1984...meet DRM. Source: jbonnain on Flickr. License: CC BY 2.0.

The New York Times reports that Amazon is offering free-of-charge replacement copies of the deleted George Orwell e-books Animal Farm and 1984. Those who do not wish to replace their e-books may get $30 or an Amazon gift certificate instead.

Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, apologized to customers for the deletions in July. And late Thursday, the company tried to put the incident behind it, offering to deliver new copies of “1984” and “Animal Farm” at no charge to affected customers.

Amazon said in an e-mail message to those customers that if they chose to have their digital copies restored, they would be able to see any digital annotations they had made. Those who do not want the books are eligible for an Amazon gift certificate or a check for $30, the company said.

The message included Mr. Bezos’s mea culpa from July. “This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of ‘1984’ and other novels on Kindle,” Mr. Bezos said. He went on to describe Amazon’s actions as “stupid, thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.”

It’s good to see Amazon admitting that they made a huge mistake here, and I applaud them for not making up excuses instead. Still, this highlights a huge problem with DRM’d e-books and e-book readers like the Kindle. Whether Amazon will pull a similar stunt in the future is uncertain, although the backlash from this makes it unlikely. However, it is important to remember that this could still be used for more nefarious purposes, such as oppressive governments coaxing Amazon into removing e-books that the government considers a threat to their well-being.

• The New York Times (cookies required)
• Slashdot