Amazon Kindle: highschool student legal action

The excuses from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, were not enough to calm the anger of consumer associations and defenders of civil liberties in the United States. Nor that of the highschool student, Justin Gawronski, whose notes on 1984 for a school project were also erased when Amazon recently erased two of George Orwell’s novels.

To recap, Amazon recently remotely deleted two of George Orwell’s novels without warning (1984 and Animal Farm) from its Kindle reading devices after having been informed by the rights holders that the editions that had been downloaded were pirate editions: "When the rights holders contacted us we deleted any illicit copies from our systems and the devices belonging to our clients", explained a company spokesperson.

Justin Gawronski is adding powder to the flames

The American highschool student has begun legal action against Amazon. According to the Canadian press, a request for a collective plea has been deposed in Seattle. If the court decides that the procedure is applicable, it could pave the way for a class-action with other Kindle users following suit.

In the meanwhile, a petition launched by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) is circulating. The petition makes a strong statement against remote deletion and DRM and requests publication of the source code for Kindle software to avoid this sort of action.

Product Survey: E-Book Readers

> Buyer's Guides: Our Pick of The Best Products