First of all, I cannot see how the Amazon execs decided this move. They simply forgot about their customers and what they paid for. These people have paid to own a copy of a book. When I buy a book I can do whatever I want with it. The only thing that I am not allowed to do is to copy it. But in the end I own that book for the period it exists. I can give it as a gift to my grandchildren if I want. In most of the cases I will read it. I can just imagine how those people felt when they opened their devices and wanted to continue their reading and the book was gone. Not even a trace of it.

Amazon’s move seems like an act of Inquisition from the Dark Ages when books were burned in the main square in front of crowds of people. For sure their reasons are different: Inquisition wanted to stop the spread of knowledge while Amazon wanted to prevent a trial with the book copyright owner who changed his mind. I still don’t get it. How can somebody change his mind after the purchase was completed and still affect my ownership over the purchased book?

When I buy a book and the book is becoming older and older, it’s value usually increases. I can be asked if I want to sell it but it is my right to keep it and no one can stop me keeping it. Amazon did not asked their customers, they just erased the books from their customers’ devices and refunded the money paid for the purchase. They wanted to avoid a trial and now they will have lots of them, but besides that a lot of people that planned to purchase their Kindle devices will buy old but non-revocable books.

From my point of view Amazon did a serious mistake. They forgot about their promise to their customers (the customer bought the copy). I expect that Kindle sales to be seriously hit by this incident. Some comments I’ve read said that in one year from no we will not hear about Kindle anymore. For sure Amazon didn’t thought like their customers. You should think like your customers and if you cannot, with today technology it is easy to ask and find out.

What do you think? Would you still consider buying a Kindle? Or buying digital copies of books or other type of content?