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Amazon Pulls Purchased E-Book Copies of 1984 and Animal Farm
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.'"
I was quite surprised when an automatic update for a copy of the Stand (Stephen King) was pushed onto me, without my consent and without notification as to what had changed. Backup copies aren't hard to make. But who owns the copy? Does Amazon own my Kindle? Do I not have a right to refuse an update?
Have you read "Animal Farm?" If you have, you would know that the power of the people to unite against the power of corporations has long been extinct.
You know what's going to happen? A small but vocal minority will heavily protest and boycott Amazon and the Kindle, while the vast majority of mindless consumers will continue to purchase their goods. Amazon could not possibly care less about this. As a large corporate entity they make money hand over fist. Eventually, if the Kindle becomes sufficiently popular and achieves critical mass, people will simply accept the ability to remotely revoke your ownership rights as part of the normal terms of usage of the device.
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The exact same thing happens in Animal Farm. The government, which in actuality is ruled by a privileged elite, leverages the power of propaganda to exploit the worker class under the guise of improving the collective good. Dissent is not tolerated and mercilessly suppressed until the people simply accept the injustice as the reality of life. What the American public has largely failed to grasp is that Orwell's allegory of the dangers of communism is not a specific condemnation of this particular political ideology, but rather, of the dangers of an imbalanced power structure and a malleable, uneducated society. The modern-day corporation has supplanted the role of the communist elite. They are the true puppet masters in today's Western capitalist systems. We have quite vividly observed this phenomenon in the US government's reaction to the past year's economic debacle.
What many people do not realize is that the game is already lost. Americans do not live in a democratic society founded upon the principles of liberty and justice, but an illusion of one, much in the same way that the proletariat class lived under Communism. The average American consumer is as much brainwashed as your typical North Korean.
-- Old growth forests don't really "grow". New forests grow much faster and create more oxygen.
-- Trees are farmed for paper. Magic clicky text here.
-- Also when you cut trees for lumber, you get chips and waste, which is made into paper, so that argument doesn't stand either.
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Not if Amazon remotely turns off non-drm files reading. Man, they can actually erase books remotely, they can't turn off a feature?
IMHO, device vendor and software vendor along with content provider should always be separate with lots of options. It is just like buying iPhone and whining on slashdot about how evil Apple is for not allowing this or that.
Kindle is really something like "amazon owns you, your device, your reading habits, your location".
Erasing 1984 alone is amazing. Perhaps someone really wanted to show what Kindle is and released it illegally on purpose. If it is the case, I am really impressed. It doesn't have to be a "freedom fighter", it could be some amazon rival proxying etc.
Ignorance is strength
War is peace
Freedom is slavery
And the new fourth one:
OWNERSHIP IS DISCRETIONARY
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
yes, they can even change the contents of your books after you have purchased them; the Kindle it's a censor wet dream).
that leads to some interesting profit models, such as: "For a $5 charge, Dumbledore will live through the next chapter. Otherwise HE WILL DIE. Make your choice."
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
1984 and Animal Farm are, through the usual idiocy, under copyright in the US but not in other countries, so someone re-publishing the text without paying the copyright licensing is breaking the law
It would be legal for an Australian company to print copies of 1984, right? And then it would be legal for me to import that book, right? That's completely legal. How does it become illegal when electrons are involved?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sadly I think it is because nobody in Hollywood has had an original idea in ages. I mean, with the exception of the Batman reset can you think of any remakes that didn't suck the big wet titty? And now I hear they are remaking the A-Team, now that is just sad.
As for the above poster who said that Rollerball and Omega Man were horrible? Dude, watch the movies while remembering the context. It was the 1970s and just about every movie that wasn't The Godfather (good thing they never made a third one la la la) went a little too ham handed with their metaphors, because that is what the audiences wanted. While I agree they went too heavy with the Jesus references in Omega Man at the end, I have yet to see a movie that captures sheer loneliness like that scene where he picks out the Mustang while talking to the corpse of the used car salesman like he is a customer. And how much more defiant can you get than the end scene of Rollerball, where Johnathan E limps across the burning wreckage of the Arena, stares right into Houseman's face, and puts the winning ball into the goal. That has to rank right up there in all time "fuck you" moments in cinema.
So while I will admit they were a little heavy on the metaphor, dude it was the 70s, that was just the way movies were done then. Just like nearly all 80s flicks tried too hard to be "hip", and we ended up with the movie equivalent of hair metal with half the movies trying to be the next John Hughes flick. It was just the way things were done at the time. I mean we all drove cars the looked like they were covered in paneling, how damned sophisticated do you think we were? Hell everything I owned at the time was wood grained! What did you expect, Hamlet?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
There's another troubling aspect to this that's yet to be discussed, and one that's especially double-plus-ironic considering that one of the deleted books was Orwell's 1984.
If they can download a book, and if they can delete a book, then they certainly have the capability to REPLACE a book. Imagine that some night thousands of Kindle ebooks disappear and then reappear... altered.
We are at war with Eurasia. We've always been at war with Eurasia...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Many of the greatest movies of all time have been remakes. The Magnificent Seven, The Maltese Falcon, Gone With the Wind, and The Thin Red Line all come to mind but I'm sure there are others. The Thing is one of the greatest horror movies of all time and it's a remake. Most horror and sci-fi movies of any quality are at least "influenced" by older movies, and are usually blatant knockoffs.
Some recent remakes have been pretty good but unspectacular: 3:10 to Yuma, Dawn of the Dead, Ocean's Eleven, Disturbia, The Ring, Sweeney Todd.
And then there are movies based on books. The Godfather, All Quiet on the Western Front, Schindler's List, Wizard of Oz, Psycho, Blade Runner, etc. are all based on novels. Movies like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, or Once Upon a Time in the West are technically original, but are more or less the chopped up and reassembled forms of dozens of different movies.
Basically, Hollywood has always done this, and it's always been a mixed bag. Do I wish they would have put more effort and made something better than My Bloody Valentine 3D or Bewitched? Sure, but it's not like they would make another Citizen Kane with that money instead.
Originality is overrated. Quality movies are quality movies, no matter where the idea comes from.