Last week, Amazon sent a shiver down the spine of the Internet when it remotely deleted copies of the books “1984″ and “Animal Farm” from users’ Kindles. As just about everyone was quick to point out, the incident showed a very “Big Brother”-like side to the company. It was simply dumbfounding, and left many people very, very angry. And it made many question whether they should ever buy any books on their Kindles again.
Amazon quickly admitted that the move was a mistake to the press with a bland statement, but that wasn’t enough. So today, right before the company announced its earnings, CEO Jeff Bezos personally apologized for the incident as follows:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
While the company had its reasons (apparently, the versions it deleted were unauthorized versions) and did give refunds, it didn’t change the fact that it was invading devices and taking back content which those people had (at least to their knowledge) legally bought. And it knows that was wrong, which is good.
Companies make mistakes, and we’ll chalk this up to a big, dumb one by Amazon, because they’ve now said as much. But what also troubles me is that while Amazon apologizes for incidents like this, it says nothing about other sketchy moves. Like how it is forcing mobile applications to be taken down because they access their APIs in a way that they don’t like (even though it’s fine to use the same calls on desktop versions of the apps).
And the whole idea of companies being able to remotely wipe content that you’ve bought is still troubling (Apple can do it to on your iPhone, but hasn’t used that power yet). But welcome to the 21st century. Not only is Big Brother watching, he’s got a backdoor passcode into your devices — and a kill switch.
I forgive you Jeff.
I don’t forgive him for not caring about Europe. Why can’t he just sell an unlocked HSDPA version one can put any sim card in? And why can I buy books on amazon.com from the US, amazon.co.uk from the UK or amazon.de from Germany, but when it comes to ebooks, rights only work within each country?
I would much prefer paying a fixed monthly fee, even as much as $20 per month, to get unlimited access to all books, all newspapers and all blogs.
And then I think Amazon needs Wacom or other stylus input touchscreen technology, for annotations and for better web interfaces.
While I know these are the inevitable outcomes of a digitized world, it still doesn’t feel good knowing that not only can this happen, but its the growing trend.
How is it a growing trend? Amazon just said they messed up and won’t do it in the future. And I think it is far from inevitable that this type of thing will become the norm.
The problem is that they can do it again. If borders illegally sold you a book, they can’t raid your house for it and leave money by your bookshelf. All we’re left with is Amazon’s good will. Once e-books go DRM Free, then Amazon WONT be able to do it again. And that’s when I’ll buy a kindle and an e-book. Until then, forget about it
DemoGen: Where does he say they won’t do it again?
Doesn’t feel good? Then read the terms and conditions on the products you buy.
This whole thing sounds like people getting upset that the library charges you money if you don’t bring it back on time. It’s pretty clearly stated in the terms you accept to use the library.
Similarly, you bought a product that allows wireless connectivity to add and delete objects off your device. The terms clearly state they can remotely terminate your licenses. And then you get upset that they can do that? Vote with your money and buy a real book or an eReader that doesn’t allow remote delete if it’s a big deal. You have a choice.
Here’s an idea. Amazon should just wholesale copy and paste your response in BIG BOLD letters on all of their e-book pages and whenever you turn on your kindle and the kindle product page. How would that affect sales? People want to BUY books, and if the button says BUY it should be a purchase not a lease. You idiot.
Not good enough.
I agree… cat’s out of the bag and I can’t trust them anymore. I was about to buy a kindle the day this news came out, I’m going to wait a long time before even considering buying one.
And what Jeff Bezos said is woefully inadequate, I want Amazon to explicitly guarantee that once I buy something, I have full rights and Amazon will never, after the fact, remotely in anyway alter the sold goods… period. Notice the carefully worded statement with BS like “we will do things according to our principles”… I’m not falling for it. Amazon, I trusted you but this was just way out of line. It’s like Barnes and Noble breaking into my house, stealing my book and leaving some change. In this “apology,” he doesn’t even make an effort to address the issue.
This is important but more important is to remove the capability for them to remove content.
I will not trust them to decide not to.
The kindle device must not allow remote control without user authorization.
Exactly. No where in his apology does he say Amazon will remove the ability to delete a purchased product from your Kindle.
This would be a perfect opportunity for an ethical company to jump in with a competitive product. They would sell tons of product if they just said “What you buy, you get to actually keep!”
The solution is for Amazon to compensate the actual copyright holder on its end if it accidentally sells an illegal copy, i.e., buy a legal copy to make up for selling an illegal copy. The end user can then receive (or not receive if the illegal copy is basically identical to the legal one) a legal copy for free and be “suggested” to read that one instead. Meanwhile the old one is left untouched and no additional charges are incurred to the user.
That’s a very sensible plan, which is probably why no one will ever adopt it. :-/
Asad, how is this a growing trend? I mean, sure, the possibilities are arguably increasing for backdoor access , but I haven’t heard anything even remotely close to this incident happening over the last few years. Even when Apple is mentioned, wielding similar powers, it’s important to note that these companies are painfully aware of the backlash from the fickle consumers.
I personally feel that Apple SHOULD have full control over its ecosphere, especially if it is contractually bound by carrier SLAs to protect them from harm.
I think Amazon is a cool company, but it’s very hard to shake what they did here. biggest WTF of the year.
Hey TechCrunch Weenies, give the guy a break. He apologized unreservedly and sincerely. What else do you want him to do — fellate you?
Don’t promise what you can’t deliver, his kneepads are already worn out from license negotiations.
No… that was a carefully worded statement. He just said that they will “make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.” He never said they won’t do it again. I want him to say that once I buy something, I OWN it, amazon should have no rights over it. Until then…. whatever pathetic excuses he gives are just that.
I love books, and the written word…but I will absolutely not invest my money in building a library of books on a device which has the BUILT IN ABILITY TO DELETE ALL OF THOSE BOOKS, WITHOUT ANY INTERVENTION, REMOTELY.
You would have to be an idiot to buy books in this fashion.
I was a day away from buying my first kindle when this happened. I’m not going to buy now.
“Like how it is forcing mobile applications to be taken down because they access their APIs in a way that they don’t like (even though it’s fine to use the same calls on desktop versions of the apps).”
Small correction: one of the apps taken down does not use Amazon’s API, it uses data gathered by the desktop version (still ok) to display on the iPhone. What makes this really stupid is that I can export a spreadsheet of the data and carry that on my iPhone, but app developers cannot make viewers for the data.
I really don’t see what the big deal is here… just buy a legal copy and stop whining about it. If this is that big an issue for someone they should consider themselves lucky that they have no real problems.
I absolutely love my Kindle, but this does freak me out a little. The idea of remote control of content is very scary. I accept Amazon’s explanation and apology, but if there is ever again any indication that Amazon has attempted to manipulate downloaded content, even if it does not affect me personally, I will wrap my Kindle up in a New York minute, send it back to Mr. Bezos with a very sad and angry note…and go back to buying books at my local Barnes and Noble store.
Big Brother is government, not corporations.
I hope this little education lesson in reading the fine print of the contracts you sign (your terms and conditions of owning that Kindle) don’t water down the meaning of Big Brother – the fear that government is increasingly monitoring and controlling our actions and thoughts.
It’s also corporations (alone and in with the government). Here’s one of the known reminders, not surprisingly from the tragic Bush era: “Tapping into AT&T”: http://articles...opinion/ed-nsa5
MG, I think TechCrunch needs to issue a correction and possibly an apology on you reported this news in your first post. The post said the “apparently the publisher changed their minds about having digital versions of the books available for the Kindle” which was not the case – the publisher was selling unauthorized copies of the books. It’s still bad the way that Amazon handled the situation, but I think this is an important difference that had a huge impact on how people perceived the story.
I was outraged at first when I thought that Amazon would just remove a book like that on the whim of a publisher, but when I read the whole story, it seemed a lot less terrible.
The “problem” is that Amazon’s relationship with publishers is none of the user’s business, and it is bad for Amazon to make it so. Your “important difference” is really a mere distinction that does not change the thrust of the story.
That’s a rap on Amazon, why the hell did they allow that book to be sold? Excuses that they didn’t know is just stupid… if they can’t control, they shouldn’t be in the business.
My original comments from 2009-7-19: “Jeff Bezos’ & Amazon’s Big “Tell”: http://chrisco....mazon-big-tell/
Amazon obviously bungled this, and they’ve apologized. I accept. My worry, and the reason I haven’t bought a Kindle, is that in 10 years whatever e-reader is then dominant won’t be able to reader books made now for the Kindle. I buy books to use as permanent resources, and I’m not sold that kindle books will turn out as such.
Apologies can’t solve this problem. Somebody could compromise Amazon’s security and erase all your books. And in the long run that’s probably inevitable. They’ll probably be able to fix it when that happens, but it’s sort of this ticking time bomb design.
If you’re going to mess up, mess up BIG! This was made all the more GLARING because the eBook was Big Brother (1984) and, to a lesser extent, Animal Farm. If this was a Sitcom could you have written a better script? Great plot device! Old Man Murphy was laughing great guffaws on this one! Epic Fail Amazon!
Nostradamus predicted this.
“In the waning days of man, a dark lord shall rise to rule the earth, while his minions shall take from the masses their source of knowledge. They shall burn the vaults of knowledge. Embers shall rise above the pillars and shall start with a kindling…”
nice one – he right you know!
i can’t imagine bezos as a dark lord, but i think this quote is right on the money.
i think barnes and nobles and other hardcopy outlets are very greatful for this huge mess.
BUY BOOKS=PERMANENT OWNERSHIP.
AMAZON KINDLE=RENT BOOKS.
was going to buy a kindle soon, but no way in hell now. i’ll stick to paper.
If you went to a store and it unwittingly sold you stolen property, why do you think you have some right to the stolen property? What if it was *your* stolen property, sold through the store? To be consistent you must defend the so-called right of the end buyer to keep what is – in fact – *your* property. In fact, the police *can* physically come and take it away from the buyer because – in fact – it is NOT their property.
It is unfortunate that Amazon bent over backwards to accomodate the pretentious self-righteousness of commentators who blew this up into some kind of huge cause. It isn’t. They didn’t remotely blow away your only personal copy of a photo, they removed – and refunded – illegally sold digital data that is utterly trivial to replace in legal form.
Suppose the Kindle did not physically contain the bits but instead, was only a remote access device to files held on a remote server? I think this is partially a psychological issue. People are upset because “their” bits were on their Kindle. The point is that, yes, it their Kindle, but it was *not* “their bits”.
1) The point is that police can only take your property with a court order. And, presumably you have a right to challenge such an order. Big (and I think quite obvious) difference here. If the remote deletion was ordered by the courts, that’d be different.
2) Anyone who equates digital copyright infringement with real world theft (on either side of the debate) is either an idiot, a troll, or both.
everythings is ok about this. a illegal sale had happened that the one side of the deal has corrected this based on responsibality. i think the mistake was about missing a little alert box: it could be : “Dear customer, this stuff have sold in a illegal way and will be deleted from your device “…. and what’s this Big Brother label on Amazon…watching and choosing healthy applications for us on iphone store the Bigest Brother is Apple. where is iPhone terms of use? that describes users can’t download and use adult games and program on the device!!!!
The Kindle is a joke. So sorry for folks who are still buying them and then renting the books to go on them.
It’s a bit different than an iPod. And thank goodness apple can’t see on to my iPod and delete content it didn’t like. There’s an imaginary metric somewhere about the terabytes of un-purchased music on iPods while Apple continues to sell you larger and larger hard drives. But see… We bought the iPod. We buy and rip and exchange music to fill our habits.
Now if the Kindle could be repurposed into a Twitter Reader, like this http://twindle.me
@jmacofearth
i think there is room on the market for other ebook devices using opensource texts and allowing full pdf functionality. Amazon is too big now for any warm fuzzy feelings from consumers. Their auto response support emails are the worst.
Just use Paper!!!
it is a problem and it’s great that Jeff decided to apologize but it’d be even better if Amazon decided to give out a free ebooks from the people they removed the ebooks from. I think it’s the right thing to do. http://ziggytek.com/
Has there been any kind of response to the people whose annotations on the books they purchased got deleted as collateral damage?
Kudos to Jeff for handeling the situation like this! Makes me want one more than ever… but they just won’t sell the thing in Europe! Jeff, if you’re reading this: Europe is ready for you man!
Bezos could have said that Amazon would delete the “delete” feature from current and future Kindle (and similar) products–just to add a little “guarantee” that would make us believe he was telling the truth.
This is how it should have gone if this functionality was not planned from the start and someone at the top did not know how things work.
Head dude: We have been selling illegal copies of books. Remove them from peoples devices pronto.
Not head dude: That is not a possible because we have not designed the software to remotely access the owners device without the owners’ authorization.
Head dude: ok, just remove the listing, reimburse the copyright holder, notify the buyers and offer a refund.
Six months ago bloggers (notably Stephanie at UrbZen) warned about this kind of thing.
See:
http://notionsc...we-told-you-so/
Re: In response to Amazon’s remote deletion of 1984 and Animal Farm
Hi there,
Saw you’d written about the Amazon / 1984 flap, and I thought you might be
interested in the petition we launched yesterday:
http://defectiv....org/amazon1984
We have over 1400 signatures already, and signers include Lawrence Lessig,
Clay Shirky, Cory Doctorow and other notable authors, librarians, and
scholars.
The petition opens:
“We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which
books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon’s
are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon’s
use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear
threat to the free exchange of ideas.”
Please have a look, and if you support the cause or think it would be
interesting to your readers, a blog post would be great!
Thanks,
-Holmes Wilson
Free Software Foundation