Amazon deleted ebook editions of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle users' accounts and their Kindle devices and then refunded their money.
Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices
Amazon was right to delete these books from Kindle accounts. (It seems that the irony is the story here!) But this point is really scary: "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."
Yet Amazon sold the ebooks anyway because it didn't know any better.
This lapse demonstrates my leading critique of Amazon--that Amazon has no way to vet any of its content and relies instead on unreliable sources. Any user can suggest changes to an Amazon product page. From a product perspective, Amazon is a dumb database (and from a sales perspective, a pretty smart one). Amazon is the Wikipedia of the retail world.
Clearly, Amazon's reliance on the goodwill of its users and vendors is flawed. It's fortunate, then, that Amazon can delete its mistakes. Who knew Bezos had the right and ability to push a button and delete books off a Kindle?
Oh wait--he doesn't have the right. According to the New York Times story cited above, the Kindle terms of service say explicitly that when a user buys an ebook from Amazon, they have bought the right to a permanent copy of the book.
So what if an unreliable vendor sells an illegal copy on Amazon? Apparently, Amazon is willing to incite the wrath of its Kindle customers to defend a copyright. Nervous, future ebook publishers everywhere are relaxing just a little.
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