"This Amazon situation is so shocking not because it's without precedent, but because it never used to make financial sense to treat a stolen copyright just as

"This Amazon situation is so shocking not because it's without precedent, but because it never used to make financial sense to treat a stolen copyright just as you would treat a stolen car. (And, after the P.R. repercussions of this move are played out, it may not make any financial sense in the future, either. ;)" Precisely. It's not a stolen car, it's a technicality of overly complex copyright law that resulted in a bunch of paying customers having something removed from a device that they thought was as safe as their bookshelf. Scale is important here. If I purchased a ten dollar book from Barnes and Noble that was later determined to be part of a hijacking of a delivery truck, they wouldn't go through the trouble. Paper is cheep, books are stolen and you'll sell more. On one hand you have the scale of distribution that is much greater than what could be attained by jacking a delivery truck. On the other hand you have a pile of customers that have just discovered that they don't actually have any guarantees that the things they purchased on their Kindle are going to continue to be there when they wake up in the morning.