Thursday, July 18, 2013

Amazon Secretly Removes “1984" From the Kindle

 Amazon Secretly Removes “1984" From the Kindle

Thousands of people last week discovered that Amazon had quietly removed electronic copies of George Orwell's 1984 from their Kindle e-book readers. In the process, Amazon revealed how easy censorship will be in the Kindle age.

In this case, the mass e-book removals were motivated by copyright . A company called MobileReference, who did not own the copyrights to the books 1984 and Animal Farm, uploaded both books to the Kindle store and started selling them. When the rights owner heard about this, they contacted Amazon and asked that the e-books be removed. And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store, but from all the Kindles where they'd been downloaded. Amazon operators used the Kindle wireless network, called WhisperNet, to quietly delete the books from people's devices and refund them the money they'd paid.

An uproar followed, with outraged customers pointing out the irony that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascist media state that constantly alters history by changing digital records of what has happened.

More @ io9

4 comments:

  1. For anyone that wants it in PDF format it's available free on Scribd. www.Scribd.com
    There is a disclaimer on it that says it was
    published in Australia and the copyright there is expired..........

    From a legal standpoint I guess Amazon did the right thing but it is ironic to say the least.

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  2. Screw "electronic" books. I have 15 "shop manual" CDs that I PAID for that won't work on my newer computer...Thanks assholes. I never have that problem on my paper books. I do however buy copies of 1984 when I find them at yardsales and give them away. I have done so for years...

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    1. You could also print them off if you have a laser printer and use the duplex setting with recycled paper, a book of about 300 pages costs $3+. That's what I did for the Robinson homeschool curriculum.

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