As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.
Actually it’s not like this in at least one very important way. There is no physical invasion of privacy, and the intentional creepy/terror factor of that language is unnecessary here.
I don’t know if the poster has been one of the voices decrying the music/film industry’s witch hunt for “pirates,” but I know a lot of the Boing Boing crowd has been, and you can’t have it both ways. An electronic copy of something is not the same thing as a physical object, and so amazon’s offense here is less heinous than a forced retrieval of a physical object.
It’s still a terrible idea from a customer satisfaction perspective, but don’t go overboard. Make your protest and move on.