Is reality creepy or funny—or creepy-funny. This is just so—ironic? Or is it the digital version of Farenheit 451?
Why do you think they call it “Kindle?”-Andy Senior, Uticans For 911 Truth
I will not even consider buying a Kindle–the implications of a reader device with central control via the net is just TOO monolithic. “Convenience”, in the case of the Kindle (or any other network accessible device), is simply over-ridden by the potential to control the content.
It would simply be unacceptable for a book publisher to come into your home and confiscate books on your shelves, yet this what Amazon has done! While I am certain that Amazon justifies its actions on the basis of “legal” expediency, it points to the potential for exploits that go well beyond copyright issues. It goes to the same issue as nearly all subscriber-based digital content (think iTunes): you don not OWN the content you purchased, you merely “RENT” it.
This also reminds me of why I love my vinyl record collection—hard copy, baby. Digital convenience is not necessarily better.
-Randy
Marc Hershon: My Kindle Ate My Homework
Jul 18, 2009 7:38 PM – Show original item
I’ve been a huge proponent of personal computers and all other gadgetry in general. Bought Radio Shack’s TRS-80 back in 1980-when-it-came-out. The first 128K-no-hard-drive Mac. The original Palm Pilot. No tech too glitchy, no adoption too early.
The commonality about it all? I’ve been in ultimate control of what content was in it. Big Brother might be watching, but it was strictly hands off. Amazon slapped my sense of ownership and control across the face yesterday when I learned they reached right into the Kindles of an unspecified number of customers and deleted — irony of ironies — copies of George Orwell’s 1984. Also his Animal Farm.
Acccording to the NYTimes, some owners got to bear witness to the digital zap as they were in the midst of reading the book. Including one student who had been making notes on the work for a summer class — since his annotations were part of the digital files they, too, vanished. (Hence the inspiration for this blog entry’s title…)
Amazon’s reasons were sound enough: the company that had originally uploaded the books to be sold were not the legal holders of the copyright so they were not entitled to profit from them. and the customers with the vanishing literature were refunded their purchase price. But the “no excuse” part was Amazon reaching out its digital tentacle into owners’ personal Kindle devices and wiping out the files.
It seems an accidental glimpse of what could be construed as censorship on a massive scale. Amazon, in retrospect, realized they screwed up as a spokeman said, “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.” Gotta love the conditional nature of “in these circumstances.”
What happens a couple of more generations down the road when printed text is nothing more than a quaint reminder of the way people used to read? When some government decides that certain material is deemed illegal and is able to wipe it out from millions of digital memories, Hitler’s book burnings will seem a drop in the bucket.
Guess I better start stocking up on printer paper.
[...] Orwell Deleted… Filed Under: amazon.com, censorship, kindle, orwell [...]
This is beyond ironic. A new word has to be invented. Ironic doesn’t describe the irony here, nor does any added adverb such as “very” or “really” in front of the word ironic. We really have to come up with a whole new word here–a challenge which Orwell himself would have relished.
This is almost to the point that it might be deliberate–you know, one of those things that high-degree freemasons do to “drop hints” in order to exonerate themselves for later actions in their own perverted world of antichrist ethics.