The Newspeak would have contaminated the largest bookstore in the world? While in the dystopia of George Orwell, the classics of literature are rewritten in a language that is simplistic and politically acceptable, this is that 1984 himself is the victim of changes. According to a survey by the New York Times , Amazon is rotting with copies of the fraudulent works of the English writer.
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Several users expressed their discontent on the website of the company founded by Jeff Bezos, as spotted by the daily american. One of them complains that the pages 189 to 244 of his book are missing. Another commenter stated that the words “faces” (faces) are replaced by “pasture” (feces). Sometimes, there is even an error on the title of the book, as with this edition of Animal Farm: A Fairy Story ( animal Farm ) renamed Animal Farm: A Fair Story .
Make Orwell “more digestible”
even More serious, an edition of her novel, semi-autobiographical In la dèche à Paris and London , edited by the mysterious Moira Propreat, in the year “2105” has, it, voluntary changes. “This edition has been slightly modified to be more digestible”, it is written at the top of the first page. Some words have altogether disappeared, while the terms in French are written in capital letters.
“Every week, a counterfeit is put online,” says Bill Hamilton, head of the copyright to Orwell. “When is it that a company like Amazon will assume responsibility for the sales of products that pass through its hands?”, he continues.
According to The Authors Guild, an organization that brings together american writers, the number of cases of counterfeiting and piracy subject to its legal department has been multiplied by ten in two years.
“there is not a single source of truth”
In a press release published on Sunday, Amazon said that”there is not a single source of truth” for the copyright status of books. This varies in each country, or machine learning, and artificial intelligence do not work when there are several sources on which they can rely. “This is a complex problem for all sellers,” writes the site. All the more that even for humans, it is not always easy to differentiate between editions authentic imitations.
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Some users report the errors in their edition. But it happens that Amazon uses the same reviews of a book for all editions. An unauthorized version of animal Farm for example, can have hundreds of positive comments. Conversely, complaints about an infringement of copyright may be retained even if the latter is removed.
The american publishers, rather discreet due to the arm of iron that they are struggling to hold out against Amazon, just file a report sharp-edged in partnership with the federal trade Commission. “The marketplace of ideas is put in danger because of the unprecedented domination of a very small number of technology platforms,” they concluded.
In the meantime, no precise solution is advanced. And the phenomenon does not seem to be limited to George Orwell. “This is not the true Fahrenheit 451 ,” wrote a user identified by the New York Times on the online platform about the dystopia of Ray Bradbury. “The formulation is different, the first chapter is not titled correctly, and the first sentence has been used as the title of the book,” he continues. It should be noted that this book is not authentic.”
