Norway’s Consumer Council Accuses Amazon

3rd November, 2009 by Adina
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A post on the website of the Norway’s Consumer Council has launched accusations against Amazon’s terms-of-service for e-books purchased on the Kindle. Hans Marius Graasvold, the director of the group, said that several points in the e-book terms-of-service violate several provisions of the Norwegian consumer protection law.

A first concern is Amazon’s practice of tying its content exclusively to the Kindle’s new international reader. This protection method is compared to the iTunes DRM the group had previously fought against. This disagreement regarding iTunes generated a legal action before DRM was dropped by Apple from most of the content. For the moment, the council is awaiting feedback from Amazon and Norwegian publishers before proceeding with “an iTunes 2 case if we are not satisfied”, as Graasvold declared. The Council currently lacks the official support from the country’s Consumer Ombudsman as it was the case when it went after Apple.

A second point is linked to the Amazon’s clause that allows the termination of the service in case of a customer breaking the agreement terms. The Council’s interpretation is that in such a situation Kindle could take away the whole collection of e-books the customer has purchased if he is suspected of illegally copying only one e-book. Graasvold shows that this would be similar to retiring an entire collection of CDs if the owner was suspected to illegally use one of them, which is totally unacceptable.

A third point is that Amazon reserves the right to change the terms at any time, which could be a common clause in the United States, but is against the Norwegian and the European contract laws. There are also concerns with the way Amazon handles or sells information, i.e. types of content purchased by the users or notes entered on the device. And finally, the opinion of the Council is that the Kindle should be associated with a five-year warranty and not with the one- or two-year plan. Hans Marius Graasvold outlined the tendency for offering the customers unfair contracts for network products and services.

The Consumer Council made specific threats of further legal action. Amazon’s reaction to these accusations is still expected. Another blamed company, Apple, initially ignored such European threats and claimed that DRM protection was a requirement of record labels and not at all an attempt to impose its monopole on the market for digital sales or for media players.


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