An Apology Just Doesn’t Come Close

by tristero

Amazon’s apologized for its Orwellian behavior in deleting “1984” from users’ Kindles without telling anyone or asking permission.

Big deal. That’s nowhere enough. In fact, neither is this:

A growing number of civil libertarians and customer advocates wants Amazon to fundamentally alter its method for selling Kindle books, lest it be forced to one day change or recall books, perhaps by a judge ruling in a defamation case — or by a government deciding a particular work is politically damaging or embarrassing.

“As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation.

The foundation, based in Boston, is soliciting signatures from librarians, publishers and major authors and public intellectuals. This week it plans to present a petition to Amazon asking it to give up control over the books people load on their Kindles

Sorry, but as long as it is technically feasible to alter and/or erase information, these devices are fundamentally, profoundly dangerous to a free society. Merely promising to give up control is not enough. It must be impossible to alter the content of a book, magazine, newspaper, etc once a user has purchased it, for any reason whatsoever. And alterations a reader does make must be clearly marked as such the way it is impossible now to alter a copy of a book without knowing it has been altered.

Since that is a daunting, if not hopeless, task for a digital gadget devoted to the sale of books and other print products – and since I want to own my books, not license them – I, for one, have little interest at this point in getting one.