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Jeff Bezos apologizes for Kindle/Orwell incident

July 23, 2009

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos knows his company raised a lot of eyebrows last week with its remote deletion of Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm" from Kindles of users that had purchased the books. We certainly weren't the only ones to point out the irony; furthermore, the deletion prompted conversations about the reliability of products that are physically intangible.

Bezos has posted an apology in a discussion forum on the retailer's site. So far, most of the responses from the site's community have been positive.

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. 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. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.