Amazon In Lawsuit Trouble

Don’t you just love this country. You can sue anyone for any reason, whether you have a valid case or not. That’s exactly what happening with the case a boy who is suing Amazon for removing the pirated copy of a book from his Amazon Kindle without his consent. The issue has generated quite some buzz in the past few days. Jeff Bezos took time out of his busy schedule to address the fans and apologize for Amazon’s decision to remove these books. But that apology won’t be enough. This lawsuit points out the heart of this very controversy. Amazon has done a lot of wrong things here, and it will take something bigger than a short apology to fix that.

Amazon has a great customer service. There is no doubt in that. But it’s dropped the ball big time here, and I doubt Amazon can deflate this controversy by having its representatives apologize to customers. So why is this a big issue? Simple. Amazon has:

• removed books that were bought by its customers without their consent. It would be one thing to ask customers to remove a certain book. It’s one thing to give them a bonus for allowing Amazon to delete the book. But none of that happened. These books disappeared without any notice. What was Amazon thinking?
• not disclosed that it had the ability to remove books from Kindle with customers’ consent. It makes me wonder what else can Amazon do. Can it figure out what I am reading now? What else I have my Kindle? Not exactly encouraging for those who value privacy.
• set a dangerous precedent. If this issue is not dealt with right-away, other tech companies may take it upon themselves to emulate with Amazon has done.

I am not a fan of lawsuits. I find most of them to be time-consuming, expensive, and unproductive. But I can see why people may sue Amazon for what has happened here. I do hope we all can work with Amazon to make sure this issue won’t happen again, and I am not quite sure what can litigation accomplish here. Amazon has promised to address this issue soon, so we will see how dedicated it is to making sure Kindle owners feel secure with their device. I am sure most of us want devices such as Kindle and Sony Reader to succeed but there is so much we are willing to give up to see it happen. Consumer privacy is an important issue in the 21st century, and this won’t be a last time we hear about this issue.