Marius Graasvold, head of Norway's Consumer Council.

For those few of you who do not speak Norwegian, an Ars Technica report says that “Norway’s Consumer Council, Forbrukerrådet, made a name for itself back in 2006 by going after Apple’s iTunes Store with a vengeance. Now, it’s eyeing Amazon and has expressed concerns about the Kindle’s terms of service — some of which will sound familiar from the iTunes saga.”

The Consumer Council says that the Kindle contract violates several provisions in Norwegian law — one of which is establishing a tie between the content an individual buys and their Kindle, as Apple used DRM to tie iTunes and the iPod.

An independent organization, the Council does have the backing of the Norwegian government. According to Ars Technica, Marius Graasvold, the head of the Consumer Council, said, “We are currently waiting to hear how Amazon and Norwegian publishers will resolve this issue, but it does not rule out an ‘iTunes2 ‘ case if we are not satisfied.”

Another objection of the Council’s was highlighted during the Animal Farm debacle, when Amazon went into customers’ Kindles and deleted books they had purchase. (See the earlier MobyLives report) As Ars Technica details, “Amazon has the ability and the willingness to control Kindle owners’ access to content even after a sale, and Graasvold also points to a provision in which Amazon reserves the right to terminate the terms of service agreement entirely if customers violate the terms. ‘This can hardly be understood in any way other than that you, the customer, will no longer have access to the books or journals you purchased if you are suspected of having breached the agreement, for example by making an illegal copy.’”

And Graasvold’s list goes on:

• Can change the agreement at any time, without advance notification
• Doesn’t have strong enough privacy protections on tracking what people buy and read, and what “changes and comments” they make to books on the device
• Offers only a one or two year warranty (he’d be happier with five)
• Makes it difficult to produce local backup copies of purchased works

Apple resolved its issue by dropping DRM from the music store, to “untie” the content to the device. Whether Amazon will make a similar concession with its Kindle remains to be seen.