The Kindle Lawsuit
In my last entry, I pointed to the case of Justin Gawronski, who was mentioned almost as an aside in the New York Times article about Amazon deleting legally purchased and downloaded content from their users’ Kindle devices. At the time, I suspected that the deletion of annotations could eventually lead to lawsuits:
Beyond the irony of Amazon throwing a book like Nineteen Eighty Four down the memory hole (a large incinerator in that book), Amazon’s action raise troubling questions as to the ability of online providers to remove content they have not created. I leave it to legal scholar to assess whether Amazon could actually be considered to have infringed on the intellectual property rights of people whose annotations were removed along with the books.
Today, news comes out that this student is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Amazon, making this the first legal case to test what a cloud-based provider can and cannot do with legitimately purchased content. The complaint uses language similar to what I talked about:
2. With an uncanny knack for irony, Amazon recently remotely deleted any traces of
[…]
certain electronic copies of George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm” from customers’
Kindles and iPhones, thereby sending these books down Orwell’s so-called “memory hole.”16. On or about July 16 and 17, 2009, Amazon withdrew from sale certain e-books,
including George Orwell’s “1984” and “Animal Farm.” Amazon then remotely deleted these ebooks
from purchasers’ Kindles and iPhones. In doing so, Amazon not only deleted the e-books,
but also rendered useless any electronic notes and annotations that consumers had made within
these e-books because the notes were no longer tied to the referenced or highlighted text.
While I had initially thought that the content was deleted, it turns out that the annotations are still available on the device, albeit without any context to them, which is what the lawsuit is now testing:
54. Plaintiff Gawronski and the Big Brother Work-Product Subclass suffered
damages because they created content on their Kindles within the purchased content that
Amazon deleted.
Most surprising is that the lawsuit did not look at Amazon’s infringement of its customer’s rights under the first sale doctrine. The first sale doctrine, which has been in place since the beginning of the 20th century, basically states that purchases can transfer a lawfully acquired copy of a copyrighted work without requiring permission from the copyright holder. Many people interpret this to mean that:
the copyright holder’s rights to control the change of ownership of a particular copy end once that copy is sold, as long as no additional copies are made. This doctrine is also referred to as the “first sale rule” or “exhaustion rule.”
It could be argued that, by taking the book away from its users, Amazon has controlled the ownership of a particular copy that had already been sold, even though no additional copy was made. It was surprising to not see the lawsuit also incorporating this point as it is probably one of the larger legal infrigements Amazon could be charged with when it comes to that incident.
The Apple Store and iPhone community
Meanwhile, while there are no legal rumblings yet around Apple’s treatment of its development community. With every incident of an app being denied access, it appears that a few more developers decide that, while the platform is exciting to use, developing for the iPhone is not worth the trouble. If it were one case, that could be considered a disgruntled developer; if it were two, that could also be ignored; but with every new incident, it appears another developer or group of developer decides that they’d rather not develop for the platform.
When I was in journalism school, we were told that when there is a high similarity between three different events in a very short time, we ought to pay closer attention as it could be a trend. When that similarity pops over and over again, as in the case of the iPhone development community, it seems like a slow grumble is turning into something more potent.
But of course, one could argue that such grumbles are really nothing to worry about, as long as Apple can continue growing its user base. After all, the company makes more money selling devices that it does from the revenue generated by the app store.
True to some extent but that particular issue starts falling on its face when one considers two important facts:
- Selling applications through the App Store is probably a more profitable business (as costs associated to the sale, as represented by a percentage of the revenue is probably lower than it would be on hardware).
- Prominent users are starting to complain loudly.
Of course, none of this is going to single handedly stop the growth of the iPhone but what is increasingly appearing is that Apple is having a potential communication challenge on its hands. A single disgruntled developer or disgruntled user cannot bring the product down but a continuous stream of complaints starts creating the appearance of wrong-doing, potentially undermining the long term success of the offering.
Apple is still thought of by the majority of the people as a cool company (as Google and Microsoft once were), a shinning beacon highlighting the power of innovation and capitalism. As it grows marketshare, what was once considered OK as a way to help the company compete against larger players (the aforementioned Microsoft) is increasingly being considered as arrogant and evil.
What does it all mean?
Of course, at this point, if you’re still reading, you’re probably wondering how this is an example of a new hope. The new hope is arising out of the fact that a largely quiet population is now starting to fight back against the over-reach of large corporations into what level of controls such corporations will be able to excert. In the case of Amazon, the class action has the potential of redefining what a company can and cannot do with a purchase device. Such decision could also establish some precedents as to the use of kill-switches in electronic devices (or invertly, give large corporations more power and legally codify the level of control they have been afforded).
In the public arena, the push-back Apple is encountering from both its developer and early adopter communities could help establish new boundaries as to what is and isn’t accepted in terms of controlling access through online gateways (in the case of Apple, that gateway is the App store but one could argue that the social rules established around the App store could eventually extend to the kind of perception around what is and isn’t acceptable in terms of consumer ISPs blocking internet sites).
With each event, the online community is also establishing some precedent as to what will be considered acceptable in an environment where all data is stored not a user’s machine but on some remote corporate server.
In each of these individual cases, awareness is raised and with every other skirmish, more people become aware of the issues at stake. It is my belief that, as more people become aware, more people will require less corporate control and more individual control. And that gives me hope.
Update: The government is now looking into Apple’s removal of Google Voice related apps from their App store. This is getting interesting.