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Do Kindle’s user terms violate basic consumer rights?
October 28, 2009 | 4:25 pm
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By Stephen Windwalker
John Einar Sandvand is an exceptionally smart guy when it comes to exploring online media trends, which is good because that’s the tagline of his BetaTales blog. He’s got a fascinating piece of coverage today, under the title Kindle’s user terms violate basic consumer rights, about a possible initiative by Norway’s Consumer Council to apply the same standards to Amazon’s Kindle catalog that it applied to Apple’s iTunes music catalog. The “Forbrukerrådet,” which is the name under which you may have heard of the council before, was successful in getting Apple to promise to open its music catalog to music players other than the iPod.
Stay tuned, all ye who care about open standards, open content, open platforms, and open books. Just because something washes in Peoria does not mean it will fly in Pelleberg.
Editor’s Note: The original of this post can be found on the Kindle Nation Daily.
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Comments:
The terms Graasvold says are unacceptable to Europeans, are pretty much not considered very acceptable to Americans, either. But the key is, no one is forced to buy a Kindle and read Amazon’s books… you accept the terms, or you don’t buy it. Apple may have agreed to those terms, but Amazon is a bit larger an organization than Apple, and they really doesn’t have to accept those terms… if they don’t want to.
Amazon could also essentially agree with Graasvold’s concerns by declining to sell in Europe. It would be interesting to see how acceptable that would be to Europeans…
“Amazon could also essentially agree with Graasvold’s concerns by declining to sell in Europe. It would be interesting to see how acceptable that would be to Europeans…”
Not sure it would be that much of an issue. Europe as a whole is a bigger economy than the US. The gap would just be filled by another retailer.
The “you don’t have to buy it” is weak. That is not how consumer law works. Consumers do have rights and they are legally enforceable. Contracts can be voided. The question here is whether they have these rights.
The Apple Precedent does not necessarily apply because the iPod as a product line was introduced as an MP3 player, sans DRM, and only later “upgraded” to support DRM’ed AAC.
The kindle has always been sold as a mechanism to access the Kindle store. Precedents of closed system devices in the euro markets start with the French minitel terminals so Amazon can fight if they choose to. Also note that DVDs and BD ROMS all sell in europe with significant restrictions on consumer use and limited online access, as does a lot of computer software.
Along those lines, note that Apple software only runs on Apple hardware and Sony and Nintendo branded game software only runs on their own branded hardware. And euro courts have already validated those closed system DRM schemes. The same applies to Vtech educational “computers” and many other content delivery systems from non-american companies.
So, unless euro laws are different for american companies, Apple may have caved but Amazon doesn’t have to. Ample precedents from Taiwan, China, and Japan.
As for the euro economy being bigger than the american that conveniently ignores that for content and wireless access europe, is not a single market but closer to 30 separate markets, each with strictly local regulation, and many are in fact easily dispensed with.
2 extra points:
1- the iTunes catalog contained a lot of exclusive content which was the bone of contention. Amazon can simply trim back their euro catalog if need be so it doesn’t carry anything the competitors don’t. A 20% pricing advantage should suffice for competitive purposes. And maybe a flag on trimmed titles.
2- the only reason Apple was vulnerable at all was that they were an american company with a dominant market share in both the european digital music and digital player markets. Amazon’s current ebook market share in the brusselcrat turf? Zero. The entrenched players are Sony and Adobe. The antitrust hammer won’t be usable for quite a while and without it what remains would be clearly discriminatory practices. Hopefully Amaxon won’t let themselves be intimidated by a hollow threat.
I get it, that people hate amazon for being big and successful, but isn’t it kinda odd to be making a fuss over a product with no presence or market power?
The majority of Amazon’s exclusive content are TOPAZ ebooks. I can see an argument for banning these from Norway.
For non-exclusive content, the list price (set by the publisher) is the same on the Kindle as on ePub or MOBI versions of the same ebook. What differs is the price to consumers, because Amazon is taking less profit.
“the only reason Apple was vulnerable at all was that they were an american company with a dominant market share in both the european digital music and digital player markets.”
Wrong. Norwegian consumer rights law is very strict, much more strict than both European and American laws even. It wasn’t so much that Apple was “vulnerable” or “American in a European market”, but that their EULA and terms of service (along with the DRM) restricted consumer rights in a way that was illegal here in Norway. It’s very possible that Amazon and the kindle suffer the same fate, but for that to happen there needs to be focus on it by both consumers and Forbrukerrådet. It may very well slip under the radar, for a while at least.
With all that said, I should note that Norway is NOT a part of the EU, so any decisions that are made here may have no further effect than being limited to Norway alone. Apple’s choice of opening up a DRM free service to the rest of the world was entirely THEIR own choice. They could easily have restricted sales of the DRM free versions to Norway only, using IP addresses and the like. Instead they chose to make those changes available to the rest of the world, and profited as a result.
Alan, is there a way to see which books are Topaz and which ones use the normal DRM? That kind of information can actually be quite crucial as to how Forbrukerrådet would handle it.
On a related note, I just came over an interesting article over at EFN.no (Norwegian only – inspired by EFF.org). Currently VAT is being charged for Norwegian ebooks, because DRM is changing the legal definition of the content – it’s being seen as a rental service, rather than a book, which normally would be VAT free. EFN points out that if they removed the DRM, it would be one step further in getting the definition changed, so they could then sell ebooks cheaper. Due to the VAT, prices for ebooks would have to be higher than paper ones in order for the publisher to make the same amount of money per book sold.