Kindle Deleted Ayn Rand Content

[Harmon]

Well, all you paranoid Kindle users - the other shoe has dropped:

http://gizmodo.com/5317180/amazon-re...nds-of-kindles

If you own a Kindle, back up everything you buy from Amazon. Right now.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Well, all you paranoid Kindle users - the other shoe has dropped:

http://gizmodo.com/5317180/amazon-re...nds-of-kindles

If you own a Kindle, back up everything you buy from Amazon. Right now.

Same story reported on a NYTimes blog.

[alecE]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

Same story reported on a NYTimes blog.

Which quotes Amazon as saying "...this is a rarity..." - which has now happened twice in two weeks. At what frequency does it stop being rare and become commonplace?

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by alecE

Which quotes Amazon as saying "...this is a rarity..." - which has now happened twice in two weeks. At what frequency does it stop being rare and become commonplace?

This one is different. The publisher simply changed their mind. The copies that were sold were legal copies, with both parties in agreement.

MobiPocket then changed their mind about the distribution and asked Amazon to cease distribution. That's fine. They have the right. What they DON'T have the right to do is take back all of the copies that were legally sold.

Amazon illegally deleted perfectly legitimate copies of these books.

Where does this end?

[tlrowley]

I thought this was exactly the same situation, Mobile Reference was distributing Orwell's books which were not public domain in the US. Where does Mobipocket come into it? I'm so confused.....

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Well, all you paranoid Kindle users - the other shoe has dropped:

http://gizmodo.com/5317180/amazon-re...nds-of-kindles

If you own a Kindle, back up everything you buy from Amazon. Right now.

FOLLOWUP: I've checked a few spots on the net where this is being discussed, and read the Amazon email sent to the purchasers (which I should have copied so I could post here, but can't find now.)

It looks like this is actually another instance of a pirated copy being deleted. I should have known better than to rely on a story originating from the New York Times.

(We return you to your previous discussion, now in progress...)

[griffonwing]

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/17/a...s-unpersons-r/

If you're into keeping tabs on irony, check this out. Amazon apparently sent out its robotic droogs last night, deleting copies of the George Orwell novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from Kindles without explanation, then refunding the purchase price. As you can imagine, a lot of people caught in the thick of Winston and Julia's love story aren't very happy -- and rightfully so -- the idea that we "own" the things we buy is pretty fundamental to... ownership. We're not sure exactly what happened, but it seems that the publisher of said novels, MobileReference, has changed its mind about selling content on the Kindle, and poof! Amazon remotely deleted all previously purchased copies. It's all a bit Orwellian, is it not? Good thing we "permanently borrowed" hard copies of both from our middle school library, huh? Let Hate Week commence.

Update: According to commenters on Amazon, this message was sent out from the company's customer service department:

The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store.

While that publisher's version of the book may have been removed, it appears other versions of the novels are still available.

[griffonwing]

Ahh. that wasn't mentioned anywhere on Engadget either.

The update mentioned "published by MobiReference" so I had assumed they had a legitimate PD publisher.

[tlrowley]

I think Mobile Reference is a legitimate PD publisher. They certainly look legit. I know people have bought some of their collections on Kindle and been very pleased with them.

Orwell is PD in other countries, I think. Could this be a case of horribly confusing PD laws causing Mobile Reference to make an error?

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity

[griffonwing]

Originally Posted by tlrowley

I think Mobile Reference is a legitimate PD publisher. They certainly look legit. I know people have bought some of their collections on Kindle and been very pleased with them.

Orwell is PD in other countries, I think. Could this be a case of horribly confusing PD laws causing Mobile Reference to make an error?

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity

Even if Mobile Reference erred when contacting Amazon, Amazon should be wise enough to know what to do, especially considering the huge publicity they had with the Ayn Rand pull. Surely someone could have been contacted to spend a few minutes to look up PD laws and who had rights.

Instead they jump the gun and do the same thing they did with the illegal Ayn Rand book.

I don't fault MobiRef, but i DO fault Amazon.

[Canuck_in_Japan]

Even if they were pirated copies, how would Amazon be able to know that? Does this mean that Amazon can delete any book that you have on there that does not come with Kindle DRM? I'm very glad I don't own a Kindle right now. Having an internet connection is seeming more and more like a con rather than a pro every day.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

Even if Mobile Reference erred when contacting Amazon, Amazon should be wise enough to know what to do, especially considering the huge publicity they had with the Ayn Rand pull. Surely someone could have been contacted to spend a few minutes to look up PD laws and who had rights.

Instead they jump the gun and do the same thing they did with the illegal Ayn Rand book.

I don't fault MobiRef, but i DO fault Amazon.

Hmm. The "facts" keep getting muddier. Who actually requested the deletion? Was the deleted ebook pirated or not? I still vote "pirated" but I could be wrong...

To add to the mix, check out http://www.technicallylegal.org/amaz...ser-contracts/ where they say,

(quoting Amazon TOS) "Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device. . . "

(quoting Technicallylegal) "So Amazon is pretty clearly in breach of their contract to Kindle users who purchased the book, as Amazon did not allow them to keep a permanent copy of the book on their device. However, the License Agreement goes on to disclaim any liability for breach of the contract, and requires confidential arbitration to resolve any disputes you have with Amazon over the device."

Looks like this is the "out" that Amazon thinks it has.

Some more speculation that seems very likely true:

From the kindle forum:
Posted on Jul 17, 2009 3:15 PM PDT
Shelley R Powers says:
Just a guess, but I would imagine this "publisher" grabbed these two books from Project Gutenberg in Australia, and re-sold through the Amazon store. Sold, until someone notified them, and Amazon, that the books are still under copyright in the United States. Badly handled? Big time. I rarely connect to Amazon now, and make sure I back what I have up, first. But I imagine both organizations (the so-called "publisher", and Amazon) were threatened with major lawsuits (the copyright owner of 1984 in the States is extremely litigious).

[Harmon]

Interesting statement at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/n...me-kindles.ars

So why would Amazon remove the books? It appears as though Amazon's purchasing system does this automatically. The company told Ars that they are "changing [Amazon's] systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances."

Bravo to that, but it would have been better for Amazon to tell customers of this planned change directly, in the first place. And why was the system designed to reach out and remove books, anyway?

It looks to me like Amazon is reeling at the negative publicity, and has decided to blame the programmers....

[carld]

Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan

Even if they were pirated copies, how would Amazon be able to know that? Does this mean that Amazon can delete any book that you have on there that does not come with Kindle DRM? I'm very glad I don't own a Kindle right now. Having an internet connection is seeming more and more like a con rather than a pro every day.

Likely users or the legitimate publisher contacted Amazon to complain about pirated copies. I have no problem with Amazon deleting illegal copies purchased from their store, I wouldn't expect anything else.

[alecE]

Originally Posted by griffonwing

This one is different. The publisher simply changed their mind. The copies that were sold were legal copies, with both parties in agreement.

Agreed. But if I were an unlucky Kindle owner contemplating two holes in my library I'd regard the difference as academic.