Someone Does Not Want Big Brother on Your Kindle

I first heard about this story over at Engadget and have researched it further to attempt to discover more details. From what I have learned, Amazon offered a Kindle version of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from a publisher, Mobile Reference (mobi). Amazon was notified from the rights holder that Mobile Reference did not have the rights to sell these offerings, and thus, Amazon removed them from the Kindle store. In addition to removing the items from the Kindle store they also deleted the ebooks from the Kindles of anyone who had purchased them. Subsequently, all of the users were refunded the price of their purchase.

I am going to let you digest that just a minute.

In my opinion, Amazon had every right, and even an obligation, to remove the offerings from the Kindle store. If Mobile Reference had not obtained or had lost the rights to those two ebooks, then removing them from the store was the right thing to do. However, I believe that Amazon has set a consumer unfriendly precedent by deleting the books from the users.

This can be debated quite a bit. I am sure Amazon had the "right" to delete the books according to their end user license agreement (EULA). But is this really what they should have done? If it was my decision to make, I would not have deleted anything from any user's Kindle. Even if I had every right to do so, it is just bad customer relations. I would have attempted to recover any losses from the publisher. If that failed, I would have taken the loss and considered it a lesson learned.

There are several questions that occur to me for which I do not have the answers. Who is responsible for this situation in the first place? Does the blame fall on Mobile Reference? Should Amazon have something in place to verify that its third party suppliers own the rights to offer an ebook? If this went to court, who would ultimately be responsible for paying damages to the rights owner?

I think this is another example of how our antiquated copyright and business laws are not up to the task of regulating the sale and use of "digital products". Imagine if this situation involved a company trying to reclaim an actual book that had been purchased. There would be no easy way to recover those items. How would the matter be resolved in that case?

In an effort to make full disclosure, ReadingWithMo is a part of the Amazon Associates program.