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Canada also punishes people for copyright infringement that hasn't even happened. Interesting place, that. However, I believe the returns in question were required of retailers who had gotten early shipments, not individuals, and telling people not to read their books was toothless; they didn't send goons to anyone's houses to take their books away.
There was a time in the US when such a request would have been laughed out of court, not granted. It's possible that time has changed. People are allowing governments to become enforcement bodies for private corporations, which is not a good thing. I remember one case, back during the Beanie Baby craze, where Ty prevailed upon the government to enforce their prohibition against bringing Beanie Babies that Ty sold in other countries to the US, so Ty could keep up their artificial scarcity, and hence their exaggerated prices. A little girl had taken her Beanie Babies (she had a dozen or so) with her on a family trip overseas. On her return, the toys were seized by government authorities acting on behalf of Ty and destroyed. They were in no way illegal, and in no way contraband, but Ty had made a rule -- "thou shalt not bring Beanie Babies across a US border" -- and induced the US government to enforce that rule for them.
Whether the US government would do the same as the Canadian one, I don't know. Precedent up until now -- for pbooks -- is that it wouldn't. True, SCOTUS has been throwing out established precedent that benefits citizens in favor of rulings that benefit corporations lately. But as it stands, they still don't send goons to your house to take away your books if they decide not to sell them anymore.
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