well at least he didn't try to blow fluff up the butt with Bullhonkey. but yeah, it has a ring of semi sincerity. but then again, how can you show sincerity in Type where everyone's internal monologue makes it sound different to each

Come on, Bezos. This is amateur work. If you were really sorry, you'd beam your apology letter to every Kindle that had the copy of "1984" or "Animal Farm" on it. That is truly an apology on the Orwellian scale.

Meh, ruined any idea I toyed with about owning DRM laden digital readers. Bad enough I have to put up with companies telling me how many times I can play a game I pay full price for, or forcing my computer to having my computer "phone home" to verify I am eligible to play, now apparently you don't have rights to electronic books you buy.

@pecan 3.14159265: And include a free version of both books edited so that Winston lives a happy life with no strife and where all of the animals are dancing in the fields as equals while Snowball's corpse dangles from a tree.

I, too, will withold any praise until I see an overhaul and clarification of their licensing terms.

BUT for some reason the use of the words stupid and thoughtless does lend some sincerity to it. This certainly isn't a form apology from the company, using colloquial words like that somehow makes it seem like they're actually "taking it seriously," in my eyes. At least they're not trying to remain PC and cover their asses...they're calling themselves stupid.

Down with DRM. used paperbacks>kindle.

I'll buy a Kindle as soon as Amazon takes the ad for it off of their front page. 2 years and running, so I am not holding my breath or anything.

Can we have a Kindle Burning Party? That'd be pretty awesome.

Notice that he didn't say that they wouldn't do it again.
Remotely deleted files that I've paid for = When I get an e-reader, it's going to be a sony.

I think it's an appropriate apology to actions that, while scary to some, were appropriate.

You don't have the rights to something that was sold to you illegally.

Pretty much the reason I will not buy one. Would rather just have a book that no one can delete or takeaway.

@Saboth: Amen. Apology or no this showed that they can and will remove things you've purchased from the device.

I guess it was nice of them to help me make up my mind about getting a Kindle.

@Erich Krueger: Yes, you do. If you buy a hard copy of a book through Amazon that turns out to be unlicensed, Amazon does not have any legal right to break into your home and take it back. This is essentially what they did by taking the eBooks back. Scary? Try potentially illegal. They are responsible for their own licensing issues. They needed to yank it from the online store, pay the fines, and move on.

@katstermonster: Sorry, I'll rephrase that. You may not have any right to an unlicensed item, but what the seller DOESN'T have is the right to take it back.

@HiPwr: That made me laugh.

@pecan 3.14159265: Zing!

So basically he's saying that "who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"... or something like that.

@katstermonster: Or maybe its a clever trick, to make you think that they are taking it seriously, even when they are not.

The first time they had a big DRM related screwup for the Kindle, with a big explanation of what happened and how bad they felt. They lost some goodwill and people accepted it because they had prior goodwill with Amazon.

By this, the second by DRM related screwup, Amazon, probably still feeling a little bit stung by buyer backlash the last such incident, explained it less and apologized less, feeling they are right. People kinda accept this too - it wasn't even theirs to sell, right? So what if it was a hamfisted way to do business, it was more or less OK.

The next and subsequent time/s this happens (and it will) they will explain nothing, and apologize not at all. People have already begun to accept that they don't really own what they pay good money for when it's DRM protected.

The best way to break this cycle is not buy things that are manufacturer-crippled with DRM, like the Kindle.

All interest I had in owning a digital reader or Kindle was pretty much thrown out the window and ran over by a steam roller...

Thanks for making it an easy decision Bezos...

@8one6: On the d-bag scale, Sony is much higher than Amazon. I am not getting one unless there is an opensource one that sells DRM-free books. Kind of like - ironically - what Amazon did with MP3 downloads.

I don't think they really *get* what has most people riled up here...or, at least what has *me* riled up.

It's not that they deleted the book. It's that they deliberately gave themselves a backdoor so that they *could* delete the book.

They basically made it so that every Kindle is basically just a dumb window into whatever content Amazon decides it's going to allow you to pay for at that specific moment in time.

As sincere as it sounds, this apology is just lip-service and a plea to end the bad publicity. It is completely meaningless until they release a firmware patch that completely disables remote deletion unless initiated by the user. Since that will never, ever happen, I for one say that there is no way in hell I will ever buy a kindle, and I'd strongly encourage any friend of mine thinking about the purchase to think again.

@MostlyHarmless: In that case, I'm doubly impressed. I like shenanigans, as long as they are cheeky and fun.

@Saboth: Agreed. I never thought I'd jump on the eReader bandwagon before, but this only makes it that much more certain.

[paraphrase]We're taking the criticism "very seriously."[/paraphrase]

Four sentences summarized in six words. Some apology. I hereby nominate Amazon for Consumerist's golden turd.

DRM is freedom, freedom is slavery.

They couldn't have found a more fitting novel (1984) to pull this one off with LOL.

Hope the readers didn't go too far in :-)

@Thanatos: I was only moderately interested in buying a Kindle but this pretty much made me move it over to the "never buying" column.

Let's see...in essence what he said is that he's sorry for breaking into something you own, (the Kindle), and stealing something you also own, (the e-book), without any mention of giving back your property which he stole.

Now I wonder what would happen if any of us walked unannounced into the home(s) of multiple people and took something they own (while leaving the cost of the stolen item). A week later we place an ad directed to said people telling them we were stupid for doing what we did but not offering to give them back their property. How would those affected react? Hell, how would/should the authorities react?

Bezos isn't sorry for what Amazon did. Just because he throws around a few words doesn't mean a darn thing. It's all about damage control. What Amazon should have done is let the company who owns the rights to the e-books go to court and have the judge decide if Amazon had to retrieve the copies it sold. If the judge made such a ruling Amazon should then have emailed the people who purchased the affected titles to let them know what was going to happen.

Amazon wasn't willing to do that because it probably would have cost them more money than returning what the the customers paid for the e-books, so they said they were just going to screw the customers out of what they owned. Well Bezos, I say SCREW YOU!

I have been shopping with Amazon for quite a few years, and with very few problems but this just doesn't sit well with me. Even though I wasn't affected by what Amazon did I'm not sure I'll continue to purchase from them.

After a month of contemplating spending big bucks on a digital reader, weeks of debating which one I was wanting, and hours of finding the time to log into Amazon to make the purchase, I saw this fiasco pop up on Consumerist.

I will NEVER buy a Kindle as long as they have the ability to remotely add/change/delete anything on a product I own.

I have never heard of a situation where Borders or Barnes and Noble broke into customer's houses to get back a book that they shouldn't have sold in the first place. Just because the subject matter is digital should be of not difference.

@Wargazm: Well said, let's hope Amazon reads this.

@katstermonster: But orwellian shenanigans are cruel and tragic...

... which makes the Not shenanigans at all, really.

[Speaking of which, has anyone seen GitEmSteveDave around here recently? I havent!]

@katstermonster:

Breaking into your house and stealing your books - that's not what they did. Not even 'essentially'.

Why doesn't the seller have the right to take it back? Not only do they have the right, they have the responsibility to do so, and as quickly as possible, so as not to get sued by Orwell's estate.

If Amazon didn't kill these illegal copies they'd be no better than Napster or Pirate Bay.

@Bogart's Falcon aka Philly Falcon:

This is why I have a hard time with DRM in general. Game makers, music distibutors, etc...say "well we put DRM in to combat pirates, but we would never infringe upon the rights of legit customers.", but then they put in back doors on your computer or Kindle so that they CAN do such things. "We see you have installed this game 3 times, you are not entitled to it anymore." "Well, one time my drove broke, then I installed it again, then I put it on my laptop." "Sounds pretty fishy to us."

@Saboth:

Except in this instance, the deletion was done to combat the piracy of these 2 books.

I would never buy a fucking Kindle, DRM or not. There is now way in hell I am paying $200-$300 or whatever that glorified fucking calculator costs just to be able to buy books to read. I can see its convenience and benefits, but to me the entry price is just way too steep.

It's not even that I can't afford one. I just have better things to spend my money on (coke and hookers come to mind hahaha).

@Bogart's Falcon aka Philly Falcon:

So... say I stole your TV and gave it to a friend who didn't know it was stolen, who sold it to Saboth. Saboth doesn't know it was stolen either.

You find out Saboth has it - are you going to let him keep it because he 'owns' it now?

@azntg: Ofcourse they could have. It could have been Fahrenheit 451, and they could have disabled the kindle too.

@Bogart's Falcon aka Philly Falcon: Technically they did refund the full amount for the ebook, so the "without any mention of giving back your property which he stole." is not exactly right.

Just splitting hairs.

As much as I love Amazon, I'll never buy a Kindle. A color screen for comic books might tempt me, but I won't have to make that decision for a long while.

The only practical use I can think of for one is technical manuals, text books and newspapers, none of which I use on a regular basis. People are essentially renting books for the same price you can get a hard copy for and do whatever you damn well please with.

@Erich Krueger: They should not have sold these in the first place. But once they did sell it, they could have notified the people who bought if of this, and should have offered to refund the money in exchange to pulling the books out. And maybe some store credit for the trouble.

If some store mistakenly sells something they should not have, they do not break into your house. They send out a general announcement saying that they made a mistake, and that they would be much obliged if the people who bought those things could return them for a full refund and some store credit for the trouble.

@Erich Krueger:

I don't see how it was piracy when people paid for them through the proper channels. I understand the mistake on their part but...

IMO they should have mailed all of these people print copies of the books with free shipping AND refunded their money, then deleted the books a week later.

@MostlyHarmless: (and Erich Krueger and katstermonster) What this event made crystal clear to me--and I should have acknowledged this the first time I read the license agreement 1.5 yrs ago, but I was too pro-ebooks to be realistic/skeptical--is that you ARE NOT BUYING BOOKS when you buy from the Kindle store. You're buying a license. Amazon offers licenses, and a cloud-based service. For practicality's sake they let you download the files to your device so that you can use your license to access them when you're offline, but you don't own that file. You own a license to access that file.

I think Amazon needs to stop taking advantage of our ingrained concept that "buying a book" means owning a physical (or digital) copy. With Kindle, you never own a book. Never. Never never. You own a license to access it.

@Saboth:

I would agree, but I never toyed with the idea to begin with. That being said, I think it is possible to by a Kindle and load it up with free stuff from PDF files (Converted to the Kindle format.) I think the device itself can be used without purchasing any DRM books from Amazon. Much luck my iPod only has Non-Drmd MP3 files. I've never bought anything from the iTunes store.

@MostlyHarmless: The Sony can read PDF files, but from what I understand its performance is real slow and the PDF documents don't scale very well to the small screen. People have had better luck converting PDFs to Kindle format, then reading them on their kindle. But they are both still too expensive and I am waiting for color.

@katstermonster: Maybe a better metaphor is that you bought a book from a pawn shop and it turned out to be stolen goods.

Are you liable for receipt of stolen goods? The Pawn shop? IANAL, but I'm curious how that works.

Bad situation, but good apology. Doesn't make it any better, but at least shows that the CEO is aware of the screwup.

@MostlyHarmless: Well, technically they did that. They just didn't give you any choice in the matter. They pulled the books and credited all the affected accounts, they only skipped the voluntary recall bit.

To be totally honest, until some laws are caught up to the new era of digital licensing, this is going to keep floating in limbo as a problem. I mean, with something like this, they do have a method to "recall" every affected product. It becomes a catch 22 because if they leave it voluntary, there's a good possibility that the estate or whatever will sue and demand they do exactly what they did because the capability exists. On the other hand, if they do it pre-emptivly to avoid that issue, we have this problem.

@Erich Krueger: Breaking into your house and stealing your books is exactly what Amazon did if you consider the purchase of these ebooks to be equivalent to purchasing a deadtree book from a brick and mortar store. "Licensing" content is an insidious way to prevent people from "owning" what they've paid for and providing the company a way to remotely dictate how you are allowed to use what legally should be your own property.

And how would Amazon be different from your proposed strawmen Napster and TPB? Amazon did not advertise "FREE EBOOKZ HEAR!!11!!oneone!". They acted in good faith when allowing the sale and removed the infringing books from further sale once they were aware of the problem. That was all they needed to do. Remotely sanitizing people's property was far in excess of what they should have done. The fact that they've left that sort of backdoor in there has convinced me that I will never purchase a Kindle.

@Chris Walters: Yup, aware of that. That is what keeps me from getting one (I even saved up for a kindle, but chickened out at the last moment. Though in my case, I was also skeptical that they would block access to wikipedia etc). And after this incident, I am waiting for a more open source, DRM free alternative that I own, and can print if i want to.