I don't like what Amazon are trying to do in terms of exclusivity and potential monopolies, but I am not surprised they are trying to do it.
However I'm not sure you can blame them for another company removing a download link. I suspect it's just that B&N systems don't have a way to separate out "this book is for sale" and "this is not for sale but can be re-downloaded by people who already paid for it" and so to remove the one you have to remove the other. A re-download link only available to an account that legitimately paid for it, is in effect a digital locker and no different in principle to a Dropbox account. I don't think that can be considered to be distributing it because you're not offering it to anyone new.
If I were a B&N customer and my download link went missing then I'd be asking them about it. They are the ones I paid money to.
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