Amazon Clears Up Orwell Books Situation

Amazon.com finelly settled the problem with Orwell books. As it was reported earlier, Amazon.com recently auto-deleted two George Orwell books, “Animal Farm” and “1984,” from all Kindle e-book readers, even though their owners had thought that they’d legitimately bought the books. Shortly thereafter, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, issued an abject apology. “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.”Today, a reader, Becky S., writes that Amazon has finally corrected the problem the way it should have in the beginning. She received an e-mail message that says:“As you were one of the customers impacted by the removal of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ from your Kindle device in July of this year, we would like to offer you the option to have us re-deliver this book to your Kindle along with any annotations you made. You will not be charged for the book.”The Kindle store already sold a different edition of those books that did NOT have rights problems; it should have offered that swap from the beginning. In any case, the note goes on to say that if you don’t want the re-delivered copy, Amazon will offer you a check or gift certificate for $30, New York Times reports.