Jeff Bezos issues humble apology over pulled Kindle title
By Ross Miller 
posted July 23rd 2009 11:24PM
posted July 23rd 2009 11:24PM
[Via New York Times]
posted July 23rd 2009 11:24PM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
I humbly accept Jeff's apology. As long as he keeps delivering the K-Cups for cheap, I'll accept his apologies for anything.
I'll gladly accept his apology too, but for it to really stick, there needs to be a change. A serious one.
The Kindle needs an architectural change. Firmware, client-server software, the whole thing. Just having a policy not to remotely delete things isn't enough: it simply needs to be impossible for remote deletions to occur. Local storage needs to be truly local, completely under the user's control. The Kindle servers should have write-only, drop-box access to that space and nothing more.
This is serious stuff here. We're talking about the future of books, mankind's record of culture and history, and Amazon is at the vanguard of this shift from physical books to digital books. They're setting the precedents for the future of reading, and they just set a really bad one that's going to need a lot of work to correct.
Ha Ha you think they didn't plan it that way? Why do you think they don't launch the thing in any country where they don't have a wireless agreement? You may think it is to offer you books on demand but no obviously it is all part of keeping the whole secure up to being able to delete books.
As for K-cups, disgusting. Get a real expresso machine.
@StreetStealth - I feel exactly the same way.
I don't want to hear "sorry, it won't happen again".
I want to hear: "We will never remotely delete anything without user consent again, ever. Additionally, we will remove the remote deletion capability from the device, and all future devices"
It needs to be impossible for them to remotely delete stuff. Then, I will accept the apology and take the Kindle seriously again.
Until then, it's a huge failure and proof of how the switch to digital can go horribly wrong. Until then I will tell anyone who happens to ask me "DONT BUY A KINDLE!!!"
Doesn't the Kindle have a way to disable the wireless connection?
That's OK. I show mine to people and encourage them to buy it because it's very cool and does exactly what it was advertised to do. They love it. I know I've personally motivated several people to buy one based on seeing it in person.
All my purchased books exist on my PC's hard drive, and whether or not the wireless sync can pull them off my Kindle, they remain on my hard drive ready to sync via USB. This is no big deal, and all you reactionary guys who don't even own one really can't give an informed opinion.
It's a great device. The book recall was unfortunate, but people got their money back and they were free to buy a legitimate copy with their refund. Nobody was harmed. No censorship took place, and Amazon can't delete the books you download to your PC hard drive, so they didn't even get all the copies back.
The reaction to this has been a lot of hyperbole.
They should just give everyone involved a legal copy of both books.
I agree
Winner. But I hope they don't do that because consumers will fall for it again and start buying that stupid Kindle. There are other issues this whole thing brings up. How do you sell a used Kindle book? How do you lend a Kindle book? Let's not sell ourselves short here.
It doesn't really matter whether he's sorry. The fact that you don't own the books on your Kindle and that Amazon can remotely remove content from Kindles is a problem even if they promise to never use that capability again.
Look, I don't want to get labelled as an Amazon fanboy or anything, but I think it is true to say that you DO own the books on your Kindle, unless you bought them from someone who didn't have the right to sell them, in which case it is similar to bought-in-good-faith-but-actually-stolen property - you don't own that, either.
Remote wiping is a bloody hard-core method of dealing with this problem, but on the other hand, it is either that, or nothing! If you don't wipe them then you are accepting the fact that there will be many copies of the work out there, unpaid-for, and with no money going to the authors slash rightsholders. From an individual's perspective, no problem there; but from Amazon's perspective, when they want the legitimate authors and rightsholders to put books on their store, there is no other option.
i don't think i'll buy a kindle now because of this. i find it a little unsettling that some corporation can directly mess with a product that i own. no amount of apologizing is going to change that. im going to wait for that B&N e reader thats coming out next year hopefully it's cheaper.
It's almost certainly going to be more expensive that the Kindle.
and they're certain to have just as much BS in their EULA too.
let's not forget: lawyers make policy. Not humans.
@CharlieX - Let's also not forget humans buy stuff. Or not. I vote with my wallet - and with snide remarks on my twitter feed.
This is going to come back and bite Amazon in the ass at some point. I think they did the right thing to begin with.
How different is this than you buying the book at Barnes and Noble and they sending someone to your house to break in and steal it back?
Barnes and Noble would do it with style, and leave a little green bag on your nightstand, where the book used to be. If you called up to complain, they would bend over backwards to sell you your book back, and even pay for the window they broke while breaking in...
But only if you called them... and you'd still be without a book ;)
I dunno, was the copy B&N sold you an illegal copy or stolen property?
But hey everyone, continue to get your panties in a bunch. My Kindle continues to function, and look, I can even get non-amazon titles on there with ease, and back them up to my PC; something many people seem to think cannot be done.
Duly noted on the material being illegal, Ian, but that makes what Amazon did akin to a cover-our-asses sort of vigilantism rather then doing what's right. Amazon represented itself to the public as having legal wares for sale and people purchased them. When Amazon realized it was selling stolen IP, they broke into people's private property and destroyed what they previously sold.
Isn't the difference obvious? You get your money back. This is not "theft" people, it's an unauthorized refund.
On a related note, the picture for this article is ROFL funny.
Looks like amazon just realized that it is manufacturing its User Agreements, along with the hardware, in China...
You mean the same principles that allowed that capability to be included in the first place?
Those principles?
Screw reading e-books the LEGAL way.
If I wanna pay $9.99 for a book, I'll buy a physical paperback copy. A downloadable version should just be included with the purchase. 1984 is $10.49 for the paperback version, there's almost no overhead costs with digital copies (besides server space), why the hell are they so expensive?
I strongly feel the same about all media. If it's more or less the same price to buy the physical version, why would I bother paying for the digital download?
And now with this kind of bullshit going on, I think I'll stick with my principal.
I tend to agree with that sentiment.
In the 70s and 80s I bought vinyl, and to a lesser extent, cassettes. Then in the late 80's I started buying CDs. I have probably 100 titles on Vinyl AND CD. I'll be damned if I'm gonna pay for a download. And no, I don't have time to rip all my CDs...
My physical book library is over 1,000, and I have no intention of re-paying for digital copies of books I already own, but I will have the digital copy. The only thing I would purchase (if I wanted such a thing) would be the performance version of the book.
CraigJ, I'm in the same boat as you.
I have over 1,000 physical purchased CDs (and a few foot deep piles of vinyls and cassettes), 400 DVDs, and maybe 100 or so books.
When I had around 800 CDs, I spent literally months ripping them all to my internal harddrive and backing it all up to an external media device as well. I was multi-tasking, but it was still horrible. I have tons of stuff that is not available for digital purchase or even torrents or sharing.
Not to mention various remasters/reissues/domestic and foreign versions, and I know that the book community is similar with new/foreign editions.
Well said!!! This has to be the post of the day.
These clowns buying music on iTunes make me sick to me stomach especially the ones who bought the DRM versions. They will sell their rights and souls for the simplest of conveniences. They really disgust me.
I also learned that despite paying for a downloaded versions with no physical copy they will not allow a redownload and expect you to do your own backup. With CD, the CD is the backup.
I hate the concept of paying for lossy audio where parts of your music is thrown out by an encoder algorithm. You should get the CD and the download in FLAC should be instantly accessible. That's how to make the music business viable again.
rrrrggghhhh!!!!
Don't even get me started on iTunes!
I'm an independent artist, and part of the deal for getting my band's CDs pressed was "free" distribution though digital downloads, including iTunes (that's another thing, I can't believe people pay people to put their crap on iTunes).
I haven't seen a single cent from them, and do you know why?
We get about 2 cents per download, that's why. It's freaking ridiculous. We don't get a check until the downloads reach at least $20 I believe. Who the hell is going to download our songs for 99 cents each, $9.99 for the album, when they can buy the physical album from our band for $10? We'll even sign the damn thing for you!
I give a ton of my money to Apple for doing next to nothing. Through other digital distribution companies I've received checks, but not Apple.
In the meantime, since I sell our physical CDs without any middleman, we gain around $8.30 for selling a disc for $10, which is light years better than being on any stupid label (i.e. someone on a major label gets like 20 cents per CD, which adds up when you sell millions, but you still have to pay your lawyers and other BS, including the $1 million advance you got from your label to record the album... I'M NOT JOKING THESE KINDS OF FIGURES EXIST AND ARE WHY ARTISTS GO BROKE!).
I encourage our fans to rip/share our stuff (we're in CDDB so you don't even have to mess with the ID3 tags!), and we even put a free live album on our website for anyone to download.
I'm sure the book industry is just as bad. Whoever is collecting for George Orwell is probably getting a check for like $300 in the mail from Amazon when this is all said and done.
hey look at it this way, before i was 95% sure I would never buy a kindle, now I'm 100% sure I'll never buy one, the act itself isn't as bad as what the act symbolizes
I mean imagine if apple decided that they didn't want you having certain apps on their iphone, or if microsoft remotely uninstalled applications from your pc.
I think Apple does that anyways...
To report or not to report?
I'm definitely surprised. When was the last time you heard the CEO of a top-tier company not only admit that what they have done was wrong, but to call the action stupid and give a full apology for it. Most CEOs would probably say something along the lines of "we're doing this for your own good" or "it's regrettable, but there are issues here none of you can understand."
I applaud Jeff Bezos for being able to do something like this.
If he's now willing to admit what they did was wrong I'm curious as to what he thinks the correct approach would be in the future?
Did they replace the books they erased? Is 1984 back in the store? If not this apology is kind of worthless.
They don't have the right to distribute it. Before it was a mistake, but if they now knowingly distributed it illegally they would almost definitely get in big trouble.
A Scarlett Letter analogy? Really?
Besame mucho Jeff. You know, como si fuera esta noche la ultime vez : )
no, i'm not at all surprised, and he's only apologizing because they were so publicly humiliated. they apologized for the strange gay book fiasco this winter, too. but i don't hear him apologizing for the fact that they intentionally slow shipping on everybody who doesn't fork out for Prime, or for selling items to different people at different prices based on past behavior.
What likely happened is some illiterate person in corporate pulled the book without realizing the irony related to this particular title. This is because most people don't read books.
That's not an apology. It's a justification disguised as an apology:
"This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle"
The customers didn't buy them illegally. The customers don't CARE that Amazon sold them illegally. The customers had a book. Amazon deleted their book. The "illegally sold" portion of the 'apology' is unnecessary turn of phrase that attempts to justify Amazon's actions.
I also agree with the other poster that pointed out that Amazon included a remote-wipe capability in the product - so apparently their principles include doing THAT, but not using it?
Right....
How about a real apology now?
(Pointing pistol at your head) Shoot!=> Oh I am extremely sorry I did this, this will never ever happen again. Judge : Ok Apology accepted, you are free!
Ridiculous. Completly ridiculous.
Engadget's got an excellent pic for this article.
If they pulled "Fahrenheit 451" It'd be even funnier by the day. 1984 is too, but it wouldn't compare to F451 :P
I know what's next. Disney will put a movie into "the vaults" and teams of Mousketeers will roam the country breaking into homes, destroying all copies everyone owns. Then when they "release it from the vault" in 10 years, there will be a whole new format (or digital file) that no one will have and sales will be huge.
Rinse, repeat. The sad thing is there would still be a large majority of people who probably wouldn't even realize just how insanely wrong this is. I'll guess 50% of Kindle owners who's books were deleted found out there was a credit and just said "OK, at least I got a refund" and proceeded to just go buy another book.
You forgot to mention that any distribution of a copy (i.e. selling your copy on eBay) will land you in jail.
I remember when the music industry was trying to take a cut of used CD sales, remember that bullshit?!?!
The book industry tried to claim profits from used books sales a ways back in the same way the video game industry is trying to do this with used video game sales today. The argument is constant (same stuff different day). The people who originally owned the intellectual property believe that they own the physical media. The problem remains that when there is no physical media then a whole new quagmire opens up. What rights do we as consumers have to the media we purchase? Are we leasing the rights or should we own something we pay for? All we can do is stand up for the belief that while you may have written the book; when i pay for it i own the words. There is no reason for the same people to keep making more and more money of the stuff they originally sold. If i sold my couch and wanted to claimed profits from each respective selling of that particular couch even the RIAA would call me ridiculous.
too little, too late.
Boy, you guys have too much time on your hands. The way you all are reacting, you'd think that Amazon just committed genocide or something. I honestly don't think that Amazon acted in a bad way -- the removal of the books from the Kindles is mildly questionable, but everyone got their money back. It's not as if anyone got ripped off.
Let's face it: Amazon is at the mercy of the publishers and their whims. Without their support and approval, Amazon (or any online ebook retailer) would have no ebooks to sell. A bootleg copy of a book appeared on Amazon, the publisher kvetched about it, Amazon had to remove it.
I think if we get honest, what everyone is REALLY complaining about is the nature of DRM and Amazon using it. Well, guess what? If there weren't so many pirates out there downloading copywrited material on torrent sites and whatnot, maybe retailers like Amazon and Apple wouldn't feel as compelled to have DRM on their files. I'm sure just saying that makes me the most unpopular guy in the world (and the fact that DRM even exists makes pirates feel justified in their actions -- and thus, the vicious circle continues), but Amazon and the publishers of the ebooks they sell are just trying to protect their merchandise. I'm sure everyone out there has downloaded something illegally in their time (lord knows I have many times), and it's not the end of the world, but if have, don't be a hypocrite and complain about stuff like DRM.