The latest Amazon move to erase all traces of George Orwell's “1984” and “Animal Farm” from its Kindle e-book store – as well as striking them off from the digital lockers of the users and from the Kindle devices – enraged the customers and buyers of the deleted books’ editions, bringing to light the fact that buyers can potentially lose over the content they purchase in the digital realm, quite unlike a physical purchase!

According to Amazon, the unusual move of retracting the titles resulted from Orwell's publisher’s change of mind regarding offering the electronic version of these titles. However, the move was especially unsettling for readers who had already purchased the books, chiefly from the digital publisher MobileReference.

The deletion of the titles reflects the way sale and purchase of books work on the Kindle - it so happens that digital books purchased for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network, which Amazon can also use essentially to synchronize e-books between devices; and apparently to also make them disappear suddenly!

Expressing the frustration of most owners of digital books on Kindle, Bruce Schneier, Chief Security Technology Officer for British Telecom said: “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow!”