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Amazon Pulls Purchased E-Book Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm

Posted by Soulskill on from the miniplenty-malquoted-kindle-rectify dept.

Oracle Goddess writes "In a story just dripping with irony, Amazon Kindle owners awoke this morning to discover that 1984 and Animal Farm had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for, and thought they owned. Apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by George Orwell from people's Kindles and credited their accounts for the price. Amazon customer service may or may not have responded to queries by stating, 'We've always been at war with Eastasia.'"

4 of 645 comments (clear)

  1. Why Buy it When you Can Get it Legally for Free? by basementman · · Score: 5, Informative

    Who would buy a book from a publisher and sales person who think it's okay to sell you DRM crap and then take it away on a whim when you can get those exact same books legally, and for free?

    Animal Farm: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100011.txt

    1984: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

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  2. Stay away from the Kindle! by YA_Python_dev · · Score: 5, Informative

    For "$DEITY" sake, don't use, buy or recommend to anyone the Kindle!

    It was designed from day one to be enable Amazon to fuck you and this is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised.

    An alternative ereader with better hardware, open architecture and NOT defective by design is the iLiad by iRex. Yes, it runs Linux and you can install third-part programs. And, yes, it costs a little more, but if you value your freedom (and your books) it's more than worth it.

    Disclaimer: I don't work for iRex, I'm only an happy customer.

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    There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
    1. Re:Stay away from the Kindle! by YA_Python_dev · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not to nitpick, but 1984 and Animal Farm aren't available for the iRex at all. Not legally anyway. And if they are, I will certainly mod you up for linking me to them.

      They are legally published by Project Gutenberg Australia (see: George Orwell). Depending on how sane is copyright law in the country where you live it may be illegal for you to read them, and/or you may be legally allowed to buy a DRMed copy and convert it to a non-DRMed format.

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      There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
  3. Re:Whatever The Party says by Techmeology · · Score: 5, Informative

    Instead coming to get me, wget http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp and http://www.asiaing.com/animal-farm-by-george-orwell.html I'm no legal expert (I gave up on trying to understand the law), but these novels are impiratable since their copyright has expired (well, I think they have anyway). Even if they weren't if Amazon and publishers will do things like this, then they deserve all the piracy they wget! --- Mod this one up, rather than either of my two comments.

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