3 ms·

It's not just an unlicensed version though, it's a version that someone sold without permission. This doesn't say Orwellian to me, it says Amazon living within

by vertis 5y ago

It's not just an unlicensed version though, it's a version that someone sold without permission. This doesn't say Orwellian to me, it says Amazon living within the prevailing legal environment that they operate in. Correct me if I'm wrong but you can still add 1984 as a document directly to your kindle without any problems.

lolc 5y ago
> a version that someone sold without permission. I'd call that unlicensed. And fraud too. > living within the prevailing legal environment Right. The book 1984 describes a society where it is outlawed to posses old books. So when a company within the prevailing legal framework removes that book written in 1948 from users' devices, the parallels are a bit too strong to not notice. > you can still add 1984 as a document directly to your kindle You can. That part was hyperbole on my part. Thankfully. But there are factions that work on making this difficult. Already now cloud companies are scanning for unlicensed copies in private stashes. The fight escalates as copying becomes cheaper.
- vertis 5y ago
  There are many things to criticize Amazon about, but I feel like removing a e-book that is being fraudulently sold is a stretch. They have to operate with the legal environment. In this regard we're not close to 1984. It's not every copy of the old book. The users are free to use their refund to re-purchase the book from the copyright holder. Assuming a 1-to-1 price, it would have been smarter to replace the copy (though this has some other interesting ethical problems). I'm with you in general though. A while back I stopped using Amazon and kindle for a lot of my reading, preferring Calibre/koreader and sourcing from others where possible. Where there is no alternative to Amazon, I quickly export it to Calibre. I think cloud companies scanning for unlicensed copies is a much better example. It's only a matter of time until someone scans a book manually, and then X cloud company decides it's "unlicensed". Partly solved by client side encryption and/or owncloud, but still.

by vertis 5y ago

lolc 5y ago

> a version that someone sold without permission. I'd call that unlicensed. And fraud too. > living within the prevailing legal environment Right. The book 1984 describes a society where it is outlawed to posses old books. So when a company within the prevailing legal framework removes that book written in 1948 from users' devices, the parallels are a bit too strong to not notice. > you can still add 1984 as a document directly to your kindle You can. That part was hyperbole on my part. Thankfully. But there are factions that work on making this difficult. Already now cloud companies are scanning for unlicensed copies in private stashes. The fight escalates as copying becomes cheaper.

vertis 5y ago
There are many things to criticize Amazon about, but I feel like removing a e-book that is being fraudulently sold is a stretch. They have to operate with the legal environment. In this regard we're not close to 1984. It's not every copy of the old book. The users are free to use their refund to re-purchase the book from the copyright holder. Assuming a 1-to-1 price, it would have been smarter to replace the copy (though this has some other interesting ethical problems). I'm with you in general though. A while back I stopped using Amazon and kindle for a lot of my reading, preferring Calibre/koreader and sourcing from others where possible. Where there is no alternative to Amazon, I quickly export it to Calibre. I think cloud companies scanning for unlicensed copies is a much better example. It's only a matter of time until someone scans a book manually, and then X cloud company decides it's "unlicensed". Partly solved by client side encryption and/or owncloud, but still.