Amazon.com Sued Over Kindle E-book Deletions
Shoot, when we were kids, the best we could get away with in terms of something similar to this was "the dog ate my homework." In this case, a lawsuit has been filed after the well-publicized e-book deletion fiasco that ending up remotely deleting legitimately purchased e-books from users' Kindles.
A 17-year-old from Michigan, Justin D. Gawronski, filed suit in a Seattle court along with California resident Antoine J. Bruguier. They are are seeking class action status.
While Amazon.com refunded the charges for the deleted e-books, the suit isn't about money, so much. Gawronski was using the e-book for a summer advanced placement class. When Amazon.com deleted the book "1984" from his Kindle, it rendered the notes he had taken in the e-book useless.
In effect, the Kindle ate his homework. As the lawsuit states:
A 17-year-old from Michigan, Justin D. Gawronski, filed suit in a Seattle court along with California resident Antoine J. Bruguier. They are are seeking class action status.
While Amazon.com refunded the charges for the deleted e-books, the suit isn't about money, so much. Gawronski was using the e-book for a summer advanced placement class. When Amazon.com deleted the book "1984" from his Kindle, it rendered the notes he had taken in the e-book useless.
In effect, the Kindle ate his homework. As the lawsuit states:
As part of his studies of “1984,” Mr. Gawronski had made copious notes in the book. After Amazon remotely deleted “1984,” those notes were rendered useless because they no longer referenced the relevant parts of the book. The notes are still accessible on the Kindle 2 device in a file separate from the deleted book, but are of no value. For example, a note such as “remember this paragraph for your thesis” is useless if it does not actually a reference a specific paragraph. By deleting “1984” from Mr. Gawronski’s Kindle 2, this is the position in which Amazon left him. Mr. Gawronski now needs to recreate all of his studies.The filing also notes, as many have, that by deleting the e-books, Amazon.com violated its own Terms of Use:
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.”The case seeks unspecified damages for all buyers of e-books that Amazon has deleted from the Kindle, as well as a ban on future such deletions. In the aftermath of the fiasco, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos apologized, and the company vowed to not remotely delete e-books in the future.
