Linked List: August 19, 2019

Monday, 19 August 2019

Counterfeit George Orwell Books on Amazon ★

David Streitfeld, writing for The New York Times:

In George Orwell’s “1984,” the classics of literature are rewritten into Newspeak, a revision and reduction of the language meant to make bad thoughts literally unthinkable. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words,” one true believer exults.

Now some of the writer’s own words are getting reworked in Amazon’s vast virtual bookstore, a place where copyright laws hold remarkably little sway. Orwell’s reputation may be secure, but his sentences are not.

Over the last few weeks I got a close-up view of this process when I bought a dozen fake and illegitimate Orwell books from Amazon. Some of them were printed in India, where the writer is in the public domain, and sold to me in the United States, where he is under copyright.

Amazon’s credibility problem with counterfeit products is as bad as ever, but it’s particularly rich when it comes to bastardized versions of Orwell’s oeuvre.

Rambo: Apple Arcade to Cost $5/Month ★

Guilherme Rambo, writing at 9to5Mac:

Today, I was able to get information about the price of an Apple Arcade subscription to customers. This information is available in one of the APIs used by the App Store app. According to a promotional message found in the service, the price for Apple Arcade will be $4.99 / month, including a one-month free trial. As Apple previously announced, the service will allow access to all members in a Family Sharing account.

That’s a very appealing price, especially considering that it includes family sharing. And from what I hear, Apple is aggressively recruiting developers to create exclusive games for Arcade. I not only think this will be very successful for Apple and participating developers, but I think it could disrupt the whole mobile gaming industry. Pay-to-win games could see a big decline.