Yet another case of someone behaving badly! Amazon made two crucial mistakes here. They failed to ensure that their book source had the proper rights to the books and they trampled their customers in the rush to take back the books. Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon was forced to apologize when this issue became more widely known and an outcry ensued. 

A better solution to this situation would have been to send each book owner a communication explaining the situation and offering them not only a full refund but also the option to receive print copies of the books. Then, by a certain date the electronic copies of the books would be retrieved. Waiting for customers to digest this sad state of affairs would not have lost the rights holders any money. This was not an emergency during which they needed to immediately get back all copies. No state secrets were at risk.

A bigger issue here is who owns the electronic book you paid for? When you buy a print book, no one can come and take it back. But it is too easy for someone to take back an electronic book from a device that is always connected to the source. For years, software vendors have pushed the fiction that you don't own the software you purchase, just the right to use it. This has never been fully tested in court. Now booksellers are moving towards that paradigm. Already they make it difficult to lend an electronic book to someone else without lending the reading device too. I can buy a print book and everyone in my family can read that one copy while I am reading another a book. Not so for electronic books. I have to be without my reader for a while. So I can't read a second electronic book while my family reads the first one. Publishers and writers see a way of making everyone who reads a book purchase a new copy for which they get royalties.

If I don't fully own a book I download electronically, who does? And can the owner take it back if I don't use it the way they want me to? Amazon has answered these questions their way. Currently there are no laws or court cases covering this situation exactly. The only thing that covers this is the End User License Agreement (EULA) that electronic reader owners agree to when they sign up for book downloads. Booksellers would like to view a EULA as a contract that makes the reader bound by the terms and conditions. But it has one big problem that goes against the legal requirements necessary to make this a contract. The buyer has no way to negotiate the terms and conditions. They just have a take it or leave it situation. Ereader and Ebook sellers would say that you can just buy print books if you don't like the situation. But that's just like saying you can walk if you don't like the terms and conditions that come with buying a car.

Readers can't have unfettered rights to copy a book and sellers can't force everyone who reads a book to pay for it. Do we really want libraries to charge for reading a book? We need a way to protect the rights of book owners while at the same time protecting the rights of publishers and writers. At the same time, booksellers need to be sure that they have the right to sell a book in whatever form they are offering.