Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
So what Amazon is doing here is not technically "mitigation." What they might be doing is trying to convince the copyright holder not to sue by restoring the situation to what it should have been in the first place - namely, that the books should not have been sold at all. It's part of an attempt to settle the matter out of court.
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I think they're trying to claim "safe harbor" status, and compliance with the DMCA by removing questioned content after notification.
This works well for ISPs and web hosts; I have my doubts about it applying the same way to businesses that are selling the content itself. I have more doubts about the legality of removing content from their customers, but that's separate from the copyright violation. (Hm. What
is the breach of law, if a store demands return of items & refunds the purchase price, against the will of the customer? I'd think that was a form of theft, even if it was "being paid for"--certainly, stores are not allowed to demand the return of items mistakenly sold on sale.)
I can understand removing the item from the store as a way to reduce their liability. I'm not seeing how stripping the purchases from some customers (those who had whispernet active & hadn't already backed up the files on their computers) further reduces liability, although perhaps it does make it less likely that the copyright owner will sue. Especially if Amazon falsely tells them that they removed "all" copies of the ebooks from people's Kindles.