Filed under: Business
High schooler sues Amazon for ruining his study notes
When Amazon.com removed copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindles, there was a big uproar over possible censorship. The irony that the book in question happened to be the most famous literary screed on surveillance since - well, since ever - only added fuel to the fire. The resulting backlash caused Amazon to promise never to snatch customers' purchases off their Kindles again, even if another book has to be pulled from the store for legal reasons. The promise came too late for one high school senior, though, who lost his copy of 1984 AND the study notes he had made on the book. Now the student is trying to start up a class action against Amazon, suing for messing up the annotations he (and, presumably, at least a few other people) made on their digital copies of 1984. Amazon didn't actually delete his notes, but removing the book means that the notes don't refer back to any text, and renders them useless. The suit alleges that nothing in Amazon's terms of service for the Kindle covers the removal of users' purchases -- the license is supposed to be for life.
[via Wall Street Journal]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
NyaR said 4:10PM on 7-31-2009
Good
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Saint Seminole said 5:01PM on 7-31-2009
Maybe the courts will exercise common sense, and give the kid some money (instead of giving out money in frivolous suits). This one actually makes sense.
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sitruc said 6:21PM on 7-31-2009
It looks like it's actually a good lawsuit. I wish him the best. I hate that the case has to come from the angle he is going with, but it's necessary and will do well to set a precedent.
//I'm doing my best not to make fun of a nerdy high schooler on a debate team that has a Kindle and decides to bring up a lawsuit because he no longer can understand his notes during the Summer...
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Peter said 6:50PM on 7-31-2009
Even if he wins it won't do any good. All Amazon will do is change the terms of service to explicitly allow them to remove books. Don't think for a moment they are going to change their behavior just because they get sued. The only thing that will change their behavior is if people stopped buying Kindle and the books.
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Joshua said 8:53PM on 7-31-2009
Meh, just an improvisation of the dog ate my homework case.
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BoycottKindle said 2:34AM on 8-02-2009
i think if you really want to be heard guys and gals, you must launch a boycott kindle movement ASAP.
That's the only way for a very bad soon to happen "change in their customer TOS terms" which would lead to "amazon is free to delete anything which exist within the kindle©"
i wish you good luck, for freedom and for the life of books, they have rights to exist too!
--- Paul Atreide.
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