Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle

[Brownian Motion]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technolo...8amazon.html?em

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.

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People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”

[ghost of miles]

Seems like there might have been a better way to handle this--pretty hamfisted and ironic indeed.

[rockefeller center]

Does Amazon dream of electric sheep?

Screw Amazon, Apple, MS, etc.

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=53731

[Niko]

looking for that story that up to some point foreign authors were under no protection in the us at all (funny considering the fuss americans are making nowadays with their copyright) i stumbled across this... (all i dimly remember is that dickens suffered from this... never any money from us readers for him...)...

i stumbled across this... if you ever wanted to see what justice looks like...

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

Edited July 18, 2009 by Niko

[Brownian Motion]

A thoughtful piece about losing control to corporations.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/...-digital-rights

[PHILLYQ]

Of all the books they might have done this with...

[Claude]

"Captain, I've found an unlicensed copy of Don Quixote"

Edited July 23, 2009 by Claude

[BruceH]

How Orwellian...

[danasgoodstuff]

So what should they have done? 'Oh, it's Orwell, it's too ironical, so let's not respect the copyright holder's rights...'

[Claude]

So what should they have done? 'Oh, it's Orwell, it's too ironical, so let's not respect the copyright holder's rights...'

Imagine that you buy a book (the old-fashioned type made of paper) at a brick and mortar bookstore.

Some time later, the store gets to know that the book was not duely licenced and is therefore considered counterfeit.

A store clerk breaks into your appartment, gets the book from your bookshelf, puts the price you paid in cash onto your table and leaves with the book.

That's what happened on the Kindle.

In the non-virtual world, a store that sold counterfeit goods has to pay damages to the rightholder, but cannot claim the goods back from his customers. It's the customers who have the right to get their money back from the store, but it's their decision.

Edited July 24, 2009 by Claude

[BruceH]

So what should they have done? 'Oh, it's Orwell, it's too ironical, so let's not respect the copyright holder's rights...'

Imagine that you buy a book (the old-fashioned type made of paper) at a brick and mortar bookstore.

Some time later, the store gets to know that the book was not duely licenced and is therefore considered counterfeit.

A store clerk breaks into your appartment, gets the book from your bookshelf, puts the price you paid in cash onto your table and leaves with the book.

That's what happened on the Kindle.

In the non-virtual world, a store that sold counterfeit goods has to pay damages to the rightholder, but cannot claim the goods back from his customers. It's the customers who have the right to get their money back from the store, but it's their decision.

Oh, for the days of physicallity...