Lawsuits over deleted Kindle book
Posted by ljfrench on 08/03/2009 at 16:08 UTC
It appears that Amazon is going to have to answer for the deletion of George Orwell's "1984" from Kindle devices. To quickly recap, Amazon accidentally sold a book, George Orwell's "1984", it didn't have rights to sell. To correct the error, it erased the book from purchasers' Kindles without their permission. For at least one person, the deletion resulted in hours of lost work (annotating, etc).
The case presents an interesting problem for the upcoming digital paper age. In trying to advance reading technology, Amazon has highlighted the major drawbacks of Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.
I, myself, use a Kindle DX, recently and excitedly received in June 2009. My plan was to use it to hold the 50+ lbs of schoolbooks us law students are expected to study each semester. Amazon had planned to offer textbooks through the Kindle, some of which are hundreds of dollars. (See Copyright Law: A Practitioner's Guide (2009 Edition)
However, with the uncertainty about one's books and annotations at issue, I thought about some other problems professionals may have with placing reference material exclusively on the Kindle. First, Kindle books only work on Kindle. If you are a student, you've placed your $200+ textbooks on the Kindle, and you've annotated passages with your thoughts, you could be in real trouble if the unit was to fail or break.
Since you can't read your books anywhere else (except maybe the 3" screen on your cell phone), you are stuck sending your Kindle in for repair, a difficult option if you need your books daily.
Other solutions exist, albeit they aren't necessarily economic solutions. One could buy another Kindle and easily transfer purchases to it. It's also possible to have books unbound and scanned in as PDF files, which are much more portable.
Second, what's a student to do on an open-book exam? I imagine the unit would be banned from test centers because of its ability to store materials other than those permitted in the exam room.
One could purchase or borrow a hard copy of the book, but again, this is a step backwards, not forwards.
I'm looking forward to see how these issues are resolved.
Thanks for reading,
Len