David Pogue on the New York Times reports that Amazon remotely nuked George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from every purchasers’ Kindle ebook reader, because the publisher decided that it did not want those books available in electronic form. I call “bullshit” on Amazon and the publishers. I will never buy books from an online publisher that retains the right to reverse the sale after money has exchanged hands.
What recourse will Kindle owners have in a situation like this? Will they sue to have their books returned, and will a judge or jury care since they were reimbursed for the reversal? This is obviously a special case, because Amazon, in effect, reached into the home of each Kindle owner that bought those books and snatched them back without asking the purchasers if this was okay. I believe that this will take strong muscle to assert the rights of consumers against big media. So-called voting with dollars is non-starter when the need (or perceived need) of a product in the market place can be artificially created, inflated, and manipulated by capital within the market.
Read the full article here.
Dynamic Subspace 