In some of my presentations I talk about the danger of libraries ignoring massive scale information and the dangers of letting the commercial sector solve the problem. While not massive scale, the following story still highlights the danger and shows that using functions (providing reading materials) to define what you do over a worldview (why you do what you).
It seems that folks who bought and paid for a few books (ironically George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) suddenly found the books missing from their Kindles. Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely wiped them. Yup, you thought you bought the book, but instead bought access. While Amazon seems to have credited accounts, it does re-open the whole question of first purchases.
From BoingBoing:
David Pogue. writing in the New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they’d earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table.
Also see the New York Times.