Interesting People mailing list archives

Update on Kindle book removals


From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:26:56 -0400



Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Date: July 18, 2009 10:37:26 AM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] Update on Kindle book removals


Dave,

I find it very helpful in these sorts of situations to compare against
a similar scenario in the "brick and mortar" universe. It's really quite
simple in this case.

Let's say that due to some sort of administrative foul up, Amazon shipped
customers physical books to which Amazon discovered they did not have
appropriate distribution rights (for whatever reason).

Would Amazon:

a) Immediately cease sales of those books and make appropriate financial
  compensation to the rights holder(s)?

or:

b) Do (a), plus send a letter to all customers who had already
  received the shipped physical books, demanding that the books be
  returned immediately due to Amazon's liability concerns, and
  perhaps follow up with legal action when most of those customers
  ignored them?

I'm willing to bet that they'd never even consider anything like (b).
Just because new technologies make particular actions possible,
doesn't mean that they are appropriate to actually be used.  In this
case, Amazon has undermined the concept that an e-book "purchase" is
as "concrete" as a physical world purchase, and validated the concerns
of many persons who consider these kinds of closed DRM environments to
be an invitation to exactly this sort of overreaching and unacceptable
behavior on the part of vendors.

--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren () vortex com
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
http://www.pfir.org/lauren
Co-Founder, PFIR
  - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
Co-Founder, NNSquad
  - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
  for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein

- - -



On 07/18 02:18, David Farber wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: David Ian Hopper <imhopper () gmail com>
Date: July 17, 2009 9:42:02 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Update on Kindle book removals

Doesn't sound as nefarious as first considered.  Instead, Amazon seems
to be protecting itself from a copyright claim.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/17/amazon-remotely-deletes-orwell-e-books-from-kindles-unpersons-r/

Update 2: Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, pinged
us directly with the following comment, and now things are starting to
make a lot more sense. Seems as if the books were added initially by an
outfit that didn't even have the rights!
These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by
a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were
notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from
customers' devices in these circumstances.




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