Geek Tested:

Amazon Offers Redelivery or $30 to "Kindle Remote Deletion" Victims

Posted 09/05/09 at 11:44:36 PM by Pulkit Chandna

In July, Amazon set the cat among the pigeons by remotely deleting digital copies of two George Orwell books from Kindle readers. It took the deplorable step after it realized that unauthorized copies of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four and Animal Farm were being sold on the Kindle Store. The ensuing hullabaloo haled Amazon into admitting its stupidity. Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder and CEO, issued a formal apology in an attempt to pacify enraged Kindle users.

Although all remote-deletion victims have already been issued refunds, Amazon is now trying to mend fences with indignant Kindle owners. It has offered to either return the deleted books – along with the annotations they may have contained - for free to affected Kindle users or to present them with gift certificates or checks worth $30 each. “If you do not wish to have us re-deliver the book to your Kindle, you can instead choose to receive an Amazon.com electronic gift certificate or check for $30,” the company said in an email it sent to Kindle owners on Thursday.

Image Credit: Blog Kindle

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Amazon has officially beat
Submitted by yourfriendlane on Mon, 09/07/2009 - 11:21am

Amazon has officially beat Microsoft in the bending-over-backwards-to-fix-their-screwups department. I can't imagine a company handling a situation like this more graciously.

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You're doing it wrong
Submitted by geodescent on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 1:10pm

Just use Google and say F You to DRM: http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:8PNZHtJUkaoJ:www.pauladaunt.com/books/George%2520Orwell/+%22animal+farm%22+1984+intitle:index.of+-sex+-audio+-html+-htm+-php+-asp+-mp3+-pls&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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Smart Move
Submitted by Techrocket9 on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 11:01am

Smart Move

_____________________________________________________

An army of pacifists can be defeated by one man with the will to fight.

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Just another reason
Submitted by MeTo on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 8:22am

Just another reason not to buy a $300.00 Amazon Kindle book reader and then pay $10 a book that they can take back at any time they want. A fool and his money are soon parted.

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Just a couple of
Submitted by lhatten on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 12:14pm

Just a couple of clarifcations. First, the people who bought these boods paid $ 0.99, not $10.00. That was the whole problem. The books were beings sold by a third party vendor as out of Copyrite, when the were not. As to why the books cost $10.00, part of the money goes to the copyrite holder.

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Annotations
Submitted by chris.peplin on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 7:30am

I'm wondering how they can restore your annotations, unless the book was never actually removed from your Kindle in the first place. Are your notes backed up to the cloud?

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From what I've heard on
Submitted by Hutif on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 9:44am

From what I've heard on Amazon's forums, the annotations you make are saved on your Kindle and were not deleted with the offending books. The replacements they are offering are formatted identically to the originals and so the annotations line-up on their own.

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My friend had a copy of
Submitted by nhskier4life on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 7:26am

My friend had a copy of Animal Farm. He bought it for a class and had tons of annotations saved on it as well. After Amazon deleted it he was forced to buy a paper copy and start over. This is a lot like DRM on music. You pay a company for the rights to use media, but they still own it and can choose to remove it any time they want. Until prices are dropped and DRM is removed or fixed I will continue to buy paper books and CD's. At least that way I actually own them and can do what I please with them.

It's hard to justify almost $10 for a single e-book. I don't think it costs that much to copy a digital file and pay for hosting and bandwidth usage. Same for $1.25 per song for popular music. Someone correct me if I am wrong.

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lol
Submitted by ethanajs on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 7:09am

those people should be forced to pay amazon 30 bucks for purchasing and reading such crappy books.

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You probably never actually
Submitted by gendoikari1 on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 7:37am

You probably never actually READ Animal Farm/1984, did you?

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NO. he didn't. those books
Submitted by vistageek on Sun, 09/06/2009 - 8:46am

NO. he didn't. those books are amazing.

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