News: Amazon pulls Orwell books from customers' Kindles (TSS)

[fashion_piranha]

Original link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984

Amazon Kindle users surprised by 'Big Brother' move
Bobbie Johnson, San Francisco

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

Comments

[phantomminuet]

Re: your last paragraph...same here. Of course, it may also have to do with the fact that hard copy is what I'm used to and grew up with, and it's hard for me to let it go as a medium of information transfer.

[kiri_l]

It is now another reason I don't have a kindle. They are too proprietary and I sincerely do not like that they feel they can edit your reading at their whim. ( I know they only sell the license to read electronic copies - not the actual books themselves, which is another problem.*) Like you I rather prefer tanglible copies - but I do read electronically. I just use my palm pilot and one day when I can locate something that meets all my requirements (including annotating and exporting that) I might change. Until them I don't want anyone censoring me or deciding they get to select what I read. (btw I back up my electronic copies (the ones I wish to keep) on two different medias. A CD and a server hard drive. )

*For me the ethical issues this entails are.. troublesome. I can see someone getting the idea to censor and WHAM thousands of people no longer have access to whatever - even though they are adults, capable of choosing and reading what they wish, and have paid for it.

[saru_kage]

Ok, so if I make a copy of an e-book, that's apparently stealing. But if I sell someone an e-book, then take it back without their knowledge or consent, that's totally OK? I'm confused. I mean, if I sell you a car and then take it back in the night without telling you, it doesn't matter that I left the money you paid for it in your mailbox, I would have still stolen your car!

I find it really ironic that this happened with Orwell because the main reason I never bought a Kindle was that one of its main features is a built-in memory hole. The idea that my entire library could be edited, revised, or redacted with a single network update never sat well with me. (Me: "Hey, what happened to my treatise on the case for war in Eurasia!?" Amazon: "Huh? You mean East Asia?" Me: "No, I mean Eurasia." Amazon: "We are at war with East Asia. We have always been at war with East Asia.") And the name also never sat right with me either. I mean, really, who in their right mind gives a book device the one name that conjures up images of Nazis throwing

[elfbiter]

I'm waiting for the electronic publishers to introduce something like "book expiration dates" that would wipe out the book file after certain period. Or that purchasing an electronic book gives a possibility to read it only certain amount of time (like only once - one of the cyberpunk authors even published one of his books in that form). It's technologically feasible. Then the reader would have to purchase a new "reading licence" (that's parallel to some ideas circulating in the records industry).

One guess why I'm sticking to hardcopies?

[ext_202221]

This is one of the big reasons I don't have a kindle as well. I blogged about this and all the other reasons in detail.

I was disturbed when this happened because I likened it to Amazon coming in my house and stealing a book off my bookshelf that I had bought from them. It is completely unacceptable behavior. And what would happen if Kindle turns out like the 8 track player? Do you get to port all those books you paid good money for to the newer, more relevant device? I doubt it.