Amazon removed books from my Kindle

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Quoth

After the Orwell fiasco they promised to never remotely delete ever.

I have been trying to find exactly what Amazon promised when that happened in 2009. So far I have only found quotes from an email sent by Drew Herdener of Amazon mentioned in various articles published at the time. For example this one from the New York Times.

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers," he said.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances," Mr. Herdener said.

That statement is pretty far from "never remotely delete ever". Do you have any other references to quotes from Amazon on this subject?

[DiapDealer]

This will, of course, immediately label me as an Amazon apologist, but I still have to ask. Does no one think they have to shoulder any of the responsibility for attempting to trick Amazon into believing a side loaded book is an Amazon purchase? Sure... there's reasonable functionality/integration at stake when changing the CDEType from PDOC to EBOK, but that doesn't change the fact that the metadata in question is Amazon's to base decisions on. Diddle them at your own peril.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

This will, of course, immediately label me as an Amazon apologist, but I still have to ask. Does no one think they have to shoulder any of the responsibility for attempting to trick Amazon into believing a side loaded book is an Amazon purchase? Sure... there's reasonable functionality/integration at stake when changing the CDEType from PDOC to EBOK, but that doesn't change the fact that the metadata in question is Amazon's to base decisions on. Diddle them at your own peril.

This doesn't give Amazon the right to delete books off my device without my consent. That's an unforgivable breach of user privacy. They can try to disable those additional features for sideloaded books if they want, but it's not their business to dictate what should be on my device and what should not.

Note I no longer use a Kindle for my ereading; this is a theoretical discussion for me. So "my device" here means a theoretical device, not an actual one.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

but it's not their business to dictate what should be on my device and what should not.

We can pointlessly argue whether or not it SHOULD be their business. But the fact of the matter is that it IS their business. And always has been. Caveat Emptor.

DeDRMed books don't have to have their cdetypes changed to be readable (and not doing so has the added functionality of ebooks not getting deleted). Adjust--theoretically, or actually--or don't.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

We can pointlessly argue whether or not it SHOULD be their business. But the fact of the matter is that it IS their business. And always has been. Caveat Emptor.

DeDRMed books don't have to have their cdetypes changed to be readable (and not doing so has the added functionality of ebooks not getting deleted). Adjust--theoretically, or actually--or don't.

I'm sure they'll invent another excuse for deleting sideloaded books then. Because yes, it is an excuse. They're sticking their nose where it doesn't belong.

[Sarmat89]

It is normal behavior to clean up user devices from leftover files with unknown licensing status; it lessens confusion and makes the device faster.
The licensed content is marked in the unique way, so the risk the user documents will be deleted is minimal.
So people trying to outsmart the developers, fail, and blame the others? It's quite ridiculous.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Because yes, it is an excuse. They're sticking their nose where it doesn't

Fair enough. But I remain unconvinced that it's anything but an unfortunate bug. Why would/should their programmers take into account the notion that users would be faking the Amazon metadata that differentiates between Amazon purchases and personal sideloads?

[ownedbycats]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Fair enough. But I remain unconvinced that it's anything but an unfortunate bug. Why would/should their programmers take into account the notion that users would be faking the Amazon metadata that differentiates between Amazon purchases and personal sideloads?

Because they're the ones who stripped certain features from personal documents?

Originally Posted by jhowell

Some features, such as Goodreads integration, do not work for personal documents.

[DiapDealer]

Were features actually stripped, or were they never there for personal docs?

Actually, never mind. Enjoy your rant. I should have known better.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by Sarmat89

It is normal behavior to clean up user devices from leftover files with unknown licensing status.

No, it isn't even remotely normal.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Fair enough. But I remain unconvinced that it's anything but an unfortunate bug. Why would/should their programmers take into account the notion that users would be faking the Amazon metadata that differentiates between Amazon purchases and personal sideloads?

Yes, it may be a bug, but the "feature" as it is being implemented at the moment should never have seen the light of day. Remote deleting of user files from a user's personal device just isn't ok from any angle.

[haertig]

I'm pretty sure that what Amazon is doing is legal. I've been having fun calling them stupid, but they're anything but that. No doubt there is something buried deep down in the user license agreement for the Kindle that says Amazon is allowed to "manage content" or some other obscure term like that (which actually means "delete content at their whim").

So is their behavior legal? Yes, probably. Is it ethical, moral, customer friendly? No. But it's doubtful Amazon cares about that. They're in it to make money, not make friends. Amazon probably figures their bottom line is better served by forcing people into their closed ecosystem than by stopping a few customers from getting angry and moving to Kobo. This is called "monopoly behavior". Amazon is a monopoly on eBooks and audiobooks these days, and on online sales as well - so they'll just do whatever they want. Customer concerns no longer matter when you are a monopoly.

[slm]

I think we are attributing too much importance to ourselves.
The population of users who sideload books and set the sideloaded books to 'EBOK' is too small to affect Amazon's bottom line. Whatever reason they have to removing the EBOKs not shown as purchased, it isn't based on maintaining their walled garden.

[DNSB]

Personally, I tend to the belief that Amazon is trying to prevent people from copying ebooks to too many devices exceeding the limits for multiple device usage. So if an ebook shows on a device that their records show it should not be on, it will be removed. A Download & Transfer via USB ebook would show as being downloaded for a specific device so not a problem.

So if I purchase an ePub copy of the book, convert it to azw3 and send to it to my Paperwhite with the information needed for it to work with GoodReads, Amazon would see it as an illegal copy and remove it. Which does seem to match up with what I saw when Amazon removed books from my Paperwhite.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Personally, I tend to the belief that Amazon is trying to prevent people from copying ebooks to too many devices exceeding the limits for multiple device usage. So if an ebook shows on a device that their records show it should not be on, it will be removed.

I agree. That is probably what they are attempting to do. The deletion of sideloaded books in some uncommon circumstances is simply an unfortunate side effect of their poor implementation of that goal.

Originally Posted by DNSB

So if I purchase an ePub copy of the book, convert it to azw3 and send to it to my Paperwhite with the information needed for it to work with GoodReads, Amazon would see it as an illegal copy and remove it.

Anyone who keeps their device continuously offline is not taking advantage of Goodreads integration anyway so having their sideloaded books marked internally as being Amazon purchases is not doing them any good, only harm.

Personally I make use of Amazon’s send to Kindle feature for books obtained elsewhere. It delivers books in the latest KFX format with cover thumbnails and synchronized reading position and annotations across devices. To me that is far superior to sideloading via USB.