Piestar

So there’s been an apology from Amazon top brass for remotely deleting books customers have paid for.  Very sincere – except it’s not.

Sincerity would be removing the ability to do it again via a new firmware.  As is the case with all large companies – doing things like this is never the problem – it’s getting caught that is the problem.  And especially problematic if the titles you get caught doing it to are Animal Farm and 1984.

Essentially Amazon was found lying on the ground by a ladder with a bucket of white paint.  ‘Sorry, our bad, we won’t do it again’.

So either a: Deliver a firmware fix to prove you can’t do it again or b: tell your customers to shut up and accept what you built and they bought licensed.  And anyone who buys a Kindle after this point without the aforementioned firmware only has themselves to blame when Amazon try to pull the same stunt (as they will).

Update:

Here’s a clarification for those that may not realise what the problem is.  Amazon has the power to remotely delete and alter whatever is on your Kindle.  They were busted using this power and have promised that it was all a mistake and they won’t do it again.  Yet why do they have this power in the first place if using it was “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles”?  It requires quite a bit of engineering to put this power in place – it’s not an accident that it’s there – and they have not said a thing about removing it.  Words are cheap.