Amazon to Replace Deleted "1984" E-books; $30 Credit Offered

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 4, 2009 - 7:14am.

Seattle - Amazon.com (NASD: AMZN) will replace the e-book copies of George Orwell's "1984" it remotely deleted from its customers' Kindle e-book reader devices, or else provide a $30 Amazon credit, or cash, TechCrunch reported.

Amazon already apologized for how it handled the incident, in which it remotely deleted the e-books after it realized that a third-party was distributing them without authorization -- with CEO Jeff Bezos calling the move "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles."

Interestingly, the company said that replacement copies of the e-book would even contain any annotations customers had made in the digital margins.

A 17-year-old filed a lawsuit against Amazon over the incident last month, as all of his study notes for "1984" were deleted off of his Kindle along with the e-book.

The lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, seeks a court ruling preventing Amazon from remotely deleting any more Kindle e-books, in addition to unspecified monetary damages.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/rlwog (TechCrunch)

http://snipurl.com/rlx68 (DMW previous coverage)