Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
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.
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Most customers won't be bothered as long as it's a one-time event. The average customer is fairly oblivious to copyright law, and assumes that whatever they buy from Amazon.com is legit. (And indeed, Amazon did nothing in this case to challenge that belief. They declared a "problem" with the ebook and revoked it; customers may have assumed a virus was involved.)
One book being revoked will be shrugged off as "odd Amazon bug." But if a person, or cluster of people, have a handful of books revoked, they'll start challenging Amazon about it--when we make this purchase, how do we know if we're going to keep it long enough to read the book? What kind of assurance will Amazon give that this is a purchase, not a preview while Amazon holds the price of the book in escrow?
If this starts happening with a number of desired-but-unavailable books, covered by copyright but whose authors are no longer alive, Amazon may inspire a new wave of customer paranoia as people who don't keep up with the nuances of copyright law try to figure out why Amazon is deleting their purchases.