Some of you may be aware of the controversy Amazon has caused by deleting copies of a book from customers’ Kindles. Ironically, it’s the Orwell book “1984”, where Big Brother is always watching. But this post isn’t about that. Instead, it’s about a quote that appears at the very end of a piece the NY Times wrote on Sunday.
I find this very disturbing:
“I’d like to live in a perfect world where I own this content and can do whatever I want with it,” said Justin Gawronski, a high school student whose copy of “1984” was erased by Amazon, but who recently declined when a lawyer asked him to join a class-action lawsuit over the incident. Mr. Gawronski said, “This is probably going to happen again and we just have to learn to live with it.”
No you don’t, young man. When something is wrong, we are lucky enough to live in a country where raising one’s voice in protest is permitted. You’re in high-school – go study Rosa Parks or Gandhi or the March on the Pentagon from 1967. Hell, look up the Boston Tea Party (the original one, not the recent ones!).
It saddens me to think that someone this young could already be of an unquestioning mindset. Society advances, and that includes businesses, when smart people question things as they are and see what they could be. The rest is just about getting us there.
Justin, if you think what Amazon did is wrong (and frankly that’s a really interesting discussion), you need not to sit quietly and assume there’s nothing you can do to fix it. Gather your facts, raise your voice. Living silently with things that are wrong is the real wrong.
What do you think?
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Consult Keith 