Amazon coughs $150k to student over lost notes

A student who sued Amazon for deleting George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four from his Kindle ebook, rendering his notes useless, has won $150,000 along with protection for other Kindle users. The agreement, which was spotted by Seattle's TechFlash, effectively prevents Amazon reaching out and deleting or modifying works in future. However, as a negotiated agreement it doesn't carry a legal precedent; and Amazon isn't admitting that it broke the law, or even the terms of service, by deleting the work. Amazon's motivation for pulling the classic from customer machines was the discovery that the work was still in copyright, despite having been uploaded and made available by an Amazon partner. Fewer than 2000 copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm had been sold, so Amazon reversed history by deleting the work over the Kindle's whispernet and crediting the accounts of those who had bought a copy.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/02/kindle_pay_off/