To both points about letters and copyright, I should have phrased it better. I meant “Libraries never even considered ownership/copyright issues around the hardcopies of the manuscripts, because it’s just assumed that the physical recipient is the legal owner [of the hardcopy].” You’re both right – copyright varies and is complicated, and isn’t just assumed. Thanks for pointing that out.

Btw, Michael, nice to hear from you! I’m glad to see we’re both still on the digital frontier. :)

That’s not quite accurate. The recipient certainly is the legal owner of the physical property of the letter, but copyright to the letter’s text remains with its author. You don’t get that from possessing the physical letter anymore than you would get the copyright by buying a book published in a single copy. Libraries do indeed have to consider the copyright issues regarding the manuscripts they own all the time–see for instance the burdens Stephen Joyce has placed on James Joyce scholars who want to quote his work.

I think the issue here is technical, not socio-legal. Unlike email or other copy-and-send content, Tweets are really nothing but VARCHAR(140)’s stored in a database with the twitterer’s account ID attached to it. In the case of a direct message, it also has the recipient’s account ID attached to it. Delete the item, and you delete the record, removing it both from the sender’s and the recipient’s stream. Annoying? Maybe. But it’s just system architecture, not thought police.

Think of Twitter as a giant cork board that people stick notes to. If someone tacks up a folded note with your name on it, you can read it. If you leave it tacked there afterward, the same person can come along and take it down, and you can’t read it any more. Tweets were designed from the start to be ephemeral.

Re: GMail’s “undo” feature, I’d call it analogous to writing a letter, sealing it in an envelope, addressing it, and then putting it in the shredder unsent. GMail isn’t reaching into your inbox to “retrieve” anything; it’s simply holding the message unsent for 5 seconds in case I change my mind about sending it at all. Nothing alarming about it in the least.

The Kindle issue I find the most alarming of all. Despite the fact that they promise not to use it again in the future, the idea that Amazon retains the technical infrastructure, and the right, to delete content off of a customer-owned device gives me the chills. I understand the issues involved — they accidentally sold unauthorized editions from a publisher who should have known better. But the proper way to handle it would have been to (a) pull the book from the store, (b) settle with the rights holder for the copies already distributed, and (c) collect on the payout from the publisher who started the whole thing. At no time should content purchased in good faith be removed from a customer-owned device.

And not to pile on or anything, but I think you’re wrong about the letter. If I send you a letter, you have the right to retain physical custody of it, but the copyright remains mine. You can transfer, sell, or donate the original, but you can’t copy or publish it without my consent. You own the paper; I own the words.