Amazon offers to give back your Kindle's copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four
By Laura June 
posted September 4th 2009 1:30PM
posted September 4th 2009 1:30PM
Poor Amazon -- ever since the company remotely deleted illegally sold copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four -- they've faced an uphill PR battle. First, the company issued an apology, and tried to explain what went down. That didn't really stop people from being rightfully upset about the incident, and its implications -- and at least one student has sued Amazon, claiming they were unable to do their school work once the e-book had been deleted. Now, they've contacted affected customers again, letting them know that they now have the option to either have their copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four -- complete with notes -- re-delivered, or, alternatively, Amazon will cut them a check for $30. Fair warning, though -- if you made any anti-Bezos notes in the margins, they've definitely been [redacted]. We kid! Full text of the letter after the break.
[Thanks, Paul]
[Thanks, Paul]
too late
http://books.google.com/books?q=1984&btnG=Search+Books
take the $30
Those are all limited previews.
Doesn't matter how hard they try to payback their customers now.
They screwed up big time.
Note to big corporations: Don't fuck with your loyal customers in idiotic ways, it fucks you back in return.
Anybody reading this at amazon: You guys are assholes.
The issue isn't $30 or a deletion of the eBook itself, its a representation of the totalitarian stranglehold they have on the content you purchase and by all rights you should own. The fear isn't so much about just that Amazon can enforce DRM on the ebooks you purchase and should have a degree of freedom with, its the fact that they can delete, manipulate, and control YOUR content on YOUR device.
A real apology would be to change how they operate, allow you some degree to safe guard your ebooks you pay good money for. Or move to an open format (like every other eBook reader) that allows you the freedom to move your purchase between devices, and dosn't lock you into Amazon's draconian sytem.
UNTHINK
Amazon will be increasing your rations .. ugh... I mean credit $30.
Boudu is completely right. The damage is done, and no apparent goodwill offerings or "opps our bad, sorry!" is going to fix it, because the root problem isn't what they did but that they COULD do it.
I will never purchase a Kindle or any other such device that allows any entity other than myself remote control over what I have purchased, not licensed (regardless of what garbage they put in non-enforceable EULAs to that effect).
no offense to the student, but libraries are not yet obsolete. He/she had no excuse not to go to one.
Apparently when they took his book, all the notes he took for class that was associated with the book file went also. Thats what he was upset about.
I doubt he sued simply because he couldn't read the book. It's more likely that he had notes in it, and they disappeared along with the book.
Exactly. Who cares if the kid had notes. If he is well off enough to afford a Kindle for crying out loud, then he could have figured out a way to get that paper written. It isn't like someone came and burned his paperback and burned his report up a day before it was due.
Another example of what is wrong with people...sue happy b&*ches
Would he sue the manufacturers of his laptop if his notes were on the hard drive and the notebook's hard drive crashed?
If the notes were so important, he should have backed them up. Hopefully at least he will come out of this learning that.
apparently he/she can't because of the so called american diet ( KFC, BURGERKING, MCD etc ) well not without a forklift.
stereobot: your argument don't hold water. Because the laptop manufacturer didn't log into your laptop without your knowledge and delete your shit. If they did then yeah they'd be responsible for it. Hard drive crash is a different story.
@stereobot but the laptop manufacturer didn't go in and deliberately crash the hard drive without permission.
This is different than a laptop and a hard drive. There was no indication that the notes may disappear or that Amazon had any right to revoke them. And it's flash memory, so why would he worry about backing up (also, how do you backup a Kindle?).
A better analogy would be what if you bought Office, wrote a paper in Word, and then Microsoft suddenly had to pull Word. They took it off your machine without your consent and you can no longer use it to view your paper, so you're SOL. That's messed up. What are we supposed to do, copy/paste all our word documents into txt documents just in case? That's ridiculous.
@freedom town
maybe you've never written one before, but i've found notes/research to be a critical part of any well written paper. as for your claim of the kid being well off enough to figure out a way to finish the paper, i hope you don't mean to imply that a person with less money equates to a person of lower intelligence. because that would ignorant... and you would have to be very poor for it to be true. it's actually almost exactly like borders coming into your house and burning the paperback copy (with all your notes in the margins) that you purchased at their store. pull your head out of your analog ass and join us in the digital world.
@va jj
kiss my flabby american ASS.
Just to clear up any misconceptions here, any notes that were taken with these copies of 1984 were NEVER DELETED from their owner's Kindles. I repeat: THE NOTES WERE NEVER DELETED. Notes are saved in a separate file accessible when the user connects to a PC. The problem is that without the book to reference the notes to, the notes alone are of very little use.
While it's nice that Amazon is trying to correct their mistake, the people most affected by the deletion probably have very little use for their old copies of 1984 back now. It's been long enough since then that I would imagine they would have gone to a plan B by now. Book reports generally have due dates and I assume those have long passed.
It won't work. I'm not willing to pay for a device and also pay for content that can be remotely deleted without my approval.
Agreed. If they had kept the functionality silent or secret, maybe it's not such a big deal. Even if some geek discovers it by looking at the source, nobody'd know, and they could deny that the function works at all.
Now, it's just a big PR disaster.
I think Amazon should've offered to restore the book for free as a gesture of goodwill. Right now, the only thing I can think of is that they've got some nerve.
Oh hey, that thing I sold you that I technically wasn't supposed to sell and sneaked into your house to take back? Here's something to make up for it.
I'm, uh, keeping the house keys, though.
Exactly, the apology should have been for having this capability in the first place.
@LordAdmiral
Did you read the note? They just did offer to return the book for free. Or to write a check for $30 if the person doesn't want the book anymore. Are you saying they should have given the book, which by the way was removed because they weren't legally allowed to distribute it to begin with, back right after deleting it and refunding the purchase price? I somehow suspect that people still would have been angry about the whole thing, and Amazon would have ended up with a few more lawsuits.
Obviously there's a lot of wounded pride going on here, but keep in mind that legally you don't really own the content in normal books you buy either. You own the paper and the ink that its printed with. Amazon obeyed the letter of the law here. In doing so they set a very poor precedent for the consumers. Most companies probably would have left it at that. But in addition to refunding the original purchase price, they've now somehow managed to get the rights to distribute free copies of the book to the affected people. Imagine how long it must have taken to get the lawyers on both sides to come to an agreement with that. They've taken a financial hit numerous times over here, re-ignited all this debate (which no doubt is costing them sales), and set another precedent which is decidedly in the consumer's favor.
Amazon doesn't owe you anything beyond what's spelled out in the EULA for their product. They've gone out of their way here to try to fix something they didn't have to, and as I sincerely doubt you were one of the people who lost their copy of 1984 I can only assume you're complaining just to be heard.
Amazon has just demonstrably proved that their concern over consumers' rights in the DRM era goes further than simple PR lip service. Futhermore, they've taken an active role in trying to use their unique position in the industry to dictate how similar circumstances will be handled in the future. If you still disagree with the way they did it, fine. Cynicism is often a good thing to have. But at least take the time to familiarize yourself with the issues surrounding this decision before you publicly pass judgement on them.
"throws 1984 down the memory hole"
What book? There never was a book.
In 2 years we will probably be saying that about the Kindle...
yeah...it's actually pretty funny that this happened with this actual book. if you've ever read it it talks about how people will control what you listen to, watch and read in the future. how ironic is it that amazon deleted what george orwell wrote about without the users consent.
So amazon not only took the book away, but took people's note ans tore them somewhere. Else, how can they offer the book back with notes? Amazon is stelling notes...great.
Actually, the notes stayed on the kindle, but all of the references were lost.
Well this sucks. I went weeks without turning the wireless capabilities of my Kindle on just so I could read 1984 before they took it away. Now I don't get the offer for the $30 credit (for a $1 purchase!) because they were never able to delete mine.
It wasn't all copies of 1984 that were deleted, just a particular edition of it which I believe contained some supplementary material in addition to the regular text (pretty common for books that have been subject to as much academic debate as 1984). Since the purchase price of that particular version was apparently $9, you probably could have kept whispernet on.
the problem is us consumers, we create these idealistic illusions of companies that are 'friendly' such as AmazonMp3 is more consumer friendly than iTunes. Then Amazon goes and does something like this. Apple has NEVER deleted any of my unlicensed Mp3s that I've added to iTunes. Google is probably the only company that I trust, yea call me naive ;-)
Don't crucify Amazon, the process worked, we bitched & moaned and they did something about it.
Saying 'sorry' isnt doing anything about it. Changing their level of control over the products YOU have bought is doing something about it.
Your kindle has a copy of 1984. Your kindle has always had a copy of 1984.
DonD is correct. The Kindle has ALWAYS had an available version of 1984. Always.
The removal of ONE of the available versions was uncool. But not a... "representation of the totalitarian stranglehold they have on the content."
What a freak.
DaveHimself clearly hasn't READ the book or he'd know what he just missed...
>Apparently when they took his book, all the notes he took for class that was associated with the book file went also. Thats what he was upset about.
Not true, his notes were still there. They just weren't tethered to a book any longer.
No no no! Thank-you Amazon! You should also ask about the 26 bits appended to every file on your PC... Now you know!
Hehehe
Seriously folks - you're missing it. They Freaking Kept the annotations too?!?! Um, what? Excuse me, what? They took the book that you'd paid for, off your kindle that you bought - due to a corporate licensing issue AND took your annotations? this is even more scary than the fact that they could remove the book in the first place. Next they are going to say that the annotations just lived in a portion of your kindle memory that wasn't visible to you... sure, what else is there... um. Amazon - what?
Again, no they didn't. The annotations were still on the Kindle.
Well, bash them all you want, but I have to give them some credit for trying to make it right.
They screwed up, and for once, a company is taking complete responsibility. I can't recall ever seeing a company use such boldly harsh language in blaming itself. It's not wishy washy, it's not "well, but". It's a very straightforward "yeah, we were wrong, we are trying to make it right, and most importantly, we learned from it".
Does it make DRM suck less? Of course not, but we've been through this before with iTunes and the music industry. Amazon is at the mercy of the rights owners on that aspect. Until that piece changes, Amazon needs to operate within customers' expectations of what they're getting.
No. They are trying to save face and present themselves as a happy shiny fun company again. Not gonna work.
One simple yes/no question.
Does the ability to delete books without permission still exist?
If so, then it is meaningless. They can do it again, or do something slightly different. The fact remains, that they can still delete anything they want any time they want. This is not acceptable.
Stating that the latest update would remove the capability would have been a good step in the right direction.
Too late, Amazon.
Redacted? They must mean "unwritten". Who needs so many words?
Redacted means to :"black out" something or remove it, which is not the same thing as "unwritten" which means never wrote in the first place.
he's making reference to the content of the book 1984...
i must rank this doubleplus good
you know, if Amazon had of contacted its customers at the very beginning before deleting the files, they could have saved themselves the headache and PR nightmare. They could have still "reclaimed" (aka deleted) the copies of 1984 and come out not sounding like complete a**holes.
I had been considering getting a Kindle before this all happened and now I definitely won't get one.
I hear every mention of the ministry of truth has been edited out. Heard it from a neighbor, but haven't seen him since.
Now it hear it never existed, apparently my neighbor suffered the same fate.
I agree Egg...
The fact that they could redeliver your notes and annotations means that it was stored somewhere other than on your local device... SHADY!