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The legal questions are complicated and IANAL, but morally they had no right to remove something that was rightfully purchased and in use from people who had do

The legal questions are complicated and IANAL, but morally they had no right to remove something that was rightfully purchased and in use from people who had done no wrong. But why not? Morally it would have been wrong to allow a leak of something that wasn't rightfully theirs when they had such a simple system set up to fix it all. It would have been wrong if they hadn't emailed every person who owned the book. It would have been wrong if they hadn't offered a refund. But they did, and they did. Amazon's been transparent about all of this. Any penalties (if proper) to be born should have been born by and only by Amazon. And they bore it, offered a refund, and sent out an apology. What sort of punishment do you expect them to have suffered otherwise? "Amazon must hang its head and look guilty cos it did a bad thing"? But to go off on that tangent, no one should have the ability or right to delete anything or deliver any form of "punishment" without a judge being involved, and once it got to that point then simply deleting the files wouldn't be nearly enough. I said on a separate thread of comments that I don't hold a very firm belief in ownership of data, unless there's money involved. In this case, Amazon gave me the data, encoded to work on their hardware, so I hold that they have the right to do whatever they want with the content on it so long as they don't take my money needlessly. They didn't.

timwiseman 17y ago
But why not? Morally it would have been wrong to allow a leak of something that wasn't rightfully theirs when they had such a simple system set up to fix it all. It would have been wrong if they hadn't emailed every person who owned the book. It would have been wrong if they hadn't offered a refund. But they did, and they did. Amazon's been transparent about all of this. Yes, morally it was wrong (though only by accident) for them to allow the leak. The problem is that they did allow the leak. It was done. You can't unbreak an egg and the only people for whom this came close to "fixing it all" where the publishers. The end users now do not have something they rightfully purchased. Yes, Amazon gave a refund, but that is not the same. Clearly the users valued having that book more than they valued the money otherwise they would never have purchased the book, so Amazon then took something without right or permission that was more valuable than what they gave back. And they bore it, offered a refund, and sent out an apology. What sort of punishment do you expect them to have suffered otherwise? "Amazon must hang its head and look guilty cos it did a bad thing"? I expect them to have worked out everything with the publisher so that the users who already made the purchase would not be bothered. This means paying any and all fees and fines applicable under copyright laws (or whatever they settled for with the publisher) for their accidental breach without the end users who already purchased in good faith being bothered in the slightest.

timwiseman 17y ago

But why not? Morally it would have been wrong to allow a leak of something that wasn't rightfully theirs when they had such a simple system set up to fix it all. It would have been wrong if they hadn't emailed every person who owned the book. It would have been wrong if they hadn't offered a refund. But they did, and they did. Amazon's been transparent about all of this. Yes, morally it was wrong (though only by accident) for them to allow the leak. The problem is that they did allow the leak. It was done. You can't unbreak an egg and the only people for whom this came close to "fixing it all" where the publishers. The end users now do not have something they rightfully purchased. Yes, Amazon gave a refund, but that is not the same. Clearly the users valued having that book more than they valued the money otherwise they would never have purchased the book, so Amazon then took something without right or permission that was more valuable than what they gave back. And they bore it, offered a refund, and sent out an apology. What sort of punishment do you expect them to have suffered otherwise? "Amazon must hang its head and look guilty cos it did a bad thing"? I expect them to have worked out everything with the publisher so that the users who already made the purchase would not be bothered. This means paying any and all fees and fines applicable under copyright laws (or whatever they settled for with the publisher) for their accidental breach without the end users who already purchased in good faith being bothered in the slightest.