The article says:

> Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks ...

> Readers who bought electronic versions ...

It has been proven to us (members of the general populace) time and again that we're not actually "buying" and we don't "own" digital media: whether ebooks, digital movies, music, or games. We are licensing or renting them. And apparently the terms of the license often include altering the contents or removing access (e.g. the Kindle 1984 fiasco) at the whim of the licensor. To be honest, I'm not really sure if the license explicitly allows that or not -- I'm not reading multi-page terms and conditions every time I make a digital purchase, even though I know I should -- but it has certainly happened on multiple occasions.

It's odd to me that we've accepted this for digital purchases. Can you imagine checking out at a grocery store and being presented with a hundred page amalgamation of terms of use for every item you're buying?

I know government regulation is a non-starter for many, but I personally would not mind if the government established some sort of digital version of the first sale doctrine and stopped businesses from using terms like "buy", "purchase", or "own" for practices that did not meet those criteria. Sure, let Amazon license you ebooks that can be edited or revoked at the whim of Amazon or the publisher, but let's "call a fig a fig and a trough a trough".

This is after they announced a separate release of non-bowdlerized versions. So extant purchasers who wish to have e-book versions of the original need to buy them a second time. Had they just released the modified versions as a separate edition this would have been unnecessary. In view of this timeline of events, increasing revenue seems to be the motive here, and the publishers seem to now be implicated in some kind of deceptive business practice such as bait and switch or worse.

Insert obligatory mention of:

Amazon removes some editions of Orwell's 1984 from Kindle Devices after issue with owner of book rights (2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930904

NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...

Time to back up your ebook libraries.

Step one: Download Calibre - https://calibre-ebook.com

Step two: Install Alf's DRM removal tools for Kindle bought ebooks https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com

When I first read this, I was furious with the publisher. While I'm still disgusted by the behavior I am under the impression that the Dahl estate supports the historical revisions.

So what response should the company receive? Boycott? Hacktivism? Flagrant piracy? Perhaps not. Should we lobby to limit the rights of an estate edit posthumously? Should a blurb indicating the edit be required on the cover of the book?

Instead, I think a more grassroots effort is desperately needed. We need something akin to a software license that an individual author can include in their contracts with publishers and in their estate planning. It should be entirely frictionless and unambiguous. It should be the easiest path for an author to take.

I propose that a small foundation be created for the purpose of its creation and dissemination; and that a public website / petition exist so that any author publishing today can see that the idea is endorsed by the very people who inspired them to become writers.

1. Shouldn’t it be possible to argue that consumers specifically bought a particular revision of a book and don’t want any new revision?

2. Better yet, shouldn’t we just have a system where consumers have access to all revisions of a book? We’re talking about digital records, not physical books that need to be printed and shipped, after all.

Richard Stallman's far fetched sounding examples become more and more true with each day