Score one for Gutenberg. The New York Times reports that Amazon.com deleted books from Kindles that weren’t supposed to be sold. I am probably the millionth person to note the irony that the books deleted in such a Big Brother fashion are George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. I checked, and I have copies of both books still on my shelves.

I wrote in Chronicles a while back that “one doesn’t have to be a Luddite to see the limitations of the appeal of such electronic media—especially given the almost instant obsolescence endemic to nearly every kind of electronic equipment.(Imagine how unsatisfied those who pay $400 for an Amazon Kindle that holds 200 e-books will feel when version 2.0 sells for half the price and holds twice the text.)” It never even occcurred to me that Amazon.com would be surreptitiously deleting books from Kindles. I guess it never occurred to their customers either.