Oceana flag from '1984,' Wikimedia Commons.

This has happened before. In June, Amazon deleted some Ayn Rand titles. And it’s happened with Harry Potter titles as well. Amazon’s defense is pretty believable; they said the copies were pirated and that they were only acting to protect intellectual property. But as Farhad Manjoo at Slate says, “The Orwell incident was too rich with irony to escape criticism….”

Then Manjoo gets to the thorny problem:

The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1′s and 0′s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections. . . . Like a lot of others, I’ve predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.

The rapid ascension of digital publishing and consumption has given the entire movement a juggernaut feeling. That’s not fundamentally a problem. But anything that moves fast tends to get established before it can be understood or its virtues critiqued. Not that people aren’t trying.

Public intellectual and novelist Stephen Carter recently wrote about the value of physical books as opposed to digital formats. Part of his argument (read the whole thing here) is that books are vital to democracy and other intellectual pursuits because of their permanence.

His article was published before the Orwell incident, but I find his point intriguing in light of it because if there’s any fact that stands out in the midst of the Orwell deletion, it’s not related to copyright or intellectual property; it’s the lack of permanence. A remote actor can delete your library. If he were reaching into your study or living room and raking books off the shelf, we would be as stunned as we were angry.

And it points out another thing: A new and disturbing level of vulernability related to centralized “tethered” control as opposed to decentralized ownership.

Douglas William Jerrod, Punch, Wikimedia Commons.

Though jettisoned in 1985, it was the law for decades, going back clear to 1949. The policy, which was enforced by the Federal Communications Commission, “grew out of concern that because of the large number of applications for radio station[s] being submitted and the limited number of frequencies available, broadcasters should make sure they did not use their stations simply as advocates with a singular perspective. Rather,” as Val E. Limburg explains, “they must allow all points of view.”

But that’s not what happened. Instead, the consensus became that the doctrine actually squelched speech, creating in that great 1980s phrase, “a chilling effect.”

A lot has changed since the 1980s — the rise of talk radio, for instance, and cable news, particularly Fox News. The talk radio format and the Fox network are overwhelmingly conservative. So the newly invigorated left wants to yank the Fairness Doctrine out of retirement and limit the reach of these voices. Today, for instance, Sen. Chuck Schumer advocated its reimplementation. This from a Fox News interview: “I think we should all be fair and balanced, don’t you?”

More: “The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that. . . . But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.”

It is inconsistent. The FCC shouldn’t decide what’s fair any more than it should dictate guidelines for any other sort of broadcast speech. Opponents of the Fairness Doctrine can’t have it both ways. But that shouldn’t end the discussion or somehow lend instant validity to Schumer’s position.

The rationale for the Fairness Doctrine (scarcity in media outlets) is all but obliterated today. There are more outlets for more opinions than ever before. The only purpose for reinstating the doctrine today is the one that led to its demise two decades ago: It’s a handy tool if you want to control other people’s speech.