Remotely deleting people's legally paid-for ebooks without warning? If that's not Orwellian, we don't know what is.
Yet that's what Amazon did on Friday to owners of its Kindle ebook reader device, and ironically the two books affected were George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.
The problem, according to Amazon, was that the ebooks had been uploaded to its Kindle store by a company that didn't have the rights to distribute them.
However, its decision to use its power to remotely delete ebooks from Kindles went down badly with many of its customers, even though it refunded them the purchase price.
As customers voiced their anger and tech blogs picked up on the story, Amazon quickly promised that it won't do this again. "We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers' devices in these circumstances," it said in a statement.
The controversy may not be the last of its kind, as Amazon isn't the only company to have this kind of remote deletion option. Apple also reportedly has a 'kill switch' for iPhone applications, although it's not thought to have ever used it.
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