This is just weird. Amazon pulled a real Orwellian "Big Brother" move by actually deleting copies of Orwell's books "1984" and "Animal Farm" from privately owned "Kindle" electronic book readers.
Without asking permission of the Kindle owners'. They just did it. Wow.
Naturally there are many, many expressions on the web about how ironic this is. You know, "Big Brother Amazon dumps books in 'memory hole'. It's so true and so ironic and so very, very disgusting.
But let's be clear here: this is not an amusingly ironic event. What Amazon did is, essentially, burglary. Whether they had a good reason or not, what they did is just the same as coming into your house in the dead of night and removing a book or CD without your permission.
Amazon does have a reason -- or at least a rationalization -- for their action. It appears that a publisher who did not have US rights to "1984" and "Animal House" nevertheless put them up for sale on the Amazon ebook network. Some Kindle owners purchased copies of the ebooks from that publisher through the Amazon network. Sometime later Amazon was informed by the actual copyright holder that this was improper and sometime after that Amazon determined to remove the uncopyrighted editions from their network. All proper and correct, no doubt.
Where it goes wrong is that somebody at Amazon decided that they should also remove the copies that had been correctly purchased by Kindle end users, from the very Kindles of those users -- without notice and without permission and without moral obligation to do so.
For a comparitive concept: it's like you purchased a book at Barnes and Noble in the mall and later the copyright owner told B&M to stop selling the book so they did that but then took the extra step of sending theives to your house to remove the book that you purchased without your permission.
It makes no difference whatsoever that Amazon refunded the money that had been paid for the books. The simple fact is that Amazon invaded Kindle users' property and took something that didn't belong to them.
The Kindle Ate My Homework!
To help illustrate how bad this thing is that Amazon did here are two stories. One is reported in the New York Times (so, therefore, it may be true) and one is made up by me for illustration.
The truish one is that one of the Kindle owners who purchased a bootleg "1984" was a high school student reading the book on assignment. (Summer reading list?) As part of the process he had been using the very attractive feature of the Kindle that allows you to make notes. When Amazon removed his copy of the book they also removed his notes. (No doubt; this is theft.)
Will Amazon write a note to his teacher? I hope he puts it on his Facebook page!
The not so truish story is my attempt to make it clearer what sort of precedent this action by Amazon can set if it is not quickly, soundly and quite roundly corrected.
What Amazon did -- or seems to have intended -- is to enforce the copyright of a software holder. But then they took it one large and serious step too far.
The contents of books are software. If that is not obvious to all when they are in book form then the act of loading a book into a Kindle must make it quite clear. The contents of books are software.
Just as the program for a computer is software. Or say, the program for a computerized heart pacemaker. Suppose that a program for a pacemaker contained a bit of copyrighted code that belonged to a company other than the one who sold the pacemaker. Should anyone in the chain of ownership be allowed to come into an implanted pacemaker and, without warning or warrant, simply take the code away and make the pacemaker stop working?
That's an extreme example, but nevertheless, exactly the same in terms of intent.
In the case of a record company, who suspects that someone has illegally downloaded some music, they can definitely come to that person's home and take the machines and disks upon which the illegal materials have been stored. But -- and it's a big exception -- they must first show evidence of actual illegality and then acquire a warrant and the cooperative action of law enforcement to implement that warrant. Even then, the alledged downloader would have their day in court.
In this case, the Amazon case, there is no illegality on the part of the Kindle owner (or the pacemaker owner), there is no warrant, there is no evidence. This is simply Amazon deciding to take something that is not theirs to take.
More than an apology is required here. Even if it's just an accidental over reaction by somebody inside Amazon, it is a very, very bad thing. This sort of action should be made to be quite clearly illegal. Soon.
Kindle Ate My Homework. Amazon Broke Into My Stuff.