Big Brother is alive and well and living inside your Kindle.

Technology blogger David Pogue informs us in the New York Times that Amazon reached into everybody’s Kindle and snatched back George Orwell’s classic novels “1984” and “Animal Farm.” “This morning,” he writes, “hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by [Orwell] had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.”

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by “owned.” In the good old days it meant you had paid for it and possessed it. But, like so many other definitions in the digital era, like “Free”, this one seems to have gone by the wayside. Amazon at least gave everyone that paid for the books a credit. To buy what? Books that can be taken back again?

Are owners bewildered and outraged? Here are their comments. But it would be hard to top Pogue’s own: “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.”

To understand why and how it happened, read Pogue’s Post.

What’s puzzling to me is, aren’t Orwell’s books in the public domain? I couldn’t find them on Project Gutenberg, but a google search for 1984 and Animal Farm brought them up quickly, easily and…free!

RC

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.