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.'"
Silly me (Score:3, Interesting)
And here I was thinking the content of the book was the most important part.
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)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When you own a book, it's yours to read. Digital distribution is the future, and DRM implemented properly isn't a bad thing. I'll take a cheap digital copy over a bulky, inconvenient physical copy that I can sell or give away any day.
And I won't! Part of the fun with owning books is the fact that you own them. I've bought childrens books that I'll never read myself, but they were some of my fav books when I was an infant, and if I ever get kids I will read them to them, and they will be theirs.
On top of that one of my prize books in the shelf is a first edition of Feynman Lecture on Physics volume 2, originally owned by a student named Marcley. If you know him let me know. There is something special about old books. Sure, some of them
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (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-h
Re:Silly me (Score:4, Interesting)
My solution was to slice the binding off books and run them through the Ricoh scanner/copiers and turn them all into PDFs at 20 pages per minute.
Luckily we have yet to need to do that, but even at my home office I can do the same thing for less than $200.
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.
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: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: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but if an author can't get an advance from a publishing company, fewer authors will be able to afford to take the time away from their "real jobs" to write a book. Yes, you can build an audience using unpolished, unedited work, and yes, you can take many years to write a book, but the first route leaves you looking like an amateur and the second route means you are more likely to get frustrated and give up halfway through.
The vast majority of books aren't a hit on the level of Harry Potter or Twilight
Re: (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: (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.
Ho
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But that sort of brings a good point into play. With digital books, I could conceivably print them to paper in any fashion I want (for personal use). For instance, I want a nice leather-bound set of King's Dark Tower series - I'd love to get a digital version to get one of the print-on-demand companies to make a copy for me. Or Harry Potter, or Dune, or any number of a classics that I can'
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
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: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: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
as long as you have the DRM keys and compatible hardware.
Re: (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
Re: (Score:3)
For God's sake, fixed that for you. In this of all statements.
In my sincerest depths, thank you sir! I though, in my silly mind that slashdot would censor me, even though I am writing this form Sweden, a supposedly free country. The Chilling Effect of your american new speak forced me to change my original FUCK to a lame fsck in order to evade the imaginary digital censors. For this enlightenment, I thank thee.
I do not however need to get your god into this. I'm not a slave to a god who doesn't fucking exist.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Silly me (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be far more accepting of DRM if copyright law went back to being a reasonable period. It's very easy today to envision an eternal copyright starting the day Disney created anything they feel is of value, and continuing in perpetuity thereafter.
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. As it is, though, anything written after my father was born is unlikely to fall into public domain before I die.
Apart from reading it, which is the best part of course, I prefer owning a book. I enjoy sharing them with friends. I appreciate the simple fact that every book I've ever purchased is mine forever (barring damage or theft, of course). No corporation or government has the right to remove my books from my control, and it's impossible to change them - you'd have to come to my house and get them.
If I could buy an e-book knowing that in a few years the DRM would be lifted and I could freely share it, and knowing that my Doctrine of First Sale rights would be protected in the meantime, I'd seriously consider some form of e-book reader. But recent events and the history of copyright holders have demonstrated otherwise, and the length of copyright means that the money I'd spend on e-books is for a short-term rental on a book, and if I want to rent my books I'll donate more money and time to my library and get them that way.
Heck, I'd be happy with an analog of the current "hardcover / paperback" model. For the first year or two of a book's existence, it could be available only in a high-priced, heavily DRMed version that is not allowed to be shared. After a year or two, anyone who spent the money on the hardcover then gets an unlock code that allows them to freely share and keep their copy without DRM, and an unlocked "mass market" version comes out at a discounted price that can be shared. I'd happily buy a deeply DRM-encrusted bookreader and buy new releases if I knew there was a sunset provision on the DRM that would allow me to keep and share them in a reasonable timeframe. I'd even pay the same I do now for a new release, as long as the contract clearly stated that the book could be unlocked in a relatively short period.
Paper sucks. Paper is inconvenient, and clumsy, and expensive, and harder to read, and bulky, and subject to damage, loss, and theft.
** BUT IT'S MINE **
And until e-readers can fulfill that desire, I have no desire to get one.
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: (Score:3, Funny)
Example, please.
Re: (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: 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: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is, tec
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't need "publishers" to print books.
If this were otherwise, you would not exist as all of modern society and
our current lifestyle is dependent on a few pirates that copied any book
they could find BY HAND.
The only digital format that makes any sense is one that can be easily pirated.
Conflating the creation of books with megacorp publishing houses is a grand fallacy.
Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)
God spoke. He wants His commandments back. It might get very wet for a long time.
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.
Re:Doctrine of First Sale (Score:4, Funny)
You conveniently forget that without these necessary DRM restrictions, nobody will be bothered to actually write articles and books in the first place. The same points you make were also claimed when DRM was applied to music - thankfully the technology has succeeded in this industry and put a stop to the years of silence and dull parties that previous generations had to endure.
Re: (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:Doctrine of First Sale (Score:5, Funny)
Ya, I know. Projects like Wikipedia or Creative Commons just wouldn't work if the contributers weren't getting paid.
Likewise, until the invention of intellectual property rights and copyright, no art was ever created. It's fortunate that we discovered these laws, or the world would have remained indefinitely with any music, art or literature.
And the quality is really the difference. 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.
These laws and systems are not only the sole protection of artistic creation, but they ensure a much higher standard to every art form.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I love you, and I want to have your baby.
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.)
Re:Doctrine of First Sale (Score:5, Informative)
What Doctorow says about books applies to music and movies as well. For decades, records and tapes were yours to loan, share, give away... you OWNED them.
The constitution says that Congress can give a "limited time" monopoly on publishing to "authors and inventors". Period. It was included to protect authors and inventors from publishers. It gives Congress no power to protect publishers from anyone.
Yet, somehow in the 1950s the record companies got copyright law to let them screw over the artists, making phonorecordings automatically "works for hire".
If you want to pirate a Cory Doctorow book, just go to his website. They're available there for free download in many formats. The same goes for Lawrence Lessig's books, on his website. I urge everyone to read Lessig's book Free Culture. His and Doctorow's books are available under a Creative Commons license.
The Constituton is, in fact, the cornerstone of all US law. However, Congress ignores it and the Supreme Court lets them. Of the four boxes, we'd better start being more effective with the first three before we're forced to use the forth.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
We have the best government money can buy!
Re: (Score:2)
Xenu [wikipedia.org], is that you?
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.
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: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, that's what the church thought too when the bible was translated and the pressess started running. It'd surely destroy them.
It might have if theology were all that they offered, but they also offer community.
Same as records destroyed the music industry,
Records severely deprecated the sheet music industry, which would probably have been eliminated altogether by the internet and free music [score, tab &c] sharing sites if they had not somehow managed to convince the legal system that every instantiation of a collection of notes are the property of the sheet music publisher.
and home recording, and VHS, and CD-burning, and DVD copying, and Bluray copying,
All of these have a certain built-in hassle factor. You actually had a better chance of a properly
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: (Score:2)
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.
Scribes didn't have a clue about the effect the printing press would have on their profession.
Even if you're right, and the publishing industry as it stands today dies, so what? Or do you long for the days when books were wildly expensive and very few had access to them because they had to be copied by hand? New technology kills industries, new ones take their place.
Re: (Score:2)
too much knowledge out there (Score:2, Interesting)
I tend to agree with him some, but there is simply too much music, art and knowledge out there to take in the old fashioned way. and if you do own the physical media it becomes a clutter and storage nightmare
i don't buy too much ebooks but in the last few weeks i bought a MS SQL T-SQL ebook app on my iphone to read on the train to work and some pdf's from mannning books. and the convenience factor is very nice in not carrying around the extra weight
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to agree with him some, but there is simply too much music, art and knowledge out there to take in the old fashioned way. and if you do own the physical media it becomes a clutter and storage nightmare
i don't buy too much ebooks but in the last few weeks i bought a MS SQL T-SQL ebook app on my iphone to read on the train to work and some pdf's from mannning books. and the convenience factor is very nice in not carrying around the extra weight
That's true, PDF's and electronic books in general spare you the storage nightmare. On the other hand I hate reading PDFs off a computer screen and I have yet to find an electronic device that didn't suck as a ebook reader and that statement covers purpose designed ones like the Kindle as well. Perhaps if that rumored Apple tablet turns out to be more than just vaporware I'll have cause to reconsider... although... now that I think about it I rather doubt it simply because with these eBook readers they can
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:too much knowledge out there (Score:4, Funny)
As Ben Franklin said, those who give up their rights for convenience deserve neither, or something...
The exact saying is:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Ben Franklin loved convenience. Hell, the lazy bastard used a kite to get his key up in the air rather than climbing up himself.
too much knowledge out there v2 (Score:2)
yesterday i also downloaded 100 free kindle books from Amazon. even if i were to buy them the chances of reading a book a second time in the near future after the first reading are slim to none. if the price is lower than physical than buying an electronic DRM'd book is no big deal. by the time my son grows up there will be more books to read so i don't really care if he never reads any of my old Tom Clancy books. besides, how often do kids do the same things as parents?
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.
Re: (Score:2)
2045: Clinical immortality is invented! Also, technology can manipulate the brain now!
MPAA: License "Shrek 9", keep memories of the video for 5 years ($35), 10 years ($55) or 20 years ($85). BTW, our "life + 75" copyrights last forever now.
Re: (Score:2)
with amazon you can have multiple devices on the same account. with apple itunes it's up to 5 computers and i don't know what the limit is for iphones, ipods and apple TV's. wife and I buy an app once and put it on our iphones. no problem.
your theory is flawed since as DRM has increased the amount of art, cinema, music and literature has increased as well. there is simply too much art to take in these days. Hulu is DRM'd and yet they give away the content for free. same with cable TV. the signal is encrypte
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
in fact i'm browsing the Steam store now and you are wrong. the content is all DRM'd but publishers like Lucasarts are selling 15 year old PC games there that people loved back in the day and it would be impossible to sell them at retail since sales would be so low. Lucasarts has also released their classics on the iphone. i'm playing Secret of Monkey Island. DRM and electronic distribution lowers the cost of entry for content that would otherwise never see the light of day because the cost of selling physi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You can't do that with a digital copy.
Actually, yes you can. Annotation is a key feature on the Kindle and it works pretty well, actually.
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.
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: (Score:2)
at the rate prices are falling who cares?
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: (Score:2)
i've read it, several times. physical book every single time and i don't think it ever changed. even saw the movie.
from what i remember there was no digital distribution system in the book and they simply rewrote paper copies and destroyed old copies of newspapers and whatever. just like today, people throw away the newspaper after reading it so you can change the past in future news. and i don't keep every copy of every newspaper i ever read.
with a digital distribution system it makes "1984" a little harde
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: (Score:2)
Don't worry too much. It's defnitely something we should push for, but it'll go the way of Apple's DRM. The content providers don't want a single book store, so there will be competing DRM formats. The inevitable cheap hardware clones won't want to pay for the DRM licenses. The DRM will go away and we'll be back to an open format.
Re: (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
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.
I'm not a fan of DRM but... (Score:5, Interesting)
A physical book has a sort of built-in DRM! If you give it away, you can't read it anymore. It can't easily be copied (it requires a lot of scanning and printing to do that). Isn't that kind of thing also part of the intention of DRM?
IMHO though, the world has changed, we now live in a world where information can be copied without any physical restrictions. So I hope that one day humanity will be able to live in that world, instead of trying to enforce old ways onto us with DRM. I'm sure that in a world where information can be copied freely, there can also be culture, people who make money, artists, and so on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, sorta. Of course, "DRM" (Digital Rights Management) isn't really a relevant term, but there are certainly reality-based restrictions on copying a paper book. In most cases, it's cheaper to buy another copy than it is to make your own copy.
But your point is well-taken. A physical book allows you unfettered access to one and only one copy of itself. If you give it away or if it's stolen or destroyed, you've lost it.
And, yes, that thinking is very much part of the intention of DRM. If you buy one co
what did they say? (Score:2)
for the most part i agree with him, but what did they say?
Dead on (Score:2)
My local library (Score:2)
While I appreciate reading books I much more enjoying using my local public library than spending a shitload of money on books whose value depreciates faster than .. well anything. And yes I know I am paying for those books through my taxes, but the range and depth of the libraries catalog far surpasses anything I could achieve if I spent the same amount of money privately.
So I am confused now - I support reading books, but don't support maintaining a huge private library. Does this mean I am bent on des
Re: (Score:2)
Lending libraries are in fact the perfect application for DRM, because it gets you out of having to return anything while still respecting the publisher's exclusive right to distribute copies. My lady has been taking advantage of our library system's membership in an online audiobook rental system, which is quite convenient (and accessible even over dialup connections on an overnight timescale, although now we have low-grade broadband.)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends, did you vote for tax cuts in the last year? Support for libraries will little or no fees with expanded hours is the key. Some libraries are closed Sunday and Monday here, and we can't borrow books from out of county. The rest have odd hours that make it difficult for someone working 8-5 to utilize.
I think I'd be happier paying taxes if I was allowed to indicate on a long check list where I wanted my money to go. Restrict dollars to the Halliburton "cost plus" burn pits [informatio...house.info] and increase spending on pub
What happens when the reader breaks ? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that the answer to all of the above questions is: no.
Re: (Score:2)
not 100%, but with free virtualization on the desktop and soon on mobile phones a reality keeping old software around for decades to come shouldn't be as hard as say 15 years ago
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.
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: (Score:2)
He should stick to blogging and the occasional soapboxy young adult book.
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: (Score:2, Interesting)
worse then Nazi Germany / USRR with remote Censors (Score:2)
This is worse then Nazi Germany / USRR with remote Censors and a way to tack who has what book.
Free copies of _Makers_ (Score:2)
I took up Cory's offer and created an iPhone version of _Makers_:
http://www.wayner.org/node/66 [wayner.org]
Please send along any comments about the interface.
New tag (Score:2)
DRM + e-books = 1984 & Fahrenheit 451 (Score:5, Interesting)
I was getting halfway interested in the Kindle until the 1984 debacle. That shows that DRM has a much darker potential than its proponents will ever acknowledge. Fuck all that shit. (Not picking on Amazon; I like it and have had an account there for years.) Corporations cannot be trusted to have any interest in freedom of any kind for the public. No doubt their accountants would show it as a negative (if intangible) item on their balance sheets.
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.
Quirks and eBooks (Score:5, Informative)
Copyright restrictions and such on sale of books/music/movies is extremely stupid in my opinion. In the end all it took was changing my address twice - once to Canada and then back - but it's the principle of it all. I'm happily reading my book now; a book that just to purchase I had to be dishonest about where I lived simply so I'd be allowed to purchase it.
DRM is another issue I'm worried about, however with the advent of tools to strip the Kindle and nook DRM, I'm not to worried about moving my books to a new platform once a better read becomes available.
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.
The most important part of a digital book (Score:3, Interesting)
is not having to pay for it. Once someone has it in digital form, without some restrictive DRM, it can be shared freely with the planet. That means I can get it for free, without paying. No money.
If Cory sees his financial future in people having his written works without paying for them, good luck. Freedom is nice, but eating is nicer. Freedom can be enjoyed a lot better with a full belly.
Now there is no reason a copy-limited work cannot be resold. There are ways to manage this that do not prevent resale or other transfers. The problem is that if you allow "loaning", "backing up", "format shifting" or anything else that allows multiple copies to exist at the same time you will also have "sharing". And once you have sharing, you will have redistribution. And redistribution means nobody has to pay.
Right now, any ebook that is pretty popular can be found on various sharing web sites. And do not for a moment think that my Kindle is somehow immune to displaying these "shared" ebooks because of something Amazon did. Nope, I can read these shared books on my Kindle.
Hope you like working for free Cory.
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.
Most important is reading book, not owning (Score:2)
BTW, the most important part of your subject... was left out of the subject (for dramatic emphasis, no doubt). Anything wrong with just writing "Most important is reading book, not owning" in the subject?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but where I'm from the library is for creepy old people. I bought books I wanted to read. Not because I'm rich, which I'm not. Because libraries are a pain in the ass. I'd much rather own books. If I want to read it again in a year or two, or give it to someone else or write in the margins (which I don't do, but just as an example) I can't do that. Most of those things are extremely inconvenient or impossible with library books.
Most of the issues with libraries, in fact, would be sol
Re: (Score:2)
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'
Maybe that's why? The content of the book is certainly important, but without these so-called rights inherent in owning a book, the dissemination of that content becomes limited. Libraries wouldn't be allowed, you'd need to purchase a copy for yourself for any book that you wished to absorb the contents of.
Re: (Score:2)
People who just want to read the book can go to libraries. However, as evidenced by the large number of bookstore sales, many people do actually want to own their books.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how you make that jump. For a lot of people - myself included - buying books is a tool of convenience. I quite like having books around, but I'm not particularly attached to them emotionally and now that I'm planning on moving house soon they seem more of a liability than an asset. Going to a library is a lot more hassle than buying a book from Amazon. It's a bit more hassle than buying a book from a brick-and-mortar store (same distance, but I have to remember to return the book or I get f
Re: (Score:3, Informative)