The incident, he said, highlighted the gap in understanding about rights in the digital world and the real world. "There's an enormous difference between buying a book and buying a tethered media device. And this incident really underscores that fact. Consumers carry with them analog expectations."
Von Lohmann said that it's not clear from the Kindle license agreement that Amazon has the right delete purchased content. "I don't see that many loopholes," he said.
And on Engadget, Amazon explains its logic:
Drew Herdener, Amazon.com's Director of Communications, pinged us directly with the following comment, and now things are starting to make a lot more sense. Seems as if the books were added initially by an outfit that didn't have the rights to the material.
These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.
