Why does Bezos mention Amazon’s “principles” without clarifying what those principles are? Uncertainty about what those principles are is what has people upset. Do those who buy Kindle books actually own them, or are they just renting them for some indeterminate time, subject to the whims of Amazon? He doesn’t tell us.

I am sure the company doesn’t like the bad press that this incident has generated. No company does. But if we don’t know what principles underlie the sale of these books, we cannot know what sorts of “better decisions” Amazon will make in the future. Are they going to clarify their rules, so they clearly have the right to do this sort of thing in the future? Are they going to do it again, but with a bit more warning to those whose books are taken away? Or are they not going to never do this again? Bezos doesn’t tell us which path they will take.

When I buy a paper book, that book is mine to do with as I please. That’s equally true of an ebook without DRM. I can copy it to another computer or reader. I can even give a copy, legally or illegally, to a friend. But that isn’t true of a DRMed ebook. I may or may not be able to transfer it to another reader, depending on how the DRM was set up.

This incident points out that Kindle takes DRM one step further. Not only can I not move it to another machine without Amazon’s permission, even the one copy I own may be taken away overnight and without my knowledge or consent.

I think Amazon has always been pushing the envelope with their ebook and Kindle practices – and this latest George Orwell incident went too far and they got slammed.

And I also believe this incident was no spur-of-the-moment mistake that Amazon would have you believe. They had a system in place to remotely remove ebooks from the Kindle long before this happened. It was methodical and well thought out.

The fact they would want to have so much control over their customer’s digital purchases in the first place is sheer stupidity on their part.

Apology Accepted.

Love,
John

ps. an email to all the affected customers would have been nice. If not for Paul’s swell blog I would never have know about your apology.

pss. Paul broke this story first in blog-land, by the way