That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Amazon was forced to promise that it will no longer delete its customers’ books.ĭon’t put too much stock in that promise. The Orwell incident was too rich with irony to escape criticism, however. Someone uploaded bootlegged copies using the Kindle Store’s self-publishing system, and Amazon was only trying to look after publishers’ intellectual property. Amazon says the Kindle versions of all these books were illegal. And some customers have complained of the same experience with Harry Potter books. In June, fans of Ayn Rand suffered the same fate -Amazon removed Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness, with an explanation that it had “recently discovered a problem” with the titles. It turns out that Orwell wasn’t the first author to get flushed down the Kindle’s memory hole. Amazon explained that the books had been mistakenly published, and it gave customers a full refund. Last week a few Kindle owners awoke to discover that the company had reached into their devices and remotely removed copies of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Let’s give Amazon the benefit of the doubt-its explanation for why it deleted some books from customers’ Kindles actually sounds halfway defensible.

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