Zap Orwell Today, Zap Freedom Tomorow? Asks Slate Blogger

A visitor to our website recently posted this comment in connection with what we call The Orwell Kindle Caper:

Yeah, I did not see a big problem here. As long as customers got a refund, no big deal. As far as the possibility of Amazon arbitrarily deleting content they actually had a right to provide in the first place - I don't ever see that happening. They do actually want customers, after all.

Sorry, pal - it's a big deal. There are some who not only think Amazon's ability to reach into customers' Kindles is a big problem, they are genuinely terrified by the prospect of far graver abuses. Because it's not just about taking back our e-books but taking back our fundamental liberties. At least that's the way technology columnist Farhad Manjoo sees it, and he's stated the case with chilling logic in a blog posted on Slate.

Here's Manjoo's position in a nutshell:

"The worst thing about this story isn't Amazon's conduct; it's the company's technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That's an awesome power, and Amazon's justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1's and 0's, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Manjoo builds on this disturbing premise. Here are a few excerpts to keep you awake tonight:

• "If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you've bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I've predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too."
• "Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren't really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else."
• "In Amazon's view, the books you buy aren't your property—they're part of a "service," and Amazon maintains complete control of that service at all times. Amazon has similar terms covering downloadable movies and TV shows, as does Apple for stuff you buy from iTunes."
• "In The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain argues that such "tethered" appliances give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function."
• "The difference between today's Kindle deletions and yesteryear's banning is that the earlier prohibitions weren't perfectly enforceable."
• "Amazon deleted books that were already available in print, but in our paperless future—when all books exist as files on servers—courts would have the power to make works vanish completely."

"The power to delete your books, movies, and music remotely," Manjoo concludes, "is a power no one should have."

Does he have a prescription for reversing this potential erosion of our liberties? "Here's one way around this," he writes. "Don't buy a Kindle until Amazon updates its terms of service to prohibit remote deletions. Even better, the company ought to remove the technical capability to do so, making such a mass evisceration impossible in the event that a government compels it."

In light of Manjoo's well argued contentions, a threatened class action lawsuit against Amazon reported by Publishers Lunch might bring some of these issues to the forefront of our consciousness.

So yes, faithful correspondent, the Orwell Kindle Caper is indeed a big deal. It's a very, very big deal.

Richard Curtis