Hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners in the United States awoke to find copies of 1984 and Animal Farm that they had purchased in the Kindle store were mysteriously missing.
Emails were sent to users notifying them of an refund to their account. Amazon user Caffeine Queen noted on the Kindle Community:
"I've received emails today notifying me of refunds for $.99 for Animal Farm and 1984, and both have disappeared from my Kindle archived items. I didn't request refunds, and I also don't remember purchasing the titles - I'm thinking they were free downloads. It's been several months since I ordered them. Anyone else have any unsolicited refunds lately?"
Questioning the emails, Caffiene Queen posted the response from Amazon:
"The Kindle edition books Animal Farm by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) & Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984) by George Orwell. Published by MobileReference (mobi) were removed from the Kindle store and are no longer available for purchase. When this occured, your purchases were automatically refunded. You can still locate the books in the Kindle store, but each has a status of not yet available. Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store."
Yes, you read that right. Amazon deleted books that people had purchased legitimately from a supposedly reputable store, only to have it summarily taken from them without warning.
Yes it was a bad decision by the publisher of the books, especially considering that the book they pulled warns specifically about this kind of 'big brother knows best' bullshit.
If the publisher wants to remove their publications from a digital store, they should have that right, but to delete books on people's devices remotely seriously diminishes the value of digital publishing in the eyes of the consumer.
If you buy a book in a store, you never have to worry about the publisher coming into your house and taking it back. The same applies if your download them illegally. However if you choose the legal route you never know how long you will have something you bought. Crazy!
New York Times technology guru David Pogue said it was "like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table."
A quick Google search finds the book available for free on the web. Australians don't yet have access to the Kindle, but George Orwell's classic is out of copyright in Australia, meaning we can simply (and legally) download the pdf of the eBook online, but there is nothing stopping someone from the US from doing the same thing. It's a more likely scenario than the person going
Another quick search and we have a number of ways to load free eBooks onto the Kindle. It's likely that a disgruntled Kindle customer will do a similar thing depriving the copyright holders of any revenue. This scenario is much more likely than a dedicated Kindle user going out and buying a hard copy version.
With the money now refunded, publishers MobileReference have shot themselves in the foot, sacrificing revenue and encouraging the exploration free options. Is this a representation of fear by publishers that Amazon has too great a market share? Bloomberg reported that fear in a report on the 9th July:
However some people have noted that it is unclear if MobileReference had the authority to publish the work in the first place.
Its yet another reminder that you don't actually 'buy' DRM protected media, you are leasing it at the whim of a Orwellian 'big brother'.
UPDATE - Amazon have confirmed that Mobilereference did not have the rights to distribute the book in the first place, and that they will not delete books from devices in the future.
"When we were notified of this by the rights
holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from
customers' devices, and refunded customers," the company said in an
e-mailed statement. "We are changing our systems so that in the future
we will not remove books from customers' devices in these
circumstances."