‘Easy come, easy go’ is an age-old expression and its sentiment is one that many Amazon Kindle users will currently be feeling very familiar with. I am referring to quite an interesting little episoide last week in which some Kindle owners had books secretly deleted from their devices by Amazon, for reasons of copyright complication (they shouldn’t have been available in the way that they were in the first place). Everyone got a full refund – but somehow I doubt this will suffice to appease some users…
After all, Amazon’s advertising hardly mentions the fact that the easy of access to books with the Kindle device also carries the price of Amazon’s ever-present easy access to the contents of your device. It should be noted also that this is actually not even the first time such a situation has arisen, with similar issues having caused problems in the past (pirated Harry Potters and some Ayn Rand are recent examples).
In terms of actual inconveniece caused the damage is fairly minimal in this case – users were able to (once aware of the move) simply buy an alternate version again with their refunded money and continue reading whatever the book in question was. However the PR fallout is (as always) the more serious concern – for if Amazon is not verifying the legality of some of its e-books until after they have been sold, it will hardly inspire confidence in the overall product.
Plus there is also something quite annoying, beyond the actual practical inconvenience, about having the books wiped from one’s device without even being made aware of it. It is a case of being made to be fully aware that your device – and the books you have purchased and read through it, are so totally and utterly accesible at all times by the companies involved in providing them – and perhaps also any malicious hackers or data thieves. If such an image abounds around the Kindle, then it seems logical that, for some at least, the simplicity and upfront ‘what you see is what you get’ of a paperback will still represent the easier option.
Dejan Levi