Just Charlotte

Earlier this week, Amazon made something of an error in judgement when the company decided to delete copies of George Orwell’s novels from customers’ Kindle ebook readers due to a legal technicality. Since then, users of the ebook have been up in arms at Amazon’s decision; the main problem being the fact that the company thought it would be a really great idea to delete the novels in secret, with customers only made aware of the issue after the novels had gone.

Since the boom of social media over the past couple of years, those companies which are sensitive to brand awareness and the potential financial benefits of engaging in direct interaction with consumers, have been trying to decrease the gap between brand and user by increasing transparency and trying to avoid what some may term “underhand tactics”. Amazon’s latest move laughs in the face of such attempts. You wouldn’t be surprised if the new office intern at some small, remote company decided to go ahead with the removal from consumers’ ebooks but Amazon? Surely not.

No doubt George Orwell would have cracked a wry smile that his novels, given their subject matter, were at the centre of this storm over invasion of privacy. The scenario of a company gaining access to the memory of a device and deleting contents without the owner’s knowledge could have been taken from the pages of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.

Ultimately, Amazon had to do something to resolve the fact that the company which sold the copies of Orwell’s novels didn’t actually have any right to use his work. However, the way in which they acted exposes the inherent problems with digital rights management. We may all like to think that purchases of the kind associated with Kindle are as hassle-free as purchases associated with high-street clothes shops but this simply isn’t the case.

If brands want to continue closing the gap between themselves and consumers, they need to address this issue and make customers aware of what exactly is involved in these transactions. When we go to Tesco, we know what to do if we’re not entirely satisfied with our tin of baked beans and we also know that when we purchase a loaf of bread, it’s ours to do what we like with. Maybe it’s now time for this kind of transparency to evolve in the online world, or else companies like Amazon might keep making moves which potentially undo all their good brand building work.