An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.[...]While the copyright on “1984” will not expire until 2044 in the United States, it has already expired in other countries, including Canada, Australia and Russia. Web sites in those countries offer digital copies of the book free to all comers.
George Orwell died almost 60 years ago, yet “his” copyright doesn’t expire for another 35 years — 96 years after the book was written, 94 years after he died.
No other country on Earth does this for authors.
But at least authorized versions are still available…right?
An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”
Really? One of the most common novel-reading assignments in American high schools is unavailable for the Kindle?
Furthermore, there is something really disgusting about Amazon reserving the right to reach into your Kindle at any time and erase part of your library.
