"Big Brother" apologizes as Amazon offers affected customers gift certificates or replacement copies of George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-four" and "Animal Farm", which were deleted without explanation earlier this summer.
A media furor erupted late
this summer when online retailer Amazon.com suddenly deleted digital copies of
the George Orwell classics “Nineteen Eighty-four” and “Animal Farm” from its
e-reader the Kindle. Now the company is offering customers affected by the
decision a $30 refund. Former owners can choose to have the book replaced or
take the gift certificate. Amazon sent an e-mail to affected users, alerting
them to the offering.
“As you were one of the
customers impacted by the removal of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” from your Kindle
device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us
re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made,” the
letter read. “You will not be charged for the book. If you do not wish to have
us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an
Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30.”
In early August, two owners
of the Kindle sued the company for breach of contract, intentional interference
with their belongings and violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and
the Washington Consumer Protection Act. Antoine Bruguier of California and
teenage Michigan resident Justin Gawronski filed the suit in Seattle District
Court over deleted copies of the dystopian classic “Nineteen Eighty-four”.
"Amazon has no more right to delete e-books from consumers' Kindles and
iPhones than it does to retrieve from its customers' homes paper books it sells
and ships to consumers," Bruguier’s lawyers argued in the suit, which is
alleging breach of contract and a violation of Amazon’s terms of service.
“Unless restrained and enjoined, Amazon will continue to commit such acts.”
Amazon issued a statement
on July 17 stating that the works by Orwell had been pulled because the Kindle
publisher did not own the rights. "When we were notified of this by the
rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from
customers’ devices, and refunded customers," Drew Herdener, a spokesperson
with Amazon, told The New York Times at the time. With the furor failing to
subside, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos publicly apologized for Amazon’s actions.
"This is an apology for
the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of '1984' and other novels
on Kindle," Bezos wrote in a July 23 community-forum posting on Amazon’s
Kindle site. "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," the note concluded. "We will
use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions
going forward, ones that match our mission."
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