James Delahunty
4 Sep 2009 22:11
Amazon.com has once again apologized to Kindle owners by e-mail for the controversial removal of George Orwell's classics, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, after customers had paid for the content. Amazon removed the ebooks from customers' Kindles after realizing they were added to the Kindle library by an unauthorized publisher. Most customers already were refunded for the inconvenience.
The refund however, did not take away the irony that Amazon had displayed a strangely Orwellian central control over the content on customers' Kindles. It's probably safe to assume that most customers didn't realize Amazon had such control over their content, even after they have paid for it.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos apologized for the incident, describing it as, "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles." On Thursday, the company contacted affected users and offered to recover the titles to their Kindles for free, or gave an alternative option of a gift certificate worth $30, or a check for the same amount. Those who had both books can claim $60.
The incident not only sparked criticism of Amazon for its post-purchase removal of digital content, but also resulted in a lawsuit and in a petition setup by anti-DRM activists Defective By Design.