Virtual censorship on Kindle
(ganked from a column by CmdrTaco)
"Recently, one of many nightmare DRM [digital rights management?] scenarios reared its ugly head; a bookseller released the George Orwell classics “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm” to be sold by Amazon.com for use on its Kindle ebook reader. Amazon sold many copies of the books, only to find that they’d purchased stolen merchandise: The bookseller in question wasn’t actually the legal copyright holder. When the true rights holder figured out its books were being sold illicitly, it contacted Amazon.
You probably already can see where this is going. The Kindle is a closed device. Amazon owns the operating system. And when the dust settles, even though you have paid for the books that it hosts, they have a kill switch that they were all too happy to flip. Suddenly, anyone who had a copy of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” residing on his Kindle found in its place a hole: Amazon had reached into the devices owned by individuals and deleted the ebook’s file. "
It's bad enough that they can delete it... but they can also rewrite the ending.
"Recently, one of many nightmare DRM [digital rights management?] scenarios reared its ugly head; a bookseller released the George Orwell classics “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm” to be sold by Amazon.com for use on its Kindle ebook reader. Amazon sold many copies of the books, only to find that they’d purchased stolen merchandise: The bookseller in question wasn’t actually the legal copyright holder. When the true rights holder figured out its books were being sold illicitly, it contacted Amazon.
You probably already can see where this is going. The Kindle is a closed device. Amazon owns the operating system. And when the dust settles, even though you have paid for the books that it hosts, they have a kill switch that they were all too happy to flip. Suddenly, anyone who had a copy of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” residing on his Kindle found in its place a hole: Amazon had reached into the devices owned by individuals and deleted the ebook’s file. "
It's bad enough that they can delete it... but they can also rewrite the ending.