Amazon Pulls Legitimately Purchased Books Off Kindles Remotely

This story about Amazon deleting purchased books from Kindles remotely surfaced late last week while I was away on vacation. The short version of the original story is that a publisher decided it no longer wanted George Orwell’s books available digitally. Amazon removed the books from the Kindle Store, but also remotely deleted them from thousands of Kindles. You can read the details at the Gizmodo link above or at The New York Times‘ website.

While this would normally be a heinous misstep on Amazon’s part, it’s only a partially heinous act. According to an Amazon spokesperson that spoke with The New York Times, the books were added to the Kindle Store by someone that did not hold the rights to the books, not an indecisive publisher. Drew Herdener, the Amazon spokesperson, also pointed out that the customers were refunded the money they paid for the books.

The article continues with,

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.

While I certainly would have been angry had Amazon deleted a book I purchased, receiving a refund kind of squashes all the alarmist stories about Amazon “stealing” from customers. I find it interesting that people are up in arms about this, when if the opposite had happened – an author’s work was published without the rights and someone else was receiving money for it – they would be just as angry if Amazon hadn’t made things right.