My Kindle Ate My Homework!

There’s been a lot of talk about Amazon settlement with the Michigan high school student.  Essentially what happened was this:

Justin Gawronski was working on a homework assignment about 1984, which Amazon remotely deleted from Kindles earlier this year (along with Animal Farm).  When the book was deleted, Justin lost all of the notes he had taken on his Kindle along with it.

Amazon is paying $150,000 to settle the suit, although my understanding is that most of it will go to charity. (via TechFlash)

What do you think his teachers said when he used this as an excuse?!?

-Kristina

Update: Catcher In The Rye case

On Sept. 3, Fredrik Colting, author of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye brought his case for publication to the U.S. Court of Appeals. 

Judge Calabresi ”expressed doubts about whether a lower-court judge heard enough evidence before blocking the U.S. publication” of Colting’s novel,  since this case deals with the First Amendment (AP).  Unrelated to any sort of ruling, Judge Calabresi shared his personal opinion of the book as “a rather dismal piece of work”. 

Ouch.  Talk about insult to injury for Colting.

-Kristina