DRM and the Destruction of the Book 419
Hugh Pickens writes "EFF reports that Cory Doctorow spoke to a crowd of about a hundred librarians, educators, publishers, authors, and students at the National Reading Summit on How to Destroy the Book and said that 'anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself.' Doctorow says that for centuries, copyright has acknowledged that sacred connection between readers and their books and that when you own a book 'it’s yours to give away, yours to keep, yours to license or to borrow, to inherit or to be included in your safe for your children' and that 'the most important part of the experience of a book is knowing that it can be owned.'"
Give Away a PHYSICAL Copy, Sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Cory's Sacred Ancestors (or whoever the hell he was referencing) didn't have a clue about what effect the scanning and distribution of a book to 100,000 strangers on the Internet would have on the publishing industry.
Doctrine of First Sale (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to give away, bogart, lend or to borrow, pass as inheritance, or roll up and smoke a book is possible because the book is yours because you own it and the Doctrine of First Sale [ucla.edu] formalizes these possibilities.
One of the many things wrong with digital restrictions management (drm) technologies is that it tries to do an end run around the democratic process and eliminate these rights, some of which are codified in the Constitution [cornell.edu]. Some would assert that not only is the constitution the foundation upon which the country has been built, but also that it represents freedom and democracy itself. So these affronts by Bill Gatesists and the other 'freedom-hating' (tm) digital taliban, can be considered as affronts to the US itself if not also to higher ideals.
It may sound harsh to some fanbois, but step back and take off that 'with a computer' clause and see if what they are doing is acceptable. If not, then you know what to do.
hyperbolic nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
"The most important part of the experience of a book is knowing that it can be owned"
Huh?
I thought that perhaps the story told within said book is slightly more important than the media.
Then again, having bothered to (try to) read some of Doctorow's mystifyingly much-lauded short stories, perhaps I can understand his point of view would be different.
theres nothing "sacred" (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything is consensual. Whe share ideas and needs, and make deals.
No, I don't want to buy the idea of books as licenses, I like the idea of ownership of the phisical book, with the strings attached to give it to other people, even make a copy. The idea that I don't like, is to elevate a inventation to the sacred level. We born in a blank slate, almost everything is learned, and everything that we learn was invented or created. Theres nothing superior to us, sacred, where we ower fidelity.
Re:too much knowledge out there v2 (Score:5, Insightful)
yea but with ebooks technically letting your wife read the book is illegal and wrong and she has to buy her own copy.
40 years from now your kids are all grown up, and you pass away in your sleep. As they go through your stuff, they pick up the tom clancy paper backs and think about how you used to read them. Or they find a non working ebook reader and the DRM prevents them from knowing what kind of books you liked to read.
Pick one. It will happen. no one lives for ever. Memories must be preserved some how. DRM laden technology will prevent it.
Zhnore... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what the church thought too when the bible was translated and the pressess started running. It'd surely destroy them.
Same as records destroyed the music industry, and home recording, and VHS, and CD-burning, and DVD copying, and Bluray copying, and.. There's an oddly long history of continuous destruction of the publishing business, yet somehow they're still around to pester us with DRM!
What pray tell ARE the effects?
Re:Give Away a PHYSICAL Copy, Sure (Score:1, Insightful)
Government is for the people not the publishers.
IP law is [was] for the people not the publishers.
They are given temporary rights to publish a given work. Since they are abusing that right, it is proper that the right be taken away. Since the courts won't do it, the people have to.
Laws only exist as long as the governed consent.
hyperbolic nonsense is what Cory does (Score:4, Insightful)
Doctorow is a pundit first, and a story-writer, oh, somewhere around seventh or eighth. Bill O'Reilly writes novels [amazon.com], too. But nobody reads them because they want to sit down with a good mystery, they read them because they are a fan of the pundit's punditry and buy up everything associated with his "brand."
Re:hyperbolic nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I checked the message was firmly attached to the medium. I have 250 year old books who still confirm to that basic principle.
In your eagerness to outsmugg Doctorow you missed his message completely, focussing on the medium itself. I 'own' a couple of e-books from the palmpilot-era which, thanks to DRM, are unreadable now. I can remedy that with an emulator, but the current generation of DRM 'promises' online checks which will fail when technologies change or companies fail.
I get to keep the medium, a bunch of scrambled bits, but somebody will steal the content of DRM-ed books, one day.
DRM will destroy books. Individual ones, and 'book' as generic term. Knowledge will no longer be transfered, it will be rented out for a limited time only.
Re:Doctrine of First Sale (Score:2, Insightful)
You conveniently forget that without these necessary DRM restrictions, nobody will be bothered to actually write articles and books in the first place.
Citation needed.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
And here I was thinking the content of the book was the most important part.
To be frank, you've missed the point. The content is just something that you use to achieve something. To be happy, to be sad, to share something with your friends. To fix your car; any time you want. To know what is wrong with your pet hamster and how to heal it. To learn to ski better. Up till now it has also been used to achieve richer authors but with very specific limits.
The aim here is to use control of the content to be able to tax your ability to do all those things I mentioned above and more. When you remember something from your hamster book about a strange rare disease, you'll have to buy the same book all over again because now Amazoid E-Reader IV doesn't support the books you bought for your now broken kindle. Even if your book reader is still working, your key to the content will have long ago expired. If you are really unlucky, they may force you to buy the upgraded new edition.
Re:Silly me (Score:4, Insightful)
Fsck you DRM! You SUCK! The written word is to important to be censored!
You actually forget the one thing that makes a digital copy vs a physical book: It takes half a millisecond to duplicate it, and it is free to do so. This is of course scaring the publishers, distributors and authors out of their minds. So they "invent" stuff to make sure only the original owner can read the book. In the process, they make the whole experience nightmarish, but hey...
This goes down to the root of one primordial liberty: Free speech. If you can talk freely, it means you can communicate freely with your neighbor. So you can give hime any information. Including a movie, MP3 or a digital book. Because down to its core, digital data is just information.
Trying to prevent someone to distribute a digital book (for non profit) is the equivalent of preventing him/her to have free speech. And this problem is new because only with a computer you can communicate data in such a bulky way with absolutely no loss.
Mindsets will change, and I firmly believe that noone will be able to prevent the information flow. This is the very nature of the human mind. Look at MP3s, they are now wold with no DRM whatsoever. Because no other way will work better than that one.
Re:Doctrine of First Sale (Score:1, Insightful)
I seldom wish I had mod points (I almost never see anything worth modding up), but for you, I'd make an exception. Sarcasm at it's finest -- I salute you!
--
I drank what?
Re:hyperbolic nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
"I thought that perhaps the story told within said book is slightly more important than the media."
Of course. But you only get to find that out if you can read it.
Worst case, if publishers had their way it might someday be possible for them to withdraw a book from publication (like Amazon and '1984'), and all the existing copies would go "poof". It's the digital equivalent of a good old fashioned book burning. And while the story may be more important, it's kind of a moot point if the nature of the media prevents its enjoyment and prevents the story from being passed on to the next generation to enjoy.
Publishers are trying to license e-books in such a way that they have vastly more power over the media. The allowed uses of it are *very* restricted. In the past, with a physical copy on the shelf, a great deal of the licensing was implicit (there was only one copy and more weren't allowed) or could be safely ignored if the terms were unreasonable (go ahead and try to prevent me from reading it to my kids, even though it could be regarded as a 'performance'). Look at the nonsense about digital readers not being able to read certain books aloud. It's a constraint that some publishers apparently want, but what a ridiculous limitation. There are plenty of other examples.
Buying a book is a bargain of some kind between the publisher and the purchaser (and ultimately the creator of the work). People buy e-books with the expectation they can them much like traditional books. Why should we have to give up so much of the traditional expectations for a book simply because the medium is digital? Publishers are using the opportunity to eliminate or clamp down on traditional uses of books, and I think that effort should be strongly opposed. Alternatively, they should stop calling their digital product a "book", because the terms of license are so different.
Yeah, Cory is a bit over the top, but the issue he's talking about is important. Should we accept the greater limitations of e-books or should we insist that publishers retain the same flexibility as traditional books? I think the answer is obvious.
Can someone explain to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
He's a political activist and passable young-adult sci-fi author who contributes to a geek blog. He's an expert on nothing. He has not formally studied anything. He mouths off about copyright all the time, but his grasp of law and legal history is laughable. Yet he consistently makes headlines for saying asinine things about subjects about which he has no expertise.
How do I get people to pay me for saying stupid things about fashionable subjects? What he does is way more glamorous and takes way less actual, you know, effort than what I do.
Re:hyperbolic nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
If there are no permanent records that are immune to alteration (hint: no electronic record is immune to alteration), those who can alter the records determine what is history and what is fantasy.
Re:Give Away a PHYSICAL Copy, Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Cory's Sacred Ancestors (or whoever the hell he was referencing)
He was referencing the founders of the United States who write its constitution. And your "effect the scanning and distribution of a book to 100,000 strangers on the Internet would have on the publishing industry" is entirely bogus. It is a positive effect, not a negative one. Doctorow gives his books away for free on his website, yet is on the New Your Times bestseller list. Care to explain that one, Einstein?
He explains why in the forward to his book Little Brother. There's no way you're going to buy a book by an author you've never heard of, but there's no risk in checking one out from the library (there are way more than 100K libraries, each with a copy for everyone to check out and read), and if you like the author's work, THEN you're likely to buy.
Nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many, many artists and authors have gone hungry from obscurity. Your argument is as bogus as Jack Valenti's "the VCR tape is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper is to women". You see how that one worked out.
Valenti's and your statements are entirely false, have been proven false, and there is not one shred of evidence that there is any truth whatever to them. Logic alone should tell you they're bullshit.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
You've got two out of three right.
Unless you're a corporate creep like Vince Flynn, you're not writing books to get rich. You care a lot more about getting your words into peoples' hands than you do about socking away millions and paying off shareholders.
There's a notion around now that a successful author, or musician, deserves more than just living a comfortable, even lavish lifestyle. They deserve to be a multi-billion dollar phenomenon. Not necessarily because that "content creator" wants this unspendable wealth, but because he is actually the tip of a corporate pyramid that needs to be fed. At the bottom of the pyramid are some shareholders that the "content-creator" will never know.
Digital distribution of content should be about allowing creators to distribute their material more easily, more cheaply, more quickly and widely. Not about maximizing the profits for a phalanx of money-sucking barnacles. Those "scared" corporate-types you mention are all about the latter, and they'll hang on to their dysfunctional system as long as they can.
If you approach digital media to benefit creators, you'll get more good stuff to enjoy. If you approach digital media to maximize profits, you get a lot of expensive dross and grandmothers getting hauled into court by the RIAA.
You misunderstand something... (Score:5, Insightful)
If copyright was 10 or 15 years, I'd be OK with draconian DRM restrictions on the things that are under copyright, provided there was a way to break it when the items go into public domain.
Then you misunderstand the purpose of DRM. The main purpose of DRM is to do an end-run around copyright expiration - so works "protected" by it *never* go into the public domain.
Imagine you're a publisher, and you want perpetual copyright, even though you know the highest law in the land says you'll never get it. What's the next best thing? Complete control over the books you sell - so you can prevent anyone from copying them ever again, and can even "recall" them if you want to. And you lobby for a law that makes it illegal for anyone to talk about how to circumvent that control.
At it's core, copyright is the ability to say "you're not allowed to say that, because I said it first." It is (supposedly) a compromise between the public and authors. In order to improve our culture, authors are given a limited right to exclude others from exercising their right of free expression.
DRM is a betrayal of this compromise - the public fulfills their part, but the authors never have to fulfill theirs. DRM is the antithesis of copyright, and rather than making laws to protect DRM, any work that is "protected" should be immediately be stripped of its copyright status.
After all, if DRM really worked, they wouldn't *need* copyright law, would they?
Re:Silly me (Score:4, Insightful)
When my granny died, her grandchildren were asked what knick-knacks of hers they wanted as keepsakes... I asked for a very old, red leather bound Robinson Crusoë that I remembered reading reverently with her as a kid, awed both by the story and the object, which was so much more impressive than my usual paperbacks or modern kid's books.
So, to me, the object counts, too. Some are signed gifts, also.
And, the idea is that I can give (very unlikely) or loan that book. I couldn't with an ebook.
And I'm safe in the idea that it's forever mine, I'll hopefully read it with my nephew some day.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd add a couple of extra concerns:
- it makes it very easy for repressive regimes to track who bought what: a handful of authentification servers have that info. granted, we may not feel concerned by that right now, but a good part of the world is, and you never know what will happen to us later on. Recent events show that corporations are all too happy to oblige any request from any "big market" government.
- it even makes possible to recall a book, possibly to change it, which conjures uneasy visions of the Ministry of Truth.
Re:Silly me (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Can someone explain to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
He mouths off about copyright all the time, but his grasp of law and legal history is laughable. Yet he consistently makes headlines for saying asinine things about subjects about which he has no expertise.
How do I get people to pay me for saying stupid things about fashionable subjects?
Hilarious irony. You claim he has no expertise on the subject of copyright and then asks how you can get paid for stating your opinion. Doctorow's expertise on the subject is precisely that he manages to get paid while giving his books away, which is something authors in favor of DRM books claim they couldn't possibly do.
Re: Paper (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it IS the paper, or at least the medium. (Marshall McLuhan?)
Since it's hard to toss a professor into your car without felony charges, the bound book is the delivery medium of the content, and the part I believe has "hardware value" much like Apple is up to. Rather than some behemoth press in NYC, I do believe the future is the DIY kiosk that takes content of your choosing and cranks it into the presentation medium. Once that process gets down under a minute I think we'll hit a plateau.
When studying moderately difficult factual material, self pacing is important for me, which is the chief flaw of audio editions. Digital only copies tie up the visual space on the computer. I'd accept a cheap disposable reader with stylus/type annotation ability that can then wirelessly email your custom copy to your standard email.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, in the United States, we regularly limit free speech rights. For example, speech that incites criminal acts (for example, a riot) is regulated. Commercial speech is regulated. Copyright limits freedom of speech. Society would not function otherwise. If we define the sharing of information as freedom of speech, then any company with your credit card number could freely share it with anybody else. Your credit card company or bank could share your history of purchases with your insurance company so they can set rates based upon your diet, your recreation habits, and the power tools you own. All of this is information, yet we see fit to regulate the ways in which it is shared.
I agree with you that DRM is bad and it is an abuse of copyright and the right of first sale. Trotting out the old hacker belief that "information wants to and ought to be free" and "freedom of speech trumps all" does not reflect the mindset of the framers of the United States Constitution nor does it reflect the mindset of society today, regardless of how simple, romantic, and seductive the argument seems.
Re:hyperbolic nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Not in the presence of DRM. Access to all unauthorized or inconvenient data can be revoked by the central authority.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
Who says authors have to make money by selling books? Here's how I see the future for authors:
1) Up and coming author puts his first books on the net for free, hoping to gain readership.
2) Author requests donations from those who like his book (yes, we're at "Profit!" at step 2, but it's small so stay with me here)
3) Author gains a good sized fan base and a reputation (think Dean Koontz)
4) Author announces a future book, and sells "access" to parts of the writing process to his fans ("Profit!" again)
5) Author now has a run-away hit series ala Harry Potter or Twilight (or, god forbid, another Dan Brown book)
6) Repeat step 4, only with more Profit!
7) Author sells movie and merchandising rights for big Profit! (this is where authors get rich nowadays anyway, not from book sales)
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
You nearly eliminate the analog hole by building a display encoder chip that uses DSA to exchange an AES session key with the decryption/decompression chip.
Camcorders defeat that. You can't fully eliminate the analog hole except for a video game.
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you're a corporate creep like Vince Flynn, you're not writing books to get rich. You care a lot more about getting your words into peoples' hands than you do about socking away millions and paying off shareholders.
I think this is important to note: people wrote books long before copyright. They wrote because they thought what they were writing was important, or they wrote because they wanted to be famous and admired. Guys wrote to get chicks, because some chicks dig smart creative types. People wrote for all sorts of reasons even when it made them no money whatsoever.
Same with music, really. I frequently try to make this point when people talk about, "If we don't have strict copyrights and DRM, no one will make music anymore!!!" No, people wrote music and performed music before the invention of the copyright. People are musical creatures. They love singing and dancing and performing for each other. It's fun and helps you get laid. The fact is that you could outlaw all musical performances, and what would happen is people would run underground musical speakeasies. People might even protest by singing songs in the street for free, even knowing they'd go to jail. Some people love music that much.
Likewise, if you outlawed writing books, people would still write them and distribute them, and there'd be people who would go to jail for smuggling illegal books. You can't stop people from writing books. I've probably written a books-worth of posts on this site for free, and I'd be pretty annoyed if you tried to stop me.
Re:It Ain't the Paper (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, technology changes. We've seen it, we've experienced it, and we will run into it with digital readers.
This is my biggest problem. Being forced to buy into a device. Right now, there are so many different version of readers and the DRM protected content only works of a select few. This is my problem. Look the way that the floppy drive has gone. What will happen in 5 or 10 years? Is you reader still going to exist, let alone be in serviceable (usable) condition? Will Amazon/B&N/Sony/etc. continue to support all those "old" devices? Will you be able to take your content from old device and put it into a new differing device? READ: I like Sony's digital reader better than my Kindle, can I put my Kindle content on my Sony reader? Or am I at the mercy of what Amazon/Sony/other choose to support?
Look how difficult now it is to find a computer with a 3.5" floppy drive? How about a 5.25" floppy (SD, DD, HD). I can pretty much promise you that your electronic reader is going to go the same way. Just like your computer of 5 years ago. Just like the Nintendo 8-bit, or Intellivision. Heck, are there any CDs or DVD that you've burnt 5 years ago that are still readable?
At a Thanksgiving dinner this year, I held a first printing of Bram Stokers Dracula. It was really quite something. Over 100+ years old, it was in just as readable condition as it was when it was printed. Will your e-book reader be able to do the same?
This is more than just a reactionary response to change. Electronic != Better tends to be the slogan, but it isn't always the case. E-readers/DRM Content/etc fall into this category. All my college textbooks have gone to electronic format (not by choice either, I have to pay for the e-texts regardless and can only be DLed to 2 single computers. No Kindel, Sony Reader, etc.) and it drives me nuts. Four hours of reading content on screen gets tiresome really fast. Since this switch, I have purchased a print copy over every text that I've needed. Its quite sad, since most of the time I can get the used copy for less than the electronic.
As you argue, content is the most important. But an Audio CD (content holder) is completely useless without a CD player. A locked safe (content holder) is completely useless if you don't have the combination. An MP3 (content) is useless without a MP3 player. A physical book will always be accessible. Content that is not accessible is not content at all; let alone useful content.
So which do you fall under? Your missing the third option that looks at the appropriateness of the development and considers *IF* it is good and should be used. I personally fall into that third category
Cheers,
Xyst
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
The passage of time censors old books more more than DRM. How many physical originals of your prized first edition of Feynman Lecture on Physics volume 2 still exist? Yet, within a matter of seconds, I was able to find a digital copy.
Digital allows the written word to live forever.
Tons. Paper doesn't degrade that quickly you know. Some may be thrown away, sure, but a lot of them are just lost by being in someone's bookshelf, or some random box of old books somewhere.
The whole concept of buying a book is totally different from renting a DRM digital copy. I love the fact that ,my oldest book is from 1954 and I was born in 1976. That is a lot older than the first bits I own. I do have a copy of 2.11 BSD, which I have simulated, a copy of Unix version 7, which I haven't simulated and an old ½" tape of some unix, probably System III for 32 bit VAX which I don't have any hardware to read. SHIT I have immense problems justtrying to use my old C64 and Amiga programs I did as a kid.......... but it is no surprise I can easily read all my letters from classmates from the same time.
Don't get me wrong, I love Project Gutenberg. But to this date, it hasn't given me the same preservation factor as in owning old books and keeping my old letters and drawings and notebooks. And I really, really, really try to save my old digital bits, but it's really fuucking hard. My old 5½" floppies probably aren't readable anymore.
So, to sum it up. I have digital bits from the late 70s, and printed stuff from the 50's, and my aunt has my granddad's diaries and he was born in 1896 so that kinda kicks the buttt out of your DRM:ed works.
Re:Give Away a PHYSICAL Copy, Sure (Score:2, Insightful)
Cory's Sacred Ancestors (or whoever the hell he was referencing)
He was referencing the founders of the United States who write its constitution. And your "effect the scanning and distribution of a book to 100,000 strangers on the Internet would have on the publishing industry" is entirely bogus. It is a positive effect, not a negative one. Doctorow gives his books away for free on his website, yet is on the New Your Times bestseller list. Care to explain that one, Einstein?
Sure, he's on the bestseller list because A: he's a very good writer, B: he has a crackerjack publisher who is willing to take risks, and C: he knows that the majority of those who read books are still mostly clueless when it comes to pirating digital books on the net. His books work this way because he is one of the only people doing it. If his idea caught on and everyone started giving away free digital copies of their books, I highly doubt most people would bother to buy them anymore. The concept works as an marketing tool the same way that any marketing concept works. As soon as it's stale, it's stops being effective. More so, the market is changing radically. Digital readers are coming out in droves, and people are very much more receptive to viewing books digitally than they were even two years ago. Sure, I may still want a physical copy of a good book for my library, but even that is becoming less appealing as the publishing industry "compensates" for the supposed lost revenue from piracy by raising yet again the price of paper books.
Logic alone is often completely trumped by pop market culture...
Selection bias in old works? (Score:4, Insightful)
Trash created pre-DRM like Mozart or Wagner just can't compare to the majesty modern DRM'ed works like Justin Timberlake or Britney spears.
Might there be a selection bias going on? We don't preserve everything from "back then"; we sure don't listen to all of it. I predict that in the future, people will still listen to, say, The Beatles. Or Elvis. Or rock out to that riff from Smoke on the Water. Maybe some Michael Jackson song will be preserved.
Not all old music was great. Not all new music is crap. Not even all good new music is worth preserving for ever. But some is.
The real problem is that record companies have shifted their function. It used to be that they discovered and selected talent; now they "produce" talent.
South Park tells a story about this too; see the Guitar Queer-o episode: "The next time you bring me some talent, make sure they're talented". And then in Fingerbang: "These are The New Boys from the Back Alley Zone. They're the new hit." (I'm paraphrasing the name.)
Maybe if enough people are bitten...? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good place to point out that Amazon unilaterally had all copies of 1984 deleted from all customer's devices, totally screwing many people up in the process. Sure the refunded the purchase cost. Big deal. They also apologized later for doing it. But this sent a very clear message that they cannot take back: They can trash your 'property' on a whim, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it as long as you abide by their DRM restrictions.
They say they won't do it again. Sorry, but once trust is lost, is VERY difficult to regain.
At least, it is for people who actually pay attention and think. What upsets me the most is that most consumers don't care enough to change their purchasing habits even after they've been bitten.
Except in very rare circumstances I avoid audio CDs, after what Sony did. I also don't buy Sony products anymore. Sony should have But when I see how many people still purchase Sony products, how PS3s are flying off the shelves, it makes it really hard to care. When the forementioned incident happened with Amazon, schadenfreude is the best description of how I felt. There have been SO many well reported incidents across SO many industries, that people have effectively waived their right to be outraged when such things happen to them.
Society at large flat out doesn't care. Those that know what's going on and care enough to do so will ALWAYS find a way to crack things like DRM so that they can at least protect themselves. Those that choose to ignore the damage that DRM causes, can go cry in their rooms because they should flat out have known better.
I can only hope that if enough people get hurt by DRM they will eventually complain loudly enough to stop this nonsense.
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
You make an interesting point because it's clear that publisher's problems are only going to increase as technology advances. Hard copies have the advantage of being durable but not easily copied. Individual electronic copies are exactly the opposite. One big problem is that the politics perverting copyright law have changed it from the original intent of eventually bringing IP into the public domain for the benefit of society at large. This concept is being transitioned into a system that allows rights-holders to profit from it in perpetuity.
Contrast this with the patent system where the time limits are still more strictly enforced. Any real debate over copyright should include the potential benefits to society at large, but in reality this won't happen because society at large doesn't have an army of high priced lawyers bringing suits and lobbying congress.
Re:It Ain't the Paper (Score:3, Insightful)
That's all well and good until dead tree publishers go out of business and books are no longer (or at least not as often) printed at all.
Then you don't get the second option.
What we need is a digital format we can be reasonably sure will stick around for the long haul, and if it doesn't stick around we need to know that it can be converted to new formats. If we have that, then we have something close to the security of a dead tree book.
Think of the archeologists! (Score:3, Insightful)
When ever I think of the book being replaced by its digital equivalent, I think of a scenario 200 years from now after a war destroys a whole nation. The people coming in to see what they can find a library with eBook readers and paper books. The paper books are still a little dusty, but everything on that civilisation up to the first decade of the 21st century is documented and available. The eBook readers on the other hand are another story, with publisher no longer in existence and DRM still in place, the content simply complains that the book can't be read dues to "text license expiry". 200 years of information on this society has now been lost to the sands of time.
Certainly this scenario is a little negative and could occur for other reasons, but the point I am trying to make is that convenience makes for a shitty legacy, especially with DRM in place.
Re:hyperbolic nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth can be buried in a big pile of disinformation. Goebbels proved that and Orwell observd it. Nothing really new there.
If you want to believe that history is "determined" by people who "alter the records," more power to you. I'd rather believe that history is intelligently designed by 45 people who work at the Wal-Mart in Branson, Missouri.
Re:What happens when the reader breaks ? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. How many books do you own that you can pass on to your children? How old are those books?
2. Have you ever had a book destroyed through wearing out, getting destroyed by dog, fire, water, etc.?
3. Have you ever lost a book, had it borrowed or stolen?
I'm sure you can all see how these questions erode the argument. And the counter argument, pushing the statistical likelihood of a book being lost or destroyed before passing it on, versus the DRM getting screwed up - it's not very powerful. No one knows the real answer to that question - but people think they do - and so the argument loses those who already have an opinion.
Just some thoughts.
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
Guess what, most artists of any kind don't get to take time off from their "real jobs" until they become well known.
If it makes you feel better, we can modify my list to include writing a short story, then raising funds to write a full-length novel based on that.
The point I was making is that instead of getting an advance from a publisher who wants a return on investment, authors would get an advance from their audience who want the finished work itself.
Re:Silly me (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not saying that they should be guaranteed an income or a living. What I am saying is that it's hard to be an artist. Those that are truly motivated because art is a calling will be fine no matter what happens. Those who have talent but would like to make a living are either going to have to produce what society wants (as society's judgment of the market value of their work is what feeds, clothes, and shelters them) or do something else for a living, and that's fine. I don't have a problem with it.
However, without incentives, only those that are truly devoted to their calling or who have a knack for producing what society wants will be able to create. Some of the most radical, thought-provoking, and critically acclaimed art is not popular or profitable, much like basic science research is rarely profitable, but they both advance mankind.
What I see on Slashdot is hypocrisy. On one hand, people complain that science, basic, fundamental science, is not being funded enough, and that governments or large organizations should be giving more grants to researchers to keep science from being a strictly commercial venture, as commercial ventures, as a rule, focus on what brings in more profit in the near and medium terms. Some organizations (for example, back when Bell Labs was active) focus on the long term, but most focus on the short term.
On the other hand, people are complaining that artists shouldn't expect funding in the form of grants (advances, for example) from governments or large organizations even though artistic contributions can have similar effects on society. They feel that artists should produce what is profitable. Ideas are powerful and insight into how we perceive this world, either scientific or artistic, has real meaning, regardless of if they bring in the most profit.
Wrong path! (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually I and O'Reilly profited from the physical-book sales of "Using Samba", which was shipped in electronic form with every copy of Samba.
Nerds, you see, buy physical books. They lose on searchability (unless the indexer actually does his job) but gain on size, weight, cost and readability-in-the-bathtub (;-))
--dave
My $0.02 worth (Score:3, Insightful)
I read fifty (50) plus books a year, and have since about 1987.
I keep some, re-read some of my faves three or four times.
When I am "done" with a book, it gets donated to a local library or given to a friend with an interest in such books.
IMHO, DRM in combination with the stupid copyright extension act passed some years ago, to me means that more and more books (whether they are entertainment only, or text books or whatever) that should make it into the public domain may never be seen again in any form, of then than already existing books, which will deteriorate over time.
There should be a law requiring that any book published (real book, publication, etc. whether "real" or electronic), non-DRM protected electronic copies should be forwarded for safeguarding by the Library of Congress and at least 8 (if not more) of the major libraries in the country. That way, once the stupid extended copyright expiration happens, these can then be released to the public domain properly. In other words, make it possible for the books to made public domain, as opposed to being obliterated entirely from human knowledge.