The Kindle Fiasco

The irony here is the two books that were pulled. From NYT:

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

Now, this story has hit the blogosphere big-time, but it seems that Amazon had a legitimate reason for the recall:

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “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,” he said.

First, I find it strange that anyone can add a book to the Kindle inventory without it being vetted by Amazon -- given the fluster over copyrights that we've been subjected to since the advent of file-sharing and the like, that would seem to be one of the first concerns for anyone developing such a system. So, dumb move number 1.

Second, to remove the books remotely and unilaterally, without notification, is just a little bit arrogant, done't we think? Apparently, that sentiment got back to Amazon:

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

Dumb move number 2. Tell people what you're going to do and why you have to do it, FTLOP.

And it appears that Amazon has violated its own terms of service:

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

Frankly, I never had any intention of buying a Kindle anyway. I spend enough time reading from a screen, and these old eyes get really tired. And I like books. I like the physical feel of a book in my hands, I like turning pages, I like the whole experience of reading a book. And I like the fact that once I buy it, it's mine. Forever. No matter what.

Does anyone really think I'm going to spend a few hundred dollars on a reading device that remains under their control? I don't think so.

Chalk one up for tradition.