Amazon Offers $30 To Those Who Had Orwell's Books Deleted

from the those-books-were-never-deleted dept

Fri, Sep 4th 2009 5:09pm — Mike Masnick

In its continuing effort to make up for deleting unauthorized George Orwell ebooks from the Kindle, Amazon is apparently now offering $30 to those who lost their books. Well, actually it's a $30 check, gift certificate or they'll redeliver the book they deleted. Of course, assuming the ebooks cost less than $30 (Kindle's version of 1984 costs $9.99), it's difficult to see why people wouldn't just take the cash and rebuy the book themselves, if they wanted it.

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Filed Under: deleted, ebooks, george orwell, kindle
Companies: amazon

8 Comments

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Marcus Carab (profile), 4 Sep 2009 @ 5:19pm

Only reason would be the notes, I guess. Amazon says all the users' annotations will be intact.
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Brooks (profile), 4 Sep 2009 @ 5:59pm

Quick detail
Before the (justified, but predictable) outrage at Amazon's incredibly clumsy handling of the whole thing, can we quickly remember that the initial impetus for deleting the book was that the publisher who put it *on* the Kindle in the first place did not, in fact, have the rights to do so?

The whole thing is stupid for a lot of reasons, but it's irksome that so many conversations start from the incorrect assumption that Amazon was acting capriciously or something.
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Big Eagle, 4 Sep 2009 @ 7:34pm

This is just a test
This was just a test to see how people would react to being in an Orwellian Society... for the real thing later. Amazon knows what you are reading. At&T knows what you are texting. Google knows what you have in you email inbox. The cloud knows what you are doing!

Beware of the cloud.

The New World Order is watching you. Google Alex Jones' documentary "Fabled Enemies."

OBEY.
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Dohn Joe, 4 Sep 2009 @ 10:53pm

Kindle is Garbage
The kindle is a piece of e-garbage. Why would anybody be retarded enough to buy a piece of equipment that doesn't obey you? Especially when even something like the GP2X (now called the Wiz) will also nicely read PDFs (as well as do the myriad of things it does) and PDFs of any book can be found if you know where to look!
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Anonymous Coward, 4 Sep 2009 @ 11:09pm

...
Beware of the cloud.

The New World Order is watching you. Google Alex Jones' documentary "Fabled Enemies."

OBEY.
-----------------
No!! This is double plus ungood!
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2009 @ 5:57am

Good on Amazon. Nice to see a big company step up, a little late, but still.
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Victoria Greenz, 5 Sep 2009 @ 10:29am

Too late damage control
Amazon should offer it right after this fiasco. Besides potential cutomers already know that purchased books could be erased in any time.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Sep 2009 @ 3:53pm

Re: Quick detail
Except that Amazon did do something wrong. They removed the book. The appropriate action would be to go after the publisher, not those who bought the book in good faith.
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