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Amazon digital downloads under review

11.12.07

Amazon is ahead of the competition when it comes to selling physical goods on the web, but "turns into one of the dumbest companies on the web", whenever it tries to sell a digital download, writes author and blogger Cory Doctorow in the Guardian.

"Take the Kindle,the $400 handheld ebook reader that Amazon shipped recently, to vast, ringing indifference," notes Doctorow, who admires the online retailer, but finds its approach to digital downloads "galling":

"The device is cute enough - in a clumsy, overpriced, generation-one kind of way - but the early adopter community recoiled in horror at the terms of service and anti-copying technology that infected it. Ebooks that you buy through the Kindle can't be lent or resold (remember, "when someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book...Everyone understands this.")

"Mark Pilgrim's The Future of Reading enumerates five other showstoppers in the Kindle legal cruft: Amazon can change your ebooks without notifying you or getting your permission; and if you violate any of the 'agreement', Amazon can delete your ebooks, even if you've paid for them, and you get no appeal.

"It's not just the Kindle, either. Amazon Unbox, the semi-abortive video download service, shipped with terms of service that included your granting permission for Amazon to install any software on your computer, to spy on you, to delete your videos, to delete any other file on your hard drive, to deny you access to your movies if you lose them in a crash. This comes from the company that will cheerfully ship you a replacement DVD if you email them and tell them that the one you just bought never turned up in the post.

"Even Amazon's much-vaunted MP3 store comes with terms of service that prevent lending and reselling.

"I am mystified by this. Amazon is the kind of company that every etailer should study and copy - the gold standard for e-commerce. You'd think that if there was any company that would intuitively get the web, it would be Amazon.

"What's more, this is a company that stands up to rightsholder groups, publishers and the US government - but only when it comes to physical goods. Why is it that whenever a digital sale is in the offing, Amazon rolls over on its back and wets itself?"

Guardian

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