"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to."

This is a quote from George Orwell's 1984, which—along with Animal Farm—was unceremoniously removed from Kindles of people who had purchased the digital editions of these books. Oh, the irony.

Why did they do this? Because the publisher changed their mind about offering these books in Kindle format.

Amazon, of course, claims that this is "rare," but it should never be able to happen at all. Selling something to someone is a final transaction, regardless of whether that thing is physical or digital. Amazon exploited the fact that they have a data connection to every Kindle to basically sneak into these people's homes and forcibly remove their property. Giving them a refund is entirely irrelevant. Once you've sold someone something, it's theirs. They didn't rent the right to have a Kindle edition of 1984, contingent on the publisher continuing to think selling such a thing was a good idea. They bought it.

Amazon really needs to get their shit together on this kind of thing and start advocating for their customers.

via Pogue - and thanks to Slog-tipper John