Amazon says Okay to Loaning Empty Kindles

Big thanks to Norman Oder at Library Journal for passing along what LJ learned from Amazon about libraries loaning the Kindle to patrons.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told LJ that a loan of a Kindle without content is OK but sharing a device loaded with content "with a wide group of people would not be in line with the terms of use."

Did you hear that, folks? If you have a Kindle, you can share it with patrons AS LONG AS THERE'S NOTHING ON IT.  Does anyone have a Black's Law Dictionary handy to look up the precise meaning of "wide group of people?"   If we buy a print book from Amazon, can we only loan it if we tear out all the pages and just check out the gutted cover?  I'm gonna pass on any further commentary about ToS, as I bet y'all have something to say about it. I will, however, probably do one last review before I pass the  Kindle on to another staff member.  After I've scrubbed it of all content, of course. 

Comments

[Sean]

You'll rarely get a company to interpret their terms of service for you and answer specific questions about the situations in which they apply. They want to reserve any legal options they may have to pursue what they may believe to be infringement.

For example, I work for a library that provides downloadable audiobooks from OverDrive. Some of the downloaded OverDrive titles allow patrons to burn them to CD. CDs don't have the same option to expire after 3 weeks as the DRM wma files do, so the CDs could be used for a long time. We once had a patron ask us if he was obligated to destroy or stop using the burned CDs at the end of the 3 week loan period for the OverDrive title. After reading the terms and not finding an adequate answer, we emailed OverDrive and they refused to answer the specific question and said to refer to the Terms of Service which I had already informed them that I had done.

They basically didn't want to limit their options in the future. Although they are currently being as liberal as they can with allowing patrons to burn some titles to CD and keep them, in the future they might not be so liberal and don't want to go on record saying it is okay to use the burned CDs forever. The only thing I could find in the terms was that you agree to only use the content pursuant to the terms of the license. In this case, any downloaded title gives you a license to listen to it for three weeks and to not distribute it to others. So after three weeks, your license expires and logically you should stop using your burned CDs.

It really seems to be about them not wanting to go on record as allowing something that they might want to restrict in the future.