Sometimes the irony of poor corporate decision-making is just too delicious to ignore, as is the case with Amazon's virtual book pyre on which it burned digital copies of two George Orwell novels yesterday.
The Kindle versions of Animal Farm and 1984 were, apparently, surreptitiously deleted over the air from the Kindles of anyone who bought them in the US.
Wrong rights holder
As for why, Amazon says it discovered the books should never have been on the Kindle store as publisher MobileReference was mistaken in its belief it held the digital rights to the Orwell classics.
An Amazon spokesperson explained: "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices."
Stick to paper
At least they refunded the money they mistakenly took, but what about anyone only halfway through reading about the beastly antics in Animal Farm or the totalitarian world of 1984?
Perhaps they'll be encouraged to ignore Amazon's Brave New World Kindle option next time and stick with some good, old-fashioned paper.
Your comments (4) Click to add a new comment
got_mach
October 6th 2009
4. Actually, it is not "Possession of Stolen Property" as that would require some type of "property" to be "stolen". "Copyright Infringement" is the term you were looking for, and the Kindle owners would not be guilty of even that. One would expect Amazon to settle a deal with the license holder and respect the rights of the customers who "purchased" the books from them. Deleting the books from their customers devices was not Amazon's only option, but it was the cheapest.
You're letting your ignorance of copyright law cloud reasonable thinking.
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m185874
July 19th 2009
3. stewhites: it's called "possession of stolen property" and exactly the same as if you'd bought a book stolen from a library - it's not yours to own in the first place. You're letting the white heat of your anti-Kindle hatred cloud your better judgement.
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optimaximal
July 18th 2009
2. Well, at least there were refunds... If someone like Apple, the money would probably be lost!
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stewhites
July 18th 2009
1. This is why i'll never own a kindle or similar device. Removing something I paid for without my permission is just not on.
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