Amazon basically guaranteed that I'll never buy a Kindle last night by bending to the wishes of a publisher and deleting every single legitimately-purchased copy of 1984 and Animal Farm from all Kindles remotely. Ridiculous.
Apparently, the publisher changed its mind about having electronic versions of Orwell's books. So Amazon removed them from the store and in the process remotely deleted the books from the Kindles of anyone who bought them, depositing a refund in their account in the process.
If there's a better argument for dead-tree books and against the Kindle, I'd like to know what it is. If you can't be sure that you own something after you pay for it, what's the point? How many people were halfway through these books that they paid for and now are shit out of luck?
Amazon says this is a "rarity," but even once is too many times for bullshit like this to happen. Once I buy a book from Barnes & Noble, I never have to worry about them breaking into my house and taking it back, leaving me a pile of singles on my nightstand.
And of course the fact that this happened to 1984, of all books, makes this even more surreal. [NY Times via Boing Boing]