Amazon Dupes Consumers to Think They Own Content They Buy: Suit
Amazon doesn’t actually own the digital content it sells the public, but sublicenses from the content owner, and when a licensing agreement terminates, Amazon pulls the content from a consumer’s purchased folder and music library “without prior warning, and without…
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providing any type of refund or remuneration,” alleged a class-action complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. Amazon’s sale of digital content it doesn't own “is made more egregious” because Amazon “charges just as much for that content,” sometimes even more, than stores like Best Buy and Target that “actually transfer title” to its customers, access to which “can never be revoked,” said the complaint. Amazon continues to “mislead consumers into believing it's selling them digital content, “even though it is merely providing them with a license to view it, which can be terminated at any time, for any reason and without any type of warning so that a consumer can take steps to attempt to preserve it,” said the suit. Amazon has sold more digital content, “and at substantially higher prices per unit, than it would have in the absence of this misconduct, resulting in additional profits at the expense of deceived consumers,” it said. The complaint seeks “punitive or exemplary” money damages, alleging unjust enrichment and violation of consumer protection laws. Amazon didn’t comment.