Courtesy: BlogKindle
In a move of sheer irony, Amazon pulled digital copies of 1984 or Animal Farm right from the Kindles of paying customers. Apparently the publisher decided it no longer wanted to offer e-book versions of the novels. And somehow, the publisher, Signet Classics, was able to exert so much pressure on Amazon that they not only pulled it from the store, but deleted it off users’ devices.
Shame on Amazon for this, and I mean that very strongly. If you sell someone something, you can’t decide later on that you didn’t mean it. Signet Classics are a bunch of crazy people for not wanting digital versions of the books, but I thought Amazon was a good company. If Signet didn’t want to sell the products anymore, that’s fine, but don’t screw with the people who had already paid good money for it. Amazon should be standing up for the little guy. To my knowledge, customers got their money back, but this still stinks to high heaven.
Of course, this is indicative of the whole problem that we have with digital media and software. We no longer own the things we buy. Rather, we have the rights to use them. That’s why distributing those MP3s that you bought is illegal. They’re not yours to distribute. But it would be very nice if the people who sell us the rights don’t change their minds about what that means. We do have a capitalist system, which means that we are free to go buy from the people who don’t pull this kind of bullshit. That’s why may of us bought MP3s from the Amazon store instead of iTunes. But now that Amazon has fallen prey to some backwards rights holders, I’m not sure if I even feel comfortable doing that anymore.
(Original story via Pogue’s Posts)
