Amazon CEO apologizes for Kindle book deletions
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos issued an apology Thursday to customers over last week's surprise deletion of a number of books that Kindle owners had purchased and downloaded to their devices:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.
With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com
Bezos issued the apology on Amazon's Kindle Community forum, where users are able to respond with their own replies--many of which simply thank Bezos for broaching the subject.
Last week the company made waves after deleting several books from Kindle devices without the permission of their owners. The move was attributed to Amazon's self-service uploader, where a third party had added e-books to be sold on Amazon's store despite not having have the rights to sell them.
As part of the deletion process Amazon credited those who had purchased the book with refunds. Regardless, many users became upset at the idea that anything else they had purchased could be taken back without their permission.
Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh. 
DRM advocates have recently insisted that it's okay to charge 80,000 times the value of a file as punishment for violating ownership rights. Let's see if they apply the same standards to sellers as they do to consumers.
The PR fiasco part could have been avoided in large part by emailing all the users with the bogus copies of the book and giving them an explicit choice of either a refund or a no-cost replacement with a legitimate copy of the book for the Kindle, and I'm somewhat surprised nobody at Amazon thought of that.
Stopping to sell the book was not the issue.
The issue was the deletion from the Kindle. That kind of killswitch is NOT acceptable.
It is like somebody coming into your house and burning books that, for one reason or another, are deemed "inappropriate."
It smacks of "Fahrenheit 451".
Bezos' apology is a good first step. Now they need to provide a software update that permanently removes the killswitch ability from the Kindle.
Respectfully, I must point out a couple of points legal:
1. Amazon didn't steal the books. The Kindle owners had purchased illegal goods. Indeed each Kindle owner who had purchased the books was in fact guilty of copyright infringement. The fact that they did not know that they were infringing on the copyright does not change the fact that they infringed and are therefore liable to the true copyright holder (Mr. Orwell in this case). By law, each Kindle owner would therefore be required to return their contraband goods. In addition, Amazon is liable to the copyright holder for enabling the sale of illegal goods even though it wasn't a wilful act that Amazon took. The fact that neither the buyer nor the seller knew the goods being sold were illegal would likely only have the affect of ennobling the judge to be lenient in his sentencing because the infringement wasn't wilful. However that would be up to the judge.
2. With regards to your call for a class-action lawsuit against Amazon... when a store sells you illegal goods, they are only liable to the buyer up to the extent of the money that the buyer paid for the illegal goods and nothing more.
Even if Kindle owners decided they did want to bring forward an action, they would have to bring up the action as a civil case because copyright infringement is only criminal if one can prove wilful intent which the evidence is in support of here. Plus a criminal case can only be brought forward by the state, not by citizens. Therefore we would be dealing with a civil case which means we must find damages to sue for. Damages in a civil case are tied to the provable losses of the plaintiff plus the costs of the legal action. Civil courts do not act to punish, simply to restore the rightful situation. In theory damages can be increased to take account of flagrancy of abuse but generally the courts will award pretty much the fee that should have been paid for legitimate use. In this case, the plaintiffs (Kindle owners) can't sue for legitimate use, because they would be asking for use of something that is illegal and you can't ask the court to restore a situation that was illegal to begin with.
Therefore any class action lawsuit raised by the kindle owners would never make it to court because there would be nothing for them to file for.
The interesting legal question that is posed in this case is, should Amazon have left the Kindle buyers "hanging in the wind" and liable for a copyright infringement lawsuit from Mr. Orwell and his publishers or did they do the right thing by seizing the material (thereby saving their clients from a lawsuit). They used the technology at their disposal to uphold US copyright law which has previously only been done by the US court system. In the past, the seller had no ability to seize property. A court order for seizure would be put fourth and then the government/police would seize goods. In this case, that would have been complex because the goods are not tangible, nonetheless, it would have been up to the police to find some way to seize the material. However, the technology has enabled Amazon to adhere to the spirit of the law before any such infringement lawsuit can be brought forward by Mr. Orwell. Therefore, which is more important, the letter of the law or the spirit of it. This could make a very interesting LLD thesis.
Regardless, there is no legal basis for a class action lawsuit on behalf of the buyers who bought illegal goods towards Amazon or anybody.
Still it doesn't take all the bad taste out of a Kindle owners' mouth, if they had the book removed.
I think Amazon may have simply posted the facts about the illegal copies out there and warned that for legal reasons it may need to be removed in the future, after further consulting.
I think we need an application of simple consumer law here.
I buy a product.
The product is defective.
I get a replacement product at no additional charge.
What is so hard to understand? Let Amazon supply a properly authorized copy at no additional charge to me.
That said, I still wouldn't buy a Kindle... any device with that capability and built-in backdoor is something I sincerely do not want to own, much less buy stuff to load on.
Amazon had no malice in their intent. It angered people but I think everyone can agree that they didn't intend to anger people. They just did what they thought was right at the time but it turned out badly for them. So they said they are sorry. When we were kids and we hit a baseball through the neighbours window, we apologized, and maybe paid for the window to be repaired out of our allowance and that was a reasonable action. That's exactly what Amazon did. They fixed their mistake, paid back the money and said sorry.
We are only human after all and we often make mistakes. I think if more companies would just own up to their mistakes and apologize, we could be a lot more civil in our dealings and act with dignity. That and it would save our court system from frivolous lawsuits.
Bravo, Mr. Bezos... Bravo!!
Kudos to Bezos.
No Kindle for me after knowing that my personal bought collection could easily be erased by Amazon at any point and at any place.
Just think--we could have "instant censorship." Scary.
There are competing eBooks out there that don't have such a killswitch.
You can aplogize for a million times, but until such feature has been disabled,
no apology will be accepted, and I will gladly spit on your face.
Given the Amazon has taken NO step to disable the ability to delete kindle owner's e-books without permission, what's the use of promises? What happened if they did it again? Another apology?
If this thing happens again, that would be the mother of all bad PRs. At that point, Bezos and Amazon can never, never be trusted again. Without consumer trust, you can say bye-bye to your business.
I think they understand that and I believe that he will stand by his words.
However, I think the Kindle franchize has been permantly damaged.
The only possible way that Amazon could correct that is to issue an update to the software for the device that removed not only the delete function but any function that could view the contents of the device as well.
TO svgtom:
The solution is not to claim they won't do it AGAIN. They need to step up and offer gift cards or other compensation to those affected by the deletions.
TO svgtom:
The solution is not to claim they won't do it AGAIN. They need to step up and offer gift cards or other compensation to those affected by the deletions.
I will not buy a Kindle with all the DRM. That is a separate thing. The software needs major restructuring.
An electroluminescent nightlight in operation (uses 0.08W at 230V, and dates from 1960; lit diameter 59 mm) But then again...you might (like me) be sensitive to the sound it emits. This is due to the built in inverters. (They have a small transformer inside) But hey! it's 2009...that issue should be resolved by now. LOL
Or you can keep using your Touch...but what's the battery life on it again?
Music Playback: 24 Hours
Wi-Fi: 3 hours
(that's with 4MB of data downloaded, brightness set to 25% with auto-brightness turned to off)
I hope you bought the Incase Power Slider battery Case (but that's like $80! Ouch! )
I ended up buying at Fry's Duracell's USB Battery Power Charger for like $20! (which is okay..but I like it's versatility)
The Kindle lasts for max 3 weeks if not longer...that's with the radio off...a couple of days with it on...but it still beats the Touch with a K.O. punch. since you are able to go online with it as well. :)
Maybe a bit less say if they did build it with built in electro-luminescent backlight technology. But sadly...not as less as it would with the Touch. ;(
If a digital version of content, be it CD, movie, or book doesn't have the exact same rights as the physical version then it fails. And until the content producers accept this, I will continue to purchase the physical version...
...hope you do the same.
But he has to follow up with a software update that makes such remote access to the Kindle impossible.
That way, people are not depending on just his word (after all, he could get fired, or have an accident tomorrow, and would any successor be bound to Mr. Bezos' word?)
So, the only real solution is to make it technically impossible to do any such thing again.
Don't forget ot rail at Steve Job's too since the iPhone and iTouch have kill switches.
- by silverheart July 24, 2009 3:00 AM PDT
- Although I am not a Kindle customer I wanted to express my gratitude to Amazon for honesty and integrity with your public apology to the Kindle customers. I cannot say that I have ever seen a company publicly take full responsibility for something and express their remorse in such a manor. To even go to the extent of saying "Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles."
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (58 Comments)Thank you Amazon for reminding us what American Customer Service is supposed to be about.