Recent Amazon deletions

[starrylizard]

Amazon in the Book Banning Business

I find this both interesting and worrying. While I don't personally have any interest in the books currently being deleted (incest erotica fiction), that would seem to be beside the point. Could this be one of the very real issues with the world of E-books? Amazon appear to have deleted the content not only as an item for sale, but deleted it also from the personal Kindle libraries of people who paid for access to the titles in question. They are not currently offering refunds, let alone a proper explanation.

Obviously here is another site that needs to seriously consider their content guidelines and spell them out appropriately, rather than simply deleting on "sole discretion, at any time". It seems like a path that could snowball into a much wider area of censorship.

I own a Kindle and I'm already fairly unimpressed with the library offered. But I'm also less than happy about the idea of someone being able to retrospectively censor content that I paid for and therefore own. I'll be watching how this progresses with some interest.

Comments

[reliand.livejournal.com]

wow...I really hate censorship laws. Especially if you paid money to read all these e-books and they deleted them with no reason behind them.
Yeah, a lot of people are probably offended by some of the books that were being offered but the option there is to not read them, not punish the people that do happen to enjoy the risque incest, erotica fiction books. If it's fiction what does it matter?

[boom-queen.livejournal.com]

So, being in my line of work, Amazon is continually frustrating on sooooo many levels. There is just no excuse for censoring content. There is plenty of stuff that I buy for my library that I don't agree with personally but I strongly believe in everyone's freedom to read and to make decisions for THEMSELVES.

This also isn't the first time Amazon has obstructed access to/censored content (the Amazonfail of 2009 comes to mind...). Both the decision to remove potentially-offensive-but-mainly-underperforming content and the decision to only allow Amazon content on Kindles are reflective of the fact that money is the bottom line for them. I understand that they are really convenient, and even awesome sometimes (particularly their used book marketplace), but their business practices suck!

My current Amazon-frustration: I have a Kindle too but it SUCKS that I have to hack it in order to put ebooks, even FREE ebooks that are public domain, that didn't come from Amazon on my Kindle. They really do not play well with others. And I can't exactly go recommending to my library patrons that they use dubious legal means to get content from anywhere-but-Amazon. Our library offers a really awesome downloadable e-book program, where you can download as many free e-books as you want, and the Kindle is the only ebook reader it doesn't work on. GRRR. Boo Amazon, boo.

/rant

[inkscribe.livejournal.com]

Yeah, they've pulled this nonsense previously by deleting copies of 1984 ... apparently forgetting that just because something is/is not in the public domain in the USA is irrelevant to an international customer base where the same item may/may not be in the public domain. Etc.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/22/kindle-amazon-digital-rights

I've needed to use computers for disability reasons for practically forever but the more this type of unwarranted and inappropriate intrusion into people's personal computing 'space' happens, the angrier I get.

*sighs*

[viciouswishes.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't own a Kindle, and I don't want one until they settle the DRM issue. I don't want them deleting books I've paid for. I'll keep my paper copies, thanks.