Posted on 07/17/2009 5:28:54 PM PDT by Chet 99
Owners of Amazon's Kindle electronic book reader have received a nasty surprise, after discovering that copies of books by George Orwell had been deleted from their gadgets without their knowledge.
The books - downloaded from Amazon.com by American Kindle users - were remotely deleted after what the US company says was a request by the publisher, MobileReference.com.
Amazon refunded the cost of the books, but told affected customers they could no longer read the books and that the titles were "no longer available for purchase".
"Although a rarity, publishers can decide to pull their content from the Kindle store," a customer service representative said.
In an ironic twist, one of the titles in question was Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 - the book that introduced the concept of Big Brother. The story, considered a modern classic, has become synonymous with political spin and remote surveillance - and many Kindle owners could not help but see the juxtaposition as amusing.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
This is where I see the real danger of digital books... far too easy to re-write history without leaving a trace of evidence of what was done...
Hmmm...I think I need a hard copy of “1984” just for reference, of course. “Brave New World,” too.
What about Animal Farm? If they’re gonna delete 1984, shouldn’t they delete that too?
Good luck with deleting that.
I would either buy or download the following: Logan’s Run, Demolition Man, Soylent Green, or The Running Man...
Glad I decided against Kindle. I wouldn’t waste a dime.
I'm less likely to buy a Kindle now.
It seems the issue is they were trying to sell it before getting the proper license. Hopefully the Orwell Estate will see the irony in this and work out a deal quickly.
Add Road to Serfdom to the list of must have hard copies.
Jame’s Clavell’s “The Children’s Story” too.
Update: They’ve issued statement that this won’t happen again - claim they didn’t have rights to those 2.
The fact that they are technology capable of doing it is chilling enough.
That was my take on it, too. Once I buy it, it should be mine. The publishers and Amazon should have tried to reach an agreement where the publisher has the right to take stuff off of the Kindle online store if they want, but NOT already-purchased copies off of customer’s devices.
Thank you!
Got them both. I also don't purchase e-books that come with remote-control strings. No Kindle for me. No Sony device either (see my tagline) -- they cannot be trusted with ANY media.
This is the danger of digital anything. This is why I insist on paper copies of my credit card and bank statements. I once had a mysterious, unaccountable charge appear on my Amex account, in the amount of $19.99. I then went back through the previous 11 months of my account and found the same charge every single month. I had NEVER seen it before, and I check every charge carefully every month. But since I had opted to receive my statements electronically, I had no paper record to compare it to. Amex did deign to refund about the most recent three months worth, but not the other eight months. Needless to say I quickly reverted to paper statements.
Nah. Some books are more equal than others.
Not buying from them anymore and I buy a lot of books from them.
ironic ping
ML/NJ
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