Amazon Settles Suit Filed by Peeved High School Student

The popular online retailer Amazon.com this week agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against it by a high school student earlier this year.

In July, 17-year-old Justin D. Gawronski sued the company after it erased copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal From for customer's Kindles, citing licensing and rights issues associated with the famous novels, the Associated Press reports. A Kindle is a small hardware device, similar to an iPod, that allows users to electronically read books that they purchase.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos immediately apologized for the deletions and offered a $30 refund to users who lost their purchases. Gawronski, however, claimed in the lawsuit that deleting 1984, which he was reading for a class, rendered the electronic notes he had taken on his device useless.

In the proposed settlement, filed in a U.S. District Court in Seattle, Amazon agreed not to remotely delete books from U.S. users' Kindles, except in situations, such as learning of corrupted files, in which the company must take action to protect consumers.

The battle over digital content seems to be a frontier in the legal system, as Gmail and Flickr users recently lost access to accounts as a result of court orders. The Gmail account was accidently sent confidential information, and the flicker user posted photographs which were licensed by another party.