Big Brother: Amazon Deletes Copies Of Orwell Books Off Kindles
This couldn’t be more ironic, given the subjects of the books being deleted:
Ever bought a book from Barnes and Noble, then turned around to find it missing from your bookshelf and replaced with a voucher? Bizarre though it may seem, that’s exactly what’s happened to hundreds of owners of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm books, with Amazon remotely deleting copies on user’s Kindles and crediting their accounts.
While this might be understandable if the copies were distributed illegally, the cause here appears to be a publisher which decided it simply didn’t want to offer a Kindle edition any more.
This is a troubling aspect of the digital age. In the old paper age, once a book was released to the public that was it. It was out there in people’s bookshelves and on their nightstands. If someone decided after the fact that whatever was published shouldn’t be out there it was too late. The toothpaste was out of the tube, and there was no putting it back in.
But now, in an Orwellian twist of technoligical development (I told you it was ironic), that’s not necessarily the case any more. As more and more of our literature and communication goes digital the archives of those things because less and less secure. If there is no hard copy, those with the power and the means to erase what they don’t want you to see can.
Anyway, if any of you out there lost your digital copies of either of these books you can download them again here.
