Quote:
Originally Posted by Sonist
Well, in this case Amazon is the seller, so it should watch out for such things (for instance, utilize a database of copyrighted works, and check new submissions against it.)
But even if something slips through, reaching into your device and removing the file without your approval, is not the solution. It is in fact outrageous, and if viewed as "hacking," it is also criminal.
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I'm not defending Amazon here, but a database of all copyrighted works would be extremely large, and IMO it's not realistic to expect a company to check all the material sold against it.
Also, that only covers "not in public domain" material. There is no way to verify that the publisher providing the material has the rights to publish the material. The author is the copyright holder of a work of fiction; authors grant a temporary (usually temporary) license to publish in certain formats (print, audio, electronic, serialization, etc) and languages to different publishers. Amazon would have no way of knowing that author ABC had granted their electronic rights to title JKY to company XYZ for the period of date n to date p. Some of my personal contracts are as short as 2 years. It's asking a lot of any company to track every author's contracts.
I'm not an attorney, but I do understand quite a bit about intellectual property, copyright, and publishing law. IMO Amazon has
greater liability if they don't remove the illegal content from Kindles where possible. They have the means to remove content sold illegally, and this fact is widely known; it's likely any cease & desist letter Amazon received also included a demand to remove the content from any customers it had been sold to, if possible.
I agree it's creepy that they can remove content, and I personally don't want a company monitoring what's on my eReader. I put gawdawful first drafts of novels in progress on there, after all.
