In a move evoking George Orwell's 1984, Amazon used its computer system to enter the Kindle devices of customers who had purchased George Orwell's books and summarily deleted them from the devices and issued refunds for the purchase price. This "Big Brother" move was the result of Amazon discovering it was sold the books by a seller who did not have the rights to sell. The copyright for Orwell's books runs out in the United States in 2044. The copyright has already expired in other countries like Canada, Australia and Russia where websites give the books away at no charge. 

The New York Times, on July, 17, 2009,  quoted an Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, who said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “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,” he said.

Customers were outraged by the action. A high school student writing a report on Orwell's 1984 for class says that his copy of the book along with all his notes suddenly disappeared from his Kindle.

Amazon has said it will handle other such situations differently in the future.

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