courtesy of David Llewelyn-Jones http://zeitgeistandstuff.wordpress.com/
Increasingly, there seems to be an Orwellian slant to the machinations of the Internet. Last summer, early adopters of the Kindle and fans of George Orwell would probably have been rather frustratingly struck by the irony of waking up to find their library somewhat diminished. As one blog writes,
“In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.” On Friday, it was “1984″ and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm”, that were dropped down the memory hole – by Amazon.com.”
Another blog notes that the Kindle is “basically a device that Amazon controls that you just happen to have in your hands.” The novels were removed after being added by a company that did not have the sufficient rights to them. This may be sufficient reason to remove the product from the store; it does not, however, excuse the way in which Amazon went about systematically removing copies that were on owner’s devices, who had already paid them. The incident was noted in a more recent editorial in the FT, evincing a mounting ownership creep on behalf of major corporations. Now, more than ever, when products are not only files on your desktop but stored remotely in a cloud, a consumer’s rights to ownership have never felt less tangible.
Read the full article here.
