Op-Ed: Amazon removing books off Kindle an invasion of privacy?

In a move upsetting customers and leaving individuals to question "big brother"-like ethics, Amazon remotely removed two books off users' Kindle ebook readers without consent. The copies had been added by a company that did not have distribution rights.

Now with electronic publishing not limited to the WWW and mobile browsing, the jury is out on which vehicle of distributing content will generate the most buyers/users and (hopefully) capital. Traditionally, companies with which you have an account keep track of your buyer history (e.g. Barnes and Noble knows what books you've purchased if you use a B&N customer account every time). But after you have purchased an item, the company isn't going to take it back from you without your consent. Well, that is unless the company is Amazon, Inc. and you purchased the books 1984 and Animal Farm for your Kindle ebook reader. Last week, Amazon found that it was illegally distributing kindle-book copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. In response, the company remotely deleted the books off of Kindle users who purchased the items. As the New York Times reports:

[Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said] that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

Customers were upset, and finally on the 23rd, Amazon’s Founder/CEO, Jeff Bezos, apologized, saying:

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

I have not yet purchased an e-reader but have been looking at them for some time. As more content is available on new gadgets, however, I wonder how much personal information users will be willing to give away for free. It could be said that by purchasing the Kindle, you the owner agree to the Terms and Conditions that are applied therein, including licensing rights regarding the content that you purchase. By Amazon deleting the books, it reinforces the fact that one does not own the book, but rather owns a license allowing the book to be read. A section of Kindle’s Terms and Conditions states the following:

Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use.

Does owning a book now parallel owing a copy of a software suite such as MS Office? And, does Microsoft have the right to rescind such license and then additionally forcibly (and without your knowledge) remove the copy from your computer hard drive? As a member of the "layman-who-doesn't-have-a-law-background-but-uses-these-technologies" clan, I think as much as this Kindle-book controversy could be called an “invasion of privacy,” I don’t think that it truly is. Individuals willingly purchased the Kindle, aware that they can purchase books through this vehicle/medium, and as poor of a job Amazon did in correcting their own mistake (deleting the remote book versions and refunding users instead of, say, paying back the publisher if that was an option, or at least informing the customers of their intentions before they were carried out), I think the user has given Amazon access to take back illegally available content. Is this an invasion of privacy? Do new technologies have better Big Brother capabilities? And finally, would this event sway you to not buy into new content-driven technologies? Personally, even after all of this, I would purchase an ebook reader for its ease of use.