When Amazon(?) deleted 1984 from everyone's electronic book reader years ago, it is another indication of the control publishers want over what we read. They said it was a "mistake" and only when people when after them did the do something to correct that "mistake". So yes, publishers want Libraries gone.

If you ask me, the publishers want to move to a "rent model" like many software companies and even some Auto makers are moving towards. That means every time you read you electronic book, you pay them a small amount. With Libraries gone, that could be the next step.

Plus its seem, just by accident, they are getting help from extremist in many US States. Those extremist are also conducting their own war on Libraries, but for different reasons. If they "win", the results will be close to what publishers want. From what I have seen, none of the big publishers have come out against the extremists (are there any small publishers left?).

Wasn't the deletion of 1984 because some third party had sold bootleg copies of the ebook?

Deleting it from the customers devices is the wrong way to handle it, but I can genuinely see how the mistake would happen as they remove the bootleg copy from the server and then the e-readers would update and see the book doesn't exist so delet it from the device.

A dumb event, but I'm not really seeing it as evidence of the publishers desire for licensed only books, something I agree is happening.

As you said, it was the worst response from them.

But I remember it was due to something odd, but forgot what. But the point is, they sold you the book. So if they were scammed they should eat the cost, not delete it from your device.

At the time I was getting interested in these readers, that activity turned me off every getting/using an electronic reader.

https://mashable.com/archive/amazon-remote-delete

> The statement, from Amazon's Drew Herdener, reads:

> These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books...When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers....We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances.

My Kindle is jail broken because I prefere using KOReader over Amazons own reader software. But even before it was jail broken if I ever brought books from Amazon I would use the "Download book to your computer" function and then run it though the DeDRM plugin for Calibre. https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools

That way even if Amazon decide to no longer host the book (so you can't redownload them) or go back on their word about not remotely removing content I still have a DRM Free copy of the content I can put on the book. However it is a shame we as consumers have to go though these steps, our other option is to buy content from store that do not apply DRM to the books, but that as decision that is basically forced by the publishers.