[sf-lug] [Fwd: [FSF] Amazon, 1984, and what we're doing about it.]

[Bill Kendrick]

On Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 10:45:31AM -0700, jim wrote:
> Have you seen this story?  Last week, Amazon deleted purchased copies of
> George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from the ebook readers of hundreds
> of users.  Yesterday, FSF's Defective by Design campaign responded by
> giving the Kindle hundreds of 1-star reviews, but now we need your help.
<snip>

I think the worst story related to this is that of a high school student
who had bought '1984' to read for a class assignment.  Not ONLY did
Amazon end up removing the book from the kid's Kindle, but it ended
up wiping out the ANNOTATIONS AND NOTES the kid had been taking!!!

In other words, it wasn't just a case of "oops, we shouldn't have
sold that to you, here's your 99 cents back," but it actually
destroyed the kid's own work.

-bill!
(Disclaimer: I'm CTO of web-based service that allows authors to publish
ebooks, and we don't do any kind of DRM.  I don't own a Kindle, and
it looks like I never will, at this rate.  Yikes.)