Kindle Controversy Just Won't Go Away

Things in Apple and Amazon worlds couldn’t be so different. While Apple fans are excited about Apple’s plans to release an Apple tablet in September, Amazon Kindle owners are still complaining about the company removing their books without their permission. Jeff Bezos did apologize for that, but that’s not merely enough for folks who are concerned about the precedent this move has set. Civil liberty advocates have now gone into overdrive mode to make sure Amazon understands what the big picture here is. What they don’t want is for Amazon to be forced to pull books or content off Kindles when a court ruling asks it to.

As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it. Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation put it eloquently:

As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it.

Apple is another one of those companies that maintains a lot of control over its devices, but it has not exercised its control like Amazon has. As I have mentioned before, it’s scary to have a device that is essentially controlled by Amazon and not you. But not everyone is in that camp. In fact, many folks believe that giving up control is a fair price to pay in a digital world where sharing pirated content is so easy. The issue of book piracy is something that need to be addressed in its due time. But what Amazon is doing opens us all to more regulations.

What copyright watchdogs have not done is figure out what makes people want to download and share pirated copies. Everybody talks about how piracy is a big issue, but not a lot of people are looking at factors that contribute to this issue growing in the digital world, and how piracy can be addressed without adding more content controls to our gadgets.There are plenty of ways to combat piracy but taking controls away from consumers is not the smartest way. There may be many folks who are ready to give up a lot just to be able to read books on their Kindle. But Amazon being a control freak could turn off many consumers as well. To Amazon’s credit, it has admitted that it’s working on changing things around. So let’s hope it gets it right the next time.