Amazon's '1984' Kindle Flap: A Blast From The Past

Amazon has been widely condemned over its move to delete e-books that customers had already purchased for their Kindle e-reader, but problems like that could become the norm unless the industry keeps as much of an eye on the past as it does on the future.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos last week used Amazon's Kindle Community forum to apologize for the way his company deleted e-books by George Orwell, including "1984," from users' Kindles, calling the move a "painful mistake."

The company was roundly criticized for deleting the editions of the Orwell books it sold to customers. Those editions were not authorized to be released as e-books.

Amazon could have seen that reaction coming and found a better way to handle the situation, such as letting the customers keep the e-books and negotiating some sort of quiet payment with the copyright holders.

Even more importantly, Amazon should have realized the reaction its moves to delete the e-books would solicit, especially given that Orwell's books, such as "1984," often bring up the issue of thought control and repression of independent actions.

Here's where keeping watch on the past would have made all the difference.

The rights of copyright holders vs. the rights of consumers of digital media is developing very quickly.

Just look at the Digital Rights Management issue, where copyright holders use technology to restrict their media products including music and video files from being freely downloaded and distributed, while others call DRM a way to restrict the availability of non-copyrighted material using new technologies, or a way to restrict competition.

Or look at the ongoing dispute over TiVo and other digital video recorders and whether manufacturers of such devices can include technology to automatically remove advertisements.

Or go back further to the dispute between television and movie studios and the manufacturers of VCRs over whether home users could legally record broadcast video.

These and other cases show the importance of developing a workable solution to handling the transmission and retention of digital media in a way that satisfies both the copyright holders and the consumers.

It is a lesson that Amazon has yet to learn, and one that heaven knows who else will fail to grasp.

As the philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."