Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion [LWN.net]

Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

Posted Jul 26, 2009 5:32 UTC (Sun) by jamesh (guest, #1159)
In reply to: Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion by rahulsundaram
Parent article: Amazon's CEO Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle ebook deletion

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.

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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.