Rewriting the Past
George Santayana's quote 'Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it' is familiar to many, as in the tale of Cassandra, princess of Troy, and doomed to foretell the future and never be believed. Recent events affecting Kindle owners make me think that Richard Stallman and Clifford Lynch must be feeling increasingly like Cassandra.
Yesterday, Amazon Kindle owners were startled to discover that their collection of e-books had shrunk - ironically the books were 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell. It transpires that despite Amazon claiming to users that they "recently discovered a problem with a Kindle book that you have purchased," in fact, the publisher and copyright owner had asked them to pull the e-book version.
Now, the customers were reimbursed so that's not the issue. According to InformationWeek, Amazon claims that the content was made available by a third party without authorisation by the publisher. This makes the copies supplied to Kindle users a form of 'counterfeit' good and therefore subject to destruction as inventory, much as happens with bootleg Nike shoes.
Interestingly Amazon don't claim they can delete books in their Kindle Licence:
"Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon."
As, well, and as noted on Information Week, it's not even clear that they can withdraw content supplied unlawfully by a third party. When you buy a fake shoe, its yours and Nike can't get it back from you to destroy. Just because a digital medium gives commercial interests these abilities, doesn't mean its lawful for them to use them (an interesting example of the whole issue of the ease of digital copying conflicting with the law playing out in reverse for a change).
There are a lot of grumpy people on the Kindle forums right now, and Amazon have apparently stated they will not do this again. Maybe, in the end this will be a positive event, showing more people that Richard Stallman, for all his extremism, is warning us about real and significant threats to our freedom and rights as readers.