How ironic it is that Amazon would exercise their Big Brother like control over Kindle devices with George Orwell’s 1984. Apparently the publisher of the E-Book (MobileReference) decided that it didn’t want to publish Orwell’s “1984″ or “Animal Farm” anymore, and Amazon pulled the book from their Kindle store. This is all well and good. Publishers have rights regarding what they sell and Amazon really has no option but to abide by what publishers say, but where this really becomes scary is what amazon did after pulling the E-Books from the store.

During the night of July 16 Amazon electronically and without warning deleted all copies of both E-Books from all Kindle devices connected over Amazon’s Whispernet system. Amazon credited the accounts of the customers that had the book removed from their device, so this is an apparently legal action, but this brings up all kinds of questions about customer rights and what the future of the service might be.

The first major point is that Amazon’s advertising for E-Books talks about customers “buying” the novels, but if Amazon can pull the E-Book from your device at will are you really buying it or just renting it long term for a one time fee. Also if you “bought” 1984 through the Kindle store, therefore owning a licensed copy of the E-Book, and you chose to backup your device on your computer, do you own that backup copy or since you have been refunded for your purchase are your morally and legally required to delete that backup copy. Also is there going to be any kind of attempt to make sure that these backup copies are deleted.

Another much scarier idea of the potential of this newly shown ability that Amazon has over your Kindle is what happens is you purchase an edgy book and it, or parts of it, becomes banned (something that many countries have a history of). Will Amazon come into your device and delete it or replace it with a censored version without prior notification. And a case that fits even better into the Big Brother themes for 1984 what happens if Amazon does this replacement and never tells the customer that this has happened or that the edition of the book they are reading is any different from the original.

One might like to believe that in these modern times the ugly cloud of censorship has long passed, and the long warned of existence of Big Brother will be prevented by our publicly elected government and a citizenship that won’t stand for that kind of control, but as recently as 2005 the Department of Justice started the Obscenity Prosecution Task Force to surf theinternet and protect us from seeing anything that doesn’t pass the Supreme Court’s obscenity test, even if they acts portrayed are completely legal (as shown by the arrest and incarceration of Extreme Associates in 2009). I really hope that Kindle users will press this issue and demand some kind of guarantee about Amazon using this technology in the future instead of their promise to act differently in the future.

Relative link:

Very confused Kindle community over the deletions and subsequent refunds

1984, Amazon, Animal Farm, Big Brother, George, Kindle, Orwell Hide