This is a story from Hot Air that I could have read fifteen times without understanding, but I am married to a computer geek who explained what happened. Now I know enough to be upset.
Evidently Amazon,com has an online 'store' called Kindle where you can buy books and download them to your computer to read. Considering the electronic savvy level of the generation under 30, that is a great idea. Well, every program has its challenges. Two books, oddly enough "Animal Farm" and "1984," were added to the Kindle store by companies that did not have the right to sell them. When Amazon.com heard about this from the people who did hold the rights to the books, they removed the books from the Kindle store and from customer's devices and issued refunds to the customers.
The article points out:
"Amazon's published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon
grants customers the right to keep a "permanent copy of the applicable digital content.""
It seems to me that I don't want Amazon.com taking things out of my personal computer for any reason. I don't want them to have access to my computer. The article concludes:
"If the holder of the Orwell copyright wants justice, by all means let him sue Amazon and the unlicensed publisher of the digital books for damages. That's the surest way to get Bezos and company to more closely police the copyright status of books being sold in their Kindle store. Why they're not already doing that is frankly unfathomable to me, but doubly unfathomable is them reaching into your virtual bookshelf to forcibly repurchase a book you've already bought. Exit question: Is this a dealbreaker for would-be Kindle purchasers?"
It's ironic that the books involved were "1984" and "Animal Farm." We seem to be heading toward the worlds those books depict!
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