Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

[Posted July 24, 2009 by ris]

From:		John Sullivan <campaigns-AT-fsf.org>
To:		info-press-AT-gnu.org
Subject:		[GNU/FSF Press] Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion. FSF calls upon Amazon to free the ebook reader.
Date:		Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:07:03 -0400
Message-ID:		<87hbx3yry0.fsf@myles.home.wjsullivan.net>

## Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion. Free
   Software Foundation calls upon Amazon to free the ebook reader.

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Thursday, July 23, 2009 -- The Free
Software Foundation (FSF) welcomed the apology issued today by Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos, as negative reviews from DefectiveByDesign.org
campaign supporters criticizing the Kindle's use of proprietary
software and Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to remotely delete
ebooks continued to pour in.

In a post to the Kindle Community forum on Amazon's Web site, Bezos
said:

    This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally
    sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to
    the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line
    with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve
    the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from
    this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward,
    ones that match our mission.

    With deep apology to our customers,
    Jeff Bezos
    Founder & CEO
    Amazon.com 

The FSF and Defective By Design, which on Monday called on activists to
post reviews calling attention to the Kindle Swindle's arbitrary
deletion of George Orwell ebooks from hundreds of users' devices,[1]
welcomed Bezos's apology, but said more must be done to remedy the
problems exposed by Amazon's actions.

[1] http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/1248

FSF's executive director Peter Brown explained, "Unfortunately this
matter requires more than just changing internal policy. The real issue
here is Amazon's use of DRM and proprietary software. They have
unacceptable power over users, and actual respect necessitates more than
an apology -- it requires abandoning DRM and releasing the Kindle's
software as free software."

The deletion of the Orwell ebooks was Amazon's third blatant
demonstration of the control its software provides over users. In June,
Amazon remotely deleted copies of Ayn Rand books, and prior to that,
they disabled Text-to-Speech functionality for select titles -- a move
which was a slap in the face to all users and particularly to the
visually impaired community.

FSF operations manager John Sullivan added, "Amazon has been a positive
example for Defective By Design to point to in the world of DRM-free
music. We hope that this controversy will show Amazon that they need to
take the same enlightened approach when it comes to ebooks, so Kindle
users can be confident that they won't be Swindled again."

### About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting
computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute
computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as
in freedom) software -- particularly the GNU operating system and its
GNU/Linux variants -- and free documentation for free software. The FSF
also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of
freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org
and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux.
Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at
<http://donate.fsf.org>. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

### Media Contacts

Holmes Wilson  
Campaigns Manager  
Free Software Foundation  
+1 (617) 542 5942  
<campaigns@fsf.org>

Peter Brown  
Executive Director  
Free Software Foundation  
+1 (617) 319 5832

 ###


_______________________________________________
FSF And GNU Press mailing list <info-press@gnu.org>
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-press

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 24, 2009 18:40 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (12 responses)

calling the device the Amazon Swindle instead of it's proper name (Amazon Kindle) is a childish act that undermines the credibility of this press release.

disagree

Posted Jul 24, 2009 19:23 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (5 responses)

I like it.

Names like Micro$oft or Microshaft are silly and should be left out of PRs, but the Swindle's a good pun for what Amazon's selling.

disagree

Posted Jul 24, 2009 19:29 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

why is one way of making fun of companies acceptable and others aren't?

I see all of these (along with Slowaris, Winblows, etc) to all be in the same category. they can be fun, and in discussions are not bad, but have no place in formal communication (and about the only things more formal than a press release are legal documents)

disagree

Posted Jul 24, 2009 19:54 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (3 responses)

"Microshaft", "Micro$oft", and "Winblows" don't hint at the harm that MS do. They're just cheap insults.

Swindle's a good one because it hints to people that what's on offer isn't exactly what they think.

disagree

Posted Jul 24, 2009 20:40 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (2 responses)

Along similar lines, I've always found "Micros~1" a much more amusing jibe at actual technical shortcomings of Microsoft software, and *patent* technical shortcomings no less.

disagree

Posted Jul 27, 2009 15:55 UTC (Mon) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeah, Micros~1 both makes a statement and is accurate at the same time.

FWIW the one I tend to use is MSWormOS, both because it's so accurate, and
as a (rather obscure, admittedly) statement about their claim of trademark
on the term "Windows", particularly when the X Windows System was using
the term way before MS came up with it.

But as my unfree past recedes into history, pretty much everything
proprietary including MS has begun to lose relevance to me, and I don't
care so much any more to make those "immature" references. But I like
yours as it's "MS approved" and thus legitimate in a way the others
aren't, and bears particular legitimacy now that they're making such a big
deal over their LFN/FAT hack patents.

Duncan

disagree

Posted Jul 27, 2009 19:29 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Um, that's 'X Window System', which seems unlikely to be considered the
same trademark as 'Microsoft Windows'.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 24, 2009 19:53 UTC (Fri) by HappyCamp (guest, #29230) [Link] (5 responses)

They did not call it the Amazon Swindle.

There are only two instances of "Swindle" in the entire press release.

Once in the press release it says, "... Kindle Swindle's ..." and then it has "... won't be Swindled again"

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 24, 2009 21:37 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (4 responses)

Right - and I think e-book readers are swindles anyway. Take it from someone who got all excited because they might be able to read me a book (which I cannot do on comuter trains because of eyesight and repeatedly being made fun of because of the way I read by the same kind of immature people who come up with DRM...because they know from experience how to be abusive....

..only to find out that I have to jump through hoops to have it, and that my sighted brethren are denied it.

Down with DRM. DRM is fundamentally a swindle, particularly for future generations, who won't be able to access archives because of it.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 24, 2009 22:11 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

don't equate e-book readers with DRM.

while all of them support DRM, I believe that they all also support non-DRM documents (I know that the Kindle does)

and many of the online stores that sell e-books have them available without DRM. they aren't as high a profile as the one-click ordering through amazon from the kindle, but they are out there.

on my kindle I put about a dozen non-DRM items on it for every DRM item

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 25, 2009 2:50 UTC (Sat) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (2 responses)

Whoa! How do you *know* what Amazon can do with their (not your) Swindle?

The very fact that they can delete not just a book you paid for, but your very own notes that you wrote, is proof positive that you do not own that e-book reader.

You make many implicit assumptions about what Amazon can do with their Swindle. Are you really that naive?

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 25, 2009 20:04 UTC (Sat) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (1 responses)

as long as someone else can update the software on your machine without you approving the update, they can do anything to your machine.

it doesn't matter if it's a phone, e-book reader, DVR, or general-purpose PC/laptop

it also doesn't matter if the someone else is amazon, microsoft, redhat, or ubuntu.

so if you are worried about what they _can_ do, you need to first disable automatic updates.

only after you do that can you start arguing about any capabilities of their software as it's currently deployed

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 26, 2009 0:32 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

I would note that automatic updates are NOT enabled by default in a Linux distribution and you do have access to the source code of the updates. The Amazon situation with DRM is hardly the same thing.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 25, 2009 5:11 UTC (Sat) by muwlgr (guest, #35359) [Link]

You call the jerks "jerks" judging for what they do, not what they say.
Amazon, Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, (... lot of others) are just what you would expect from large and established corporation : a bunch of greedy jerks.

Stallman's "The right to read" is a true prophecy.
Be ready for interesting times coming :>

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 25, 2009 20:03 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (5 responses)

"""
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received.
"""

So, the customers got their books back (minus any notes)... or not?

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 26, 2009 0:35 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

They can't since Amazon didn't have the rights to distribute them in the first place. The problem is not that they had to recall the books but the manner in which they did it.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 26, 2009 2:34 UTC (Sun) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link] (1 responses)

So the "apology" really comes under the heading of "talk is cheap". If the books had been paper, would agents of Amazon have shown up on their customers' doorsteps to forcibly reclaim the books?

I wonder what Orwell would have made of this 'great literature as a service' world? In fact, I think we can make a good guess.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 31, 2009 23:53 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

If the books had been paper, would agents of Amazon have shown up on their customers' doorsteps to forcibly reclaim the books?

By forcibly, you mean somehow bodily prevailing upon the occupant of the house? That's not analogous to what Amazon did with the Kindle. Well, maybe some people think hacking into a computer is morally equivalent to mugging someone -- virtual violence -- and for them it would be analogous. But I think most people draw a distinction.

I'm reminded of laws that say a person may legally right a wrong if he can do it "peaceably." For example, if you steal my book and I see it sitting on your desk when you aren't there, I can "steal" it back, but if you're holding it, I can't take it from your hands.

I see electronically deleting files behind the user's back as peaceable.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 26, 2009 5:32 UTC (Sun) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link] (1 responses)

The New York Times article says that there are authorised copies of 1984 available for the Kindle, so Amazon obviously is able to sell copies of the book.

So they certainly could have replaced the copies if they wanted to, or even used that relationship to pay the required royalties for the copies they already sold.

It also isn't clear that deleting copies after the fact makes much of a difference: Amazon still participated in copyright infringement, so the copyright holder could still go after them.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Aug 1, 2009 0:02 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link]

It also isn't clear that deleting copies after the fact makes much of a difference: Amazon still participated in copyright infringement, so the copyright holder could still go after them.

Right. Some of those customers already read the book. The damage is done. There's a lot we're not being told about what transpired -- seems to me the copyright holder would have demanded royalties from the beginning and Amazon would have written a check instead of messing around with file deletions and refunds.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 27, 2009 18:20 UTC (Mon) by sigra (guest, #57156) [Link]

In Sweden it is illegal to modify or delete someone's notes on their
computer without allowance. It is called "dataintrång" and can give prison
up to 2 years.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 27, 2009 22:34 UTC (Mon) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link] (6 responses)

'Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received.'

To me, the scandal is not just that they deleted books from users' devices, it's that they designed the device to permit remote deletion in the first place (IIRC this kill switch has been known about for a while? correct me if I'm wrong.).

There are all sorts of tradeoffs in a product - I personally dislike DRM, copy protection, etc but I can see that they can be applied in ways that don't upset your customers too much and that maybe make your content providers happier. I'd rather have a world without it but occasionally I see it done in a way I can *just about* live with for the time being.

But building in the ability to perform remote deletions - why even do that in a device you're intending to sell? Although I'm sure there are business arguments for including the feature, I think it crosses a line. DRM is bad because it restricts what a user can do with their device. But reserving rights to do things to the device yourself is even more distasteful!

As a consumer and technology enthusiast, the fact the device seems to aim to support remote delete is simply evidence of bad faith on the part of Amazon. They're reserving the right to do something that we know and they know (it seems from their press release) that they should never do. That doesn't inspire me with confidence. Whether or not this case is an, the fact remains: if they reserve the right to do it (and here my assumption is that the ToS permits remote deletions in principle), that means they are keeping open the option to *actually* do it. If they're keeping the option open, then there will always be mistakes and misjudgements even if they are acting in good faith.

If they really wanted to show that this was unintentional they would provide a patch to restrict document removal to local users. If they insist on keeping their "nuclear button" whilst simultaneously telling us how bad it is then it's just marketing spiel.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 0:42 UTC (Tue) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link] (5 responses)

Update: Whilst I largely stand by what I just wrote, commenters at the Howling Void suggest that the remote deletion capability is provided to refund accidental purchases of books. (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1315931&cid=28836261)

Seems like a somewhat weaselly way to tackle the problem of potential accidental purchases - they equally could have just put a well-designed "are you sure" dialogue on there, one would have thought. I wonder if they realised the control they had over the device and just got carried away.

I assume their DRM-free MP3 store doesn't have access to your computer in case you need a refund.

Still think it's an example of Amazon getting carried away with what they *can* do and not thinking about what they *should* do.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 0:48 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (4 responses)

it's not just refunds of accidental purchases. it's for any refunds.

I've purchased a couple books that were so unusable that I got refunds on them (less for the money involved than to have them not show up on the list)

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 0:58 UTC (Tue) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link] (3 responses)

Unusable? Erk! I'd be disappointed if I bought a book from Amazon that wasn't readable on their device :-( But I suppose given the range of items they sell it wouldn't be feasible to verify them all.

All the same, the real issue seems to be that Amazon can delete stuff without your permission. Given that for DRM purposes they probably already authenticate that the OS has not been tampered with, they could have implemented a "Delete this book and receive a refund?" UI that popped up for remote deletion. That would have been harder to do, so I can understand them not doing it.

But at least then the user would *know* what was happening - I believe it's really the "backdoor" appearance of their current solution that makes people so angry.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 1:06 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (2 responses)

it is not that hard to modify the binaries on the kindle, so they do not have the absolute control over the software there that you assume that they have.

everyone, including Amazon (now) agrees that deleting stuff without notice is the wrong thing to do.

the remaining dispute is if Amazon is evil for having the _capability_ of deleting something from the kindle in the first place.

I suspect that the next time something like this comes up they will replace the book contents with a notice explaining what happened instead of just silently deleting the book, as well as sending notice about the refunds to people. but you never know until the next situation arises.

and it will arise, it's impossible for Amazon to know who really owns the copyright on something that is given to them.

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 1:43 UTC (Tue) by MarkWilliamson (guest, #30166) [Link] (1 responses)

'it is not that hard to modify the binaries on the kindle, so they do not have the absolute control over the software there that you assume that they have.'

Interesting ... to what extent, though? Can you, e.g. modify the kernel? Modify the code that does the remote deletion? If so then there's a fairly straightforward fix waiting for some hacker out there to come up with. I'd be moderately surprised if they hadn't locked down their core components though - surely if they're using remote delete to implement refund they're going to want to verify that the deletion really did happen?

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 28, 2009 2:07 UTC (Tue) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

the update mechanism appears to be well understood, and with that people have modified things like the web browsers, the screen savers, and the fonts, as well as installing new applications that run int he background (file format converters) and released 'update bundles' to allow script-kiddie level people to do the changes

others have reported going in and getting root shell access.

the code to allow amazon to delete books in not in the kernel, it's in the userspace applications.

I've seen at least one report of someone going in and doing much more drastic changes (putting their own linux distro on the box), at the time they didn't have the display and several of the keys working, and since those have explicit support in the kindle kernel patches, this indicates that they probably replaced the kernel along with everything else. but I don't know for sure.

remember that users can mount the kindle as a UDB drive and copy documents to/from the device, so even if amazon issued the command to delete the file, they can't prevent you from copying the file back onto the kindle later.

and taking the approach of blacklisting a filename and deleting it any time it's seen is a _very_ dangerous thing to do, just from a reliability point of view. I would be surprised if they had done so.

as for them locking things down, the Tivo and game console hackers have shown that that sort of thing isn't going to stop the people who are determined to go in and change things, Amazon seems to just be putting up enough of a roadblock to stop casual changes (and to protect themselves from applying the wrong update to the wrong system), but not going to great lengths to try and stop people.

as I understand it, even the DRM they use for their books is something that has been broken quite a while ago. again, it's enough to stop casual copying, but not determined abuse.