I was hoping this wouldn’t happen, but I knew it would — it’s the danger of an always-on, always-connected society. Today, Kindle users found themselves a few books short; Amazon had, with no warning, pulled a kill switch on a set of books which a publisher wanted to no longer offer. The books were sucked out of the devices and customers were credited the ten bucks or whatever they paid — like it never happened. Scary, isn’t it? Positively Orwellian, in fact.
The “kill switch” has been brought up in other circumstances — most prominently with the iPhone. While Apple already holds sovereignty over the App Store’s contents, they also reserve the right to deactivate programs (or, one may extrapolate, activate programs) on any or all phones if they feel it’s necessary (or expedient). I never wanted an iPhone because I didn’t want to have any devices under the control of anyone but myself — and now I’m never going to buy a Kindle.
It’s certainly the publisher’s right to say “Actually… we’re going to stay out of the e-book business for now.” Fine by me, so am I! But they don’t get to come to my device and take my data that I paid for. Sorry, Amazon, it’s mine now. If, in a physical book, there was to be a typographical mistake on page 45, or royalty issues preventing further printings, I would not allow the publisher to enter my house and take that book without my consent. Maybe they could say “There was a mistake, please send it back and we’ll give you credit, or a replacement book” — and they could have said that this time.
Clearly Amazon was in a tight spot or they wouldn’t do this, but they could have at least kind of done the right thing. Publishing rights are certainly complicated, but they put their head into that lion’s mouth and they’re going to have to make it right for their customers. Here’s their response so far:
The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.
Italics mine.
Unless there is a reckoning here, this sets a truly frightening precedent for the cloud-based, streaming media world we are entering. What about a movie you bought at the store, and made an official licensed back-up copy of on your computer? Can they nab it? What about an app for your phone that you paid $2.99 for, which adds some functionality that you need but Apple doesn’t like? Can they block it, and if you acquire it elsewhere can they remove it remotely? Telescreens are real, pals, and you bought one with a two-year contract.
It was an ugly, ugly thing Amazon did — and, I might add, extremely ironic considering the author they pulled was George goddamn Orwell. But we’d better get used to things like this if we don’t fight to keep what’s ours. This capability is the wet dream of every media lending (as I like to call them) company on the web, and if there’s one thing we teach them during this honeymoon period of beta tests and startups, it’s that this is not allowed.
[via NYT]
Before you get your panties in a tizzy, please take into account that right now there doesn’t seem to be much of an explanation from Amazon on this matter, but that this may very well be a case of a person or company who does not have the rights to upload this copyrighted work having attempted to illegally sell and profit from the digital version.
So let’s not jump to conclusions. All we’ve got right now is a scripted response from Amazon, a bunch of people who thought they could buy something for $0.99 that is not in the public domain, and the rantings of David Pogue, echoed through the blogosphere at an increasing level of indignation.
Then it should have been handled on the business and legal end, not with a remote DELETE. This still smells of the ability to reach in and rip something out of your pocket, good intentions or not.
I don’t like the idea of a remote delete any more than you do, but I don’t exactly know what you mean by “handled on the business and legal end.” If Amazon sells a copyrighted work that is not authorized by the copyright holder, they’re liable for all kinds of damages. What exactly are they supposed to do? Sue every reader to return the book? Have the person that owns the copyright sue them for the name of everyone who purchased it so that they can sue the readers? I’m just not sure what the right solution is here, but it seems to me that Amazon’s response is certainly the simplest, if not the one that makes everyone feel happy and secure with their Amazon purchases.
Sometimes the simplest solution for a headache is to remove the head, but that’s rarely the right solution.
They offered it on their store, took the money, and now they’ve remotely deleted it. I don’t think there’s a lot of jumping, though I appreciate the moderative stance (it’s the one I’m usually in, though not this time).
Oh God, do I EVER agree with this whole posting! This is bull____ and it extends to the ‘do not record’ flag on Tivo’s and Windows Media Center and so on.
I don’t have a Kindle yet, but I don’t agree with them deleting content remotely.
If I had a Kindle and the content was erased, I’d be very upset about it.
The copyright holder notified Amazon that the books were not authorized to be sold. Amazon had no choice but to remove them pending further negotiations by MobileReference to make them legal. All of the customers that bought the illegal books were refunded their money. Amazon would rather put up with your ignorance of long standing law than put with a real lawsuit; and like most companies, they won’t comment on possible litigation about the matter.
This initial posting is absolutely bull. Theft is not legal.
Items cannot be retroactively unsold. Amazon is liable for the content provided through its services; they should have removed it from the store and paid any due damages to the copyright holder.
Amazon is a large, seemingly reputable retailer. Persons buying these files had every reason to believe, given the source, that they were completely legal and legitimate. The root of the problem was that Amazon did not exercise adequate oversight on the legality of items they were selling through their storefront. With this knowledge, how sure can I be that anything on Amazon is legitimate and not subject to repossession? If I buy an mp3 through their music store, is the RIAA going to come after me because Amazon didn’t ensure that it was a legal copy? The problem was Amazon’s lack of oversight, and was aggravated by a ham-handed, slightly panicky response that appears to violate their own terms of service.
A number of analogies have been made with “receiving stolen property.”
I’m no expert on the US, but here in the UK, if you receive stolen property, then a COURT can order you to return it, even if you purchased it in good faith.
However, the seller can’t just come round to your house and take it.
I’m not aware that Amazon received any court order to do this.
Now, you may say that the Amazon T&Cs allow them to do this without notice. In which case, this isn’t a legal argument – it’s a “Do I want to enter into a contract that gives one party such huge rights” argument.
And for me, as someone who spends £2-3,000 a year on books ($4-5,000), the answer is clearly “no.”
umm… why didn’t you just copy the file from the kindle to the hard drive of you PC. Then you’d still have a copy.
ummm… why don’t you turn off the wireless mode until you have something you need to download. Then you’d still have it on your kindle.
ummmm… a 30 second google search produced 3 websites with free versions of the book and two with the audio book. That was page one of google. Why did you BUY it?
Just another reason to buy a sony.
ohhh the irony. it makes me cry. *see psp homebrew arms race and sony BMG rootkit for details*
it’s sad when we have to evaluate which company gives us less DRM and big-brother like supervision.
oh nevermind
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1468931/amazon-ban-1984
Better yet use a crunch pad as an ebook reader …
1) Why didn’t you copy the kindle files onto your PC? Then you’d still have a copy…
2) Why didn’t you turn off the wireless? Then you’d still have a copy…
3) A 30 second google search for “George Orwell 1984 free book” turned up 3 places to download the book from, Project Gutenberg (which you can copy the file to Word doc and send it to yourself vie Amazon), and 2 audio book versions (which the Kindle will play). WHY DID YOU PAY FOR IT????
Because 90% of the population doesn’t know what any of that means.
iTunes made it easier to buy than steal music, and Amazon should do the same for books. Remote book burning is going to set them way back.
My grandmother (who loves her Kindle more than anything it seems) doesn’t care about the legal or technical reasons her book is gone. But she knows is her dead-tree books won’t vanish.
This seems designed to make people read 1984. I couldn’t imagine a better or more timely publicity stunt for that work.
It is truly annoying how people throw around the word “theft” when talking about copyright. Copyright was a concession added to the Constitution by the framers. It temporarily restricts the freedom of markets and the rights of ownership by the purchaser in order to encourage artists and creators fo all types by guaranteeing them compensation for their efforts. If I “violate” a copyright, I am just avoiding this concession I am not “stealing” neither morally nor under the legal definition of theft.
Through corruption and bribery, Congress has distorted the whole idea of copyright, and used it to confer unprecedented monopoly rights to a bunch of corporations who profit of the creativity of others, often without properly compensating the creators.
George Orwell is dead, so certainly extending copyrights isn’t going to encourage HIM to right more. When he wrote 1984 I have no doubt he wasn’t wncouraged to do so by the idea that his estate might get a few pennies (if that much) in the distant future from purchases on the Kindle. In short, the current copyright laws are a travesty and one more example of how in US corporate capitalism our constitutional rights are eroded to benefit a small class of corporations.
I don’t know the details of the rights dispute here, but I understand that it is likely that Amazon is legally obligated to stop selling the book. But if it were a printed book, they would not be legally obligated to going into your home and removing the book from your shelves. In fact, they are legally forbidden to do so, because THAT is theft. In short, Amazon is the thief here, by taking something away without permission from people who acted in good faith in their purchase.
I have to agree with Aron T – the problem is as much copyright as it is Amazon’s actions. George Orwell has been dead for over 50 years, yet his work is still under copyright and people who had nothing to do with it are profiting off of it at the expense of everyone else – at the expense of our culture and heritage, as a matter of fact.
The problem ultimately comes down to copyright. We need radical copyright reform, simple as that. We have allowed corporations to be the guardians of our heritage and to milk our great authors for money for more than half a century after their deaths. In an age where we could otherwise share these great works endlessly and for free we instead are allowing them to be captives to the whim of corporations and estates.
Copyright extention act of 1998 took your book
It’s worth remembering *why* an e-book legal in Canada is now illegal in the United States. The Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. “1984″, “Animal Farm”, and “Winne-the-Pooh”, would all be in the Public Domain here, if not for that. But Disney nets a billion dollars *per year* in Pooh merchandising. So it gave a tiny part of that to lobbyists, and here we are today.
ShinyHat does make a great point. It could just bea great marketing tactic to get some publicity on the book.
Whatever the case may be, the author saying they’ll never buy the kindle because of Amazon’s ability to take away an infringed book is just ludicrous. Apple had the ability and when have we really seen it used. I’d be pretty pissed off too if I knew one of my books were just wiped away but we have to understand the legal aspects of it. If Amazon asked readers to simply “delete” the book, most would probably response with a “hell no”. Amazon did the right thing by removing the book to save their butt but ended up angering customers without a thorough explanation. I own a Kindle 2, and this isn’t going to stop me from buying more books from amazon. http://ziggytek.com/
So if Amazon has the ability to audit & remove content from the Kindle, doesn’t that contravene the “Safe Harbor” provisions of them DMCA? They become liable for all content on the kindle whether they write it or not? If someone takes offense, they can go after Amazon.
I’m not a lawyer, so I’m just askin’
For what it’s worth, I doubt I will ever by a Kindle. This just reinforces it.
It’s not Ironic, just coincidental.
But I agree with your point. Being able to remove content you bought at any time is pretty shady business.
I heard about this on Kim Commando this morning, its gonna be real hard to keep track of digital copies of books…they are gonna have to have some sort of digital sig. to keep track of them.
for some reason, this just seems to iconic to be actual censorship, my guess is that it is a political statement or something similar, if I am wrong (I really hope not) then to hell with amazon.
well that was a delicious false alarm
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1468931/amazon-ban-1984
hmm… what if you copied 1984 from project gutenerg and paid the $0.10 to have it downloaded to your kindle from there? Would Amazon be libel since they provided the service?
American Laws are driving me nuts. Anyone who is halfway intelligent can see that most of the crap is totally ridiculous.
I used to hang out with cokeheads. ,
October 2008 at 9:35 pm Dear Mr Goldstein,I work for the brazilian magazine and i´m interested in writing about your experiment. ,