Creepy Kindle cravenness?

I'd like confirmation on this: the Times' David Pogue reported today that Amazon deleted a particular author from people's Kindles overnight:

[A]pparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were "1984" and "Animal Farm."

The Kindle forum thread on the topic reads, to me anyway, like the copies deleted were from a publisher that didn't have the rights to sell electronic copies. Like it or not, Orwell's works are still protected by copyright. So if the deleted copies were indeed sold by a publisher illegally, it's not like Barnes & Noble removing the book off your shelf and leaving 99c on the table; it's like Barnes & Noble discovering it had sold you a remaindered book and correcting the error.

On the other hand, perhaps an email explaining the situation might have helped Amazon in this case?