Amazon’s Attempt to Remain Reliable

Amazon has talked and talked, trying to convince potential buyers that the Amazon Kindle is the best way to read your favorite books. Being paperless, cordless, and wireless, it is “the future of book reading. It will be everywhere,” said Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and Liar’s Poker.

Last Friday, however, many Amazon Kindle users lost their faith in the compact book storing device when they found their copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm missing from their E-Book collections. The Orwell books were added to the Kindle store by a user named MobileReference who did not have the rights to sell the books in America. When Amazon became aware of this illegal selling in their own store, they took down the E-Books being sold and deleted it from all users’ Kindles who had already purchased the books. Amazon also refunded each Kindle owner’s loss with the amount paid.

Many comments are being thrown around about this violation of trust saying that retailers of tangible goods would never be allowed to sneak into a customer’s home and take back a bootleg version and replace it with a check. Why should E-Books be any different? Now, Amazon is admitting that the move was probably not the best solution and that they are taking steps to prevent it from happening again.

On the flip side, Amazon was in the right here because the reliability of their bookstore was being compromised. The blame should not fall on Amazon, it should be on MobileReference for posting the books illegally. The copyrights for 1984 and Animal Farm have expired in many other countries, making it legal for anyone to read online without purchasing it, but will not expire in the US until 2044.

There is still a listing for the E-Book 1984 from the legitimate publisher Houghton Miffin Harcourt, but no E-Book for Animal Farm.