Quote:
Originally Posted by pshrynk
Well, that's one of those things that an administrative law judge will eventually need to answer. My point is that Amazon probably felt that they needed to remedy the error in that fashion. They are a pretty conservative company in that respect.
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Stepping outside the context of the legal discussion to look for a reason for what Amazon did, I damn near broke my neck tripping over the idea that perhaps this is not about the specific situation - that is, not about dealing with the Ayn Rand copyright owner.
Maybe what Amazon is interested in doing is demonstrating that Amazon will not harbor unauthorized ebooks, and will not become a kind of defacto Pirate Bay. This could be a matter of maintaining the trust and goodwill of publishers and copyright owners in general.
Of course, it has a downside to some extent with the trust and goodwill of its customers. I'm not sure that all that many customers are all that concerned about the potential for Amazon arbitrarily deleting ebooks. After all, most ebooks sold on Amazon are not going to be pirated copies like the Rand book. (That's not to say that it might not be a good idea for Amazon to throw the customers a sweetener of some kind.)
But on balance, it strikes me that it is reasonable to assume that most customers won't be bothered, while many publishers and copyright owners will be gratified, by this action.