Last week Amazon decided to be play the role of big brother and deleted George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 eBooks from their Kindle customers. Confused as to why this took place, many cried foul and accused Amazon of spying on them. Although a refund was issued, users were not happy with Amazon’s ability to delete books from their Kindle.

This incident was first reported on the Amazon community, then on the NY Times by David Pogue, which turned the fiasco into a debate of whether or not Amazon was to be blamed for something they claimed was out of their hand.

Amazon says the publishing company that sells the George Orwell ebooks, did not have the rights to sell the eBooks. The books were put into the Amazon database by MobileReference, 3rd party seller. Amazon made this statement about the situation:

“These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books.”

According ArsTechnica, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm are not available in the United States in the public domain, so Amazon was not allowed to sell it.

After reading all the different perspectives and the initial reactions, I think most Kindle users and bloggers overreacted about the situation without letting the smoke clear. It seems that Amazon’s purchasing system was to blame, at least that’s what Amazon tells us. The system is designed to remove books Amazon no longer have the rights to to sell. Why that’s the case, we don’t know but let’s take some time to look into this scenario Amazon has found themselves in.

Amazon’s eBook service and Kindles are relatively new to the public. There’s always a first time for these mistakes and I believe Amazon when they said they’re changing their system to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again and users are going to be allowed to keep their eBooks in the future. Amazon was clearly in the wrong for removing the eBooks, but If Amazon no longer has the license to sell something, they can’t continue to sell the item. It’s that simple.

This incident reminds me of the reactions by the public to Apple’s iPhone “kill switch” that gave Apple the ability to delete apps from iPhones they deemed were unauthorized. Many were questioning Apple’s motives and cried “violation of user rights” but it eventually died down. Amazon is hoping for the same… and quick.

(Via ArsTechnica)