Amazon Settles Lawsuit for $150,000

We all remember the headaches that Amazon had to deal with when it removed a few books from Amazon Kindles around the nation without the consent of their owners. One student was unlucky enough to lose his homework in the process as well. It was obvious at that point that Amazon was going to face a bunch of lawsuits over that fiasco. And one belonged to the above mentioned student. Losing your homework and all the work you have done on a book is certainly painful, but it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. In fact, many students lose their term papers, thesis documents, and many more important documents when their computer crashes on them. But this lawsuit was about more than that. It was about showing Amazon that it’s wrong to remove things from Kindles without notifying their owners first.

Amazon has settled this lawsuit by agreeing to pay up $150,000. Now the student does not get a piece of that money. In fact, most of it will go to a charity (and lawyers of course). But will Amazon learn from this? Companies such as Amazon and Apple like to keep a close control on their gadgets. Apple has been more controlling in the past, but it is opening things up a bit with the iPhone. But what Amazon did proves that no matter how much control a company wants to have over a gadget, it needs to respect the rights of its customers.

Amazon did not have the right to sell those books through its store, but that doesn’t mean it had the right to go in and delete all the instances of those books from those Kindles. I suspect after all the bad publicity that Amazon has received over this issue, its management will think twice before pulling the trigger on such a move in the future. Then again, these top companies always find a way to make a “bonehead” move and surprise us all.