Almost 2 months later, Amazon offers compensation for deleted Orwell titles
It was back in mid-July when Amazon decided to remotely delete two George Orwell titles from the Kindles of customers who purchased the ebooks. As expected, the controversial move brought down a rain of criticism on Amazon. Jeff Bezos issued an apology, which was nice, but seemed more like a desperate public relations stunt than a genuine attempt at atonement for a company that crossed the line of privacy. And it appears Amazon is still thinking about the incident, which has prompted their latest offering.
Almost 2 months later, Amazon is giving the customers who had the Orwell titles deleted on their Kindles the option of getting the titles back, or get a gift certificate, or receive a $30 check from Amazon. The customer can decide how they want to be compensated. According this New York Times article, Amazon will even restore any annotations the customer made:
Amazon said in an e-mail message to those customers that if they chose to have their digital copies restored, they would be able to see any digital annotations they had made. Those who do not want the books are eligible for an Amazon gift certificate or a check for $30, the company said.
I will admit that the offer is very generous, even if it is a little late. The titles only cost $0.99, so a $30 gift card or check is more than adequate. But I can’t help but wonder if this is an attempt to prevent more lawsuits (see Amazon sued over deleted digital book copies), or even to keep the current one from progressing any further.
I’m happy Amazon is following up on their apology with actions. However, the fact that they deleted 2 titles that cost $0.99 is not the real issue here. The real issue is that they can. The NYT article explains what many fear might happen in the future:
Consumer advocates and civil libertarians say the system could allow courts or governments to force Amazon to recall, and in essence censor, books that they deem politically dangerous or embarrassing.
This fear is real. Amazon needs to trash whatever mechanism they have in place to remotely delete titles from the Kindle. Get rid of it once and for all and make it clear in the TOS that once a title is purchased, the customer can keep it forever. Of course, for this to work Amazon would have to seriously rethink the DRM they have built into their Kindle and ebooks.
More than anything, I think this incident shows how the ebook industry is still in its infancy. In order for real progress to be made, and for ebooks to go mainstream (more than they already have), standards need to be set in terms of formats, DRM and consumer protection for digital content. I hope Amazon has learned their lesson.
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