Update on Amazon Pulls Books from Kindle Story

This from Endgadget, following up on its original story about the incident:

Update 2: Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, pinged us directly with the following comment, and now things are starting to make a lot more sense. Seems as if the books were added initially by an outfit that didn't have the rights to the material.

These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. 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. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.

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Comment: Well, now: Doesn't sound so bad, does it?

As I suspected, something went wrong and the copyright holder exercised their rights -- in which case Amazon had no option but to accede.

Of course, Amazon screwed up, or rather, got screwed up by the third-party submitter who didn't have the right to submit the books; Amazon will need to figure a way to check that sort of thing more closely. And Amazon arguably screwed up by not promptly announcing the nature of the problem so as to dampen criticism.

Yet, there are still complaints: Under the invisible headline You Can't Win, Endgadget goes on to conclude:

Still, what's upsetting is the idea that something you've purchased can be quietly taken back by Amazon with no explanation and no advance notice. It's a rotten policy, regardless of the motivations behind this particular move.

The 'no explanation' part is the only part I think is worth complaining about. The 'no advance notice' is only wise, under the circumstances: Many commenters talked about wishing they had offloaded their copy of the books so they couldn't be taken back. Amazon would have been foolish to announce in advance, thus enabling customers to put Amazon in noncompliance with copyright law.

The real bottom-line complaint from most complainers is that Amazon is able, in this technology, to 'unsell' you a book. In their minds, All Sales Are Final. But this is also nonsense: If I sell you a book I stole from someone, the owner could have the police come to you and take it back. Only legal sales can be considered final. The only thing unusual about this particular Amazon sequence is that the reclaiming was done in a novel (sic) virtual way that isn't an option in the physical world. People hadn't thought to consider this as a possibility, and now they're taken aback. Understandably. But they are also crying foul, which is understandable also (because people lash out) but wrong.