From the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” department, this morning Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely deleted copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle devices.

I’d have LOVED to be in the room when that one was pushed through.

UPDATE : Engadget has reported that the copies where in fact removed by Amazon because the company that put the volumes up for download did not own the rights to do so.  So, removing the volumes was probably the right thing to do.  But Amazon still made the decision to pull the books from the Kindle devices without somehow notifying the people who had bought them. I’ve downgraded the offense to Second Degree Irony.  Someone should have realized that, especially given the books in question, this would raise some eyebrows.