Near as I can tell, Mobile Reference is based in Canada, so they are free to own copies of a book that’s in the public domain. That doesn’t mean they have the right to sell it in the US, but they have every right to their own versions.
What a ridiculous abuse of the concept. I need to write a best-selling novel so that my children may never have to produce anything of value or contribute anything lasting to society of their own. :rolleyes:
If it is in English what’s the difference between versions?
The works of Orwell are in the public domain in Canada but not the United States due to the duration granted by law in those countries (they’re signatories to different copyright pacts).
So no difference in version beyond the country in which you buy it.
Go ahead.
You really missed the point on that one didn’t you?
Yeah. I find this far more disturbing that what Amazon did (not that I’m defending their actions here).
The author of this particular work is long dead.
Doubleplus ungood doublespeak.
If you bought a pirated hard copy, Amazon wouldn’t have taken back a book that you bought in good faith. I don’t give them any credit for crediting the customers’ accounts, because all that does is reduce their action from criminal to assholish.
As the only group actually at fault, Amazon should have resolved the issue without putting the burden on their customers. The obvious solution would have been to pay the Orwell estate out of their own pockets, or seeing if they could make some arrangement with Mobile Reference.
If you only did that to be a prankster, it still has nothing to do with censorship.
Amazon’s deletion ability is there to allow them to do things like rental services or weekly news that disappears when the new one comes, or whatever. They deleted this book because they realized they didn’t have the right to give it to you in the first place.
The sheer ability to destroy a book, ones own or someone else’s aside, has nothing to do with censorship. There’s not a person on the planet who can’t figure out a way to destroy someone else’s possessions (for instance, by throwing a molotov cocktail at their house), and there’s no call to restrain everyone in a padded room.
You are just being ridiculous now. By that “logic” theft is OK, because any thug has the power to break into my home and steal stuff.
They set up a system that would be unacceptable in traditional products; but because it’s new I’m supposed to just shrug and not care. People wouldn’t buy books or cars or clothing that was wired for remote destruction by the seller; but somehow it’s considered OK to do that with data and programs. Including data that the company doesn’t own; a college student who used the Kindle to make notes on 1984 lost them along with his copy of the book. But since he’s merely a customer, somehow HIS data isn’t sacred.
And this affair is an example of why with the current state of the law, actual books are simply superior to digital ones.
No, by that logic, theft is called “theft”. Choosing to call something by a name other than its own is silly.
I didn’t say anything about “OK” or “Not OK”. Nothing I said has anything to do with whether a prankster, thief, copyright protector, or arsonist is or isn’t morally justified. I’m saying nothing more nor than less than that prosecuting an arsonist as a censor is silly, short of any evidence that that was his actual intent. You can and still should prosecute him on arson. Arson is bad. It’s not OK. But it’s not censorship, unless it is.
:rolleyes: In other words, you are trying to handwave away my point with an irrelevant side issue. Fine, remote controlled whiteout then.
No, I didn’t, but I suspect you did.
Rather than being either an act of censorship OR a justified response to copyright infringement, I’m disappointed this wasn’t a publicity stunt.
Or… was it? :dons tinfoil hat:
So they didn’t delete every copy of “1984”, just the ones from this publisher, correct?
Governments censor for politics, Religions censor for hersey, Big Business censors anything that damages the Bottom Line.
BTW–Animal Farm got deleted, too, so all bizpigs are not equal, I guess.
Annuder link.
http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2009/07/orwellian-amazoncom-remotely-deletes.html
Quite easily. 1984 was written in 1948 (or 1949 depending on how you count). Copyright was for 28 years with an additional 28 year extention as amended in 1909. As Orwell died in 1950, it obviously wouldn’t be renewed by him and there’s a chance that it wouldn’t have been renewed by the benefactors of the copyright when it came up for review in 1976-77.
Fortunately we’ll never need to worry about the answer to that question because in 1976, Congress extended copyright to the life of the author plus 50 years to be retroactively applied. Whew! Orwell’s covered until 2000 then!
But guess what happened in 1998? The Sonny Bono copyright extention act. Now copyright’s life+70 years, also to be applied retroactively.
So 1984’s still under copyright until 2020. That each of these extensions occurred within a year or so of the copyright’s end is entirely coincidental for Mr. Orwell. The real culprit is Disney (but that’s another story altogether).
Yeah, I realized the statement you made was rhetorical in nature, but…well, there you go.
I agree with Der Trihs on this. And that is something you won’t find me saying just every day, or month. But I have been out in the sun all day. 
Very well stated and my point of view on this new device too.
Whose publicity would it have helped? Lots of people are looking askance at Amazon now that they’ve shown they can remove content from your library, and MobileReference is totally discredited, not that anyone knew who they were until now.