Amazon deletes Orwell titles from customers Kindles

Jul 18 2009

When I read yesterday that Amazon had removed several George Orwell titles from their Kindle ebook reader, I can’t say I was surprised. Sad but true. Not too long ago a story surfaced about an Amazon customer who had his account suspended (too many returns, I think) and all the ebooks on his Kindle became disabled. Is this becoming a disturbing trend on Amazon’s part?

Before I go any further, it is probably best to give Amazon’s side of the story first. According to this New York Times article, the Orwell titles in question were placed in the Kindle ebook store using the self-publish feature:

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.

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.

I’m glad that Amazon at least recognized it was a ‘bad idea’ to remove the books from the Kindles (although that might be an understatement). But this also shows that Amazon simply has too much power when it comes to ebooks. The fact that they can and have remotely deleted titles from these devices should be disturbing to everyone.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also jumped on this issue, saying in a recent post Orwell in 2009: Dystopian Rights Managment:

This is Amazon choosing its “content partners” over its customers. There is nothing about copyright law that required these deletions — if Amazon didn’t have the rights to sell the e-books in the first place, the infringement happened when the books were sold. Remote deletion doesn’t change that, and it’s not an infringement for the Kindle owner simply to read the book.

Indeed, if I was at the helm at Amazon making this decision (or, whoever happens to make these decisions over there) I would have pulled the titles from the store, yet left the ebooks that customers had already bought alone. I know, I know, it’s easy to make these judgment calls in hindsight.

I have always maintained that the Kindle only gives you access to your ebooks, you don’t really own them. And this just further proves what a lot of bloggers and ebook-lovers have been warning about all along. Right now, I’d discourage anyone from buying a Kindle, at least until Amazon gets its act together. Go for the Sony Reader, which is open to ePub, so you can buy your ebooks from a variety of places.

What do you think of Amazon’s latest ebook power play? Did they cross the line? Or were they perfectly right to delete the ebooks off the Kindles? Leave a comment either way and let us know what you think.

P.S. I did shoot off an email to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference seeking an explanation for this incident. I have not received a response as of this writing. But when/if I do hear anything, I’ll be sure to share it here.

Read More: Publishing News, Technology, eBooks

One Response

What, no commentary on the irony that this happened to the biggest of all “big brother” books, 1984?

And I agree, Amazon shouldn’t have deleted the books. This is probably the worst possibly thing they could have done when they are already being criticized for the DRM scheme. I think if I was Amazon, I would have let the rights’ holders sue me all they wanted before deleting content from customers’ devices.

Susan 7/20/2009 8:16 am