Amazon Deletes George Orwell From Kindle!!!

[Erasmus_Folly]

It sounds unbelievable but Amazon has reached into peoples Kindles and deleted George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm and dropped them down the "memory hole" and this was no accident but done on purpose.

If you thought you owned the works you purchased for your Kindle you were wrong.

Here is the link to the story from today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/techn ... mazon.html

This practice is shameful in the extreme.

Comments anyone?

[Scott]

It appears that the copies people had purchased were sold illegally.

So one could make the argument that what happened is similar to if someone sells you a stolen purse, in that you never actually owned the purse and maybe the purse needs to be taken back and you refunded the money you spent. Either way, it's a tricky situation.

[The Mythwriter]

At least everyone was refunded, but even though I was never going to buy a Kindle, I now have yet another reason. Why should they control what files you put on your personal device? That's like saying you can only buy paper books from this publisher, and if you buy from another, we come to your home and take the book. I can see why copyrights might interfere and give them cause... the whole things is just a bad idea to me.

[Fran]

That's scarily Orwellian ... I'll stick with the old fashioned paperbacks?

[Hana]

The irony of this entire situation would be laughable if it weren’t so ominous. I heard about this on NPR and was horrified. There was no warning, nothing – fffth- just gone. And then came the explanation.

No.

I do not have a reading device. I do not want a reading device. I will stick to books. I will amass so many of them that if a day comes that we move into a world that is a bastardized child of Orwell and Bradburys’ nightmares, they will have to burn down my whole house just to be rid of them.

“Each time your hand is slapped the sting of shock lessens but the expectation of punishment grows and you learn not to reach at all.” All hail Pavlov.

[wctumesh]

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.

Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.

Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not immediately returned.

Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices — and apparently to make them vanish.

An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”

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.”

Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said.

[Zannie]

That is a bit worrying. Sort of like big brother. Also you have to ask if one pirated edition was sold from a "replicable" dealer, then how many others have they been selling? Why are no security measures in place to ensure copyright laws are not being infringed.

[kaylahar6]

As long as they give you a refund, I think that it should be ok.

[dragoneyes2005]

Glad everyone got refunded and the issue with the books being distributed illegally was resolved, but this is very reminiscent of big brother. I just got my kindle as a gift not long ago and find this a bit unsettling.

[RobertM]

I can see where Amazon handled this badly, but where they REALLY went wrong was in not checking whether the publishing entity who made the book available actually owned the rights. There are scam publishers who try to creep into the Kindle Book trade with their ripoffs of classics. And when you upload a book to be made available for the Kindle, there is a box you have to check: 'Is this a public domain work...OR do you own the publishing rights to this work?' The ripoff publisher obviously checked the box. Which means they lied.

Okay...but then Amazon is supposed to check that statement BEFORE they authorize the book for release, and frankly, with an Orwell book they should have caught that. The publisher's Amazon Kindle Publishing account was probably deleted, and one or two folks in Quality Control probably got called on the carpet.

What Amazon SHOULD Have Done: Deleted the books from the Kindles and replaced them with FREE versions of the authorized editions from the REAL publishers...and then paid off the real publishers their royalties for every phony copy that was sold. Either that, or issue a credit to the customers equal to the amount they would need to replace the removed books.

It was Amazon who screwed up by letting those illegal copies hit their website for sale. So...it should be Amazon who pays the price. That's my opinion, anyway.

[sybil1reader]

I can see Amazon's point in retrieving the unauthorized copies, but notification should have been made first. Maybe Amazon should do more to restrict this type of activity from unauthorized persons and Kindle customers won't have to go through this again. Some type of vetting must be in place.

[David Dawson]

I'm no fan of Amazon (tax avoidance, treats its workers pretty badly etc.), but I'm not sure if the deliciousness of the irony has made people more excited about this story than it warrants. What if it wasn't Orwell, but illegal copies of a struggling, living writer's work, who would be losing out on much needed income were Amazon not to take any action? Which is not to say they could not have handled it better.

[L_Therese]

That's scarily Orwellian ... I'll stick with the old fashioned paperbacks?

The irony kind of eases my chagrin. In the end, I think the people we need to blame are the ones who are pirating the books. I agree with those of you who say that Amazon should have notified Kindle users earlier, though. They have to do what they have to do, but they can save themselves a lot of bad press and their customers a lot of confusion by communicating their actions and the reasons for them in a timely manner.

[katliegh]

That's scarily Orwellian ... I'll stick with the old fashioned paperbacks?

Yes, yes it is...

[anomalocaris]

The removal wasn't so much of an issue as the way Amazon handled it -- unannounced in the middle of the night.