Yesterday, following a showdown between Amazon and some book publishers, Amazon had to remove books, through their whispersync network from people’s Kindle devices and re pay them the purchase price of those books.

This came about because the publishers decided that they no longer wanted to sell their books via eInk and then they persuaded Amazon to go one step further and delete the books from people’s Kindle devices without them knowing. This raises questions about privacy and people’s rights - if Amazon can connect remotely and remove, or add, files to people’s devices without their knowledge then it sets a very dangerous precedent for future uses. I’ve read that Apple also have the ability to remove apps from iPhones remotely too, but they’ve not gone as far as Amazon and actually used the system.

Amazon reacted to the news by saying that they will never make use of the system again. Hopefully they’ll keep to their word because I would hate to see this become a practice that more companies use. It would give the large companies way too much power over what, and what not, we can have on our devices. With more and more mobile devices using “apps” things could become extremely messy in the future.