In a "too delicious to be true" story, Amazon has used one of its Kindle's features to erase copies of the book 1984 from their customer's devices. Yes, that 1984, the one about the futuristic society that controls and audits everything their citizens read or speak.
Apparently a third-party seller uploaded an illegal version of 1984 to the Amazon web-site, and some users purchased it. When Amazon found out the version was illegal, they refunded the purchase price *and deleted the copies of the book from the Kindles*. Almost too funny to be true. (One of the users was a 17 year old high school student whose notes on the book were also erased by Amazon when the deleted his copy of the book.)
Amazon has already promised not to do something like this again. However, the story makes clear the deep danger in aggressive digital rights management. If the owners of the content can control what you read, when you read it, and how you read it, our access to media becomes only a temporary "right" that can be granted and taken away at a whim. We need to create a set of rules that ensure that information can never be controlled in this way.
One extreme example of the need for rules to protect the free flow of information is the hubbub over the new version of Hemmingway's "A Movable Feast". Depending on who one talks to, Hemmingway's grandson Sean has either edited the book to make it truer to how Hemmingway really felt about his first wife or has altered Hemmingway's text to change history about that relationship. (It helps muddy the water that the first wife is Sean's grandmother.) The publisher is releasing the new version, which will now be compared endlessly by scholars to the 1964 original. What would happen in the digital world of the future? Would the publisher be able to change the text of everyone's original version to the new updated content? Presumably noone would lobby for such a world ... but if we aren't careful to constrain contracts between publishers and digital device owners, we could accidentally end up living in it!
How wonderful that Amazon made this mistake with the book 1984. It's not the greatest of the anti-utopian novels -- that's Huxley's Brave New World! -- but perhaps we were too quick to accuse it of wandering too far from reality ...
John
Why?
"If the owners of the content can control what you read, when you read it, and how you read it, our access to media becomes only a temporary "right" that can be granted and taken away at a whim."
Dictionary.com to own: "to acknowledge as one's own; recognize as having full claim, authority, power, dominion, etc"
And why shouldn't the OWNER of something have exclusive rights to how that something is used? If you OWNED your lawnmower, wouldn't you like to dictate terms as to how your neighbor can use it were he to borrow it - or even rent it, as that may be a more accurate analogy. If you owned an empty apartment, wouldn't you be upset if someone you never knew moved in and rented it out for $1000 a month without even telling you, much less sharing the profit with you? In a society where a person's property can be duplicated and transmitted and distributed and ALTERED and redistributed in infinite dimension, it becomes even more important, even necessary, to ensure that the rights of the creator and owner are not infringed. The OWNER of the content SHOULD be able to control how and when his content is viewed. And laws and regulations and tools should be put in place to ensure that distributors honor his rights as the owner. If not, we are taking away the concept of ownership itself.
With that in mind, laws and regulations and "Digital Rights Management" tools that protect copyrighted material work in favor of Hemmingway - whose original work and all distributed copies of it (real or digital) would be safe from alteration until the copyright expires. Stranger in a Strange Land is a prime example. The first publication had only 160,000 words due to the publisher's insistence. A later publication, true to the original manuscript, had 220,000 words. BOTH editions are available, both in print and digitally. Digital copies of the first edition have not been edited to match the later. The altered work is published as a separate edition, making it nearly a separate book as publishing is concerned. A second example is college textbooks, many of which are available in digital formats. Any student who buys an edition of a textbook must pay for a newer edition as though it were a new book, regardless of how much or how little has changed between editions.
You are right to include Brave New World as one of the greatest dystopian novels of all time. But remember that the methods of "control" utilized in Brave New World are directly opposed to those in 1984 - and they are much more common in our present society. You should check out the writings of Neil Postman, namely "Amusing Ourselves to Death". A short comic detailing some of his notes on the subject can be viewed here: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/docs/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.html