Post by xaratherus
Let's start with the
source.
For those who haven't heard, Amazon.com has defined a whole new level of irony when they recently remotely (and without warning) deleted copies of George Orwell's
1984 and
Animal House from their Kindle e-reader devices.
1984, for those not in the know, is a classic sci-fi novel about a dystopian future where "Big Brother" (a.k.a. the "guv'mint") watches everyone and everything at all times, and can quickly and easily delete any written criticism of themselves.
On top of that, the Kindle allows you to add your own notations to text, making them a growing popular choice among students since it adds an easy method for studying a novel. However, those notations are deleted if the digital media is removed - as was the case with the
1984 incident.
Apparently, the Terms of Service for the Kindle downloads state that the purchaser does not actually own the text of the novel - but they do not go further and state that Amazon.com has the right to delete a book once you've purchased it.
Amazon pulled the books from sale because the vendor who had uploaded the digital text did not own the rights to said text; a side effect of that process is a mass remote deletion of the text from all devices. Amazon has stated they will alter this process so the text is not deleted; from my understanding, that means that should Amazon fail to properly police ownership rights they will be responsible when pirated copy is uploaded for sale to their service.
The fact that Amazon immediately refunded the purchase price to all who had downloaded it is besides the point. :P The only thing that could have been more ironic would have been including
Fahrenheit 451 in the deletions...