My Kindle Ate My Homework

I've been a huge proponent of personal computers and all other gadgetry in general. Bought Radio Shack's TRS-80 back in 1980-when-it-came-out. The first 128K-no-hard-drive Mac. The original Palm Pilot. No tech too glitchy, no adoption too early.

The commonality about it all? I've been in ultimate control of what content was in it. Big Brother might be watching, but it was strictly hands off. Amazon slapped my sense of ownership and control across the face yesterday when I learned they reached right into the Kindles of an unspecified number of customers and deleted -- irony of ironies -- copies of George Orwell's 1984. Also his Animal Farm.

According to the NYTimes, some owners got to bear witness to the digital zap as they were in the midst of reading the book. Including one student who had been making notes on the work for a summer class -- since his annotations were part of the digital files they, too, vanished. (Hence the inspiration for this blog entry's title...)

Amazon's reasons were sound enough: the company that had originally uploaded the books to be sold were not the legal holders of the copyright so they were not entitled to profit from them. and the customers with the vanishing literature were refunded their purchase price. But the "no excuse" part was Amazon reaching out its digital tentacle into owners' personal Kindle devices and wiping out the files.

It seems an accidental glimpse of what could be construed as censorship on a massive scale. Amazon, in retrospect, realized they screwed up as a spokesman said, "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances." Gotta love the conditional nature of "in these circumstances."

What happens a couple of more generations down the road when printed text is nothing more than a quaint reminder of the way people used to read? When some government decides that certain material is deemed illegal and is able to wipe it out from millions of digital memories, Hitler's book burnings will seem a drop in the bucket.

Guess I better start stocking up on printer paper.

Marc Hershon is the co-author of the new book I HATE PEOPLE (Little, Brown and Company; June 2009) with Jonathan Littman. Ironically, their book is available in a Kindle edition.

Follow Marc Hershon on Twitter: www.twitter.com/IHatePeople_

Comments

[TazoWolf]

I had 1984 on my Kindle... It was removed and replaced with an copyright notice. However, after seeing yet another article on it today, I was discussing it with a family member, and I opened the book to read the copyright disclaimer to her. N DISCLAIMER­... THE BOOK WAS RESTORED!! My notes and marks in the book were restored as well!

[Marc Hershon - Huffpost Blogger]

I appreciate everyone's comments to this piece. I think the incident has some ominousness, indeed. Yet I still want a Kindle. Guess it's the gadget freak in me. And yes, when I get one I shall back up my purchases, as several of you have reminded us all. (Although it seems that even restoring a "lost" file would only result in it being whisked away as soon as "Brother Amazon" saw that it was online...)

Curious to see if anyone else has seen similar "twitchy" behavior with this or other technology that's gone unreported so far...

[oregonbird]

Did I ever mention how much my friends laughed when I ranted about the coming storm when "Zelig" came out? Not much notice taken, since there weren't explosions and scary dinosaurs -- just archival news footage SEAMLESSLY modified. What's horrifying about that? Chill, my friends said.

No Kindle for me, thanks.

[Beelzebufo]

They like to advertise that you can take your 5000 volume library with you to the beach. What they don't say is you can lose that same 5000 volume library in one forgetful instant on a train or in a cab. Thank god for paper books.

[BlackJAC]

And that's before you factor in the batteries running out at an inopportune moment.

[Maxiesid]

Still love my Kindle... people who were already not buying a Kindle are still not going to buy a Kindle, those of us who appreciate ours will not change our minds either. The difference is that I never count on the goodwill or trustworthiness of any company for anything I buy. I download all electronic purchases to an SD card, you know, just in case someone out there decides that my legally obtained electronic holdings should be something they should be able to have access to (after eight years of government spying and wiretapping, insisting it is their legal right, who trusts government anymore?) . I back up important files on my computer to removable media, if it is paper information, I keep copies and I do the same with my Kindle. It is fairly simple to do. Anyone relying on the 'magic' of technology is just asking for someone to reach out and screw with them.

[mbaty]

This is scary, and I will not be getting a Kindle anytime soon. It's just a little too ironic that they erased "1984." Did anyone even know they could do this? Is there an alternative to kindle that absolutely cannot be remotely altered by the company that makes it?

[Markoreg]

Don't know about the validity of this lawsuit, but there is an important issue re: the validity of homework, in general. I have an idea to share re: homework.

On back-to-school night last year, I made a deal with their parents: I said, "I won't assign grammar or essay homework, if you will supervise your child's reading-discussion homework." Every parent made positive comments about this approach to homework. Few parents at the intermediate, middle, or high school levels want to or know how to supervise written work. Supervising their child's reading is something that parents support and perceive as valuable.

Here, in a nutshell is the homework plan: Students read for thirty minutes, four times per week. Parents grade a three-minute discussion of each reading session. Students lead this discussion with reading comprehension strategy discussion prompts. I got a high degree of buy-in from parents and students. I flesh out this homework program much more on my blog at http://penningtonpublishing.com/blog/reading/how-to-get-students-to-read-at-home/

[kejia]

What Amazon did was wrong. But the consequences would have been the same for the student had his Kindle been lost, stolen, or damaged. The student forgot the first rule of electronic devices: BACKUP.

http://www.forgeover.com/articles/2009/07/18/simple-kindle-backup

[wilray]

? The same could be said of printed matter that is lost, stolen, or damaged. But what can't be said of printed material is that a corporate giant reached out with a giant eraser and destroyed your work.

Never, ever gonna get a Kindle.