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Amazon Settles Kindle Suit

Provides book replacement to Orwell fans

By Jon Hood
ConsumerAffairs.com

October 6, 2009

Amazon has agreed to fork over $150,000 for removing copies of the novel 1984 from users' Kindles without warning. Eligible consumers will receive a new copy, and $30 for their trouble.

High school student Justin Gawronski brought the suit in July after discovering that George Orwell's classic had been wiped off his Kindle. Amazon refunded Gawronski the amount he paid for the book, but he sued anyway, claiming damages for time spent creating annotations rendered useless by Amazon's actions. Kindles allow users to make notes in the margin of books, but erasing the text makes it nearly impossible to match those notes to the proper portion of the book.

Amazon said it deleted the book after learning it had been sold without a proper license. After a tepid response failed to please consumers, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos apologized profusely, calling the company's actions "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles." That the company's Big Brother-esque move was directed at a book about omnipresent surveillance and thought crimes could not have been lost on Bezos.

Gawronski's suit emphasized that Amazon gave customers no notice that books could be removed after they were purchased. Indeed, the Kindle's terms of service seemingly guaranteed consumers the right to a permanent copy of works they bought.

Under the terms of the settlement, filed on September 25, Amazon will not be allowed to delete e-books without first obtaining permission from the owner, or unless the work contains a virus with the ability to harm the Kindle.

The case highlighted one of the many pitfalls inherent in the movement toward digital media. Just as an entire iTunes library can be wiped out when a hard drive decides its number is up, an electronic book can vanish into the night as if you never owned it in the first place. Indeed, Gawronski's lawyers, straining to find a sensible analogy, compared Amazon's actions to that of a bookseller who sneaks into houses and takes his books back.

The settlement amount may seem large, given that the suit centered around handwritten notes in the margin of a 60-year-old book. The good news is that, rather than keep the fee to which they are entitled, Gawronski's attorneys have decided to donate the entirety of that fee to charity. The settlement provides that KamberEdelson LLC, the firm representing Gawronski, "will donate its portion of that fee to a charitable organization that promotes literacy, children’s issues, secondary or post-secondary education, health, or job placement."

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