Very informative article, and worth reading to the end.
It’s getting to where you have to be careful when shopping at Amazon, that you are buying the real thing, and not a deceptive fake.
IMHO, Amazon has not been doing enough of the store owners due diligence, to ensure that the buyer is not ripped off by deceptive marketing.
IIRC Orwell’s estate sued Apple over the 1984 commercial.
And every year at this time, Chicago lawyer Bill Coulson thinks about what’s wrong with that historical record and the ways he might try to correct it. The thoughts have a little extra urgency this year, with Orwell’s “1984” being widely reread by people who fear the worst about Donald Trump’s presidency.
Chicago attorney William Coulson has been working for years to set the record straight on Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl ad.
Chicago attorney William Coulson has been working for years to set the record straight on Apple’s “1984” Super Bowl ad. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)
Coulson’s specialty is intellectual property, and Apple, he has been on a lonely crusade to let people know, violated it by appropriating scenes and themes from Orwell’s novel for its own commercial purposes.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-apple-1984-ad-myths-ent-0205-20170201-column.html
Have they rewritten it yet to claim that the danger is not the state but individualism and non-conformity?
I think that if Orwell were alive today he would marvel at the genius of the newspeak bureaucrats having their work done by what is meant to appear as objective private sector journalists. It’s sorta like a newspeak information and censorship laundering front.
Often the problem with drastic socialism has been the increasing need for oppressive totalitarian control to maintain it, which further breeds resentment and the eventual outcome of collapse or revolution. But if your propaganda doesn’t come from state run print or TV, then you can buffer to focus of the resentment.
Messing with language is doubleplusungood!
I always try to buy older books in the earlier editions where possible for exactly this type of issue.
I have found a few “edits to correct errors/omissions” that completely changed the character of the original thought.
I bought a book from another author which was nothing more than the Project Gutenberg version printed by Amazon. They didn’t even bother to relabel the original table of contents with the new pagination.
I read this article earlier today. It is both chilling and prescient in it’s analysis.
I'd think the estate of George Orwell would be suing Amazon for violating their eternal copyright. That's a battle I'd like to see. Maybe an organization as large as Amazon could lobby for reforming copyright law in America as something that is in its own best interest.
Read later.