Who Do You Trust:

George Orwell thought Big Brother was big government, but the more likely scenario is big business becoming the equivalent. Or maybe the two will become so intertwined that it will be impossible to tell the difference.

Recently Amazon.com reached out through the air waves and wiped Orwell's two most famous novels from its customers' electronic book reading device, the Kindle eBook reader, even though the customers had paid for it. Apparently there were some "rights" issues. Naturally, Amazon reimbursed their customers by crediting their accounts, and afterall those same people could purchase the books at the local bookstore or simply go to the library and read them for free. Many of us who own paperback or hardback editions of the two famous novels simply snickered when the news broke.

But it's the implications that has everyone stirred up. If everything is moving to the Web, will anything be private or protected from deletion? We've seen recently what happens when we trust banks and Wall Street with our money.