Tech-followers the world over – but owners of Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader in particular – got a nasty shock last week when Amazon switched into reverse the “Whispernet” wireless network it uses to sell e-books directly to the Kindle devices, instead plucking away e-copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm that people had thought they had bought, because of a rights dispute. For more details, the New York Times’ coverage is here; do note how carefully Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener chooses his words, promising that “in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances” (emphasis added; why were those last three words necessary?).

This bizarre episode promptly elicited on-line comment about how strange it was to suddenly find missing something that you thought you had bought, and how appropriate it was that the works in question originated from the author famous for “Big Brother.” Among the more in-depth remarks I have run across, however, must be included reaction from a German-based Kindle-owner (who therefore still has his e-book Orwell, if he bought it in the first place – Amazon’s “Whispernet” network extends only to the US) by the name of Peter Sennhauser, who writes on the site Netzwertig.com (Orwellian DRM Fall-of-Man; yes, it’s an awkward title in English, but less so in German). His lede: “Amazon has erased-over-distance customers’ books on the Kindle e-book reader. Jeff Bezos is about to stomp out his e-book sparks.” (more…)

You knew it was just a matter of time: From Johannes of the German readers-blog lesen.net we get word of a Kindle-clone out of China. It’s called the “Wefound”; it was first displayed to the public recently at some Japanese publishing-industry convention; and the organization behind it is the Founder Group of Peking University, which is bad news since that company is already famous for its hardware prowess, employs around 30,000 and has a yearly turnover of $6 million.

This “Wefound” should come out on the market by the end of this year and cost €150. As Johannes remarks, you’d have to think that the Founder Group will at least steer clear of the American market, where Amazon already has gained a patent on the “Kindle-Look,” for the thing is awfully similar to your standard Kindle 2: the same 6-inch “e-Ink” display, the same QWERTY keyboard, the same paging buttons – and even a digital publishing house lined up to sell content, called Apabi.

The Kindle – Amazon.com’s answer to the electronic book-reader – is now winning influential converts over on this side of the Atlantic. This includes Nikolai Thyssen of the Danish commentary newspaper Politiken – although you have every right to doubt that just from looking at the title of the article he has just written about it, The wolf in Kindle-clothing. Rest assured, though, that after spending one month and six e-books with a Kindle he is ready to concede that the electronic book breakthrough that experts have been predicting for decades is finally upon us.

The main reason for this, he declares, is Amazon’s “e-ink” technology, which succeeds in making the Kindle’s screen behave just like the regular ink-on-paper we are all used to from time immemorial: you can read a Kindle directly in sunlight, and, indeed, in the evening you better have some external source of light available somewhere nearby, as usual. But another reason the Kindle seems to have some momentum behind it is that, just like the iPod with iTunes, this content-delivery device comes with an on-line store already stocked with many thousands of bits of content for sale – this time e-books, of course, of which Amazon offers 300,000 and counting – many of which you can certainly assume that you would be interested in reading, if you are into books at all in the first place. And you can even beam them into your Kindle, after purchase, wirelessly. (more…)