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I had this on my Kindle and didn't realize it had been deleted until I read the story here. The email from Amazon is in the "Your Amazon.com Order #XXX..." form

by jknupp 17y ago

I had this on my Kindle and didn't realize it had been deleted until I read the story here. The email from Amazon is in the "Your Amazon.com Order #XXX..." format familiar to anyone who buys kindle content regularly, so many will not even realize this was removed. 1984 is literally my favorite book. I was happy to have it on my Kindle, readily available at all times. You would think, then, that I would be outraged by this. To be honest, after I got over the initial creepy "they went into MY device and deleted something" feeling, my (positive) feelings about either Amazon and the Kindle itself were unchanged. It's still an amazingly useful device that I get a ton of mileage out of, and they made a dumb mistake that just happened to affect me. I've been fully reimbursed for the title (all $0.99 of it), so no harm done. The concerns about Amazon randomly deleting content on your Kindle seem overblown. The ostensible purpose of the Kindle is to drive sales of Amazon's e-books. How would deleting customers' purchases on a frequent basis further that goal? I'm willing to write this off as a one-time occurrence, albeit an unfortunate and somewhat frustrating one.

breck 17y ago
Interesting comment. I feel like too many people are speaking up on HN just to speak (I wonder if the demographic has changed lately). I like this comment because it adds some data, not just an opinion or crafted argument. I come to HN to hear first hand accounts from people. jknupp's comment is a good example. Other great examples are when founders comment on articles about their companies, or programmers about their code, or authors about their articles. But above this comment, with 40+ upvotes, are a couple of comments where the commenter doesn't even own a kindle, nevermind having 1984. sigh.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  Huh? Does owning a Kindle give you some special insight into the question of DRM, copyright, consumer rights, etc, inaccessible to others? How would owning a Kindle make you more qualified to comment on this development? Maybe a lot of people didn't buy the Kindle because they have compelling, well-argued positions on why they don't accept the limitations imposed on you by the product's terms and conditions. If anything those people are probably more informed on the issue than someone who just bought the latest gadget. Speaking up just to speak is a problem, yes. But if you're going to impose barriers to participation, let's have them be a little less arbitrary than "owns a Kindle".
  - andreyf 17y ago
    As someone that was actually affected by the decision Amazon took, I think jknupp has an opinion more valid than someone considering the situation hypothetically.
    - sailormoon 17y ago
      An "opinion more valid"? I don't think so. He might be able to offer a "this is how it made me feel" angle or something, and I liked hearing about how it's his favourite book, but otherwise he has no more insight or information than anyone else. I am not trying to criticise jknupp. I liked his comment. But I reject the suggestion that only Kindle owners can legitimately comment on this matter.
      - andreyf 17y ago
        You're right, that was sloppy - I'd have trouble defining what makes an opinion "[more|less] valid". And even with the "intuitive" definition one could just as well argue jknupp is biased in his opinion on the perspective parties' rights in the matter, as he could be trying to justify the $350 we paid for the device (and more for the "books").
  - kragen 17y ago
    This is the first firsthand confirmation I've seen that this actually happened.
- andreyf 17y ago
  I, too, am disappointed that we have pages after pages of comments of knee-jerk reactions with without anyone bothering to take a moment and ask "why did they do this?".
anatoly 17y ago
You're missing the point. It isn't Amazon that needs to want to delete your content, it's the publisher. Amazon enables the publisher to do it. In this case, Amazon didn't want to delete 1984 off your Kindle, the publisher did. Say you bought a non-fiction book exposing some company's practices, or the Church of Scientology, or whoever, and they come after the publisher with defamation lawsuits. The publisher withdraws the book because it can't afford the legal battle, and Amazon deletes it off your Kindle. You don't get a say, Amazon doesn't get a say, Amazon's general desire to drive up its sales, which you base your optimisitic assessment on, plays no role whatsoever. Or maybe it's not a defamation lawsuit, it's a copyright case over 10 lines of quotations in a novel you bought on your Kindle. And the publisher is just threatened with a suit, and decides to withdraw the book. Or maybe you bought some memoirs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces), and later there's a scandal over how the author made it all up. To hush up the scandal, the publisher simply withdraws the book. Etc. etc.
- adharmad 17y ago
  Regardless, Amazon should have done their homework and ensured that it was OK with the publishers before actually selling the commodity. Its too late after they have sold the commodity to go ahead and forcibly reverse the sale. And they have to take some flak associated with this whole issue. I do not understand the comments which say that "Amazon is blameless and blame the publisher". Sure they are less to blame than the publisher for this whole mess, but they do have some responsibility. As a large corporation, they should have checked it out with the publisher BEFORE they sold the book. Also, they could have told the publishers that "the book is sold and we cannot reverse the transaction". Why make the world aware of the fact that they control the kindle content to such a large extent? It is simply opening a door to the publishers, who can later on make such demands in other cases also.
- jknupp 17y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that I thought Amazon capriciously decided to remove this themselves. I was merely saying, in all honesty, how often is a publisher going to withdraw all online copies of a book? It's in neither the publisher's nor Amazon's best interest to make this a frequent occurrence. I understand what happened here, but I honestly don't see it happening too frequently.

by jknupp 17y ago

breck 17y ago

Interesting comment. I feel like too many people are speaking up on HN just to speak (I wonder if the demographic has changed lately). I like this comment because it adds some data, not just an opinion or crafted argument. I come to HN to hear first hand accounts from people. jknupp's comment is a good example. Other great examples are when founders comment on articles about their companies, or programmers about their code, or authors about their articles. But above this comment, with 40+ upvotes, are a couple of comments where the commenter doesn't even own a kindle, nevermind having 1984. sigh.

sailormoon 17y ago
Huh? Does owning a Kindle give you some special insight into the question of DRM, copyright, consumer rights, etc, inaccessible to others? How would owning a Kindle make you more qualified to comment on this development? Maybe a lot of people didn't buy the Kindle because they have compelling, well-argued positions on why they don't accept the limitations imposed on you by the product's terms and conditions. If anything those people are probably more informed on the issue than someone who just bought the latest gadget. Speaking up just to speak is a problem, yes. But if you're going to impose barriers to participation, let's have them be a little less arbitrary than "owns a Kindle".
- andreyf 17y ago
  As someone that was actually affected by the decision Amazon took, I think jknupp has an opinion more valid than someone considering the situation hypothetically.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    An "opinion more valid"? I don't think so. He might be able to offer a "this is how it made me feel" angle or something, and I liked hearing about how it's his favourite book, but otherwise he has no more insight or information than anyone else. I am not trying to criticise jknupp. I liked his comment. But I reject the suggestion that only Kindle owners can legitimately comment on this matter.
    - andreyf 17y ago
      You're right, that was sloppy - I'd have trouble defining what makes an opinion "[more|less] valid". And even with the "intuitive" definition one could just as well argue jknupp is biased in his opinion on the perspective parties' rights in the matter, as he could be trying to justify the $350 we paid for the device (and more for the "books").
- kragen 17y ago
  This is the first firsthand confirmation I've seen that this actually happened.
andreyf 17y ago
I, too, am disappointed that we have pages after pages of comments of knee-jerk reactions with without anyone bothering to take a moment and ask "why did they do this?".

anatoly 17y ago

You're missing the point. It isn't Amazon that needs to want to delete your content, it's the publisher. Amazon enables the publisher to do it. In this case, Amazon didn't want to delete 1984 off your Kindle, the publisher did. Say you bought a non-fiction book exposing some company's practices, or the Church of Scientology, or whoever, and they come after the publisher with defamation lawsuits. The publisher withdraws the book because it can't afford the legal battle, and Amazon deletes it off your Kindle. You don't get a say, Amazon doesn't get a say, Amazon's general desire to drive up its sales, which you base your optimisitic assessment on, plays no role whatsoever. Or maybe it's not a defamation lawsuit, it's a copyright case over 10 lines of quotations in a novel you bought on your Kindle. And the publisher is just threatened with a suit, and decides to withdraw the book. Or maybe you bought some memoirs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Million_Little_Pieces), and later there's a scandal over how the author made it all up. To hush up the scandal, the publisher simply withdraws the book. Etc. etc.

adharmad 17y ago
Regardless, Amazon should have done their homework and ensured that it was OK with the publishers before actually selling the commodity. Its too late after they have sold the commodity to go ahead and forcibly reverse the sale. And they have to take some flak associated with this whole issue. I do not understand the comments which say that "Amazon is blameless and blame the publisher". Sure they are less to blame than the publisher for this whole mess, but they do have some responsibility. As a large corporation, they should have checked it out with the publisher BEFORE they sold the book. Also, they could have told the publishers that "the book is sold and we cannot reverse the transaction". Why make the world aware of the fact that they control the kindle content to such a large extent? It is simply opening a door to the publishers, who can later on make such demands in other cases also.
jknupp 17y ago
I didn't mean to imply that I thought Amazon capriciously decided to remove this themselves. I was merely saying, in all honesty, how often is a publisher going to withdraw all online copies of a book? It's in neither the publisher's nor Amazon's best interest to make this a frequent occurrence. I understand what happened here, but I honestly don't see it happening too frequently.