I just saw this nitty little story about the Amazon's "gentle" handling of the 1984 affair (you can read more about it here and here). I won't go into much detail about who is right and who is wrong and whether 1984 is or is not public domain (and where) and who is a bearded pirate and who is not, you be the judges for yourselves. What irked me is the fact that a vendor (Amazon) who fully charged a person for their device (Kindle) still retains ownership over that device and gets to delete stuff on it as it sees fit. And we are talking about an expensive gadget here, not as expensive as the fruit stuff, but still in the $300 zone.
Maybe I am old fashioned, but if I got the 1984 on my Kindle and I read through the few chapters and then had it deleted by the Amazon, I would be extremely mad so I completely understand the outcry, it really is not about the money (hell, give the cash paid to the rights holder, what do we care). I know, I know, Amazon just promised never to do it again; I say big deal, the management decisions and promises of big companies have a very bad habit of being as stable as snowflakes in desert, and on a sunny day for that matter. If anything, the corporate world is quite predictable and at least one publisher will now be just as mad about their new decision to be kind to customers as the CNET editor from the link above. This, naturally, results in threats of legal action against Amazon for facilitating piracy, placing the management between a rock and a hard place. Guess what happens next? maybe a new user agreement for Kindle that will give Amazon the right to do what it did and poke and prod your gadget? It sure can force you to sign a new agreement by not allowing you to buy additional books until you do, so dream on about rebelling against the change.
On the light note, I am actually glad this happened the way it did, I was hoping for Kindle to arrive in Europe and was planning on getting one and this sure dissuaded me, big time. $300 more bucks left in my pocket... I wonder what DRM free stuff I can get for that money....