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Well, that’s maybe a little bit harsh but this has got to be the ‘wtf?’ moment of the week. Apparently the publisher (MobileReference) of George Orwell’s books “Animal Farm” and “1984″ decided that they weren’t interested in the e-book market quite yet. Which is fine. But maybe this decision could have been made before copies had already gone out to buyers?

Thousands of kindle owners woke up Friday morning with a couple of books missing from their device. Amazon decided it perfectly okay to break into their customer’s digital life and “deactivate” these books while simultaneously depositing a refund back into the customer account – as if that makes it all okay. Oh, you want to come in to my house and take a few books from my night stand? No problem, just be sure to leave a check in the amount of the sum of the cover prices.

This is seriously scary on so many levels. Henceforth I shall forever be leery of any device that the manufacturer ultimately has more control over than I do; whether it be a phone a PDA or a kindle (which though I’ve actually been considering purchasing, I’ll probably never buy now). I half expect this to be a marketing stunt. Seriously, how more ironic can it be that the two books stolen from paying customers were “Animal Farm” and “1984″?

UPDATE: Apparently the book were “unauthorized” versions and there is some sort of copyright dispute. I still say that while removing the product from your store shelves is fine, actually taking back a product that you sold to a customer is pretty damn Orwellian to use the parlance of our times.