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Originally Posted by TallMomof2
Amazon did not have the right to sell that particular version of 1984 (it wasn't in public domain thanks to the Sonny Bono Disney Protection Act) so they removed it *and* refunded the purchase price.
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What if by some means something similar had happened with a printed book? Maybe there was a dispute with a publisher, and Amazon refused to pay for a shipment of paper books, some of which had already been sold? Would Amazon have the right to search your house and take your books off your bookshelves?
If Amazon sells a book they don't have legal rights to, then they should pay the rights owners for that right, or whatever damages a court assigned if things went that far. Barging into people's Kindles and taking back the ebooks those people had bought is no more appropriate than barging into their houses and taking back the paper books, even if they leave refund checks in the empty spots on the bookshelves.
This isn't a hypothetical situation, by the way. The first US edition of Lord of the Rings was in fact totally unauthorized by Tolkien. Yes, it was a pirated pbook. When the lawyers hit the fan, the publisher (Ace?) stopped selling it -- but they did not send goons out to buyers' houses to take the books off their shelves.
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For content creators I would think that this would be a good thing. Having your IP protected and all that comes with the possibility of having content that violates copyright removed. Amazon, because of Whispernet, is able to remove all offending copies off of Kindles and remove access from Kindle apps.
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And this is a GOOD THING? What happens the next time the lawmakers chug a few gallons of Disney Kool-Aid and decide that copyright should never expire, and this applies retroactively? You would think it GOOD that Amazon could go into your Kindle and remove those "offending" Shakespeare plays, the complete works of Charles Dickens, and so on?
When you buy something in good faith -- and one would hope that buying from Amazon.com would be somewhat more reliable than buying from the back of a van in a parking lot -- you should,
especially if it is non-material goods like an ebook, be protected in what you bought. It's not like a stolen TV. George Orwell's ghost didn't lose a single piece of paper, only the royalties on those sales. Amazon could make good on those royalties, thereby remedying the harm, without touching the books they'd already sold. Remember, unlike TVs, ebooks are in infinite supply; if Amazon sells one to you, that doesn't mean they don't have one left to sell to me. So the rights owner lost royalties (money) and needed to be compensated (money) -- and the actual ebooks were, or should have been, no part of it.