Amazon sends apology

Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO wrote:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,
Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO Amazon.com

While it is good to see an apology from Jeff, it is certainly not enough for me to stop thinking about Amazon's policies to be Big Brother of some part of eBook market.

Only when they cede the technical ability to do so, or change their DRM philosophy, I could regain trust in them...

Amazon fatal step - "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it'

What Amazon did is a real sign of time. They remotely deleted two books from all Kindles that bought them. And the irony is, they did it to George Orwell's books - the authors who "nomen omen" predicted what could happen when the power is connected to means of overwhelming communication.

I guess we still do not take the lessons of the past seriously.

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it"

Orwell observed carefully what was happening in parts of the world with highly centralized powerful organizations and their fruits (nazizm, stalinism, communism) and wrote these very books as the warning.

I think we should seriously take this event - and the irony behind it.

The digital world may not go for DRMs as it is practiced today. We saw the first, still quite innocent as for its scale, incident. But it shows us what really could happen...

Once again:

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" (George Santayana)

Having in mind that history does not repeat exactly, lets look, with eyes on XX century and its "-nisms" at Google, Amazon, eBay and other giants that can truly control us ...

I think we still do not take seriously the power of the new digital world, and the threats it carries. But - this is the world, our world - and we should take the past experiences seriously...