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Big Brother in the Cloud

Written on July 21, 2009 – 1:30 pm | by Steve Yastrow |

In yesterday’s New York Times, Jonathan Zittrain’s Op Ed piece, “Lost in the Cloud,” contained a very ironic story.

Zittrain was writing about how cloud computing, for all of its advantages, can take power away from users/owners of information by removing data from their personal computers and storing it in a cloud controlled by someone else.  Last week, Amazon, for some reason, decided to remove a book from certain people’s Kindles, giving them a refund, but no notice.

The book Amazon removed:  1984

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2 Comments - Add yours! »

Comment by Dan Gunter Subscribed to comments via email
2009-07-22 07:28:25

Steve, you say they removed it from “certain people’s” Kindles? I’ll go hunt down the article, but I’m curious, what was the criteria which “certain people” met?

1984, huh? Ironic indeed.

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Comment by Steve Yastrow
2009-07-22 10:05:21

Dan – The article didn’t say who had the book taken back … only Big Brother amazon knows, I guess.

I still love my Kindle, but it makes me wonder what amazon might do in the future.

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