On 07.17.09 Amazon got a bit Orwellian by remotely deleting copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from people’s Kindles — copies that were legitimately purchased from Amazon (the original purchase was credited to people’s accounts). The Kindle is a small, portable and proprietary e-book reader — in many ways, Kindle is an iPod for print media. By controlling both the hardware and software that constitute the Kindle, Amazon can tightly regulate to whom, where, and how long e-books are made available. Amazon/Kindle thus becomes the marketing/distribution medium connecting publishing companies (who are interested in “monetizing” their IP in cyberspace) and informational consumers (who are increasingly encouraged to pay for — formerly — free content).
Last August, I blogged about Apple’s decision to embedded a remote kill switch in the iPhone’s operating system that allowed them to deactivate applications of their choosing — including applications which were knowingly installed by an iPhone’s owner. At the time, I argued that Apple’s “security” decision to censor what applications I could and could not install on my iPhone, as well as it’s flagrant surveillance of what I did with my iPhone, made me feel a lot less safe and a lot less secure. The current Kindle snafu isn’t all that different. Not only is Amazon asserting their right to retroactively terminate past purchases (raising important questions of censorship as well as what exactly we get to “own” in exchange for our hard-earned cash) but they are also displaying their ability to monitor all information flowing through the Kindle.
If you bought a Kindle from Amazon, and if you bought an e-book from Amazon to read on your Kindle, then what right does Amazon or some publisher have to continue regulating those technologies? Sony can’t regulate what shows I watch on my TV, and my local bookstore can’t pull a “my bad!” and retrieve a book they’ve sold me. With all the moral grandstanding over IP / copyrights (from the AAP, RIAA, MPAA, and so on…) at what point will we start respecting people’s rights to the intellectual property they legitimately produced or purchased? What about our property rights?
