You may remember the story of Justin Gawronski. Gawronski filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com because the books 1984 and Animal Farm were deleted from his Kindle shortly after he purchased the books. Gawronski’s homework was also deleted from the Kindle.

Amazon.com settled with Gawronski and the law firm representing him by paying $150,000 to settle. After paying the cost of the lawyers, the rest of the money will be donated to charity. Gawronski will receive a $30 gift certificate too.

“Amazon has just proven that when I buy a book on the Kindle, I don’t really own it,” stated Gawronski, 17, in an interview with The L.A. Times. “I just feel that is wrong.”

The reason why 1984 and Animal Farm was deleted is because a company that did not own the rights to the books added them to the Kindle store. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos stated the incident was “stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles.” Gawronski is a high school senior that lives and studies in south-eastern Michigan.

Back in the day when I was a kid, when people forgot their homework, they would frantically try to complete it about 15 minutes beforehand or say that you got a computer virus and it was deleted it.  Now there is a more high-tech reason why you may have lost your homework.

Amazon.com recently had 1984 deleted from thousands of Kindles and Justin Gawronski lost his electronic notes for the book.  Now there is a class action lawsuit against Amazon.com as a result of the deletion.  The class action lawsuit is seeking punitive damages from Amazon for those that were affected by the deletion of the book.  The lawsuit is also seeking an injuction that forbids Amazon from improperly accessing the Kindle in the future too.

1984 is a novel about a civil servant named Winston Smith that was assigned the task of promoting a regime’s agenda by manipulating records and political literature.  In turn, Smith starts a rebellion against the regime and is arrested and tortured as a result.  The coincidence that it was this novel that caused a civil lawsuit against Amazon.com just makes it even more newsworthy.

[via Gizmodo]