Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

Well it strikes me as way too little, way too late:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. 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. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

I guess it’s good that they are finally realizing what a disastrous thing this has been for the Kindle and for Amazon as a whole. I wish that I could very easily put this aside but I just can’t get past the creepiness of Amazon being able to remove my ebooks from my Kindle whenever it decides to or, even worse, perhaps replacing my ebooks with a different version without my knowledge.

Amazon has a HUGE amount of work to do in order to convince people that they can be trusted again. This was one of the most egregious violations of customer trust I’ve ever seen and there are a lot of us who really liked the Kindle who Amazon is still going to have to convince.

There needs to be concrete steps taken by Amazon and other publishers to acknowledge that once an ebook is purchased IT BELONGS TO THE USER NOT TO THE PUBLISHER OR TO THE COMPANY WHO SOLD THE EBOOK. No company should EVER have the ability to arbitrarily remove or edit an ebook once it has been purchased. Ever.

Until Amazon comes up with some kind of mechanism that guarantees that the purchaser of an ebook truly owns it, I doubt that they will be successful in repairing their tattered reputation.

Frankly, at this point, I will be sticking with ebooks published in open standards that I can control and use on any device. The DRM used in the Kindle books and the fact they are only available through Amazon (and the fact that Amazon can remove or edit them whenver it wants) creeps me out totally at this point. And I won’t spend another dime on buying books for my Kindle.

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