My love for my Kindle e-book reader has always been tempered by the discomfort of knowing that neither the device nor its contents are really mine.

At any given moment, it is technically and legally possible for an invisible digital hand to reach out and alter the proprietary contents – meaning the books I have purchased through Amazon – on the device.

They could, technically and legally, do that to the non-proprietary contents I send to the device too, such as a good amount of my “to read” pile of articles and academic papers.

Someone controlling the invisible digital hand which controls the device, after all, might object to what it is I’m reading. They might object to the things I’m finding out. They might object to the people I’m reading about. They might object to the conclusions I’m drawing.

And in a digital world, my location an ocean away from that hand’s controller doesn’t matter.

So given the current times, I can’t help but wonder:

how long, do we think, before books start disappearing off Kindles, overnight, on error code 451.

Because assuming it will happen, other questions precede and follow:

what sort of corporate resistance – if any – will stand in its way;

how long or short will it take that corporate entity to capitulate, under the threat of what laws and statutes used to force their digital hand;

and what sort of public resistance will keep those books, digital or not, in circulation.

I’m not wondering about those questions because I’m paranoid.

I’m wondering that because well before my Kindle was invented, many authors, mostly gone, wrote book upon book upon book upon book warning me that someday, it was going to happen.

They weren’t warning readers to amuse them. They were warning readers that someday they would need to be prepared to act fast.

That’s you; that’s now.

Update: a week after I wrote this post, Amazon announced that the ability to download backups of your books via USB will end on 26 February.

Things are, indeed, moving.

Header image: some streets where I spent my 1980s childhood. If you know where and what that is, you can come along with me. Don’t forget your lighter.