Amazon's Kindle DRM strikes again

Yet another exam­ple of the prob­lems with DRM and the Kindle:

This morn­ing, hun­dreds of Amazon Kindle own­ers awoke to dis­cover that books by a cer­tain famous author had mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­peared from their e-​​book read­ers. These were books that they had bought and paid for — thought they owned.

But no, appar­ently the pub­lisher changed its mind about offer­ing an elec­tronic edi­tion, and appar­ently Amazon, whose busi­ness lives and dies by pub­lisher hap­pi­ness, caved. It elec­tron­i­cally deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and cred­ited their accounts for the price.

via Some E-​​Books Are More Equal Than Others — Pogue’s Posts Blog — NYTimes​.com.

This also clearly illus­trates the prob­lem from the con­sumer per­spec­tive of “licens­ing” what was pre­vi­ously sold. With phys­i­cal books — or even elec­tronic sales — the “first-​​sale” doc­trine applies, and the seller can­not uni­laterly reverse the trans­ac­tion and take back the item (even if they credit the con­sumer for the price). Nor can the seller in a tra­di­tional sales trans­ac­tion pre­vent resale, etc. — which Amazon also prohibits.

Will con­sumers adjust to this new model, or will we rebel and insist on our tra­di­tional first-​​sale rights?

This cer­tainly dis­cour­ages me from buy­ing a Kindle — or, espe­cially, from pur­chas­ing my Kindle books through Amazon. Better to get them via Project Gutenberg, where they can­not be taken from me later on.

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