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Big Brother is Watching and Deleting

By Howard Knopf, Esq.

In an ironic move, the publishers of Orwell's Brave New World and Animal Farm have convinced Amazon to remotely delete these titles from Kindle book owners' machine. At least the "owners" (as if!) of these copies got their money back. Here's the NY Times story. Big Brother is alive and well at Amazon.

Another irony here is that these books are in the public domain in Canada, since Orwell died in 1950.

It's only a matter of time, especially since Canada has embarked on free trade negotiations with the EU, that there will be demands to extend the copyright term to life + 70.

This is also an example of what TPMs, DRM, and contractual override, all as found in and/or enabled by Bill C-61, can do for you.

And why, if Canada is not very careful, we will lose copyright sovereignty for all practical purposes in the brave new world that certain content owners are now seeking.

Ask what would happen if someone - or some government or corporation - could get a court order somewhere or otherwise convince Amazon - to remotely delete a book because it is allegedly libelous, or maybe just politically incorrect or embarrassing to an important person?

Savonarola and Stalin would love this technology. And it could put the firemen in Fahrenheit 451 out of business.

Never would happen, you say? That's what everyone said just a few years ago about suing individuals for downloading.

HK

Full post as published by Excess Copyright on July 17, 2009 (boomark / email).