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Thursday, October 1, 2009

Books Amazon Ate My Homework

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 2:41 PM

The high school student who sued Amazon.com for deleting an edition of 1984 from all its Kindles without prior notice has won the case:

According to the terms of the settlement filed Friday, Amazon agreed that it will not impermissibly “remotely delete or modify” any books, magazines, or newspapers from U.S. users’ Kindles. Amazon also has provided consumers the option of replacing the deleted books and notes to all users who had Orwell books deleted or giving them $30 in cash or gift cards.

The student lost all the notes he had written onto his Kindle when Amazon remotely deleted the book.

Comments (18) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

it just couldn't have happened to a better book.

Posted by Josh Bomb

on October 1, 2009 at 2:57 PM

Ha ha, that is ironic.

This is part of why books, physical books, printed on paper and bound, will remain as one of the best information technologies for quite some time.

Posted by Lilting Missive on October 1, 2009 at 2:59 PM

I was under the impression that he still had the notes, it's just that they were useless without the book. Something like "Remember this paragraph for class" is meaningless without the paragraph.

Posted by Ben on October 1, 2009 at 3:06 PM

On the other hand, buying used textbooks from Amazon, the dead tree kind, rocks.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on October 1, 2009 at 3:10 PM

This is why you back up your work, preferably via treeware

Posted by Shini on October 1, 2009 at 3:10 PM

@3, notes are keyed to "locations", which are mysterious points within books that only Kindle uses -- they're similar but not exactly identical to sentences. A note that says "location 4864" isn't much use without the Kindle edition.

To be honest, they're pretty goddamn worthless WITH the Kindle edition, and until they figure out a better way to refer to places in the book (like PAGE NUMBERS) that are portable to other editions or copies, the Kindle will be useless as a scholarly tool.

I get the impression Amazon doesn't much care, though; their target market is romance novels, mysteries, and sci-fi, genres with little scholarly interest and massive consumption rates (romance readers can plow through a book a day or even more).

Posted by Fnarf

on October 1, 2009 at 3:21 PM

#2 actually that's just poor software design.

or what #3 said.

Posted by w7ngman

on October 1, 2009 at 3:24 PM

Into the memory hole.

Posted by Winston Smith on October 1, 2009 at 3:36 PM

So if they will not "impermissibly" delete books, sounds like there's still some situation in which Amazon might permissibly delete a book?

Posted by muddlizard on October 1, 2009 at 3:43 PM

This is double-plus good.

Posted by Skip on October 1, 2009 at 3:44 PM

I realize you're not a lawyer, but reaching a settlement does not equal "won the case."

Posted by bigyaz on October 1, 2009 at 3:55 PM

Now scroll down and compare this story with the story of the exciting Microsoft GlamBook thingy. Storing all your valuable crap in a proprietary format on a proprietary device is asking for it.

Posted by elenchos on October 1, 2009 at 4:36 PM

A high schooler has a kindle? Those things are like $400!

Posted by Annag on October 1, 2009 at 6:28 PM

@12 uh, elenchos? Did you even watch the video about the "Microsoft GlamBook thingy"? If you had, you'd know that nowhere do they state that files will be kept in a proprietary format- in fact, the video shows projects and files being sent via email in a myriad of formats, including PDF.

Hey, I understand your defensiveness- I'm a hug Apple fan (in fact, I'm writing on an iMac right now) but being a fan-boy snob just for the hell of it is just tacky.

Posted by UNPAID COMMENTER on October 1, 2009 at 7:43 PM

Apple?

Posted by elenchos on October 1, 2009 at 8:34 PM

I might be an asshole, but there will never be a replacement for a real book. Studious kids, go to your fucking libraries at your colleges, high schools, etc.

Posted by love hurts on October 2, 2009 at 12:47 AM

All this tells me is that Amazon takes this way more seriously than they do their failure to provide access to gay books. No gift cards issue, not even a fucking apology.

Amazon hates gay people. If you're cool with that. keep sending them money.

Posted by Stace

on October 2, 2009 at 9:01 AM

They did fix the gay books thing and when I emailed a complaint I got an apology back and an explanation that it was an accident and they were fixing it. I'm not sure who specifically they should give a gift card to-- maybe the authors whose work was hidden for a day?

Posted by vitaminwater on October 3, 2009 at 8:28 AM