Everyone has reacted with outrage over the idea that Kindle owners had 1984 removed from them. They say that in the "analogue" world this would be equivalent to Barnes and Noble breaking into your house and taking books back.
Of course the real question is whether Amazon had agreed the rights to sell this book. If they had, then they have broken users terms of service, which gives users a permanent right to own this book on their Kindle. On the other hand, if Amazon were not authorized to distribute this, then this is exactly like the analog world. If you buy stolen goods, you have to return them, whether or not you bought them in good faith. So basically its just the same as the analogue world.
George Orwell died in 1950 and yet this book, written one year before he died isn't due to be out of copyright in the EU until 2020. I think that is the real issue here. That and Amazon's decision in their dealings to put their customer second, a loss of trust they'll have problems recovering, and which will be cited for many years to come.
ReplyDeletePaul
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that the EU is failing people around copyright. I'm a huge supporter of the fight against sound copyright extension that is currently going on in Europe.
http://www.soundcopyright.eu/
Paul