Oh the Irony: Amazon Goes Orwell on Kindle

By Heather Huntington on September 2nd, 2009

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As a book-lover, I haven’t paid too much attention to the whole Kindle phenomenon. That is to say, I like to have actual books. So much so that my husband and I have an ongoing row about how he thinks I should borrow them for the library and I think we should just buy a bigger house so I can purchase them and have a library of my own.

However, the Kindle came crashing into my life recently with the whole Amazon/Orwell situation that went down because, well, because people were talking about it. The thing is, even I can see that the convenience of the Kindle makes sense. I mean, imagine only having to tote that little thing with you in lieu of the backbreaking stack of giant textbooks students often have to lug around. Wonderful, no? Plus, the downloads are way cheaper than real books and the convenience of just buying and downloading a new book you want instead of having to drive to the book store (or library) can’t be ignored. I mean, this is why iTunes killed the CD, is it not?

Sure, there’s the fact that sometimes you want to write notes in the margins, sometimes you need to highlight, and sometimes you just need to read a hard copy of something instead of looking at it on a screen. However, all told, this medium seemed like a pretty clear wave of the future.

Until. Until Amazon realized that the copies of George Orwell’s “1984,” and “Animal Farm,” it had sold were in accidental copyright violation and it ‘rectified’ this situation by recalling it from users’ machines–post-purchase. True, Amazon gave users a refund for the deleted material–thank God. But that’s not the point. The point is that going into users’ machines and mucking around with their purchases–the ‘books’ they have paid for and therefore own–is extremely unsettling, to say the least.

The precious coincidence that it was Orwell’s dystopias–about government mind control, that gave us the phrase and idea of ‘Big Brother’–has not been lost on the public, or the media. It brings up multiple issues, including those of privacy: If the company can go into this machine and take out items I have on it, what else can it do? What else can it see? But furthermore, it speaks to the issue of ownership, and e-ownership. If I paid for this, if I purchased it, should it not be mine? If people had walked out of a physical store with a physical copy of 1984, the book seller would not be able to come to each patron’s house and take it back in the middle of the night like some consumer tooth fairy, leaving a note: ‘Sorry! My mistake! Here’s your refund!’ Once you pay for it and walk out the door, it is yours no matter what.

But if this episode has taught us anything, it is that the nature of e-media is wholly different. Because the company who provides you with the item has a continuing relationship with you in order to provide you with the ability to continue to use that item. And that continuing relationship evidently gives virtual merchants way more access to you than real-world ones. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that they should. And at the very least, it is not access they should wield. Not if they want repeat customers.