4 ms·

Illegal or not, the purchasers bought the books from Amazon's web site, not from some Hackerz site. Amazon later discovered that the books that Amazon was itsel

by habibur 17y ago

Illegal or not, the purchasers bought the books from Amazon's web site, not from some Hackerz site. Amazon later discovered that the books that Amazon was itself selling were somehow illegal, which the buyers need not have to be concerned about in the first place. Then instead of informing the buyers of it's mistake, Amazon decided to delete the copies outright, without any notice and of course without any talk of refund to the buyers. That's what I understand of this situation.

potatolicious 17y ago
Then you misunderstand the situation. Amazon issued notice of the deletion (though did not clarify that the books were illegal), and automatically refunded money without the customers having to ask. I think they handled it as well as anyone can handle this particular situation.
- tdonia 17y ago
  to not clarify that the books were illegal when rescinded is nearly as grave a mistake as to allow them to be sold in the first place. rather than being in front of this and stopping these books from being sold - which was something they had every right to bar & would have been a pr conflict for exactly no one- amazon instead designed a system that allowed bad content to be sold with a kill switch in place so 'in the event of a mistake, it could be rescinded' - they deserve this pr storm because they've earned it. they've broken trust with their consumers on not one but 2 fronts here - foremost, they offered an ILLEGAL product for sale on their website. secondly, rather than explain the fact that this was illegal, they immediately attempted to go back in time and undo it - something that directly conflicts with a value proposition offered on the premise that books create memorable value and that their consumers might notice if a book suddenly goes missing. Amazon deserves what it's getting and we can only hope this will be loud enough to set the precedents & standards that define a better eventuality next time a similar situation arises.
  - uptown 17y ago
    "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
- throw_away 17y ago
  A better result from a CS standpoint would have been to purchase licenses for the legit copy, eat the difference in price and improve the vetting process so that books don't enter into the marketplace until their copyrights are validated. This way there aren't blog posts in nyt about this and your customers don't suspect you of doing something dirty. The book is 1984 for f sake. Does it have to be 451 before someone at amazon realizes this would be a PR nightmare? There were better ways to handle this issue, but they can still fix it, as they must have a record of which books from which customers they revoked & refunded.

by habibur 17y ago

potatolicious 17y ago

Then you misunderstand the situation. Amazon issued notice of the deletion (though did not clarify that the books were illegal), and automatically refunded money without the customers having to ask. I think they handled it as well as anyone can handle this particular situation.

tdonia 17y ago
to not clarify that the books were illegal when rescinded is nearly as grave a mistake as to allow them to be sold in the first place. rather than being in front of this and stopping these books from being sold - which was something they had every right to bar & would have been a pr conflict for exactly no one- amazon instead designed a system that allowed bad content to be sold with a kill switch in place so 'in the event of a mistake, it could be rescinded' - they deserve this pr storm because they've earned it. they've broken trust with their consumers on not one but 2 fronts here - foremost, they offered an ILLEGAL product for sale on their website. secondly, rather than explain the fact that this was illegal, they immediately attempted to go back in time and undo it - something that directly conflicts with a value proposition offered on the premise that books create memorable value and that their consumers might notice if a book suddenly goes missing. Amazon deserves what it's getting and we can only hope this will be loud enough to set the precedents & standards that define a better eventuality next time a similar situation arises.
- uptown 17y ago
  "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
throw_away 17y ago
A better result from a CS standpoint would have been to purchase licenses for the legit copy, eat the difference in price and improve the vetting process so that books don't enter into the marketplace until their copyrights are validated. This way there aren't blog posts in nyt about this and your customers don't suspect you of doing something dirty. The book is 1984 for f sake. Does it have to be 451 before someone at amazon realizes this would be a PR nightmare? There were better ways to handle this issue, but they can still fix it, as they must have a record of which books from which customers they revoked & refunded.