Posts Tagged ‘1984’

George Orwell, Project Gutenberg and Amazon.com

Amazon Offers Refund for Deleted Copies of Orwell Novels

“Big Brother” apologizes as Amazon offers affected customers gift certificates or replacement copies of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-four” and “Animal Farm”, which were deleted without explanation earlier this summer.

Covered earlier in George Orwell’s 1984 and Other Books Go Down Project Gutenberg’s Memory Hole

George Orwell’s 1984 and Other Books Go Down Project Gutenberg’s Memory Hole

I still maintain my Palm Tungsten E and one of my favorite activities is reading books by backlight (so as not to wake up my wife) in bed at night. In the last few months I’ve been reading classics like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and George Orwell’s 1984.

Today a friend emailed me about his concerns about the “Fairness Doctrine” affecting American radio and I was about to recommend that he download 1984 and was about to provide the link that I had once used to get the Plucker version that would work in my Tungsten’s reader… but not only wasn’t 1984 there, NONE of Orwell’s titles were available. See screencap below:

George Orwell no longer available at Project Gutenberg

As of 28 January 2009, Australia’s Project Gutenberg still had George Orwell files: http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty-n-z.html#orwell

I have copied the files and the links will be here as long as I’m allowed.

• Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
• Burmese Days (1934)
• A Clergyman’s Daughter (1935)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
• Shooting an Elephant (1936)
• The Road to Wigan Pier (1937)
• Homage to Catalonia (1938)
• Coming up for Air (1939)
• Animal Farm (1945)
• Politics and the English Language (1946)
• Nineteen eighty-four (1949)
• Fifty Orwell Essays

I hope that I will be able to update this post with news that Project Gutenberg’s new omission was a technical glitch and not throwing Orwell down the memory hole [linked to Wikipedia].

More Fairness Doctrine sources:

• The Fairness Doctrine at Work
• Liberals, too, should reject the Fairness Doctrine
• Fairness Doctrine Fouls Out
• Limbaugh Is Right on the Fairness Doctrine – Wall Street Journal
• Fairness Doctrine Watch