Sanders Media

The recent row over Amazon’s decision to delete readers’ Kindle copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm has highlighted a growing problem. Do we really own our digital content?

I find this to be a disturbing question to have to ask. In the traditional world of buying and selling, once you’ve paid, the product or service is yours to keep. The seller or creator did not have rights thereafter. You could do with the product as you pleased. Now, Amazon has changed that equation by remotely removing purchased copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from its customer’s Kindles. Here is Amazon’s statement to it’s customers:

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.

I really have a problem with this. You wouldn’t have seen this happen with paper books. Therein lies another issue. Should merchants and content providers have the right to remove previously purchased content without the buyers permission?

Amazon tried to further explain themselves in this statement:

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. 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. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.

That still doesn’t address why the consumer should have to lose out because of Amazon’s mistake. In the end, I shouldn’t have to worry that iTunes, Amazon or any other digital merchant will remotely “disappear” content I’ve purchased. It feels like an invasion of privacy. Companies risk losing the consumer’s trust by acting in this way. Hopefully, they will soon understand that.