1984
It’s July 23, 1984. 04:44 in the morning.
As you slumber peaceably in your pink Bri-Nylon sheets, a crack pair of cat burglars from Dillons has met up in your garden. Stealthily, they shin up the drainpipe, deftly flipping over the window-latch you’d been meaning to get fixed for months, and they’re in your library. (Hey — it’s the eighties. You own a library.)
A thin beam of light slowly traverses the shelves. It stops, and scans back.
It comes to rest on a particular book. A nod is exchanged. A gloved hand silently plucks the book from the shelf. It disappears into a sack.
Not even the cat wakes up as the intruders slither out of the window and slide back down the drain pipe.
The previous day you had strolled into Dillons and treated yourself to a book. But unfortunately for the venerable bookseller, they weren’t supposed to be selling that particular edition. It was produced for another market. You didn’t know that, and what’s more you didn’t really care.
But Dillons cared. That’s why they had to get it back. And they did. You woke up the following morning to find your new book had mysteriously disappeared.
Improbable? Certainly. Impossible? Not entirely.
Fast forward 25 years to 2009. You’ve just bought your spiffy new Kindle from Amazon, and having got this shiny new piece of kit, you might as well buy an e-book to read on it. So you make your selection from the Amazon store, and you pay Amazon your money, and you download your book.
You wake up the following morning to find your new book has mysteriously disappeared.
Improbable? Not at all. Impossible? Certainly not.
So what’s happened? Well, Amazon was selling an e-book they weren’t supposed to be selling, so they simply deleted it from the Kindles of everyone who bought it.
Scary, or what?
I can tell you this: I wouldn’t be happy to cede control of my library to Amazon or any other supplier.
It’s Big Brother and the Ministry of Truth, 1984 all over again. We are no longer allowed freedom of choice, merely the illusion of it.
By now you can probably guess the book that Amazon deleted. With superb irony, it was indeed George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four.
July 23rd, 2009 at 13:09
Gwyn, if you want to make analogous story complete, you need to add an additional detail. The “thieves” left ninety-nine cents (the full price of the book they retrieved) on your bureau as they exited. Don’t think of it as theft; think of it as a “forced return.”
It’s all pretty bizarre and, with the title involved, deliciously ironic. But you have joined the ranks of those who exaggerate it.
July 24th, 2009 at 11:01
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has just written “Our ‘solution’ to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.”
I guess this means that someone who had a job with Amazon last week doesn’t have it this week. And Mike, the very concept of a ‘forced return’ is spectacularly scary.
July 24th, 2009 at 14:16
Call me old fashioned, but this is one of the reasons I insist on the superiority of having a physical product. Even when I download songs/albums I burn a disc. Files are just too ephemeral for me.
July 24th, 2009 at 14:32
Damn right, Jeff.