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High schooler sues Amazon for ruining his study notes

When Amazon.com removed copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindles, there was a big uproar over possible censorship. The irony that the book in question happened to be the most famous literary screed on surveillance since - well, since ever - only added fuel to the fire. The resulting backlash caused Amazon to promise never to snatch customers' purchases off their Kindles again, even if another book has to be pulled from the store for legal reasons. The promise came too late for one high school senior, though, who lost his copy of 1984 AND the study notes he had made on the book.

Now the student is trying to start up a class action against Amazon, suing for messing up the annotations he (and, presumably, at least a few other people) made on their digital copies of 1984. Amazon didn't actually delete his notes, but removing the book means that the notes don't refer back to any text, and renders them useless. The suit alleges that nothing in Amazon's terms of service for the Kindle covers the removal of users' purchases -- the license is supposed to be for life.

[via Wall Street Journal]

Tags: 1984, amazon, amazon-kindle, books, lawsuit, orwell

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