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Amazon Faces Kindle Class Action

Student lost notes attached to deleted "1984"

By Jon Hood
ConsumerAffairs.com

July 28, 2009

According to the suit, 17-year-old plaintiff Justin Gawronski bought and was reading “1984” as part of a summer assignment for school. Amazon deleted the book while he was reading it, causing him to see the text disappear before the eyes as he was reading.

Gawronski had taken advantage of the Kindle feature that allows consumers to attach personal notes to specific sections of the book. Once the text disappeared, he still had the notes -- but they were rendered worthless since he couldn't match them to the correct section of the book.

Amazon says it deleted the book because it had been sold without a proper license.

Although Amazon provided Gawronski with a refund for the novel, he claims damages for the time he spent creating the now-useless annotations. The suit also emphasizes that Amazon didn't clearly tell consumers that improperly licensed works could end up being deleted. Indeed, the Kindle's terms of service “grant [y]ou the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times.”

The suit alleges actions in trespass -- comparing Amazon's actions to that of a bookseller who sneaks into homes and steals books, leaving a check on the table -- and Washington state consumer protection laws.

The action is being brought on behalf of three distinct classes. The first is made up of consumers whose Kindles' resale values have dropped out of fear that Amazon will pull additional works from the machines. The latter two classes consist of those who lost a digital work and those who, like Gawronski, lost a work that they had already spent time annotating.

The first class of plaintiffs -- owners whose machines have lost value due to the threatened loss of a text -- may already have been rendered moot by Amazon itself. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was quick to apologize for the deletions, and the company has already promised that works sold without a license will be handled differently in the future, and won't be deleted from owners' devices.

The suit is the second Kindle-related class action in a month. Earlier this month, Amazon was slapped with a suit from a plaintiff whose Kindle cracked around the edges, “where the cover attaches with metal clips.” The crack appeared despite the fact that lead plaintiff Alisa Brodkowitz opted for the $30 protective cover.

As a result of the cracks, the screen froze and the Kindle stopped working altogether. According to Brodkowitz, Amazon covered the screen freeze under its warranty, but not the cracks, claiming that they were caused by Brodkowitz having improperly bent the cover backwards. The company charged $200 to repair the cracks.

Brodkowitz, who vehemently denies having bent the cover, filed suit in Seattle, contending that “scores, if not hundreds” of consumers were in the same boat.

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