Think you own your Kindle books?

During the night of July 16th, while Amazon Kindle owners slept, Amazon was quietly deleting their copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Most people who are upset nigh this were upset and surprised that Amazon would unilaterally delete their books. They're missing the existent points.

Whether Amazon had the right to exercise this is an argument for another twenty-four hours. There is no question that they desperately mishandled it. At the very least, Amazon should take told their buyers that it had turned out they hadn't the rights to sell due east-copies of those books and that they were going to need to remove them. That appears to be what Amazon will practise in the future, or that Amazon will permit people who bought copies in good religion keep them while not selling any more copies in the hereafter.

Fine, but none of that touches on the real problems. Amazon is telling you that you lot will never own any book you buy for your Kindle. This is the one-time DRM (digital rights management) trap that won't let you make back-ups of your DVDs snaring withal another media's users.

Only, it's worse than that. Now, that we've discovered that Amazon can remotely and automatically delete your books without your knowledge or consent, what's to stop Amazon, some other company, or the government from non simply deleting it, but replacing it with an edited version? Nothing.

Information technology was a scene that could take come right out of 1984, since the protagonist's chore, is to alter newspapers and records and so that the official word on what has happened before reflects what Big Brother wants you to believe today.

As Orwell himself wrote, "Who controls the by controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

If we rely on companies similar Amazon that claims the correct to control our books, we're opening the door to letting a future Big Blood brother control not simply what nosotros read, simply eventually, what we recall.

I had liked the idea of Kindle and thought virtually buying ane. I already have e-book applications on my computers and on my iPod Touch, including Kindle on the Bear upon. Forget about that now. Without the freedom to truly control and ain any intellectual property that we're either given or buy, the Kindle and other devices like it are just attractive traps.

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