Every now and then, these news items cross your path that simply don't need any words or imagery in order to make an impact. This is definitely one of those. You all know Amazon's Kindle, right? It's Amazon's successful e-book reader which allows you to buy a subset of Amazon's book catalogue in electronic form. Well, the term "buy" doesn't really apply here. Update: In a rare case of company mea culpa, Amazon has explained that deleting the books was a bad idea, and they assured us it won't happen again. The issue here was that the publisher behind the two Orwell books in the Kindle Store did not have the rights to sell these books, and after Amazon was informed by the rightsholder, they removed the books. Still, according to the NYT, more books were deleted from Kindles, even though Amazon doesn't have the right to do so according to its own TOS.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2009-05-20
The publisher, journalist, the PR people, the agent...they will go the way of the dodo, and this process will be accelerated by such examples as this by Amazon of an essential hypocrisy: "we will make you respect some aspects of the 19th C transactional model, but where this does not fit our 21st C strategy or needs, we will do what we like."
Am I the only one who likes quality journalism? Novels written by real authors? The arts?
Like those things would just magically appear to the internet.
Someone wrote that this is the dark age of technology. But he got it wrong. To put it rhetorically: it is the true dark age when things like Slashdot have replaced quality journalism.
Nevertheless, this Amazon thing is one reason why I still prefer printed books. The other one is the more important: until I can write to a e-book with a pencil, scrunch and shred an e-book, and take it to a toilet with me when taking a shit, these things will never succeed
. Edited 2009-07-18 18:46 UTC
Member since:2006-06-02
Erm, like Radiohead isn't a quality band?
It just requires for anything else to become great art or recognized as great artistry that we are all better educated in developing taste, and that means learning to discriminate for ourselves, which in turn relies on our own exposure to new things, and our own critical and aesthetic faculties being exercised as a result.
Journalists already rely on ordinary but alternative sources to write "their" quality prose but mostly what you see regarding objections to the 'blogosphere' replacing traditional news production is based on the fear of an industry that is seeing its business model collapse rather than anything else.
I stand by my original statement - the means of information amd media production will devolve more and more to individuals, away from corporations, and the consumption of media and information will be performed by individuals with greater and greater autonomy. The Internet will allow this to happen. China for example knows this, so does Iran. But you cannot firewall the human spirit.
Member since:
2006-06-02
Kids, take it easy. The role of the mediator in future is going to be severely limited. What Radiohead did with In Rainbows will be replicated more and more:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1666973,00.html
Money will no longer be a means of exchange; this will be replaced by bandwidth, or slots on the computational grid.
The publisher, journalist, the PR people, the agent...they will go the way of the dodo, and this process will be accelerated by such examples as this by Amazon of an essential hypocrisy: "we will make you respect some aspects of the 19th C transactional model, but where this does not fit our 21st C strategy or needs, we will do what we like."
Sorry Amazon, you can get as Web 2.0 on our collective ass as you like but we will, literally and metaphorically, no longer buy it.