Amazon did the legally right thing by erasing copyrighted copies of Orwell's famous book
Amazon did the legally right thing by erasing copyrighted copies of Orwell's famous book
Irony, they say, is the highest form of wit, but people who had bought copies of George Orwell's book 1984 from Amazon for the Kindle e-book reader didn't find it very funny when the book was deleted from their readers just like that because of a copyright issue. And they were not mollified when Amazon refunded the money.
How did all this happen? Amazon was selling many titles for the Kindle, including Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.
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However, the copyright holder told Amazon that it was selling these books without proper permission. Due to this, Amazon, keen on ensuring that there was no messy lawsuit, stopped selling these books.
Orwellian nightmare
Amazon is caught between a rock and a hard place. If it doesn't delete copies, then the copyright holder can cause trouble, and now that it has deleted these copies, readers are upset with it. Because of this, the company has (according to a spokesperson quoted in The New York Times) changed its systems so that, in the future it will not remove books from customers' devices under similar circumstances.
While one has to respect copyrights, one should also consider etiquette, without which society cannot exist. For instance, if you and I are waiting in an airport lounge and you borrow my newspaper a paper that is legally mine because I paid for it then, while I can legally snatch it away from you anytime, it is not socially acceptable because it is rude.
Now, to give this the Amazon twist if the airport stall from which I had bought it had stolen the copies, then is this particular copy still mine? And if it is not, then can somebody just snatch it from me and throw two rupees in my face and say that I have been compensated? No way, because I would feel insulted.
Half correct
Now, let us also consider another angle suppose you bought a copy of 1984 for the Kindle and read a hundred pages and then decided to read another novel. When you returned, you found that this copy was deleted from the Kindle. So, what do you do? Does Amazon now expect you to go to a bookstore, buy a paper copy of the book and read it?
The line we are taking may sound harsh, but we are not trying to unnecessarily embarrass Amazon. What we need to understand is that there needs to be a strong sense of etiquette that decently balances things out.
Without it, companies will have to face unnecessary trouble.
The Kindle has in the past been criticised for various reasons. Wikipedia mentions various problems, like poor contrast, a rigid way of displaying PDF files, and a poor text search capability, to mention just a few. Considering this background, Amazon could have done a lot better without this snafu.
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>>Amazon got into copyright problems over George Orwell's 1984
>>It deleted the copies and refunded buyers
>>However, many users are not pleased
Cruel irony
Wikipedia says that the book 1984 is famous for its portrayal of pervasive government surveillance and control, and government's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication, many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, and Newspeak have entered the popular vernacular. The word Orwellian itself has come to refer to anything reminiscent of the book's fictional regime. The book is generally considered to be George Orwell's magnum opus. It is in some ways ironic that Amazon has done a Big Brother by deleting 1984 from the Kindle!
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