Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle Devices – NYTimes.com
In a rather “Big Brotherish” move, Amazon.com recently removed access to 2 digital editions of books by George Orwell.
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.
The funny thing about this story is that, while Orwell’s 1984 portrays the intrusion of governmental power into our lives, it’s really restrictive copyright laws encouraged by the content industries that made this possible. It looks as though Postman’s Huxleyan prediction was indeed much more correct! If books follow the trend of music–away from physical media–we can expect this loss of control over things we “buy” to happen more often because you never really own anything but an “implied license” use it (with a number of restrictions). Yet, as long as we’re entertained, there’s little chance anyone will protest.
Edit: here is some more detail