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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.'"
...must be the complete truth. Or else the thought police will come get you.
fuck kindle. buy real books and support real trees
The Kindle is now equipped with a memory hole.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You always lose. This is just another example.
This seems extremely shady legally. You bought and paid for something. Electronic or not, how do they have the right to take it away from you? I could MAYBE understand if it was a subscription-based service in which you had access to a collection, but for them to take this away from someone who specifically bought the book seems legally dubious at best.
How can there still be a copyright on this?
No wait - politicans of course.
But more to the point SHOULD there be a copyright on something from that long ago?
And if someone says it is public domain, how can they not only sell it but also deny people right to use it?
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Please, oh, please, Kindle owners sue! This would make for an interesting case. If the property in question were concrete like a lawn mower that I purchased at Home Depot, HD decides they want it back so they pull it from my back yard but credit my account isn't that still theft? I'm dying to see what is made of this.
I can see Amazon no longer allowing it to be purchased for download but actively pulling content that has already been purchased and downloaded sounds criminal.
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
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
For stuff you really want to have access to permanently.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
when you can get those exact same books legally
That's great if you're kicking it in the Outback or somewhere else sane, but here in the States 1984 it is still under copyright (I assume using the simple heuristic that it was created after Steam Boat Willie) and so probably not actually legal.
The enemies of Democracy are
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?
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.
There's a hidden treasure in Python 3.x: __prepare__()
Your books are now 'unbooks'. They don't exist. They never existed.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Obligatory Futurama reference: "Death by snoo snoo."
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Oh dead tree books are so obsolete, even though they are cheap, last longer than I ever will, can't be altered from a distance, and don't need electricity! Same with CDs, DVDs, and other durable backup media that can't be taken from me and don't depend on some here-today-gone-tomorrow license server! And land lines! Who needs them when we have such fickle and expensive cell phone service with far less coverage!
You know, it's one thing to be a Luddite, and quite another to stay with reliable, cheap, and fully functional technologies until the newer alternatives truly surpass them.
Ah. the age old argument. The Future Will Be A Totalitarian Government Dystopia vs. The Future Will Be A Privatized Corporate Dystopia
http://notanumber.net/
I'm amazed at this. Not that some company wanted them to do it; but that Amazon did it. All comments about "big, evil corporations" aside - are they trying to kill the Kindle? Don't they see what a PR nightmare this could be?
Why on earth should I buy an expensive electronic book reader from them, EVER, when they've just demonstrated that I might have my legally-purchased books deleted at any time?
#DeleteChrome
Give Killer Klowns From Outer Space a watch some time.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
It's a safe bet that they'll extend copyright again just as Mickey Mouse is looking like public domain.
You guys in the US won't have a public domain to speak of in a few years.. it'll all be owned by the great grandchildren of once famous authors - the new ruling elite.
I heard a rumour once that there was a remake of Rollerball, but fortunately I was mistaken.
Along with other classic films like The Manchurian Candidate, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Ocean's Eleven, Psycho, The Shining, Death Race 2000 and even the Thunderbirds, I am happy to say that there was never a remake of Rollerball.
La la la la la...
What are you talking about? Amazon has never sold copies of 1984 or Animal Farm in digital format, and to suggest otherwise is treasonous.
If I were one of the customers who had my book deleted, then I would feel entitled--even compelled--to download a DRM-free copy from the internet.
Indeed. I'm also glad that there were no sequels to The Matrix... too much potential to fuck it up entirely.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
ï
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.
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.
I think Amazon did the right thing and according to their official response:
Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
"These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future, books will not be removed from customers' devices in these circumstances."
This is a pretty amazing story. In the Digital Age a distributor fells that they are allowed to invade an electronic device that you own, steal a copy of digital media that you own and force you to accept a refund for something that YOU own.
Let's imagine this happened thirty years ago, or even ten years ago for that matter. A book store sells a book to you and for whatever the publisher decides they don't want to sell the book to you and must have it back. The publisher must now trespass onto your property, break into your house, steal your book, leave a cash refund on your table and then leave your property without any one noticing just to get the book back. A crime has now been committed; namely trespassing, breaking and entering and theft.
Both of these scenarios are exactly the same, except that in today's scenario the book is in a DIGITAL format, which for some magical reason means that a publisher can trespass onto your property and steal something that you own.
In what other context, except the digital context, would behavior like this be tolerated or acceptable, and not to mention legal?
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.
LOTR.
Seriously - when Ralph Bakshi did that first version in the 70's, it SUCKED.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
All hail Big Brother.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
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.