Another Amazon book removal controversy
“Where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
That’s not always true. Sometimes, where there’s smoke, there’s a guy with a smoke machine. 😉
Smoke machines are used to make it look like there’s a fire. They are part of theatre…designed to engage your emotions, not your intellect.
There is a lot of theatre around Amazon and the Kindle.
That’s not a surprise. Success may be the best deodorant*…but that won’t stop people from saying you stink. 😉
About a year and a half ago (is that all?), Amazon removed copies of a specific book by George Orwell from people’s Kindles.
Thanks to a high concentration of ironium (the element responsible for irony) 😉 in the removal of 1984, a book that features government censorship, it became a huge story.
Criticism of censorship censored?
No, not really.
The publisher says it had not intended the book to be made available in the USA, where they did not have the rights** for it. Amazon may have accidentally released it to the wrong market. Amazon removed the book.
The controversy really came because they removed it from Kindles, not just from the Kindle store. Many people are very protective of their Kindles…reading is an intensely intimate act, a form of communion with another person (the author), that, while purely mental, is as personal as anything that takes place in a bedroom.
Amazon got caught in a media firestorm (yes, sometimes there really is fire), and realized they had made a mistake, even though they compensated people. CEO Jeff Bezos said:
” 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.”
—Jeff Bezos’ statement in the Amazon Kindle forum
They went on to say they would not do the same thing again in the same circumstances.
That story still haunts them, still gets used against them. Removing books from people’s Kindles was wrong.
However, removing the book from Amazon’s servers was not.
They can not knowingly distribute an unauthorized copy of a book under copyright protection without breaking federal law.
That, by the way, means they also need to remove it from the servers that provide archives for people’s Kindles. If they let someone redownload an unauthorized copy, that’s an infringement under copyright law.
Their policy is that, if they are required to remove a book from their store and from your archives, they will not remove it from your Kindle.
If you have a copy on your Kindle (or a back-up you’ve made), you get to keep it.
Shouldn’t Amazon have to go after those illegal copies you have?
That’s one of the tricky and misunderstood things about illegally-generated copies. It’s the copying and distribution that’s illegal…not having the pirated copy. The Superme Court has specifically said that having illegally-generated copies is not the same thing as having stolen merchandise. It isn’t theft: it’s infringement.
Nobody has to come after you for those copies.
That was Amazon Book Removal Controversy #1 (or ABRC1). 🙂
Just recently, there was ABRC2.
A movement arose to make Amazon remove a specific book.
The book reportedly took a position that many people find repellant. It allegedly took a sympathetic position towards child molesters, although that’s not what the author said was the intent.
Amazon reportedly made this statement:
“Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable…”
However, they were also clear that carrying books that were illegal was something that they wouldn’t knowingly do.
Despite the statement, the book was removed from the Kindle store.
It hasn’t been clear to me whether Amazon removed it, or whether the author, under pressure, removed it.
However, it is very clear to me that Amazon has the right to stop selling a book…any book they want. They have no obligation to sell someone’s book.
This is also very key: if they did not remove the book from the Kindles of people who bought it, they did not repeat what they had done with the Orwell book.
My presumption is that they did not.
This was a big controversy…people said they would not shop with Amazon while that book was in the store.
That’s where Amazon has a problem.
Amazon wants to present itself as just a service provider. They’ve said they want to carry “every book ever written”. That mission statement implies, “We don’t care what the books are about. We don’t care what positions they take. We will let the consumers choose whether to buy or not to buy. We just provide the connection between the authors and the readers.”
NOTE: I AM JUST MAKING UP THAT STATEMENT…AMAZON HAS NOT EVER SAID THAT SPECIFIC THING. I’M USING IT TO ILLUSTRATE WHAT I SEE AS THE IMPLICATION OF THE STATEMENT THEY HAVE MADE.
It’s an interesting and defensible position, in my opinion. Brick and mortar stores can’t do that…they can’t say they’ll carry ever possible book. The physical space limitations make that impossible. Once they start having to choose which books to carry, they become something other than a mere conduit.
Those decisions will be made on a number of factors.
Of course, one driving factor is going to be if the store’s management thinks they can sell enough copies in that location to justify the cost (notably rent) of having the book.
If a book is illegal, that can be a significant cost…in addition to being something the management chooses not to do.
There’s also the issue that the book’s sales will be offset by losing you sales on other books. If carrying one book that sells ten copies keeps people out of your store that would have bought 100 copies of other books at the same price, that is bad economics.
Management then also makes choices based on taste. They may decide not to carry a book that would sell well for them, because the management simply doesn’t like it.
Hypothetically, it’s possible for an e-tailer to “stock” all books…to not have to start down the decision trail that is forced by physical limitations.
However…
Legal issues would still matter, of course.
Amazon specifically says:
Illegal Items
Titles sold through the Digital Text Platform Program must adhere to all applicable laws. Some Titles that may not be sold include any Titles which may lead to the production of an illegal item or illegal activity.
– DTP Content Guidelines
That applies specifically to books independently published through Amazon’s Digital Text Platform. I would presume they have some similar guideline for books from traditional publishers (tradpubs).
Does Amazon have other content guidelines?
Yes.
The broadest one, in my opinion, is this:
Offensive Material
What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect. Amazon Digital Services, Inc. reserves the right to determine the appropriateness of Titles sold on our site.
Any publisher using the DTP should know that Amazon will not sell their books if Amazon decides they are offensive. Amazon is not compelled to carry your book.
If Amazon decided that a book recommending burning books is offensive, they could stop selling it. If Amazon decided that a book about unicorns, or witchcraft, or the Jersey Shore show is offensive, they could stop selling it.
They could also decide to stop selling it…just because they decided to stop selling it. They don’t need a reason.
They are not obligated to sell anybody’s book.
So, that brings us to ABRC3.
I think I first became aware of it in this thread, started on December 9:
Amazon Kindle community thread
The author says that the book was removed by Amazon because it violated the guidelines. As I say above, those guidelines are very vague.
More importantly, they don’t even need to have them.
That said…
I don’t think Amazon has commonly removed books for content before.
They carry all kinds of contrversial books. I’ve gotten books from them that depict horrifying acts. I have honestly been shocked by some of the things that I’ve read (and didn’t expect ahead of time to be in there).
I’ve written about what I’ve found objectionable…including a book that featured underage sex, and is still being sold in the Kindle store.
Should Amazon stop carrying that book?
From their “non-judgemental” position of “every book ever written”, the answer would be no.
Is Amazon abandoning that idea, though? I don’t expect them to carry illegal books, but should it be modified to say, “Every book ever written…unless we at Amazon find it objectionable”?
Regardless of your position on that (and I’m happy to hear them), it’s important to note that they have not gone back on what they said after the Orwell controversy…unless they removed the book from people’s Kindles. That’s been alleged in some stories on ABRC3, but I’d be very surpised.
My guess is that people get confused about the archives (if they aren’t just “using a smoke machine”). When a book is in your Archived Items on your Kindle, it isn’t on your Kindle. I see people asking about that pretty frequently. “I removed a book from my Kindle, but it’s still in my Archived Items”. That’s just a list of what’s available to your Kindle from the Amazon server that backs up Kindle store books bought on your account.
Let’s say you bought a book from the Kindle store. You downloaded it to your Kindle. You finished the book and removed it from the device.
It would then show in the Archived Items on that device (it’s not supposed to show both in the archives and in the title listings on the homescreen).
If Amazon removed that book from the store because it was illegal or in violation of their guidelines, it would also be removed from the Archived Items list.
On the other hand, let’s say you downloaded a book to your Kindle and did not remove it from there.
It would not appear in the Archived Items list on that device.
If Amazon removed it from the store, it would not disappear from your Kindle…that’s what they have said they wouldn’t do again.
If that Kindle was eventually lost, stolen, or failed, though, you’d lose legal access to the book.
So, I think the suggestion that “Amazon is removing books again”, suggesting a connection to the Orwell incident, is a smoke machine.
I think the issue of Amazon changing its positioning from being a conduit to an arbiter of taste would be a significant one.
Feel free to tell me what you think.
* “Success is the best deodorant.” is a line attributed to Elizabeth Taylor. Is that still true in today’s society?
**Australia and the US have different copyright laws. In Australia, if the author died more than fifty years ago and prior to 1950, the book is in the public domain. Orwell died in 1950, which is sixty years ago. The book is not in the public domain in the USA, but is in the public domain in Australia. That means a publisher does not have to get rights to publish it in Australia, but does in the US.
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
I Love My Kindle 