4 ms·

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, Am

by 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 anatoly 17y ago

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.