When you "purchase a book" from the kindle store, all you are actually purchasing is a license to view the book that is bound by amazon's terms of use.
Criminally illegal, no. But that leaves open civil suits, which are sure to come.
1) You can sue anyone for anything. The US does not have a "loser pays" rule, though frivolous lawsuits can include attorney's fees.
2) Class action lawsuits are very profitable for lawyers when they win. They need to convince a jury of 12 people who couldn't get out of jury duty that "Big Corporation" was wrong. They get a percentage of the total judgment.
My guess is that some lawyer will pick this one up. They'll sue Amazon based on "common sense" and Amazon will realize that a jury isn't going separate a "book" from an "e-book". The plaintiff's lawyers will equate it to removing a book from your bookshelf in your house.
Amazon will argue commas in their TOS or Amazon will settle. On top of it all, Amazon demonstrates why I purchased a netbook instead of a Kindle for my e-book reading pleasure ... and why I don't buy e-books that I can't remove the DRM from.
[edit] since I can't edit the original due to replies.
I still think they stand a good chance of a class action lawsuit. The likelihood of it succeeding is less since it sounds like the issue relates to "who really owned the copyright" and they had to take down the content due to that ambiguity or fraud.
I concur - bonehead handling by Amazon perhaps, Exhibit A to why the copyright laws might need reforming, but not likely to lead to legal liabilities for Amazon given that they refunded everybody's payments.
Amazon needs to make its licensing policies clear up front and not bury them in fine print.
I may not like it when I only get a license that might be yanked, but I'll be a lot less upset about it the day it is yanked if I did the deal with open eyes at the start.
Though Amazon may be technically correct, it deserves the drubbing it is getting by failing to make its DRM policies clear up front to its customers.
It obviously obscured this issue to ensure that the issue would not harm Kindle sales. Now that this bomb has exploded, Kindle sales will be hurt anyway.
1) You can sue anyone for anything. The US does not have a "loser pays" rule, though frivolous lawsuits can include attorney's fees.
2) Class action lawsuits are very profitable for lawyers when they win. They need to convince a jury of 12 people who couldn't get out of jury duty that "Big Corporation" was wrong. They get a percentage of the total judgment.
My guess is that some lawyer will pick this one up. They'll sue Amazon based on "common sense" and Amazon will realize that a jury isn't going separate a "book" from an "e-book". The plaintiff's lawyers will equate it to removing a book from your bookshelf in your house.
Amazon will argue commas in their TOS or Amazon will settle. On top of it all, Amazon demonstrates why I purchased a netbook instead of a Kindle for my e-book reading pleasure ... and why I don't buy e-books that I can't remove the DRM from.