Columnists

Most Comments

Peanut Gallery

Not My Tribe on Facebook
Tweets from Not My Tribe
Second Life
Boycott Israeli Goods Granma essays of Fidel Castro
Click to buy St Patricks Day parade t-shirts
Click for more on COLORADANS FOR PEACE

Pantheon of Heroes

Massimo Tartaglia
Berlusconi pugilist
Muntadhar al-Zaidi
shoe thrower
Tim DeChristopher
Bidder 70
Glenn Spagnuolo
R68 rabblerouser
Andrew Meyer
Don't taser me Bro
Rachel Corrie
Palestinian rights

Rapscallions

James O'Keefe, fraud
Hannah Giles, fraud
Neda Agha-Soltan, *
Yoani Sanchez, fiction
John Yettaw, spoiler
Rebecca Joseph, UCSB Tova Hausman, UCSB Greg Mortenson, tool Prince Harry
wannabe killer
Scott Robinson
RNC Kicker

Popular Culture

Book reviews:
Three Cups of Tea -- 1000 White Women - Harry Potter dead zone
Zorro
Film reviews:
Dolores Umbrage Bush Twilight - Happy Feet -
The Queen - King Kong
Borat

Essays:
Homer for gen. Simpson
The authoritarian M.O.
Plastic flower of youth

—- Internets —

NotMyTribe banner for general distribution
Colorado Springs Progressive Blogs
Local coverage of the arts on SPRINGS CULTURE CAST
Newspeak Moblog
Blog News Net Colorado Lefty Blogs Lefty Blogs Boycott AP Lewis Links Riseup dot net Add to Technorati Favorites Creative Commons License Let iCab Smile
Not My Tribe 60×60 button
Check PageRank Site Meter TECHNORATI auth488 COMPETE 102K QUANTCAST 57K URLFAN 148K WS.OUTLOOK 362K
Left List US IWW Wobblies Socialist Party aim-native-american-indian-movement-peace-sign.gif Troublemakers Union Organic Consumers Association ACORN EZLN Black is Back

Reference Library

NMT Calendar

MAR 2010
1-13 Israeli Apartheid Week
4- CC lecture: TR Reid
8- Day of Solidarity with the Arab People of Syria
19-20 A.N.S.W.E.R. National March on Washington, DC
23- Camp OUT NOW, on the Mall, DC

APRIL 2010
19-25 - Week of Solidarity with Latin America
22- CC lecture: Paul Watson

MAY 2010
1- International Workers Day
4- Day of Solidarity with the People of Nicaragua
15- Day of Solidarity with Palestine
22-29 Week of Solidarity with Africa

JUNE 2010
6- Anniversary of Israeli seizure of Gaza
20- International Day of Disarmament
25-26 G-20 summit, Huntsville, Ontario

JULY 2010
26- Day of World Solidarity with the Cuban Revolution

AUG 2010
3- Day of World Solidarity with the Struggle of the People of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands
6- Day of World Solidarity with the Struggle of the Japanese People
18- Day of Solidarity with the Afro-American People

SEPT 2010
12- Day of Solidarity with the People of Zimbabwe
21- UN International Day of Peace, sponsors PTP, UF & CPI
23- Day of Solidarity with the People of Puerto Rico
25- Day of Solidarity with the People of Mozambique
30-10/6 - Week of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia

OCT 2010
8- Day of the Heroic Guerrilla
10- Indigenous Peoples Day
12- Day of Solidarity with Laos
19- International Media Democracy Day

Interests

Afghanistan Africa Antiwar Barack Obama China Colorado Springs Cuba Denver Economics Election Environment Film Gaza genocide Guantanamo Headlines Health History Imperialism Interrogation Iran Iraq Islam Israel Jesus Justice Media Mexico Militarism Military Nazi Pakistan Palestine Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission Police State Popular Culture Propaganda Protest Racism Revolution Sarah Palin Somalia Sudan Terrorism Vietnam

Takes issue with

Whether premature or prophetic, Hugo Chavez calls to consolidate South American Left to invoke a 5th Socialist International.

The War on Islam’s covert battlefield: Yemen.

Coup Accomplit: Obama’s undemocratic triumph in Honduras.

Trending Keywords: Pox Americana, War Czar

Get our RSS feed

Search articles

Archives


Interesting Feeds

RSS The Rag Blog

RSS Black Agenda Report

RSS Space 4 Peace

RSS Antiwar.com

RSS Global Research

RSS Infoshop

RSS Angry Arab

RSS Monkey Smashes Heaven

RSS Propublica

RSS Media Matters

RSS Colorado Media Matters

RSS Irrepressible Project

Latest Articles

Links:

NMT Tweets

  • Photos of MARCH 8 Colorado College SDS mass DIE-IN to mark 1,000 US death in Afghanistan. http://notmytribe.com?p=15308
  • Drudge Report got a plug on the screenplay nomination clip for . A war flick that takes no moral side is propaganda.
  • TOONS featured Kathryn Bigelow in the Directors Section because we lacked for women directors, not because her films were great.
  • Real reason Oscar acceptance speeches kept short, to fit a longer pre-game show. Red carpet couldn't get enough of actors blabbing.
  • Kathryn Bigelow thanked the US soldiers & military, reminded me I had her confused with the great female director Penelope Spheeris.

Book burning is old hat for Kindle

The Amazon KindleAwww, the “Gift of Reading.” Wasn’t that something we gave ourselves for free in public school? And look at the e-book with which Amazon expects to separate readers from viewers –the latest movie.
 
Holy Schnikies Amazon picked a whopper of a name for its e-book reader! Is the “Kindle” supposed to inflame our gone-digital hearts to the warm fuzzies of reading? Because kindle wood and books have always been combustible dance partners. Firelight was something man used to have to read by, but kindling was also indispensable for book burnings. Which role most likely foreshadows this Kindle’s potential?

I think the answer lies not too far from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezo’s celebrated promise to never again remotely tamper with their readers’ Kindle libraries. Earlier this year, online customers bought digital books to which Amazon then discovered its merchant partner didn’t have the intellectual rights. Amazon refunded the purchases and erased the already downloaded files, revealing what technology experts already suspected, that the Kindle’s software permitted more than a hands-on eavesdropping capability.

In response to the outcry, Bezos promised never to do it again. Fine. His assurance is good enough for me. The truth is, Amazon won’t have to.

The burning of e-books will not be about destroying your and my electronic files. It will happen at the file’s creation or un-creation. And I suspect the censorship will be a lot more clever than a publisher conspicuously sitting on its exclusive rights to release or not release a title. All that need happen to disenfranchise a public from a familiar inflammatory tome is to buy the publishing right and excise the offensive material. Why not– it will be their right. And Jeff Bezos will probably be able to justify amending already sold copies under the guise of issuing corrections, or redistributing free updates to the original editions.

Can you imagine a world void of its disturbing literature? That’s the vision which has guided book burners. The only thing standing between mankind and the more equitable distribution of knowledge are the revolutionary armadas launched by Gutenberg. At which the Kindle is aiming its broadsides.

Tags: , , , , ,

Related articles

Permalink to this article link     Submit Book burning is old hat for Kindle to Digg.com   Bookmark Book burning is old hat for Kindle in Reddit   Bookmark Book burning is old hat for Kindle in Newsvine   bookmark  Book burning is old hat for Kindle in del.icio.us   Bookmark Book burning is old hat for Kindle in Spurl   Bookmark Book burning is old hat for Kindle to Fark   Bookmark Book burning is old hat for Kindle to Yahoo!   Tweet this post

Comments

Comment from Brother Jonah   (IP: 97.112.129.208)
Time: December 3, 2009, 4:25 pm

Yeah, those pictures of Clowns and Puppies are too sad and scary. They must be BURNED!

The clowns and puppies, that is, merely burning the pictures would be too Liberal.

What would be really horrifying is if the rights to the book Fahrenheit 451 were done in like that. The movie sucked. But the book was excellent. Present Tense: Is excellent. I watched the movie before reading the book and almost didn’t read the book. Ok, that’s not entirely true, if I see a really bad movie I try to find the book simply from experience. Sometimes I wonder what percentage of the people in the world have the same reaction?

It seems like a minority, just judging from the way they normally act.

Ah well. Education is the ONLY cure for Ignorance. Keep on plugging it, eventually it makes a noticeable difference. A lot of the killings done by the Klan were of schoolteachers, teaching people to read. There’s still a spark.

Comment from BillyKzov   (IP: 71.214.47.36)
Time: December 3, 2009, 11:22 pm

I don’t think that’s quite what the kindle is about…

the road isn’t the latest movie, it’s the latest book made into a movie… an extremely excellent book that people should read in whatever form they can find it in… blah blah…

as for publishers controlling literature, check this out. i’d imagine that getting books out, be they illegal or whatever, is going to be way easier through a digital medium than through a physical one… like illegal downloads… easy easy easy…

Comment from Brother Jonah   (IP: 97.112.129.208)
Time: December 4, 2009, 12:32 am

On the other hand to that, the software used to blank out the Kindle book from the machines of every user who had bought it, can be used to track down “illegal downloaders” and, is being used for exactly that purpose. It was also used recently to persecute people who “illegally” modified their own hardware with the XBox gaming network.

Disney’s production company has been prosecuting people for almost a decade with a version of that software. It’s software which can trace not only the SOURCE of an electronic transfer, but also the destination.

There’s other implications to it… Remember when “some unknown person” on the White House LAN emailed Scooter Libby and blew the cover off a CIA operation? Not only outed Valerie-Plame Wilson but, more importantly, every informant who had been supplying her operation with data. People who lived among and broke bread with al Qa’eda on a daily basis.

Scooter Libby and his Trash-ass Coward Crew, including George Bush and Richard Cheney, all got smooth away with it.

Homeland Security under the direction of the Guilty Parties made a sham investigation into the incident. And reported that they couldn’t trace where on the Very Limited White House network the email originated. They lied. As usual. And as usual with their murderous crew, people DIED.

The Bu’ush Regime did it in a fit of pique because Ms Plames husband stood up and defied their LIES about WMDs.

Even though this same software was available to the Homeland Gestapo Administration, it wasn’t used. Instead, it gets used to suppress the rights of The People to read what they want.

There’s a pattern here. A Dictator who said he’s above all laws (Richard Cheney) and wants to regain power, and whose Demented Disciples are trying to restore him to Power even BEFORE the next Election, condones and even commands the use of such software to harass and even KILL citizens.

It goes beyond “mere” censorship. Eric didn’t go too far with that train of thought, he stopped short.

What else can it be used for…? Erasing evidence of Governmental Wrongdoing, been there, done that.

Fox News using it to erase any traces of their Proven Lies? They’ve just gotten a concession from Google.
My suggestion, grab every cached transcript of Fox and Clear Channel’s propaganda, the ones they change daily on their own website in order to make themselves look good… Google has the ORIGINALS cached. But not for long now. Snarf them and burn them onto DVDs. They’ve got close to the power to make History disappear.

Their Regime has shown that they’re not above lying, they’re not above murder and they think of themselves as being above all human law. Damn right they’re going to use that technology against Americans and anybody else in the world.

Comment from Brother Jonah   (IP: 97.112.129.208)
Time: December 4, 2009, 12:46 am

Back to Eric’s main theme, remember the OTHER Orwellian story?

Where the “10 points of Animalism” were painted on the barn wall…

And those animals who could read, noticed that the precepts kept changing. But couldn’t prove it, because the Pigs controlled the writing. Comrade Snowball is wounded in a battle with the Humans from the two neighboring farms, then as soon as Comrade Napoleon declared Snowball to be a traitor, the history was re-written. The “common people” didn’t have access to any evidence that the story had changed.

The Kindle has only a limited scope in making history disappear. It can be used in conjunction with other technologies available to The Dictatorship. Like their mastery of LYING. Declaring George Bush’s Discharge Papers to be “forgeries” leaps to mind. Which experts declared them to be forged? Why, the ones who Worked For The Regime.

What else would they declare to be Forgeries when the time comes for them to do so, if there’s a truth they can make into a lie just by publishing a revised version of it?

In other news, Oceania has ALWAYS been at war with Eastasia.

Kind of ominous that particular book was chosen as the test case for Dropping Information into the Memory Hole.

Write a comment