I read stories like this one, where Amazon has gone onto their subscribers’ Kindles and removed books (refunding the purchase price, but still) because the publisher decided they didn’t want to make the books available electronically anymore, and I wonder what the company is thinking.
The calculus might work this way–Kindle subscribers are a small part of Amazon’s business model right now, and the people who had purchased those books (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) are an even smaller part, so the relationship with the publisher is more important than the one with that small subset of subscribers. After all, even the ones who are pissed off at Amazon’s actions aren’t likely to dump their subscriptions after plunking down serious bucks for the hardware. In the short term, Amazon’s move makes sense.
In the long term, though, if this practice continues and if more people find their Kindles invaded and books removed (even if the purchase price is refunded), Amazon is going to have problems holding on to subscribers and pushing their hardware, and they’ll also have an even bigger problem with piracy.
Part of the problem comes from the different ways that users and providers look at the e-content. This became clear to me back during the Sony rootkit scandal, where Sony, in an attempt to protect their intellectual property, invaded the desktops of people who had purchased their CDs and ripped them to their hard drives. The music industry’s justification was based on the idea that when consumers purchased a CD, they only licensed the music, and therefore were limited in their uses of it. Legally speaking, that’s accurate, but it doesn’t seem logical to the person who just dropped twenty bucks at the store, because most users don’t differentiate between the physical CD and the data on it.
This Amazon issue has gone a bit farther. Now Amazon is saying that they’ll sell you the data, but that it’s a conditional sale, and that they can take it back from you at any time, and that you don’t have anything to say about it (unless you have the ability to hack the system, presumably). So what are you buying? According to Amazon, it seems you’re buying conditional access to data. But I, as a consumer, say I’m buying a book, just in a different format. I’ve already conceded, by purchasing it electronically, that I won’t be able to resell it or donate it to a used bookstore (or even to a student in a class), but I still feel like I’ve bought it, which means I get to decide how long I own it.
And that’s the danger that Amazon really faces. It’s hard enough to convince people that they’re actually buying something when they agree to pay money for data, because you’ve jumped the physical-ethereal divide. But if you then start telling your consumers that they haven’t actually purchased anything, and that you can snatch it back without warning, well, why should your consumers buy anything from you in the first place? They’ll find other, less expensive ways of accessing the same data.
7 responses
(flying the Jolly Roger) – “Phreaks forever!”
Their rationale makes sense (the publisher of the Orwell e-books didn’t have authorization to make the books available on the Kindle) but as Amazon’s Kindle mistakes keep piling up, they’re setting themselves up for a giant fall. I’m just waiting for Apple to launch a dedicated e-book reader, which combined with the ubiquitous iTunes as a delivery vehicle will completely take over the e-book market.
If that’s their rationale, then you’re right Pete, but they could have made that clear to their subscribers, most of whom were still complaining (on the message boards I could find) that they couldn’t get a straight answer out of Amazon. No matter how you look at it, it’s a public relations screwup, and when you’re selling something as ephemeral as data and can’t rely on the quality of the product itself cover your ass, then the public relations has to be as near to perfect as possible. It shouldn’t have been difficult for Amazon to include an explanatory sentence or two with the email announcing the refund, but they didn’t do so, which I think backs up my contention that companies which “produce” IP don’t view it the same was as people who purchase it.
Hold on. I’m working on some code to “borrow” books off your Kindle, so you can get “sublease” them, given that ownership is a (re)movable feast.
Turn this into a question of what would Amazon do if this had been a physical book instead of a hard copy.
They would have discontinued sales of the item and removed the offending publisher from selling further titles. But they would have been powerless to have the people return the books that they purchased.
Apple has done this with iPhone apps, and now Amazon. This is the problem with the software End User License Agreements. The EULAs are so much legalize that a normal person like me could never read and understand, let alone anticipate, that this action would be taken on Amazon’s part.
As with all things good communication before action turns aside a lot of criticism.
The irony that the orwell titles, espec. 1984, were removed is creepy and already much commented upon.
Does this mean that if a publisher recalls a book that I’ve put on my kindle–perhaps for reasons of plagiarism or defamation of character–that the book will be repossessed from my Kindle. If I go to the bricks and mortar Barnes and Noble and buy a book–say a cookbook with an exploding recipe–and the publisher later literally removes the book from the shelves, i still own the cookbook. If i put it on my kindle, could amazon remove that?
Truth really is stranger than fiction; not even Orwell could have made this up. Someone should invent the software to prevent amazon from invading the kindle.
It will not kill e-publishing. Many publishers are already signing on with other more secure sites, without the need to deal with Amazon at all. Amazon is just becoming insecure about everything having to do with their business. But if they had just run it more efficiently, and with a better and more educated staff, none of this would happened in the first place.
We at Antellus have already removed all our Kindle book links and also links to Amazon in order to remove the taint from our book sales. We think that others will do the same, and avoid becoming involved in any more “imperial” entanglements.
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