August 05, 2009

Big Brother is a little late in arriving, having been expected by 1984 at the latest. But he has shown his face twice recently in the world of mobile technology: First, in the mass removal from Amazon Kindles of George Orwell's 1984 (oh, sweet irony) and Animal Farm e-books. Second, when Apple banished all Google Voice-related apps from its App Store--including one excellent app, GV Mobile, which Apple had approved and which had been available in the iTunes store since early May.

Amazon's move was by far the more outrageous of the two. If you'd purchased Orwell's e-books from Amazon's Kindle store, you'd have awakened one fine July morning to find that an entity more powerful than you had spirited those e-books away in the dead of night, like dissenters in a totalitarian regime.

Okay, so that metaphor is a bit over the top--but so was what Amazon did. Amazon says it took this drastic action because Orwell's publisher changed its mind about distributing the late author's works as Kindle e-books. People who downloaded Orwell books to their Kindles received a refund--and Amazon CEO Jess Bezos ate a big slice of humble pie after the public hue and cry. But the point from this escapade was clear: Through digital rights management, your ability to read, view, listen to, watch, or use a digitally downloaded product can go poof at any time.

Source:-www.pcworld.com