?
If, by their terms, we’re purchasing rights to their material that may be terminated at a given time, and we agree to this, we really should’ve seen it coming. I still think, however, that it DOES suck, and that Amazon should change this policy. Because its the same as music companies going “you purchased the right to play that song on that CD for as long as that CD lasted, no longer, etc.”
This is really wrong.
This was pretty much the straw that broke the camels back. Today I canceled my NY Times and Atlantic subscriptions over this – and I wasn’t even an owner of any of the titles in question.
Amazon has too much control over the platform. If I buy something I ought to own it. I shouldn’t have to worry about my content being snatched from me.
If Apple were able to reach out and zap music from people’s iPods there would be a righteous uproar. I fail to see how this is any different.
I hate to break this to you, but it’s a very good bet Apple can and is legally allowed per the terms you agreed to when you downloaded music from iTunes to delete anything they want from your iPod. They just haven’t done it yet. Unless you own physical media, you’re at their mercy. Which is why I own all my music on CDs and rip my own mp3s so they can go straight to hell.
Well put, MG.
This is absolutely unforgivable. If the Kindle ever makes it to the UK, then this alone is enough to stop me buying one.
Somebody definitely needs to test this in court too.
They should of notified the users before-hand that this was possible, it really is bad business on Amazon’s part and makes it look really bad. They should just stop selling the digitized novels and let the people who already bought it keep it.
I’m disappointed in Amazon for doing this – you usually expect Apple to do ridiculous stuff like this, but I always thought of Amazon to be more of a principled company that treated customers with a little more respect.
“Really, Amazon?” I smell a Weekend Update segment coming…
Why do you guys keep harping on Microsoft when your darling companies like Amazon and Apple do shit that’s JUST as worse (if not more worse) that what microsoft does?
You guys are just out to criticize anyone successful just b/c that’s how you get press
Is this any worse than TechCrunch deleting critical comments?
Not really. I would argue it’s the other way around. And I’m sure they believe this as well.
This is why I absolutely refuse to pay for any digital content that has any sort of DRM or any restrictions or has any ability to erase my content. I just flat out refuse. I also wont pay for cd’s until when I purchase a cd I have the right to put it digitally on any devices I own for the rest of my life and all of eternity in case my future kids want to listen to it as well. I am sick of the whole mess. I saw this story on another site and it linked to a site that has these books free of our own BS copyright laws and has them available as e-books free of charge and free of DRM as they should be since they were written how many years ago?
http://ebooks.a...ta/authors.html
Which one of you monkeys is running the football?
That is total bullshit and will only damage this platform. I buy a lot of technical books that I depend on for projects I am working on. Imagine I have a deadline approaching and plan to do work tonight, only to discover that my needed book is suddenly gone? Or a student is planning to study for a test only to have their book evaporate. Why does Amazon think it is acceptable to unilaterally reverse sales just because they now have the technical means to do it?
This doesn’t put me off to all e-book readers, just Amazon’s. I still prefer the idea of owning a digital copy of a book to a physical copy. I think the key word there is ‘owning’, not ‘licensing’, as with the Kindle.
Another reason I prefer my old-fashioned Palm T|X. My books are in a number of places on my various machines and gadgets.
AHHHHHH!! Lord, will one of you bloggers get the story correct? There’s a REAL big part of this that isn’t being brought up and being outright distorted here, Gizmodo, and with Pogue.
The publisher didn’t have rights to the text! It was like you or me putting 1984 on the Kindle and selling it! It wasn’t “changing their mind” it was “it was illegal for us to sell you this book!”
This is going to happen from time to time when people are allowed to upload willynilly (like YouTube) – the advantages are clear, but this kind of thing WILL happen.
I agree the “reaching onto the device to delete” is creepy. I’m not sure about how they did it – but the issue isn’t what it is being presented as.
I call B.S. on this. I was one of the people affected yesterday and contacted Amazon. They told me there was a “problem” with the book and said nothing about the publisher not having rights. I’ve seen this line peddled on the Kindle forums by many self-appointed IP experts without a shred of proof.
Put up or shut up.
i thought the point was that they HAD rights to distribute, then the printer changed its mind, and after they changed their mind they retro-actively pulled the books?
Thank you, Gideon, for pointing out the truth. Siegler here can’t bother even calling Amazon on the phone without bursting into curses. Here’s a quote from the New York Times (which TechCrunch likes to ridicule for faulty journalism):
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “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,” he said.
http://www.nyti...s/18amazon.html
How could Amazon be so sloppy to allow the wrong publisher to upload and sell the book “1984″? It also sounds like who ever uploaded the book made a killing off of the Kindle, because I am sure they have sold quite a few copies by now. How could Amazon not verify the rights such a popular books?
Even if MG got the story completely wrong, it still shows a flaw with Amazon.
As a side note, TechCrunch does not ridicule the New York Times, I believe Arrington just met with their tech columnist and he admitted he looks through TechCrunch for stories to write about.
But what you’re not addressing is would Amazon have a similar right to remove “illegal copies” of physical books from your home after you have purchased them? I think people have assumed that purchasing digital copies gave them the same right of ownership as purchasing physical copies, and learning that they don’t have the same right is proving to be surprising and upsetting to many as per the comments here, and causing some to reconsider buying a Kindle.
Suppose the same situation occurred with physical books that were added to a bookstore “by a company that did not have the rights to them.” Would it be equally acceptable to say, “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from customers’ homes, and refunded customers,”?
I think this situation has revealed a prevailing uncertainty and lack of knowledge of exactly what it means to “own” digital versus physical products. This is an extremely important issue, and to say that Amazon’s explanation should preclude any further discussion is absurd.
from New York Times article in your link
“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 said.”
Electronic Vandalism.
Too bad Facebook doesn’t own Amazon; they permanently keep all your information.
The Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, also said, “We are changing out systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customer’s devices in these circumstances.”
So if the story was “distorted” why are they stating publicly that they will not be doing this again in the future, rather than publicly insisting that what they did was perfectly right and reasonable and will be done again?
If people don’t think twice about this we are really in trouble both from the consumer side and the business side. Take for example what enterprise business software vendors try to pull and frequently succeed: impose rules in their contracts to limit their customers’ use of third-party contract advisers. Some vendors forbig disclosing details about any problems with defects and bugs and you are not permitted contractually to talk with the press, peers and user groups. Amazon has both consumers and enterprise clients. Time to get a grip!
This is madness, services/goods offered cannot be retracted until unless they have a defect in them, here the defect was ” the book was not supposed to sell on Kindle”. The explanation doesn’t suffice the emotions…darn it!!!
I guess Bezos isn’t the role model I thought he was… just another greedy, hollow man. When did he sell his soul?
as long as you have passwords and access to documents you should be able to do whatever you want with them, including deleting.
or maybe you should first call the user to agree on which pages they can keep.
/sarcasm
Randy, et all have it right. Its been said already, but I’ll add my additional thoughts. My comments from Engadget…
Assuming that Amazon DID have the rights to sell that publishers version of the book at the time that actual purchases were made, the people who gave Amazon money for the “copy” of the book had an exchange of value, and thus took OWNERSHIP of that specific “copy”, exactly the same “transfer of ownership” that occurs in the brick-and-mortar” world. At that point, the publisher, distributors, and Amazon all lose any claims of ownership to that specific copy. Once the publisher decided they no longer wanted to sell the book via Kindle, as is their right, Amazon’s only legal “right” is to remove it from the store. They have no legal claim to the one that has already been “sold”.
Now, I don’t own a Kindle, nor have I read the Kindle ToS, and perhaps deeply buried in the ToS maybe some terminology that indicates that “purchases” are really “leases”, and that all content and items remain the property of Amazon, but I’m doubting it. Absent such terminology, or actual agreement, the word “purchase” has implied legal connotation based on precedent and use, and that includes the notion and understanding of “transfer of ownership”, and all the rights and privileges therein. Even if such terminology DID exist, it would likely be vacated on legal challenge, which is why many such ToS have the included term “this agreement is void where prohibited by law” to signify that any laws prohibiting any terms specified in the ToS will nullify the ToS.
To put the final perspective on it, lets assume you purchased said book from Barnes and Nobles in a store, who at the time had a legal right to sell the book. At some point after your purchase, the publisher decided it didn’t want B&N selling the book anymore. B&N does NOT have the “right” to break into your home at night, take the book back, and leave the money on your night stand, EVEN IF THE LITTLE CHARGE SLIP YOU SIGNED had some verbiage on it that said “we reserve the right to reclaim and refund your purchase at anytime”. Such an agreement would be void as it is illegal. and breaking and entering is sure as hell illegal anywhere in the US…even on an electronic device.
Avi, good point! We are talking about a COPY of the original. Also, if you think about it carefully this copy was CREATED RIGHT ON THE DEVICE from the digital content transferred over the communication lines.
Just my $0.02
It is not only likely that the ToS contain some legalese in it which bears claim to digital copies as being leased by Amazon’s approval, it’s quite LIKELY.
Almost all digital content, from software to games, have such claims of ownership with a basis of lease to the payer. It is prevalent, pervasive and uniformly ignored by the public.
Because, as mentioned before, who reads EULA’s or TOS Agreements?
Exactly right. Sellers’ EULAs are not as omnipotent as people think. EULAs don’t usurp U.S. Copyright Law. It doesn’t matter what wishful nonsense Amazon’s legal interns crammed into the EULAs of the products they were selling — if they violated fundamental property rights, as prima facie it appears they indeed did, the Judge will hold them liable for damages.
At times like these, one’s mind may very well drift toward the CFAA.
“… one’s mind may very well drift toward the CFAA.”
Indeed.
See http://cid-c072....live.com/blog/
Yeah, that’s complete and utter bullshit. But … do I see it right that exactly below this entry is an Amazon.com an Amazon Kindle advertisement?