Amazon.com: Omnipotent Technological Deleter of Stuff you Bought

Now this is interesting. Amazon.com has been sued in a class action lawsuit for remotely deleting copies of the George Orwell books "1984" and "Animal Farm" from Kindle readers. Amazon deleted the e-books (saying the e-books were found to be pirated) without notifying users in advance that the deletion would occur or that Amazon even had the capability to do so.

This certainly raises questions about users' rights to the copies that they purchase. As with any book purchase, you are not purchasing the work itself, but only a copy. You receive no right to ownership of the underlying work. But isn't your copy your property? It would certainly seem that it should be. I'm sure this side of the argument will be hashed out in the class action suit...if it actually goes anywhere.

The part that should scare the crap out of Amazon is whether someone will try to get the Department of Justice to go after Amazon for violation of criminal statute 18 USC 1030, which prevents unauthorized access to computers, or access in excess of authorization. It's a long shot, but crazier things have happened.

See the AP story at E-Commerce Times