: Amazon thought it had digital rights necessary to offer George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm" to users of its Kindle e-reader. When it turned out Amazon didn't have the rights, it without warning simply removed the books from user accounts and refunded their money.

The irony of Amazon essentially "burning" Orwell books, and certainly some customers, was not lost on the world at-large and many electrons lost their lives chronicling the sad tale.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos used a blog post to in very serious tones:

"This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our "solution" to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we've received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission."

That seemed to end it.