It has come to light that Amazon, the leading online retailer, has overstepped the mark in protecting copyright laws and flagged up an issue of major concern for digital rights in the future.
The issue surrounds Amazon's excellent Kindle e-book reader, a device and service where users buy electronic versions of books and download them to the device wirelessly, allowing the content to be carried and read anywhere. The device, despite only being available in the USA, has proven to be very popular and built a strong base of users in its short lifetime.
However, controversy surrounded Amazon's recent discovery that two books it had been selling had been improperly licensed from the copyright holder, necessitating a recall. The scary development was that this was done without any warning to the customer and the refund was automatically credited back to user accounts. The main issue of digital concern was the fact that Amazon remotely deleted the content from every customer's Kindle device, again without warning.
One wag reckoned it was akin to a traditional paper bookshop sending someone to break in to your home to remove the offending book from your shelves but leaving the cash refund in full on the coffee table!!!!
Amazon has recognised that its approach had been 'stupid' and publicly apologised for what has been perceived as a breach of privacy laws and even their own terms and conditions of service as applied to the Kindle.
Yet the real classic moment in this whole affair were the books in question themselves - none other than George Orwell's '1984' and 'Animal Farm' - two books seen as the foremost writings on the dangers of censorship and a police state! How apt!
Questions have now surfaced once again about the whole concept of ownership in the digital age and the rights of consumers and copyright holders. Likely the only ones to profit in circumstances such as this in future will be the lawyers..
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