Thousands of people last hebdomad discovered that Amazon had quietly dispatch electronic copies of George Orwell ’s 1984 from their Kindle e - book reader . In the process , Amazon revealed how easy security review will be in the Kindle age .
In this fount , the mess vitamin E - rule book remotion were motivated by copyright . A company call MobileReference , who did not own the copyrights to the account book 1984 and Animal Farm , uploaded both books to the Kindle store and start sell them . When the right owner hear about this , they contacted Amazon and call for that the e - books be take away . And Amazon decided to erase them not just from the store , but from all the Kindles where they ’d been downloaded . Amazon operator used the Kindle wireless mesh , called WhisperNet , to quietly delete the books from hoi polloi ’s gadget and refund them the money they ’d pay .
An uproar keep up , with indignant customers point out the caustic remark that Amazon was deleting copies of a novel about a fascistic metier state that incessantly alters history by changing digital records of what has hap . Amazon ’s action flies in the face of what people expect when they buy a book . Under the “ rightfield of first sales agreement ” in the U.S. , people can do whatever they care with a Christian Bible after buy it , including giving it to a Quaker or resell it . There is no alternative for a bookseller to take that book back once it ’s sold .
Apparently , until last week , Amazon claim it would n’t take back buy books either : The New York Times ’ Brad Stone report :
Amazon ’s write terms of service accord for the Kindle does not appear to give the companionship the right hand to delete purchases after they have been made . It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “ permanent written matter of the applicable digital mental object . ”
But this is n’t the first time there has been a problem with secret deletings . Stone total :
Amazon appear to have deleted other purchased vitamin E - books from Kindles latterly . Customers point out on Web forums report the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over alike issues .
Now that the public is up in arms over the Kindle deletions , Amazon is once again promising good behaviour . Amazon spokesmanDrew Herdener tell reporters :
We are changing our systems so that in the futurity we will not polish off books from customers ’ devices in these circumstances .
That “ in these circumstances ” bit does n’t inspire a lot of confidence . Sounds like Word of God will be remove again under other ( undefined ) circumstance .
Regardless of whether you believe Amazon ’s promise to pass on your Kindle alone , the company has tip its hired man and demonstrate us the dark side of a civilisation where Good Book are only available in electronic shape . If the WhisperNet service from Kindle allow the company to delete Word silently from your equipment , what other entropy might they have access to ? Can the company supervise what you ’re reading and when – and then hand that over to law enforcement ? Can it replace a Holy Writ single file with a different file whose content is transfer ?
Perhaps more than anything else , this aggregate omission of 1984 has made it clear that collecting e - book is go to require some expert know - how . No e - Word is truly yours unless you may get it off your Kindle and onto your computer – hopefully a computer that is n’t connected to the internet .
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