Sometime last week a number of Kindle users were surprised and a little vexed to find that several of their ebooks had been deleted from their devices, among them works by George Orwell (which I'm told is deeply ironic, although since I evidently missed that class in high school, I'm afraid I'm unable to confirm this). Amazon's explanation was that they had evidently been contracting a third party to upload books into ebook form, and this third party had managed to do so with a number of books without first obtaining copyright. Once the error was discovered, Amazon remotely deleted those books from the Kindles that had purchased them, and refunded those customers' money.
Now many people are up in arms though, and for good reason. The slippery issue of ownership had already been a topic of discussion and some debate with regards to the ebook, but now there is also a lot of talk going on about the future of book-baning. Across time and history, of course, the Press has been notoriously difficult to control due to how diverse and spread out it is. Imagine though, how different it might be if all it took to wipe a book off the face of the Earth was a corporate will, and a few complicated raps on the keyboard?
Amazon has already announced that in the future it will not 'recall' already-purchased materials, and so many people believe the current anxiety is both paranoid and ill-founded. Perhaps. Although I admit that I wouldn't mind hearing Amazon address some of these concerns directly. I haven't given up on ebooks yet as a worthwhile medium, but clearly there are still some valid issues that need to be addressed.
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