By way of Shane Rhyne this news that Amazon has removed two books from Kindle ebook readers after the publisher decided against making them available for digital download.

1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell simply disappeared overnight and readers' accounts were credited with what they had paid for them.

continued...

Back up your ebooks.

At the moment Amazon offers, via their 'Manage My Kindle' page, an option to download all your books to your computer for manual transfer to your device should you find yourself out of wireless range.

Since I believe that, once I buy something, it's mine, a copy of every ebook I have bought is safely stored in an undisclosed location.

I dare say reinstalling a 'banned' book would result in losing it again the next time the Kindle communicated with Big Brother. I would keep the wireless turned off until I read the book then manually deleted it.

BTW I noticed the Kindle 2 is now selling for $299.