Amazon and the 1984 Affair
July 20, 2009 by Bernd Kling
You thought you could buy e-books for Amazon’s Kindle? Untrue. They only licence them to you and may take them away anytime. True.
Amazon can delete books from your Kindle and thinks it has the right to do so. Amazon just erased the titles 1984 and Animal Farm from George Orwell. Yes, George Orwell. Do they really think they can play Big Brother and get away with it?
Yes, they can.
The bookseller pressed the delete button and sent refunds to customers who had “bought” these books – without explaining anything. The explanation came only later when angry customers dared to ask. Amazon had offered Orwell’s works as public domain books for 99 Cents each. But these titles are still copyrighted in the United States while public domain in other countries, as publisher MobileReference explains:
“This work is in the public domain in Canada, Australia, and other countries. It may still be copyrighted in some countries. The user should determine whether the work is in the public domain in their own country before using it.”
When Amazon learned about this from the real U.S. rights holder, they just went and deleted the already “sold” books. Surprise, surprise. You never really owned these books, you only kind(le) of licenced them. Just take a look at the fine print in the Kindle licence agreement:
“Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use.”
You don’t own the books. You can’t sell them to somebody else, you may not even lend them:
“Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party…”
By the way, Apple has similar clauses in its Itunes store agreement:
“Apple and its licensors reserve the right to change, suspend, remove, or disable access to any Products, content, or other materials comprising a part of the Service at any time without notice.”
Yes, you should always read the fine print before spending real money for unreal goods. Otherwise you might have to share the frustrations of Bruce Schneiers, chief security technology officer for British Telecom. The 1984 affair caused the well known computer security expert to think about his Kindle:
“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon. As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”
(bk)
Related posts: