Amazon Deletes Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle Ebook Readers

[hilly7]

July 18th, 2009

I don’t understand why anyone would buy a Kindle. Then again, I don’t understand the popularity of many things.

Via: New York Times:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

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.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Scary.

http://cryptogon.com/

[Easy Skanking]

You just can't make shit like this up.....

[plasticfan]

Kindle the Age of eBook Burnings

I've been a huge proponent of personal computers and all other gadgetry in general. Bought Radio Shack's TRS-80 back in 1980-when-it-came-out. The first 128K-no-hard-drive Mac. The original Palm Pilot. No tech too glitchy, no adoption too early.

The commonality about it all? I've been in ultimate control of what content was in it. Big Brother might be watching, but it was strictly hands off. Amazon slapped my sense of ownership and control across the face yesterday when I learned they reached right into the Kindles of an unspecified number of customers and deleted -- irony of ironies -- copies of George Orwell's 1984. Also his Animal Farm.

Acccording to the NYTimes, some owners got to bear witness to the digital zap as they were in the midst of reading the book. Including one student who had been making notes on the work for a summer class -- since his annotations were part of the digital files they, too, vanished. (Hence the inspiration for this blog entry's title...)

Amazon's reasons were sound enough: the company that had originally uploaded the books to be sold were not the legal holders of the copyright so they were not entitled to profit from them. and the customers with the vanishing literature were refunded their purchase price. But the "no excuse" part was Amazon reaching out its digital tentacle into owners' personal Kindle devices and wiping out the files.

It seems an accidental glimpse of what could be construed as censorship on a massive scale. Amazon, in retrospect, realized they screwed up as a spokeman said, "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances." Gotta love the conditional nature of "in these circumstances."

What happens a couple of more generations down the road when printed text is nothing more than a quaint reminder of the way people used to read? When some government decides that certain material is deemed illegal and is able to wipe it out from millions of digital memories, Hitler's book burnings will seem a drop in the bucket.

Guess I better start stocking up on printer paper.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-hershon...k_b_239312.html

[---]

Quote:What happens a couple of more generations down the road when printed text is nothing more than a quaint reminder of the way people used to read? When some government decides that certain material is deemed illegal and is able to wipe it out from millions of digital memories, Hitler's book burnings will seem a drop in the bucket.

Yes, it'll be exactly like 1984

[kevlar]

just wait till they start offering book readers like the kindle where you can disable the internet connection and just upload your pirated pdf books like it should be.

i wouldn't buy a device which is so riddled in drm, i never bought an ipod because i hated itunes and the non sense that went with it.

sony has a book reader where you can just upload your books that you have already and it is cheaper and i think better than the kindle. but still has stupid limitations.

it is shame when they have the technology to offer cheaper and better devices.

a great example is how the telecommunication companies are holding back VOIP. i mean that technology should have revolutionised telecommunications a few years ago.

but there is more money in charging shitloads for the time spent on calls.

[---]

Quote:sony has a book reader where you can just upload your books that you have already and it is cheaper and i think better than the kindle. but still has stupid limitations.

I didn't know that.cheers

[Guest]

It sucks to be them, and they should have bought it on paper. I'll read what I have to on the screen, but gimme a paperback anyday.

[mastermg]

Reading, who does that these days? lol

[icosaface]

plasticfan provided a link to the library which has this link, http://fugaziquo.com/directory/pages/multi...ry/classics.htm , in the "hundreds of ebooks" thread wherein you can get access to 1984 and Animal Farm in ebook format.