[Infowarrior] - Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

[Richard Forno]

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

July 17, 2009, 12:57 pm Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others
This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that  
books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from  
their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid  
for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an  
electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and  
dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all  
books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts  
for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of  
thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve  
been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books,  
only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like  
books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or  
even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our  
homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been  
reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none  
other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”