This story is just coming out, so the motive behind it is still unclear, but it reaches a whole new dimension of irony none the less.

People who bought Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm for their Kindle were surprised to discover that it had disappeared from their devices overnight. It turns out the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic version, and Amazon caved into their demand to sneak into people’s electronic libraries and take back the book at the publisher’s request.

The Kindle owners accounts were credited, but it still shows just how evil DRM can be. Sure you may have paid for the books, but they aren’t really yours. You are basically just purchasing the right to read them. Want to re-download the books you’ve already paid for? Nope, no can do. Done with the book and want to resell or donate it to someone, like you would a physical book? Again, nope.

It’s the DRM and tight restrictions of rights I have that has kept me from the Kindle. I shouldn’t have to wonder if the book I just got will be deleted because the distributor or publisher wants to pull the digital rights.

Speculation on the Amazon boards is that the distributor didn’t have the rights to begin with, so when Amazon found out, they pulled the books off of the Kindles. While this may be a very logical explanation, it’s still pretty Big Brother that Amazon is able to delete an e-book that someone bought in the first place. Boing-Boing said it best:

This kind of bullshit will encourage readers to visit Web sites in countries where the copyright has expired on Orwell’s books so they can get free un-stealable electronic copies.

Poor Orwell. It’s a good thing he’s not alive to see this.

Technorati tags: orwell, kindle, digital rights