Amazon deletes Kindle downloads, backpedals quickly

It was a vicious -- yet very quick -- little war.

The trouble began on Friday morning: News began to percolate that Amazon was remotely deleting books from the Kindles of customers who had bought a few specific titles. There wasn't a lot of explanation offered for why the titles were deleted, but a few hundred buyers who paid a dollar for -- in the irony to end all ironies -- copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, found them abruptly deleted without warning, though the money they paid for the titles was at least refunded.

The protests were quick, loud, and angry, with Amazon being portrayed as Big Brother, a "virtual book burner," and Satan himself by various commentators. One student even bemoaned that Amazon's deletion of the book, which he was using for school research, took with it all his annotations and notes. Did Amazon hate learning?

By late Friday night, Amazon had changed its tune, saying that although the right to delete content is outlined in the Kindle terms of service, it would no longer engage in such practices. (Amazon's original claim to that right however is also being debated and challenged.)

The problem was eventually revealed to be more complicated than Amazon's remorse over having sold the novel. Turns out someone uploaded their own digital copies of the books in question without authorization. (Amazon allows anyone to sell their own work on the site, in hard copy format or encoded for the Kindle.) The legal copyright holder for the Orwell books complained, so Amazon deleted the unauthorized versions for sale -- which it was right to do -- but also "recalled" the copies that had already been sold.

As loathsome as it sounds, Amazon's actions were at least understandable, the equivalent of asking shoppers to return stolen goods that a retailer had inadvertently stocked on his shelves. The real problem, of course, is that consumers didn't get an explanation in advance, and some paid a heavy price for the recall in the form of lost annotations.

Nonetheless, Kindle owners -- and buyers who'd been considering a purchase -- are awfully peeved about the situation. It's easy to see their side of the argument. Once paid for, no book should ever be deleted. Period.

Amazon says it's putting systems into place to prevent this problem from occuring in the future, but is it too late? Is the damage already done? Discuss amongst yourselves.