Slashdot Mirror
The Right To Read: Time Limited Textbooks
qbasicprogrammer writes: "Vital Source Technologies is now providing time-limited medical textbooks to universities. Password protected books as predicted in The Right To Read by Richard Stallman are finally becoming a reality." Starting on Oct. 28, (when the other part of the DMCA comes into effect), you could face a civil lawsuit and criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook. See the NYU FAQ, the Advogato discussion, or the company crowing about new revenue opportunities.
If a person purchases a book they aren't allowed to let someone else read it? What kind of ridiculous day and age are we living in when electronic means are being created in order to prevent sharing and helping one another? Yes, please sign me up for the electronic devestation of my right to be nice to other humans!
--- Simple solutions are always the best
Think about it, it makes a lot of sense to have medical textbooks that are time limited.
Consider eating eggs for example.
1950 Eggs are good for you.
1970 Eggs are bad for you.
1980 Eggs aren't so bad for you.
I still have my textbooks from my breif stint in tech school. They have proven to be increadibly helpfull as refrence materials, and for teaching the kids. are we coming to a time when we are esentialy going to have to pay "maintenece" cost just for trying to retain knowlege we learned?? how many people remember EVERYTHING they learned in school?
Dirty Pirate Hooker
you could face a civil lawsuit and criminal penalties of up to five years in jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook
How does this work? I always thought that books were legal for anyone to read as long as two people weren't reading it at once.. (by making a copy of the book). By the same law that you can have mp3s of your cd's you legally own at work and home. as long as you aren't listening to them at the same time.
are they now 'Licensing' books now in a shrinkwrap EULA?
phoenix
We are all geeks, just admit it and get on with your life.
Man.. I shared so many books... what a load of crap.
It isn't unusual to be forced to buy the crappy book your prof published. I think that, more than anything else will drive whether schools move to eTexts.
News for UW students
Boy, this sounds like a bad idea....
I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, but the time lock on my text has expired, and I won't be able to perform your life saving surgery today.
Ouch. All doctors are in "practices"! They need the books to help get it right. Ouch.
--
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way
OK, time for all you idiots that have been calling RMS a maniac to eat your words. He was dead on target with this one.
Quite frankly, I find the idea that you can be charged for reading over someone's shoulder one step short of the "Thought Police". No way would I ever spend money on a textbook that was licensed like this.
(BTW, I work for a publishing company, and I can tell you that the higher-ups would drool at the idea of such a system. The day I have to work on such a book is the day I quit my job.)
Perhaps not in fact, but in practice.
If you were hiring a system administrator, and (s)he showed you the Netware 3.1 and DOS 5.0 manuals (s)he knew backwards and forwards, would you be impressed, or would you ask for the next candidate?
George
Damn, I guess I can't photocopy that book and a chapter by chapter basis anymore. Also, where will I draw my pictures?
Well, isn't that wonderful. The number, and source, of required texts for our future doctors is no longer determined by need, but by contractual obligation to the publisher...
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__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Imagine a world where ALL textbooks are password-protected, time-limited, etc. How does Steve Wozniak learn electronics? How does Edison learn physics or engineering? How does ANY person of limited means learn ANYTHING? And how do we pool our knowledge on anything from "how do you set the VCR clock" to "how do you make starship"?
There are powerful societal reasons to keep information transfer as free (in all senses of the word) as possible. Unfortunately, these reasons don't translate well into the language of capitalism. There is no way to say "a rising tide lifts all boats" in Capitalismese.
Discussion question: How do you explain this to business people (who run the country) OR build it into the economy?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The DMCA was created for things like this. You're not buying books, you're buying licenses to read books. It's like a library where you pay. And someone will come up with a way to break the woefully inadequate protection system they have there so people can read the books when they like, and they will be sued, even if they live in some other country. And we will be better off because with rights and freedom, chaos would immediately ensue.
icqqm [ICQ:11952102]
Are you breathing air? Have you paid this months air bill? That's a $500,000.00 fine, mister!!!
Outrageous... its Capitalcratic politics, and its eating us alive!
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Although not an orwellian phenomenon as such, restriction of books is up his alley. Isn't there anyone out there that understands what is happening?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
" What about a computer? The VitalBook version for the 2000-2001 academic year is fully-developed on the Apple Macintosh. You must
have an Apple PowerBook for this application."
Yeah. Right. I guess the future dentists of the world will not be able to run Linux or even Windows.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
I think the issue here is that in essense they are charging you a subscription to access the information.
/. readers slam these economic models as unfair. Yet there was a fair bit of support for the suggestions that were made by myself and others about how the RIAA could put all the music ever made into a streamable database and charge people $20 a month to access it rather than having to buy cds.
This is really no different from some existing technical knowledge bases on the internet where you (or your uni) has to be a paid up subscriber.
Interestingly enough this is similar to the model that microsoft are considering using for software. No longer will you be hindered by having to constantly buy new M$ software... instead you will only be able to rent it. That way everyone has the most recent versions and they can forget about backward compatibility.
What is even more interesting is that so many people, particularly
Since we all know any "secure" form of information can be broken in any way or form, do they have a way of tracking which book goes to who? There's something to be said about just copying the text content only, but what does this company do when 50 people make copies of their books? Do they have a way of marking each cd in a unique fasion?
---
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
This could turn out to be a net positive. I'm not suggesting that it will cause the public to "rise up" and strike down the DMCA, but... it could draw some serious attention and paint the whole thing in a seriously unflattering light. Most people I talk to don't know or care about the DMCA. When I try to explain it to them in terms of DeCSS, Napster, MP3.com, etc. their eyes just sort of glaze over. Maybe this is something that the average citizen can relate to.
Public libraries are soon to be illegal.
Only the rich may be permitted to read.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I wish the content companies would admit how much they're gaining for the new technology instead of just growsing about how it threatens their existence.
Then when court dates for other civil and criminal actions dry up, effectively shutting down the system, someone might get a clue. If not, this is one crime I will willingly commit. It is my book, my property for which I paid my money for.
Are you a booklegger?
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Time make copies of *all* your books/data/publications and move them to a data-haven. Yes, they aren't just for Neal Stephenson books any more. See:
-----------------------------------------------
---
Segmentation Fault ( core dumped )
Unlike digital books, like the VitalBook, once you purchase a textbook, it's yours FOREVER! I could see paying $3600 for a lifetime subscription to a digital service, if the information was really that important to me... textbooks are most valuable after the schooling experience, when they become not learning fodder, but reliable reference material. So, as a dental student at NYU, I have to pay $3600 for the VitalBooks that are only good while I'm in school, then pay for additional materials when I go to my residency? This calls for a boycott!
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
I hope you all like the world you are creating.
Anyone that has tried to go through registration or financial aid in a university will know that this will go on without a hitch...
Universities are a military dictatorship (at least mine was, the bloodsucking bastards...), and the college kids are used to being screwed... royally... twice a day.
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Do you understand the implications of restricting the free-flow of ideas in a democratic society? If the principal means of distributing knowledge are restricted, you have your first step (a big one) on the road to the creation of a self-perpetuating oligarchy -- with high and criminal-law protected -- barriers to entry. And what about the ability of individuals (this is America isn't it) to self-educate from easily affordable and readily available sources of information. What about the World Wide Web?!
On the other hand, maybe ubiquitously available napster type applications, plus faster bandwidth availability, and wide-spread dissemination of dvd-encryption busting tools will leave these fascistic proposals on the scrap heap of history.
Here's Hoping.
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
Redmond WA, Monday 28th August -- Microsoft Press today announced that they will be moving all their current publications into a time limited form.
This is designed to alleviate the current problems they have of failing to get it right the first time.
We were unable to get a comment from microsoft, but a preprepared press release says "By allowing a user to only use the textbook for the first hour after purchase we hope to be able to provide up to the minute content. Since our standards change so regularly users will never be misled by outdated content".
Beta testers were reported to be pleased with the books although there have been several injuries as a result of the impromptu warning:
"This textbook will self destruct in five seconds"
So how long before med students are downloading "Principles of Internal Medicine" at the krad super 'leet med text warez site?
Click here for Hot Teen Action
Click here for Sanford's Guide to Antimicrobial Therapy
Click here for QuakeV
Can't wait
Before everybody starts to scream about having these guys drawn and quartered, I'd like to remind the esteemed Slashdot audience about such thing as freedom, and in particular, the freedom of contract. If there is no monopoly situation (and it doesn't seem like it) then why in the world should anybody be prevented from making a product (even if you believe it's bad) and trying to sell it? After all, that's what market economy means: good products succeed and bad products fail. For a good example look at Divx (Circuit City idea to sell time-limited movies, etc.) Was there any regulation/legislation necessary? No. Did the stupid idea die on its own? Yes.
Same thing here. These guys have to compete with real textbooks which, among other things, have resale value. If you think that you'd like to keep that textbook as a reference even after the course is over, why, then, don't buy the time-limited version. As long as there is a choice, I don't see any problems.
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob. Other than that I have no objections to having a choice between a $120 paper textbook and (hopefully) $20 time-limited DVD.
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Already I'm blasted for $600 (CAN $) worth of books each SEMESTER. I wouldn't need an electronic pain of a book to put more money in the publishers pockets.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
jail and a fine of $500,000 for reading someone else's textbook.
No,no,no!
Come on michael, you know damn well the DMCA has nothing to do with reading someone else's textbook!
It will make it illegal to duplicate the DVD, but that doesn't prevent someone from sharing it anymore than it prevents you from playing Quake at a friend's house!
This an interesting story on its own merit, for many reasons, and does not need your sensationalism to get people's attention!
Browser? I barely know her!
I don't know about you, but most people don't like to read from a screen, not in the last place because you can not make annotations on your screen (well, at least it won't be a very smart idea :-)
:) my opinion *might* change....
While a portable TFT screen may help overcome the portability and glare problems, making annotiations remains a problem.
Especially in textbooks I want to make a lot of annotations. My opinion is that, up to now, most software that I have heard of that tries to let you do this, just plain sucks. Nothing beats a pencil and paper sometimes...
Now with that new write recognizion hardware you see around lately (running Linux
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Calling these time-limited peep shows books is an egregious abuse of the word "book." I think it's only fair to doubt the honesty, competence, and judgement of any author, publisher, or med school who facilitates this kind of product. Producing these peep shows instead of real medical texts is not consistent with any legitimate educational purpose.
About 20 years ago, when I began college, through just a few years ago (when I finally went back and finished college) the University and the professors used radically different methods:
1. They would have "new editions" of textbooks quite frequently. The main difference seemed to be the wording or order of questions assigned for homework. Calc books were the most amazing. Did not know Business student calculus was so dynamic as to require a new adition of the same book every year or 2.
2. "Class packs" were common a few years back, until some lawsuit against Kinko's stalled wholsale copyright violations by professors. Somehow, a way was found around that and class packs were available again, for a pretty hefty price, given the "quality" of a pile of xeroxed paper. BTW, even though the pile of bad quality printed paper was a collection of other's work, don't dare make a copy for a friend or the prof. would have a fit.
It seems that this latest twist has the same effect as the tactics used before, except the professors/textbook writers do not have to move the questions around every couple of terms.
However, in the past there were not any criminal hammers hovering over the students for these violations.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
I've always been annoyed by the $100+ textbooks. The usual excuse for charging $115 for a textbook has been the cost of "paper, printing, binding, stocking..." Now with these people charging $600 for a DVD it sort of proves that the college textbook industry is just greedy and can get away with outrageous textbook prices because they have a captive audience.
Sure, the FAQ does go on to say that you can return it if you're not satisfied, but students starting in 2001 are told "It is our position that ALL dentists must have excellent computer skills to maximize their skill and knowledge as dentists." To help them build excellent computer skills, Apple PowerBooks and VitalBooks are mandatory.
Meanwhile, back at VitalBooks themselves, they comment:
Here at VitalBook, we've taken care of little details like choice. Heck, you don't even need to be taking a given course to charge people for it:
And that pesky used book store where people can save a little money on their education and help protect the environment with reuse:My biggest hope is that as companies get increasingly... well... evil, it will become clear to everyone that this must be stopped. I don't want to live in a world where I license everything and own nothing.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
THE FIRST 10 AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION
AS RATIFIED BY THE STATES
Note: The following text is a transcription of the first 10 amendments to the Constitution in their original form. These
amendments were ratified December 15, 1791, and form what is known as the "Bill of Rights."
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the
freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a
redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not
be infringed.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a
manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,
shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly
describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand
Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any
criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall
private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be
informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory
process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved,
and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the
common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people.
The real Anonymous Coward has Slashdot ID -1. Anyone else is an imposter.
This would make it illegal for Microsoft to sell licenses that restricted use of their product to one computer or one purchaser. The rights they convey to you would also be conveyed to any person you wished to transfer that software too. If you had permanent access to some medical database, you could transfer that access to somebody else (setting the ground for the notion of inheritance of intellectual property).
Now, to the benefit of copyright holders, I think it is fair to allow them to build in limitations that permit only one copy of an item to exist at a time. So, if you transfer your rights to an item, you cannot continue to share those rights. But I think there should also be built in requirements to allow for limited duplication of material for archival purposes (how many of us have lost our CD's to scratches?)
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This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
if it's not in your head, it ain't private.
For every encryption there's a decryption...you just have to want the info badly enough, or be disgusted enough by an Orwellian nightmare of a scheme.
I don't know about other people but personally i get sick of reading things online. There is nothing as good as reading good hard back copy. Also has any body considered the medical considerations of college students starting to read online. It would probably cause an increase in cases of carpul tunnel, bad eyesight.
What happens after I graduate? For students who subscribe throughout dental school, the VitalBook you have when you graduate will always be active. The College is finalizing a plan for alumni which will be announced later. If you decide to return the VitalBook after 90 days, or you do not renew the program after the first year, your VitalBook will become non-functional and will not work at all.
The NYU FAQ implies the DVD will still be readable (meaning NOT time limited) -- just won't be updated. It appears the story leading was misleading.
KenNow it seems that even knowledge is becoming ISO9xx-ied.
Have these guys actually found somebody to share their pretentions with them ?
Let's take a look to their partners list...
Jeeesus... They don't need partners, they construct theirs !
It is also strange to see Mac Powerbooks on all of their Vital Book-related pages though I am sure this will rather run on MS platforms.
Grrr...
PS: When will the toilet paper also be subject to non-disclosure-agreements ?
Maybe when electronic noses will be there to check who did uses one another's.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If this shit with time locket textbooks (I assume on computer) happens, I'm downloading the whole friggin thing while I have access, and then selling the book to the next student who takes the class. Yes. How does "book buyback" programs work with this scheme?
THE REAL GOAL OF TIME LIMITED TEXTBOOKS IS To KILL THE USED TEXTBOOK MARKET.
As a starving college student. I certainly cannot always afford new textbooks. Looks like once again history is repeating itself. "Learning is only for the wealthy" and not for us plebs.
This really does mirror what RMS describes. Frightening. Here's what VitalBook's FAQ says:
Wow. I used to just laugh at some of RMS's rhetoric. I think I can take him much more seriously now.
And I was in a bad mood to begin with today....sig: file not found
How do you explain this to business people (who run the country) OR build it into the economy?
Why did the Fed raise interest rates? In part to keep lid on rising cost of wages due to low employment.
The established textbook distribution model does not help increase the quality or quantity of educated individuals that can fill the advanced job positions of an information-based economy.
Logic suggests that removing artificial barriers to a quality education will be good for society, and, also good for corporate earnings. Why? Better educated individuals --> Better business decisions/actions --> Better earnings growth.
Separately, what do you expect from the Ivory tower? You have to "earn" (read "pay") for that white coat.
That's not even counting the fact that you have to buy an Apple computer to view the thing, which they're happy to sell you, of course. Go figure.
I guess they think that being able to search easier is going to be worth the $1200 extra you pay for the books alone, but last I checked, textbooks tend to have a pretty good index in the back for that.
I would assume (hope, anyway) that they give you some way to highlight and make notes while you're reading, and if they had any foresight they'd search that when you do searches later, which might be nice. I'd still go with a good old book I can keep on my shelf and won't have to worry about them deciding to deactivate someday.
According to the faq, if you finish the program and pay all the way through the 4 years, you'll have the books and they'll work forever. If you give them back before the 90 day period, you get your money back and don't keep the books. So what happens if you quit in between?
I'll stick to real books, thanks.
Borogrove
Yet another Mac on innovation.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Things like restricted reading *needs* to change...
I'm not rich... does that mean my kid will be forced to be a blue collar mill worker, because I can't afford to pay for all the time he needs to study for tests? If this is the future, its not going to stop... next thing you know we'll be paying to breath the "united states air"......
Then again, that's already covered in taxes...
-- "Almost everyone is an idiot. If you think I'm exaggerating, then you're one of them."
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
"guarantees 100% market penetratoin at participating schools
significantly increases the number of titles students purchase each year
significantly reduces overhead costs associated with manufacture and distribution of textbooks
and promises continued licensing of publisher materials through continuing education
reates a copyright compliant environment on campus
gets rid of the need for used books
tailor-makes solutions to fit the unique needs of each campus
"
This sounds like hell to me.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Read the Vital Books site. They specifically say you are not allowed to lend your VitalViewer or VitalBook to anyone.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Still, it's a buttload of crap.
But professor, this book contains material that supports my arguements. However, you'll need to pay $399.95 inorder to read it.
I could let you read it, but then I'd have to have you arrested.
My karma is in a nose dive
Yes, yes, yes!
Come on blameless, you know damn well the DMCA has everything to do with putting WHATEVER THE HELL THEY PLEASE IN THEIR UNNEGOCIABLE, UNAVOIDABLE END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT.
Since it is impossible to control, it won't last
for long and they decide to give it up. Civil
disobedience is the keyword here.
You know, if this ridiculous 'license' thing takes off, I'm going to copyright my license plates and charge cops every time they run a check on them!
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
Copyright is supposedly a limitation on freedom of the press for a limited time in exchange for encouraging more works to be created.
Copyright has been hijacked by the big corps at public expense; it is no longer for a meaningful limited time, and fair use, resale, loaning, viewing platform of choice, any number of traditional uses are history, according to the corps. Now here comes a new govt enforced violation of the spirit of copyright.
How can you call this libertarian? It's govt enforcement at public expense against the public good for private gain.
--
Infuriate left and right
From reading, the NYU FAQ, I'd have, say that while, advocating that all DDS, students learn computer skills, they don't, feel the same skill, level is necessary, in terms of grammar, and punctuation.
American rampant consumerism... I'm wondering what the problem is.
You can either a) Buy the books at regular price or
b) Buy a limited-time licensed DVD-Rom with ALL the books on it, for a cheaper price. This is like a subscription.
Where is the problem? If you don't LIKE the idea of time-limited books, don't BUY them!
There is a very important reason why serious professional people (e.g., I'm an engineer-in- training) retain their textbooks after college: REFERENCE. You can crow all you want about how material keeps getting outdated, but not all of the background information makes it into the new text, and I do need to dig out stuff from old textbooks periodically to brush up. I know where that information is in my textbooks; I studied it. If this new system becomes widespread, professionals will need to try to get along on the minimum amount of reference possible (don't think the fees will come *down* after college!), and, where stuff disappears in new revisions, they will end up simply guessing at things they should have been able to look up. Often, they will guess right. Sometimes, they will guess wrong. Who will have to pay? You will. Bridges will fail. Surgeries will be botched. You can plan to sue, but real professionals carry professional practice insurance and simply pass along the bill. Why do you think medical help is already so expensive? Any hope for a sensible world to live in in 20 years time depends on explaining to your professors why you will be depending on your textbooks long after they give you that coveted "A". Make no mistake: this new "publishing" scheme is bad news.
This is not exactly true. The Library at Alexandria was not burned intentionally. The Roman Emporer at the time (can't quite think of his name ATM) had ordered the ships in the Alexandrian harbor burned; and the fire unfortunately spread onto the docks and to the library.
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
1.) The NYU FAQ says that you have to use an Apple Powerbook. Don't you think that they'll get a backlash from, say, the Windoze and Linux users who don't want to buy a whole new computer?
2.) Isn't it just a matter of time before someone breaks whatever sort of encryption thing they have on these and we get a DeCSS-like situation?
3.) What if you don't want to have to stare at a screen to read the book, but (god forbid) you want something tangible that you can scribble in and mark up?
We shall see what happens, won't we...
I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd sure want my doctor to be able to use his med school books as referances when he's treating me. I know I've never been able to remember every little thing out of a book and have a stack of referances that I consult regularly, and I'd expect my doctor to be no more super-human than myself.
Addlepated - punk & metal
Because breaking encryption of any kind for any purpose is a violation of the DMCA. So long as they have some sort of encryption method (even ROT13 would be enough) then it's illegal to share it becase sharing requires breaking of encryption. If Quake had some method of only letting one human play it, then letting someone else play, which would require breaking the encryption method, would be a crime.
I just took my Harry Potter: Sorcerer's Stone over to a friends house for him to read to his kids. Um.. It's a gift! Yeah! That's the ticket!
I can see some usefulness of timely books, but reference to previous medical publications is why professionals build libraries. (heck, I still have PL/1 books) I suppose I'll just have to boycott these types of online publications, after all, if nobody buys them then they'll have to change. Publishers *do* know which side of the bread the butter goes on (the down side.)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Okay, this is not something that would succeed in widespread application, I think, but in the application to which it is being applied (dentistry school, if I read correctly) it does make some sense. Some points behind my reasoning:
1) In the medical field, it is crucial that practitioners have the most current information.
2) The cost of buying these DVD's could very well be much less that buying all this material in printed form
3) The cost of "leasing" this information (especially if for just a short period of time) could be much less than permanently buying the rights
4) In some sense there's less waste in that you don't pay for information you don't care about after it "expires"
Adam Smith's invisible hand is a means, "a rising tide" is a goal.
The invisible hand is a meta-statement about a free economy. However, we don't have a free economy, we have built in certain restrictions (patents, copyrights, anti-monopoly laws, etc). Also, the real world is not identical to theory (real people don't have perfect information or perfect logic). For these reasons, it is sometimes possible for the economy to be on a path that does not head towards the goal the society wants (a rising tide). My question is: What restrictions do we remove/add/modify to make that goal more likely.
Phrased correctly, these problems are amenable to mathematical analysis. I'm not competent to do the math, but I'm taking notes in the hopes that I *am* competent to do the phrasing.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
The best way to prevent such an unbelievable trend is not to buy into it -- even if the exclusive copyright is to the passworded publisher.
Simple capitalism will ensure that there will be a competing (although not interchangeable) work of literature that will be distributed under another medium.
IMO, the most enlightened writers will not allow their work to be distributed under such a restrictive agreement.
Either way, I'm not even sure that this means of distribution will even yield more revenue.
This means that whoever produces the 'books' will have a lifetime ability to extort money from you: "Pay the yearly 'licensing fee' or we won't give you this year's encryption key."
Of course this year's encryption fee is just the 4 digit year (i.e. 2000, 2001) etc. but the DMCA forbids you to figure that fact out - since that is 'breaking a digital protection method'. The DMCA even forbids you to set the wrong date in the computer's clock to spoof a time when you had a good password - since that is 'bypassing a protection means', and subjects you to the draconian penalties of the DMCA.
Part of the reasons that women fear the outlawing of abortion is that it gives the police the right and the obligation to investigate every miscarriage. Part of the reason that geeks need to fear the DMCA is that it gives the police the right and the obligation to investigate everything that you do on your computer; "The CMOS clock on your machine is wrong, how do we know that you aren't trying to circumvent digital protection means on your computer? "
I can't wait until some lawyer figures out that all reading is covered by the DMCA since when you learn something you are making a copy into an electronic computer (your brain).
--
The law, 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been checked to see if it works.
"Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools who opt to implement the Vital Source system. Purchase of all included titles is mandated by the universities."
How can VitalViewer claim to the publishers that a university will mandate the use of the VitalViewer textbooks? I've never seen a university say "if you don't use this text book, you will get an F". I thought grades were dependant on the student's comprehension of the material, not on the purchase of a book.
"Because the service is a global curriculum application, the fee comes in from each student each of the four years of their studies, regardless of whether they are taking that course that year."
This one is the most appalling. They're actually claiming that universities will force students to pay for a product that they won't even use. Courses normally require a "mandatory" textbook, but many students used the libraries' copies, and passed anyway. I've yet to see an exam require a copy of the book's receipt.
"By implementing the VSTi system, however, universities contractually agree to require at least three titles per curriculum topic. Therefore, the number of titles used by students increases significantly."
I think they forgot to add "whether they're needed or not".
Students are already having a tough time going through university or college because of the enormous costs. Here in Canada, university is partially subsidized by the government, so the costs are lower, but it's still very expensive to get through a 4 year degree.
The scary part is that some universities have already adopted the VitalViewer system.
bh
Ouch. Even though financial aid covers the cost, being locked into Apple would suck.
What does the VitalBook cost? For year one, the cost to the Class of 2004 is $600. If you continue in the program beyond year one, it will cost $1,200 annually (cost for the remaining three years is $3,600). Plus the cost of the PowerBook
What if I decide I don't like the VitalBook? First of all, the VitalBook has been extensively pilot tested and a beta-version was out for some time before the application was completed - that means, we don't believe you won't like it!
"Come the revolution, you'll all have strawberries and cream, and you'll like it!" This attitude bothers me enough, that if I was actually interested in going to dental school, I'd drop NYU from consideration for trying to force use fo the "vitalbook".
What happens in 2020, when the dentist who bought the VitalBook is trying to look something up, and his 2000 PowerBook dies, and his 2018 PowerBook isn't backwards-compatible with the VitalBook software? Books are always readable, unless they physically rot. Can you read those old MSWord 1.0 documents on 5-1/4 floppies anymore? Paper will never die, even if it stops being made from dead trees, because there is no technology beyond written language required to read it.
Vital takes the profs out of the money loop -- so capitalism will work against Vital in many cases. The real story is: how many schools are using time-locked e-texts, and what is the growth rate of that practice?
Never meant half of the things I said to you. So you know, there's a half that might be true - G. Phillips
I could be wrong here, and I probably am, but the "Vital Source Technologies" website LOOKS like a total hoax. I mean, come on, lets THINK a little instead of immediately going into anti-capitalism knee-jerk.
1) This will create the need for 2 textbooks, the electronic and the dead tree version. Ever hear of community colleges (at least that's what they're called here in California)? Typically, a fair number of people are there because they can't afford state college. If they can't afford state, they probably can't afford fancy computers. Many community colleges offer large computer labs for the students becasue they know the students can't afford computers. Will publishers REALLY want to maintain 2 versions of the same text?
2) I _LOVE_ the part where the publisher will update the content every year as part of the licence agreement. Ever look at the copyrights for some of your books? Ever wonder if some of those guys are still ALIVE? I've studied under professors who have written books (yes,we used their books, but I got lucky, they were pretty good books), and typically, there was at least a five year span between editions. What author is going to want to work hard enough to update his or her material every year?
3) Ever have a professor who seemed to have the book MEMORIZED? They guy hasn't changed his lesson plan in 10 years, and he's retiring in 5 and doesn't want to ever change his lesson plan again. You think professors like this are going to want texts that change EVERY YEAR? NOT!
4) As someone else pointed out, Universities make $$$$$ off used books. I know I typically got less than 1/2 of what I paid for a book that was used in the first place when I sold it back. I don't think the Universities are going to want to give up that revenue stream.
5) But wait, you say, the University will REQUIRE all this due to the larger revenue stream of requiring 3 books per ciriculum. Uhhh, they _COULD_ do this now, with dead tree books. But they don't. Ever seen a university try to force professors to do something? It isn't pretty.
6) None of the links on the bottom of the page work.
I could be wrong. I probably am. But this smells like hoax to me, or (here I go qualifying already) at the most a straw man to gage reaction.
Merde, il pleut encore!
The Library of Congress keeps a copy of every book published in the United States, and is open to the public. Will a copy of these e-textbooks be provided to the Library of Congress and other libraries? Will they be denied legal copyright if they refuse to provide a copy? Will they even be considered books, or are they in fact just software? A lot of questions, I look forward, with a great deal of trepidation, to the answers.
Sigh.
They're adding an access method, not taking it away.
The dental students CAN STILL BUY REAL BOOKS. That's CHOICE. Perhaps many will buy VBs; perhaps many will not.
It's not worth complaining about unless it's mandatory, which it is NOT yet. To do so is roughly akin to complaining about the invention of fire just because it MIGHT be used for harm -- namely, alarmism; 'tis but crying wolf.
If they DO show intent to make it mandatory, then by all means protest to your heart's content. If the program is expanded against the wishes of dental students, THEN there is a problem. But not yet.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
True virtual libraries - Download a copy of a book from your public library with a 3week limitation. After 3weeks, it's unreadable. (Of course, when you dl a copy, it's not like you're removing it from the shelf, and therefore someone else can't get it, UNLESS books are distributed with single user licenses.)
Outdated/limited information - Remember the early Netscape betas - they expired about 3 months after release to prevent people using beta quality software sometime down the road. For fields like physics, chemistry, etc where we general restructure how we teach and view our science roughly every 10 years, a textbook published in 1970 may be teaching not only misleading but WRONG information, and thus limiting the date on these things may be useful. But you'd still want to be able to access that information as potental historical value. And unfortunately, there's not a large number of cases where this happens.
Now, as I read the associated info for this article, most of the concept with time-limited books appears to be focused at colleges, which can make some sense. How many hundreds of dollars do you pay for books a year just as a scientist or engineer in school? Look at the cost of medical books, they're even worse. However, you can most likely pick up a copy of Office for less than $100 which will last you through your school years. If you could buy all your books that you'd use for school at 25% the list price, but only be able to use them through your school, after which you'd have to pay subscriptions to continue to use them, compared to buying unlimited use at 100%, I would think most students would jump on the former. I *still* want the option of the second to be available, as many professionals end up buying textbooks as reference materials, and at this point, the initial cost isn't terribly bad.
I can't see this yet being popular for average joe: even getting away from physcially holding a book and curling up with it before bed, there's still the probably of the fact that you don't buy the book, you license it. It may lead to cheaper book prices (get Tom Clancy's latest for only $5 for a 3yr limiation as opposed to $25 for no limitation), but it can also easily lead to pay-per-page, especially if it uses any net verification to make sure that you are reading your book. Password protection would be shunned - there's something in sharing a book with a friend that adding the password layer would ruin.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
While VSTi might still take some time before they get to market, and need to get market acceptance, there are other textbooks out there, which are "sort of" time-limited. I did choose a new textbook for this Fall's computer networking class, based on a preliminary edition I had available. That book did include a companion website with additional information. Now that the final edition is out, they suddenly limit access to the first six months after purchasing. While I do understand that they do not want to open up the entire website to everyone (it contains a complete online copy of the textbook), the limit to six months is arbitrary and limiting. Outside the first six months, the right to access such simple things as errata, you have to pay $25.
According to the NYU FAQ, "the full cost of textbooks and manuals for four years of dental school is about $3000." They're offering the first year of VitalBook for $600, and each remaining year for $1200. So, for four years of dental school using VitalBook, you pay $4200, for a total savings of -$1200, less the cost of the Apple G3 Powerbook, if you don't happen to already have one for some reason. (NYU strongly recommends the one sold by, surprise surprise, the NYU Computer Store.)
Imagine that! You save -$1200, get to buy a tangerine-coloured laptop, and all you have to give up for this privilege is ownership of anything. Well, I guess you get to keep the powerbook.
This sounds like as much of a scam on NYU's part as on Vital Source's.
Interestingly, though, NYU says that participation in this is voluntary, while Vital Source's release to publishers indicates that it's partner universities mandate the use of their technologies. Someone seems to be lying.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
http://www.peicommerce .com/HISTORY/ROMAN/CLEOPAT/LIBRARY.HTM
http://www.fwkc.co m/encyclopedia/low/articles/a/a001001097f.html
First posting isn't trolling. It's...first posting.
This is very alarming.
Historicaly speaking there used to be laws on the books disallowing the education of african american slaves. This lack of education maintained the slave-masters power and the kept the uneducated subject to their will.
This EULA on educational materials coupled with the DMCA appears to me to be a method of maintianing and controling a captive audience, as well as granting liscense to the brokers of information th pick and choose who can and cannot legally garner an education.
If we tie this into the World Intelectual Property Organization's attempts to make FACTS copyrightable, we've a real doozey of legal information monopoly that could, in theory, bring the Open Source 'movement' to a grinding halt.
...brings new meaning to the notion of 'Thought Crimes'
christopher
http://www.neitzert.com/~chris/descramble.mp3
This communication is secured using Rot-26 Encryption Algorithm, Unauthorized decryption will be subject to laughter.
Score -1, didn't read links before replying.
"As a consequence, a computer is a basic tool of dental school and in the 2001-2002
academic year (Class of 2005), a computer and the VitalBook will be required as part of
coming to dental school."
I suppose you could buy the Vitalbook AND paper copies.
--
Michael Sims-michael at slashdot.org
after all, it's their "property"
Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools who opt to implement the Vital Source system. Purchase of all included titles is mandated by the universities.
Now see what the problem is?
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Ah, kids, back in my day, when I was in University, it sure was a different world. Would you believe we actually used flat, dead trees for our printed communication?
Hey, no laughing, or I'll quit reminiscing!
Yup, everything was printed on paper. That was back in the days when there were these huge multinational companies that were allowed to cut down entire forests. Would you believe that Brazil used to be a jungle? Amazing.
Whazzat? How did they protect their books? They didn't! This'll blow your mind: we had these big buildings called "libraries," where all these books were kept, and you could go in and read them *for free*!
Yah, you could even share your books with friends. Heh, once I even made a complete copy of one of my textbooks using this thing called a photocopy machine. You'd open up the book, put a page on the glass, press a button, and a perfect copy of the page came out of the machine.
No, there wasn't any encryption, Timmy. It was plaintext. I know! I know! It's amazing, I told you! Everyone could share books, you didn't even need to pay for them if you went to a library, you could even make copies of them without being caught.
Well, yah, that all came to an end at the turn of the century. That Digital Millenium Copyright Act sure put a halt to sharing books.
Seriously, would I lie to you? This is all true!
Yah, those were the days. You could get your information for free, and it was yours forever. Didn't have to pay Random House a yearly fee to keep them from erasing your mind, even. Once you knew stuff, it was yours forever...
--
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
It has come to my attention that your license to use the English Language has expired. Further speech on your part will be considered an infringement. Our lawyer will talk to your lawyer about this.
Furthermore, your continued use of the English Language will be taken as evidence that your are using some form of DMCA-prohibited Circumvention Device, such as a brain. We will aggressively pursue legal action against the parties that distributed this "brain" to you. If you are engaged in the manufacture of these "brains", commonly through the mechanism known as "children", we will pursue legal action against you.
In October of this year, mere possession of this Circumvention device will become illegal, and our attornies will be at the forefront of this legal opportunity.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Where is this debate at now? Has the Clinton administration's Evil Copyright Initiative been successfully thwarted? Enquiring minds want to know...
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Now won't we have a dandy situation? We'll have "Cops in High Tops", posing as students in classrooms. They'll say, "Hey dude, I forgot my book, and I've got a huge assignment due, like, tomorrow, man! Can you, like, loan me your book?"
You'll comply, because you're a nice guy, and suddenly you find that you're calling mom and dad to bail you out of jail.
Dad : "What the hell did you do, son?"
You : "I loaned a textbook to a classmate."
Enough!!! This shit has to stop!
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Disclaimer: expiration of printed copies of this e-text is based on the honor system. You are requred to print it on our self-destructing paper, or using our special vanishing ink/toner... blah blah blah.
Or they won't be printable at all. In which case, I can assure that e-books for oculists will be the first to came out...
We each pick a book and memorize it. Then, we recite it to anyone who wants the information. As we grow older, we teach our children our book(s) and they teach their children...and so on. The information is always available and free, since even the government can't "password protect" your memory (short of using a bullet).
I have a friend named Sontag who is very interested in this...he works for those who put the DMCA into action and now he's having second thoughts...
Once I thought Ray Bradbury was a little out of touch...not so much now.
BTW, just what is the ignition point of an e-book file?
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
This is right from their site. Here is the URL: http://www.vitalviewer.com/files/macsupport.html#A nchor-11481
They specifically say it is illegal to even let a friend or upperclassman use you book. It isn't saying anything about copying, it is saying unauthorized use is a copyrgiht violation. This is serious people. I'm a pessimist, but even admittedly had trouble believing it could be this bad until I saw it for myself.
We need to get Open Content (open source for books) going, and fast!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
You don't.
You let them tie their own rope and hang themselves with it.
The United States, as the world's current sole superpower, is enjoying unprecendented economic prosperity. Unprecendented. In this climate I have found it impossible to discuss, much less make clear, a number of topics, all of which seem obvious to those of us who read slashdot and are informed on the issue, and are apparently unfathonable by most of those who do not:
Like the people of Philidelpha in the 1970s who refused to believe their mayor and police could do any wrong because crime was down (mainly as a result of their torturing prisoners and witnessess alike to coerce testimony and insure convictions, and the fact that they were terrorizing disadvantaged groups into submission), no one wants to hear negative or unsettling commentary on This Great Nation(tm) when things are so good. Add to that the specter of being considered "unamerican" or "unpatriotic" if you should be so uppitty as to criticize Our Leaders(tm), and you have an environment in which people are adamantly unwilling to listen to, much less believe, anything which even smacks of a pessimistic commentary on what is going on.
I can't even get friends who are activists in other areas of life to listen (and you would thing, as politically active and motivated people, they would at least be willing to ponder the topic). The degree of denial and unwillingness to look at and consider evidence that runs contrary to the common meme of "America is the greatest place on earth bar none!" is probably impossible for those to grasp who haven't been confronted with it directly. It is truly remarkable!
In a very real way we are being fattened for the slaughter.
I am slowly concluding that you simply cannot make people hear what they do not wish to hear. Soon enough the consiquences of this unwillingness to be informed will make themselves felt.
More importantly, if other countries are smart enough to persue more intelligent intellectual property policies, they will quickly become more competetive than the United States and economic fortunes will shift. Then, and only then, will Americans sit up and take notice.
On the other hand, if the rest of the world follows America to hell, well then, we can all roast marshmellows over the brimstone together.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It's not like this is going to be every book ever published... you you want to write a book, and publish it the old fashond way, then thats your right. Im sure many many writers will do the same thing. The entire future of information flow is not in danger here.
Once Microsoft released the format for Windows Media Audio, it was cracked in the first day. Some songs restricted you to listen to them for only a very short time period, and only when connected to the Internet. But run UNFUCK.EXE, and that restriction tag would be stripped off. It might've been more worthwhile if WMA had a better spectral response.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
I collect old science-fiction pulps. The other night, I was reading through ``The Gods of Mars'' again (it's book 2 in the Barsoom series). It's the 1965 pocket edition. Among other things, the Copyright notice says that ``This book shall not ... be lent out ...''.
The thing is, there's no way to enforce such a restriction on a physical book, and indeed later editions don't have the restriction. There's got to be a story there somewhere, if only one could find the right people to interview.
I have dozens of textbooks on the shelf behind me, and I don't intend to buy another circuits book because Addison Wesley thinks it's out of date.
The problem with the world wide web, and the reason publishers like it, is that information can be revoked at whim. Sure, CNN publishes hundreds of stories every week on the web, and you can access them quite a ways back. But what if CNN realizes that one of the stories it wrote last year was very embarrasing, but only because of some new information that has come to light. There is a strong incentive for them to remove the story from their website. (Remember they did this with a DeCSS story a while back, removing a very embarrassing link.) When a story is published on paper, the publisher can't recall the paper for a bit of editing. They have to live with their mistakes.
If all information is published "WWW" style, this starts to look like 1984. Now books are moving in to this territory. Today they're on CDROM, tomorrow they'll just be downloaded by a proprietary browser. Imagine a world where the page in the history book you're reading today is different than it was yesterday. Maybe the publisher updated it with "value added" content, but maybe they just crossed out a paragraph.
I recommend that people reject this kind of digital publishing. If publishers really want to publish a book electronically it should never be licensed in a way that limits the time that information can be used. If they want to put their information on the internet, they should use the Freenet, or some similar means to ensure that the information is not controlled by anyone once it has been released.
Or maybe they'll make you list everyone that might walk through your living room, and then "pay-per-viewer".
Or perhaps all TVs will contain special encoding techniques in the future. Your eyes won't be able to decode it until you're licenced to view it.
If it starts, where will it stop? Scary stuff, if you ask me.
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
and soon, in the future ... books will have a retina scan to make sure it's the correct user reading the book at ALL times, and if it's incorrect, magically handcuffs will appear until $500,000 in quarters is inserted into the book ...
Runnin' On Empty
I just finished reading "The Psychology of Computer Programming" (Gerald M. Weinberg, 1971). Despite the datedness of the book, especially in a fast-moving subject such as computer science, there was still a lot of useful information and truth in it. And looking at the debates between batch and time-sharing systems was funny in hindsight (yet still enlightening).
But what I'm worried about: What happens, if an electronic book should ever get "out of print"? Is the information in it completely lost? (The friend who gave me the above-mentioned book assumed so).
What happens to historians or (possibly extraterrestrial) archaeologists, who try to find out something about how we lived? All the information we have deciphered was written (=encoded) in a way to make it easy to be read and understood. The historians will need a lot of luck to find out anything about such a world. If they do finally, they will probably be sued for breaking the DMCA :-(.
Services: make one, sell it repeatedly, long-term income. Require someone to pay each time they read a book and you've got a long-term income.
Profit ultimately goes to the owner of the asset. In this book-rental service (which time-limited-textbooks essentially are), the company makes sales yet keeps the asset for repeated resales.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Jeez... any students who don't wanna play Escape Velocity are getting screwed on this deal.
Books are shipped with EULAs! What else would you call this blurb that I find in most paperback books:
This is from the UK -- do you have something similar in the US and would it be legal there?
Hi!
This reminds me so much of when they added the method of accessing my money that we call ATM's. At first it was in addition to the banking hours, then, after people started using the ATM's, the banks cut their hours and their staff. Now, I am basically forced to use an ATM to ever get money from my account. This was not too bad when I used to get free transactions with my bank's ATM's and 10 free transactions with other ATM's, but now I still get the free transactions with my bank's ATM's. but with others, I get chanrged a fee by the bank whose ATM I am using and a network fee by my own bank, so at times it now costs me $3 to get a $20.
Sure enough, if the eTexts gain even a small foothold, this will happen wth textbooks as well.
I personally do not care. I buy my books, I keep my books, as long as I have access to my own purhcased books, I don't care if I can't transfer them to anyone else.
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
I'd like to see some of the bigger IT companies come out strongly against stuff like this and announce publically that no programmer who ever worked on such a project will be hired. There's a point when you have to realize that your job is evil and find something else.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
So I'll be able to read my textbooks on a powerbook running OS9 What about OS X, OS XX, OS XXXIV ? How does the company ensure that I'll be able to access the disk in 5, 10, 30, 100 years ? What about when linux achieves a market dominance of 100%; will the company supply me with a linux based reader at no additional charge ? What happens if the company goes out of business and I lose my password ? What about replacement disks ? Even if it costs a bit more, it seems like, for the present, paper is safer.
But starving students prefer to buy used books because they're 30% or more cheaper. Textbook publishers HATE this. They get nothing from the 2nd sale of the same book. So far, they fought back by coming out with "new editions" every few years to obsolete old versions needlessly and force more sales. I guess this is not enough for them anymore.
Well go ahead baby! The SECOND you put that textbook in machine readable format... I'm making FREE copies for everyone. And since it's, by definition, "FOR NON-PROFIT EDUCATIONAL USE", you can't even sue me. So ha! It's not even piracy.
.... as corporations get more power over everything in the USA. At my university, we're unable to get any beverages not made by Coca-Cola on campus. Big deal, right? Well, then they put up signs all over campus saying "Always Rutgers, Always Coca-Cola!" Hey, I'll deal with it if it's bringing in money towards educational improvements. Then they sold the campus bookstore to Follett. And decided that when they built new stores, only Follett would be able to bid on rights to control them. (Which kind of voids the purpose of a bid.) Fortunately, our Comp Sci department hasn't been taken over, and the people in power are pretty friendly towards standards etc., so I haven't been hurt that way.
My mother, on the other hand, worked at another university with a well-known Comp Sci program. Not a technological person, she became a big fan of the Mac in her office, until the school cut a deal with Microshaft, and she was forced to switch to Windows. And all their email had to go through Exchange servers.
Why does this textbook story not surprise me?
grep -ri 'should work'
Being an student, I gots many texts. (If you live in New York City, theres a nice spot on Steinway and Ditmars that sells used texts for $1!) I am posting this question because I am disturbed by this story. My parents and I are going to write letters to the our state senator. I hope you all do also. In the mean time, how can I copy the texts I own to a digital format and prepare them for mass, anonymous distribution?
There certainly is a monopoly situation. The particular work is owned exclusively by the author or whoever hired him and if they only want to sell it in a pay per use form then you have no competitors you can run to for the same work and you must pay per use. Now, this doesn't matter in general because competitors can sell similar works as the ideas themselves within the work aren't owned, but in this particular case of textbooks it matters a lot because we're talking about a textbook which is required for a course. You cannot easily substitute one textbook for another within a course because courses are often structured around a particular text. To make things worse, homework assignments are generally taken right out of the specific required text and if you don't have the specific text book that is required then there's no way you can do the homework because you can't see the problems. When I was in college I used to by older editions of the required texts to save money since the content doesn't change significantly, but it was always a hassle when it came time to do problem sets because I would have to borrow a friend's more recent text or go to the library to get the appropriate problems. If the publisher decides to only release a required text in pay per use form then students pretty much have no choice but to buy the license (or "steal" the text). That most definitely is a case of the publisher having monopoly power.
Now, whether this means that publishers shouldn't be allowed to do this is another issue. I personally think that publishers should be allowed to do this because, like you said, they have freedom of contract. I also think that I won't be paying for any such books and I will personally choose the books which I can purchase outright. I would also hope that most professors would be clueful enough to select texts which are not time limitted, at the very least as alternatives to the required texts (but I'm probably hoping for too much).
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Oh, does this mean I'll never have to go to ALL THAT TROUBLE of looking at an INDEX to find something again? Hmm...well, considering that textbook authors seem to be (at least in the texts I've had in the last few years...mostly business and liberal arts :P) unwilling to WRITE a decent index, maybe that's a good thing. (Not that it ever bothered me, I can scan text myself with pretty decent speed)
Now, however, what if we added MORE competition? The idea I have in mind is a "just-in-time" publishing company that would sell textbooks to students in the format that they want (CD or print). By doing one offs, and perhaps foregoing huge profit margins that publishing companies think they need, you might be able to get pricing competetive enough that students would prefer buying from you. If you could also make it more renumerative to those actually writing the textbooks, then you'd see some success. As to potential copying problems with the electronic format, you could provide some limited copy protection -- enough that what with your lower prices and all, most students would rather just buy the book than mess with trying to crack it.
And then, when VitalViewer comes to your University and says: "Look! Electronic publishing!", the adminstration can frown and say "Hmmm. We already have that."
Tweet, tweet.
I see no fundamental moral difference between "replaying" a piece of music in my head - I do this all the time with very good accuracy (at least it hits most of the same cognitive triggers as the recorded version does) - and recording and replaying the music I've heard with a brain augmenting device such as a tape recorder or, in the futre, some kind of neural implants. Either way I am simply reliving one of my experiences as best I can and I firmly believe I have that right.
If I read some text, I have the right to make notes about that text in anyway I see fit and to review those notes at any time in the future.
I believe it is my basic right to talk about anything I hear or read while sharing my experiences with friends. I believe I should be able to show them notes I have taken. I believe I should be able to hum a tune I heard...or play and sing it with a guitar...or with a whole band...as accurately as I want to...or play them an mp3 or wav recording of any sound waves that were sent in my direction during my life. And if my friend can read my mind, I should be able to share those songs that I play back in my head with good fidelity.
If we are to limit a person's basic right to relive and share any of their life experiences then you are limiting their ability to live a human life, and there had better be a damned good reason to restrict such a basic right. I can't think of any good ones that have an overall benefit to humanity. And I don't appreciate people trying to take away those basic rights which may not be codified, but should be.
The library burned twice (at least).
Once around (during?) Caesar's or Augustus' time, this is what you are refering to.
Then it was destroyed a little before the year 500 out of "religious" motives by "the" Turks (who weren't Christians).
The only possible explanation for this is that the web site was created as a hoax by JonKatz in order to give himself more material about which to write long-winded ego-stroking redunant editorials. This couldn't possibly be for real....
grep -ri 'should work'
Publishers are guaranteed 100% market penetration at partner schools who opt to implement the Vital Source system. Purchase of all included titles is mandated by the universities.
In the VSTi model, students are mandated by universities to pay a yearly fee lciensing their reference curriculum.
By implementing the VSTi system, however, universities contractually agree to require at least three titles per curriculum topic. Therefore, the number of titles used by students increases significantly.
VSTi will control the Universities. The Universities will control the students. This shit will be mandated, and the Universities will have to sell every student at least three books per class!
NYU (linked above) requires it's students to purchase an Apple notebook to use this system(and highly recommend purchasing it through the campus bookstore). In a year or so, the entire system will be required of the students!
If they want this system to work, they'll have to make some serious adjustments. First off, they need to seriously slash the price of the books. They won't be able to complain that they have to keep them in stock anymore, so that cost is gone. They won't have heavy books, and therefore high shipping costs. They won't need massive shelf space. The publisher gets it's money from one nice source. All of these are good reasons to slash the prices dramatically. But what do you want to be that the price of books won't go down a bit? "These books are more convenient! They let you search! They are small! They fit in your pocket! You should expect to pay *more* for these!"
But in addition to that, they're going to have to let students loan or give their e-books to other people, just like with paper books. There can't be a restriction on that, or this system will fail.
We'll have to fight it if they don't make the system flexible, and beneficial!
--SpookComix
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
"Sorry, sir; I couldn't do the discussion questions. I ran out of time on my textbook."
If I were a med student, for example, and had to KEEP PAYING for the same damn textbook I thought I'd already bought when I signed up for the course, I'd be hella pissed. I'd mention DIVX (the bad kind) to my prof, but do you think he'd listen?
Good news though: Windows has screenshots. Who'll be the first to create an automated screenshot-creation tool (general-purpose, not specific to this) and make it available to those wanting to keep what they have paid for?
sulli
sulli
RTFJ.
Discrimination of the dissemination of information by financial barriers. Period. This will re-establish a wealthy ruling class of the 1900's in society, and if you think you can stop it you're dreaming.
The GI-Bill shattered the theory that blue collar workers were not smart enough to compete in intellectual pursuits. The internet has the potential to further those accomplishments by providing information to EVERYONE (even those without access to a local institution of higher learning - which have pretty much sold out anyway).
A garenteed stream of revenue seperates the have's from have-not's in a huge way, the same way that $30K+ tech schools keep the lower class in their place, out of technology. And the funny thing is, the smartest hackers usually come from the lower class segments.
pay-per-neuron licenses are next.
Someone get me off this rock!
Ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Oh, and I always thought that the ability to compile large amounts of low-quality information into something understandable, was one of the things to learn at a University. Guess I was wrong, eh?
does this remind anyone of the frickin dark ages? all books of great importance were written in latin, and only the social elite were allowed to know latin. isn't this a rudimentary form of the same thing?
However,
I just checked Richard Stallman's article, with that horrible login message from the University of Chicago (?). It was practically indentical to the one the FBI recommended to the guy who wrote the article on Root Prompt on being cracked.
There are a bunch of issues here. The whole point of copyright is that if you create something, you have a right to define how it gets used. You can require your readers and/or users to do something completely idiotic if you want, and they have to right to not use it.
The concept of time limited, updateable textbooks is actually interesting. My twenty year old college textbooks are on my shelves at work, where I use them for reference. An update feature would be really nice, especially if it is available to someone who is poking around my mouth with medical instruments. I would revolt at the $1200US annual price though.
Colleges have the option of not using these services if they are against the interests of the students.
Big Brother must be smiling...
A world where information, or at least data, is not free, in every sense of the word, is a world where people are not free, in the political sense of the word.
I am appalled that someone did not think through and committed this act of intellectual vandalism. Or worse, did think it through and has sacked the cathedral. It is an act of out standing and palpable idiocy to have perpetrated this piece of bigandcy, this act of perfidy.
But this is a great opportunity for the internet to promote, promulgate and perpetrate freedom of information, the freedom of the bazzar.
Scan the source material. Publish it on the net and cut this guy's legs out from under him and anyone stupid enough to invest in his foul scheme.
Proprietary rights to what you can put into your head will eventually be out-lawed because they are untenable,but we're going to have to deal with this dentist as harshly as he should be dealing with cavities.
This decay of our rights to information is moral turpitude. What's does he want to "protect" next? (It certainly isn't you.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Its like renting a movie for a few days, that doesn't give you the right to keep it forever or make copies of copyrighted material. Next I suppose you will be going after libraries because they have a limit on how long you can take out books.
My next point is if you don't like it then don't fucking buy it! If the idea sucks people won't buy it, the result being failure. Look at the big deal about divx, its totally extinct now.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Admitedly, this may be slightly off-topic, but the very root of all our problems is captialism, and it's downsides, is it not? In a world without it, do we not eliminate most of these problems? Certainly other social systems have their problems as well, but has anyone given any thought to this as the foundation of all these problems?
I'm personally a big fan of some of the works of B.F. Skinner, and I think that many of the ideas he proposed could be an interesting alternative to capitalism, not to mention a perfect social model for implenting global computer networking.
Anyway, just a thought, to stimulate the conversation in new directions.
Joshua
Perhaps the open source movement of the future will apply to more than just software. We are moving into an era where knowledge is becoming more valuable than goods. As is happening with the software industry now, we may see a future where people from around the world collaborate to share the information that used to be freely available in books.
Just how is this restricting my free flow of ideas? The only restriction they are putting on is a time limit. What about the library? Its still free, nothing is going to replace paper books any time soon. About the napster issues, how are tools designed to illegaly break copyrighted material helping anything? It sure didn't help the decss movement. Had someone followed the law and written a legal player for linux you wouldn't be in this mess. But then again I forgot how much zealots hate to pay for anything.
Somehow I think buying a book is still a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a computer and paying for internet access to learn.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Oh no, what a horrible thing. You are right, screw civil disobedience. I don't know how political prisoners do it.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Text books are "password protected" right now. You can't access one unless you pay for it, "getting the password". Whats the big deal? Can you take out a library book forever, or do you have to return it after a set time? Same thing.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
You can't access one unless you pay for it, "getting the password".
Ummm...yes you can. While I was in school I was quite poor. So I convinced my roommate (same major) to go halfsies on books. Two uses, one payment. That feature would be obsolete under this system.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Believe me, we will.
The huge military-economic powerhouse the USA currently is, there hardly is any country in the world that can afford to say "No!" to the USA. And those few who can (Russia and China to name a few), are easily bribed to go along.
For instance, many countries were strong-armed by the US State Department to sign the Wassenaar-agreement which restricts the developement and marketing of strong encryption throughout the World.
The sad thing is that any country in such a dominant position would do the same.
So that's it for libraries then. I assume that this would make a library unworkable unless they paid a fee for every book withdrawal. More like renting a video.
This seems unjust. If I purchase a book I should be able to transfer it to another person, just like any other software I purchase. Infact this seems utterly unique in terms of the extent restrictions being applied. Imagine a music CD with similar restrictions for example, I wouldn't be able to let friends borrow it, and what about playing it at a party?
This can be taken to utterly riddiculous extremes, for example, what about a childens story book? Presumably I wouldn't be allowed to read it to twins without an additional license.
Books are physical objects printed on paper. We all know that there's a certain value to books that can't be replaced by something on the screen - they're more inviting, easier to handle, extremely convenient, not subject to power failures, and so on. I often buy books even when I could get the same thing online for free, and even though I have access to a really fast laser printer. I'm also writing a book at the moment, and I'm in favor of publishing it online for free as well as on paper (though that's up to the publisher). I don't think I'd lose money by doing that, and it would make the material more accessible and useful.
This company is providing a system for securing access to online resources. I don't like the sound of their motivations, but this isn't new. My high school's library (several years ago) had a CD-ROM collection that wouldn't allow printing. I was annoyed, but I didn't see any Slashdot alarmists bitching about it. I would classify anything published with this medium as "material", but not as "books". Books are something I can lend to friends, take anywhere, and photocopy as I see fit.
If you don't like a new trend in publishing, spend your money elsewhere. If you are involved with an organization that requires it, complain to the administration.
-John
Maybe this is an idea to use attacking the DMCA: Encourage your congresscritter to amend ADA1990 to include the following provisions:
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
And I honestly can't imagine any of my classmates doing so, either. Textbooks at this point in our career are many things: a) something not to buy b) something to buy and not read c) something to buy, read, and never look at again, and d) something to buy, read, and use as a reference.
These jokers won't make any money off of the first three kinds of people, which represent the vast majority of the students. People like me who like the reference will simply turn to quite free alternatives, often available in quite handy palm pilot form.
That said, there are very few essential textbooks. Many, such as Albert's tome on Cell biology, are being offered on-line through the ncbi site. I seriously doubt that many or even any of the major authors would limit their probably brisk sales (Netter, Bates, Janeway, Harrison, etc.) by giving this company a monopoly. So, IMHO, this is a doomed business plan just like so many others in the past (ie DIVX...yeesh!)
Invicta{HOG}
The Turks didn't enter Egypt until the 1100s. You are thinking of Omar, the second (?) caliph, who supposedly ordered that all the books that contradicted the Koran be burned as heretical, and all the books that supported it be burned as superfluous. Unfortunately, this is probably apocryphal...
Have you ever thought that maybe the big boys
who run things want this?
They'd rather preserve the status-quo than feel
the pain of growth.
In their eyes, we are the enemy, little punks who are just going to screw up their gravy train if they let us have our way.
Ignoring the obvious moral issues, what does this do to future access of a work?
Witness abandonware. Software publishers drop a product or go out of business and it is impossible to purchase a title and illegal to copy it; the title becomes "lost".
Imagine that with books. A publisher stops "support" for a book or goes out of business. With the "unlock code" unavailable, the book can never be seen by future scholars.
Imagine the world today if all the classical titles had been digital. The library at Toledo would have contained few books, as the decryption codes had been lost with the fall of the Greek and Roman civilizations. The Odyssey and the works of Plato would be unknown. As Europe tried to recover from the dark ages and the plague of 1348 ended, there would be no ancient scienfitic knowledge to rebuild western Europe.
The Book of Kells and Beowulf would be nothing more than mysterious discs in a display case. We would wonder about the Egyptians, as Budge could not read The Book of the Dead.
Stamping general knowledge "Authorized, monied persons only" will mark the beginning of the decline of the information age.
Ok, all you ex-game protection crackers. Here's a couple of extra-credit questions to ponder during the break.
1) What is the major problem of ALL disk-protection schemes, cryptologically speaking?
2) Exactly HOW BIG will the black market in cracked/pirated textbooks be, and should you get involved now, or wait for the market to firm up?
3) What moron thought this horse-shit up? Stallman, is that you?...
"Death from the Skies"
-- Motto, 5th Strat. Bomb. Wing, USAF
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
In the text, it says that all students are _required_ to purchase this copy of the book...
Image a world where ALL textbooks are free. How do the author(s) and editor(s) get reimbursed for their efforts? How do students get new textbooks? It is obvious that any extreme is very harmfull. Focusing on that, and that alone, only serves confuse the issues.
For one, you fail to see this method of distribution as an opportunity for would-be authors. There are literally thousands of worthy topics and authors that cannot be published because the current textbook economics do not allow for it. If the market that that book is not sufficiently large, it simply won't get published. This would allow for many more alternatives.
Secondly, you err when you say that "There is no way to say 'a rising tide lifts all boats' in Capitalismese". One of the beautiful things about capitalism is that it doesn't need to be expressly dictated all the time. The businessman need not know, or even particularly care, about the good of the common man. The "invisible hand" largely sees to that, or at least more effectively than any other previous method. By providing goods and services far more efficiently and cheaply than in any other system, we simply have more to offer everyone.
In this particular situation, I see no reason whatsoever to believe that books will become any less accessible or affordable on the aggregate. In fact, I believe a digital/per use system would, in fact, create a vastly more efficient market with even more competition, which would lead to a significantly better system for everyone. Though I am well aware that all too many slashdot readers claim that intellectual property is leading to the lockup or ownership of all knowledge, there is little evidence of it. One may own a particular phrase, method, song, or you name it, but those are only the means by which you obtain the end, not the end unto itself. Because there is almost always more than one way to do a thing, there will be competition. Prices will fall, just as they always have. [Where monopolies may form, they can be dealt with]
It seems logical to me. If the knowledge is "owned" by somebody then they can probably control what I do with it, right?
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Read it. Keep it. Read it more. It's not like you're removing it from the shelf so someone else can't get it...
As to expiring stuff- I truly hate that stuff, because all too often the situation is this- I use an early version, it works great, I try a later version and they SCREWED IT UP. Then the early version expires and I'm hosed. Furrfu. Software shouldn't expire. It's all too prone to obsolescence anyhow, why _guarantee_ that it will become useless? It's like sabotage.
I see a few other problems with this. What if you want to read your textbook in a place that is inhospitable to a computer IE a place with no power? Yes, the laptop has batteries, but does that mean I can only study for 2-3 hours until the batteries run out? Or worse, power receptacles will be at a premium now. Instead of sitting in a quiet cafe to study, you'll be fighting over the only two power receptacles.
What if your computer dies (I own an iMac, I can tell you from experience that Apple tech support is VERY expensive and isn't that good at all). You cannot tell me that a stressed out student isn't going to drop their powerbook at some point. Do they have to wait a week to get it repaired? Hopefully NYU and other colleges that participate in this will have emergency loaner machines.
What about if the disk is lost or stolen? I would assume that it would become more valuable to thieves once someone figures out how to decrypt them (and they will figure it out). Will replacement disks be offered?
I read a lot of my father's college textbooks. I learned a lot by doing that. I still refer to mine a great deal. Will someone's bright little kid be barred from looking at daddy's (or mommy's) textbooks because they didn't pay for a password? Ok so these are dental texts. I assume this will eventually leak over to things like digital design and programming books.
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
I would hope that any professor out there would do the responsible thing and avoid these textbooks like the plague. Granted, there are less-than-responsible profs out there, but if enough of them will not use a textbook based on it's ridiculous restrictions, perhaps a sanity check can be achieved.
Hopefully this idea will die as quickly and painfully as DIVX did.
Anyone certified to teach a college-level course, from community college associate professors to Nobel-winning careers academics, could offer part or all of that material, and be sure of having an up-to-date, well edited and maintained body of 'source' material. Plus, as online education gains legitimacy and accredidation, the content could be offered with Internet-based lectures, discussions, etc., to allow for a free (or low-cost) college degree with content way above the level that most trade and 2-year schools can afford to provide.
- Image a world where ALL textbooks are free. How do the author(s) and editor(s) get reimbursed for their efforts? How do students get new textbooks?
And if no one were paid to write programs, no programs would be written, right?While this application does have "substantial noninfringing uses", it gives companies more power over the user. Based on past behavior, it seems reasonable to assume that companies will use this power to squeeze as much money from the consumer as possible without regard to their rights. And while monopolies can be dealt with as they come, it worries me when a new opportunity comes along for companies to gain more power.
Currently, most of the people involved with this thread are paying a monthly/yearly/whatever fee for access to information in the form of subscriptions. Subscriptions give you a form of limited access to certain types of information. True, you can print off pages from a service you subcribe to you can also take down notes - whatever. You can do the same with these sources of information as well.
Another way to look at it is to view this product as getting consulting time. In an age where things are becoming more virtual why not a virtual consultant in the form of text? Why should you expect to get unlimited access to a consultants time?
I agree that it is scary to think about the possibilities this raises. It is extremely unlikely that this type of information transfer will win out over textbooks for school kids and replace libraries. I don't think the public would stand for it. (Then again, you never know.)
Your mind looks a little cramped. Why don't you stretch it a little?
Oh yeah, capitalists, like those clueless old geezers of old who used to donate their entire fortunes to libraries or universities? Get off your ass and look around. Learn about some of these people you would like to villify, then see if you can acomplish anything yourself. There's a reason buildings on campus are named after people.
These greedy dirtbags don't have a chance of passing their trash off as it is not competitive. For your $600 initial investment and $1,200 yearly fee, the sole advantage they offer is a text search and once a semester updates. NFW! Ever heard of an index? Table of contents? Who needs once a semester updates on a dentistry book? Is that much really going to change about teeth in that time? Sheesh, pass me a book. I feel sorry for the people who put their money into this company.
Your world will not happen. Textbooks are written by academic types, people who devote their lives to teaching. They want people to learn and desire as wide a readership as possible. Dissapearing textbooks, assides being uncompetitive, will not be tolerated by the people woh write them. All of these new laws will be successful in protecting is junk no one wants.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Would some of you guys who actually have a legitimate chance at being published in main media PLEASE write a few articles about the horrific financial and intellectual damage that the DMCA and similar legislation is going to do to the US software industry? Such as, for example, wiping out huge segments of the US computer security industry, which has already been seriously weakened by export control and CIA/NSA bungling. Whence e-commerce then? One practical effect of these laws is that a goodly amount of software manufacture may have to move overseas- possibly for example Apache, who have to figure out how to emulate every trick MS adds to its server ware, simply in order to survive. We should also note that open source projects such as Linux and BSD- commercially legitimate competetors to MS and Apple- can be stopped in their tracks by suing the project coordinators under DMCA- legitimately or not- since these projects are undertaken by individuals without the assets to fight, let alone win, a court battle. Part of our political problem stems from our not getting the word out in terms that the lawmakers will pay attention to. If money is all that matters, then the people who make the laws and the people who buy them should know about cooking the goose that lays the the golden eggs... The American software industry is dominant today because of the free intellectual atmosphere that has pushed innovation so far, so fast. An early example: Lotus 123 was followed almost immediately by clone "As Easy As," forcing Lotus to improve its wares. Similarly, Apache has forced a huge effort by MS to improve its server ware. DMCA and similar legislation are going to ruin the American software industry by eliminating the possibility of legitimate competition against any established giant with the sense to encrypt a couple critical modules and then sue everyone else for copy-protection violation and "reverse engineering."
I want to see the following question answered in the FAQ: "I am a techie, and I think this stuff sucks bad. What will you do to satisfy highly competent students?" :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
It's half of fair copyright law: protection of the copyright holder. If you can resell copyrighted works, that cheats the copyright holder of his income. Wouldn't you, if you were an author, feel screwed by one person buying a book, then passing it on to 20 others?
This isn't one-sidedly for the holder. Remember, book-passing has to be taken into account when setting prices.
Unfortunately, I don't see any efforts toward the other, much more important half of copyright reform: shortening the term to about five years after publishing. Copyright, like patent, is supposed a temporary monopoly on one's own ideas. Most copyrighted works make most of their profit in the first year; many in the first month. If you aren't expecting to make a sufficient profit in 5 years, you probably aren't doing it for the money.
--------
Actually, one of the guaranteurs of freedom is that we do _not_ have freedom of contract.
You do not have the "freedom" to agree to wages below the minimum wage. You do not have the "freedom" to live in an apartment without heat. You do not have the "freedom" to sell yourself into slavery.
You cannot give up your freedom to sue someone who has wrong you, unless a settlement has been made after the fact.
In the end, we remain "free" because we are prevented from giving up some of our freedoms.
This is a situation where, I think, where if everyone suddenly exercised their "freedom" to enter into such a horrid contract, we would all be much worse off.
-Dean
In addition to all the other Computer Based
Training systems, now books themselves require
you to choose a specific tool to read them.
And when Apples' market share becomes so marginal
that they fall, then there will be only one point
of control for all information on the planet.
It may already be too late to stop it.
The more I read Slashdot, the more I feel like we live in two different worlds, with 2 different set of laws. In the "real world" I can buy a book, read it, give it to someone else and they can read it. No law's broken. In the "cyber world" I can read the same book, with time constraints, and I can't let anyone else borrow it. At least the trees will be happy.
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
As for ATM's try joining a local credit union. Since their business is making *you* money, not them, you won't usually find such silly restrictions as a limit to 10 transactions, outrageous checking fees, and most credit unions provide no fees for transactions from other CU's.
More ontopic, the only thing keeping regular textbook manufacturers from doing this is traditional copyright laws. The right of first sale, specifically. However it doesn't stop the practice of "obsoleting" textbooks every semester or whenever it's economically feasable to print new ones. It also won't stop them from moving more of their textbooks to electronic format, requiring "licensed software" to view, and taking full advantage of the DMCA.
If you're a student, I highly reccomend making a real big stink on campus right now. Flyers are cheap (try printing them in your lab if possible) and nothing gets college students going like a "cause". The earlier students let their universities know they won't support or stand for this, the better chance of nipping it in the bud.
Ever been to a lawyers/judge's office?
... a suggestion that Windows pricing will be based on subscription . Now books too? This will lead to more people not being educated because they cannot afford to study.
They have at least 2 shelves filled with legal books. If this digital textbook thing becomes alive then they too have to spend thousands of dollars to keep their legal books active and current.
Microsoft the trendsetter
I can just imagine Vital Source Technologies' boardroom meetings: "Let's take the amazingly popular DIVX business model and apply it to the university setting! Students will love pay-per-read!"
Duh.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Im sorry, I know that this has probably been said 50 times by now but....
<RANT>
This is absolutely ludicrous! Companies are becoming obsolete because they are unable to think of new revenue steams in a market when people expect information to be free and sharable, so they try to take away any and all change that we have of owning what we paid for! This makes me terrible upset, I just cant believe that instead of learning changing and adapting to the new way that business is done, they try to do the equivalent of forcing a butterfly back into its cocoon in the hopes that it will go back to being a caterpillar.
</RANT>
Bah.
.mincus
I like peanuts are good.
By tagging each content component with metadata designating items such as chapter, sectoin, author, pulbisher, and access/print privileges, XML allows information to be readily located, reused, and controlled.
I read a book about 15 years ago fortelling of how information was the basis for the next economy. Those who control it will profit.
The problem with this model is that the machines we are developing are making it easier to "manufacture" or replicate information. Imagine if you had a machine that could copy your friend's car or house with no material cost to you. Manufacturing as an economy would collapse. That is the fundamental flaw with an information economy. Info is too easy to copy and redistribute. People will try to control information, but they will ultimately fail because you cannot restrain ideas. They are better off trying to figure out new methods to allow information to be shared instead of trying to bottle it up.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Publishing a textbook is a labor of love for most. Sure, the 50,000 or so US publishers try all sorts of tricks to make money, but for some reason there's really not much to be made. Strange. In any case, the amount of money to be made by the author will keep him at his day job. All of the proffesors (engineering, greek and roman history) I've had with any pretense to publish a text were in it for recognition and love of the subject. They wanted to share as widely as possible.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As I have been told by a professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business while taking a Software Management course (ugh - don't make me do that again!), she claimed that buying the course materials was mandatory for some courses. As appaling as I thought that was, I happened across some books after a Biz class had ended and sure enough, I saw this:
This was actually in the Software Management course materials book as well (it was taught by the Biz school) but the requirement was waived.
I don't think it gets waived by the Ivey profs. Anyone graduate from Ivey and if so, can you substantiate this?
Woz
"...in the 2001-2002 academic year (Class of 2005), a computer and the VitalBook will be required as part of coming to dental school."
Am I the only one who finds it faintly ironic that this pain in the ass is being tested out on would-be dentists? Is it irony, or just cosmic symmetry? I wonder if Steve Martin is involved?...
"...they may harpoon us, but they ain't gonna pick us up on no radar screen!"
NYU promises that the "vitalbook" will contain not only all required books but also all recommended texts. The corollary is that no professor can be permitted to recommend any book (for any subject) unless the publisher of that book has entered an agreement with Vitalviewer. If I were a publisher who hasn't entered such a contract, I'd be lobbying all the professors, and making sure they understood how this is going to limit their flexibility to decide what books should be used.
- guarantees 100% market penetration at participating schools, --so students will be at your mercy--no sneaky going to the library, or borrowing a friend's book
- significantly increases the number of titles students purchase each year,--more money!
- significantly reduces overhead costs associated with manufacture and distribution of textbooks, and promises continued licensing of publisher materials through continuing education.--and all this costs you less!
In the process the VSTi model- creates a copyright compliant environment on campus,--you won't even have to worry about fair use any more! Someone wants to photocopy a chapter of your book for a class presentation? Hah! They'll have to get your permission first....
- gets rid of the need for used books,--You can make sell the same book over, and over, and over again.... And they'll have no first-sale rights, so they won't be able to pass it on to anyone else.
- tailor-makes solutions to fit the unique needs of each campus. Work out precisely the most that the market will bear on each campus, and charge the most you can get away with! No-one can resell your books, so there's no opportunity for arbitrage--everyone pays through the nose!
Sounds like a great deal for someone, but not for the advancement of knowledge....The story is here. Sigh.
Okay, how many of you out there still look up your old college textbooks when you need to know something about your line of work?
(Hands raise)
That's about what I thought. QED.
The whole issue of "right to read" is a major one, yes, but there is a practical matter as well, inasmuch as it robs the student of the ability to use the material down the line. I still have my old Dragon book from compilers class; I couldn't have written my program hc without it. Think about the doctors that will be deprived of a useful anatomy textbook down the line.
/Brian
Amazon to use Microsoft Reader software to sell electronic books
Amazon sure will make alot more money if they don't actually have to ship a physical book, not to mention if you have to reorder it every time you want to reread it, and if you have to buy a different copy for everybody in your family.
And would it scare anyone else if our favorite monopoly gets a stranglehold on the technology that allows you to read books???
Unhappy? Kill your television.
Oh come on. What actual evil have these companies actions resulted in? Is your quality of life actually less? No. Is the average Americans worse? No. Have the size of libraries grown? Yes. Is music cheaper than it was before? Yes. Have the costs of specific medicines and treatments gone up on the aggregate do the corporations? No, they've gone down, it's only society's expectations that have gone up. All these, and many more, mythical complaints, yet few provably bad results.
There is one word for this: FUD.
Click here to agree. You have no choice.
The scheme is this: you get a voucher each semester to use at the book store. The only catch is that the book that you bought with the voucher has to be returned to the library when the class finishes. You can also check out books for the semester from the libraries collection (that other students bought with vouchers/donated).
Thanks to the 1914, I've been able to get away with under $100 in books almost every semester here.
If Williams implemented a system like this, all of us financial aid students would be screwed.
Will libraries be obselete in a few decades/years? Storing all of our information electronically combined with the new legislation coming out of DC makes it almost impossible for libraries to do their jobs without paying big bucks per-view of the material to the publication companies.
For example, my high school library had to implement quotas for how much information you could get off of UMI's ProQuest system (publications on CD-ROM). They had to pay UMI royalties for each view of the information so there was a limit to how many articles that a single student could retrieve.
It seems like libraries might be forced to degrade their services across the board if companies like this have their way.
I think you've just stumbled upon the ultimate reason that this whole 'book licencing' thing may fail. Those that make the laws and those that interpret the laws are some of the biggest book consumers. These laws have the potential of hitting a judges own pocketbook the hardest. Thus, all those crotchety old judges willing to swallow the MPAA's 'hacker propaganda' have their own self interests to worry about now...
Amazon to use Microsoft Reader software to sell electronic books
Would it scare anyone else if our favorite monopoly gets a stranglehold on the technology that allows you to read books???
Unhappy? Kill your television.
---
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Hey, whoever moderated the above post is doing a pretty crappy job.
Instead of moderating Jellicle down, you should moderated Kaa down, for posting an inciteful (not insightful) post on a topic he hadn't read anything about, clearly not even the links in the story.
At least ten posts point out Kaa's argument is completely unrelated to the facts of the situation, yet he receives a +5 score and people who point this out get a 0 Flamebait score for daring to point out that Kaa was talking out of his ass.
If you are a moderator who contributed to this situation, then you're a part of the Slashdot problem, where trolls and idiots get highly moderated while the people with something to say are ignored.
Try to think when handing out moderation verdicts, and read in Oldest First, not Highest Score order, and don't filter out 0 score posts, otherwise you're harming much more then you're helping.
- Software EULAs
- Stupid Patents that have slowed down progress
- DoubleClick invading privacy
- My.MP3.com getting sued for space shifting
I don't mean to sound like aYou might be able to sell such an idea to dentists, because sadly, a lot of dentists aren't all that bright. But any CS student would be nuts to buy into such an astoundingly greedy scheme. And any CS prof -- or engineering, or physics, or humanities -- should be burned at the stake for helping to promote it as long as there is still an alternative.
You can count on it that the only reason this thing is flying even as far as it has gone is that Vicious Source Technologies has paid NYU a huge bribe. Sure, it's called a "marketing agreement", but you know that it boils down to money changing hands.
The NYU dental school is a blight on the face of academia. Their next contract will probably be with a huge candy company.
The scary part of this is that doctors and others use textbooks as references after they graduate. My father-in-law has shelves and shelves of medical texts that he combs for everything from general and specialty to historical references.
If this keeps up, you are going to see a profession that has enough problems reduced to no better than laymen.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
I've looked over the NYU and VitalBooks sites, and I see nothing indicating that the books are actually unusable after one year --- they're merely obsolete. This isn't the DiVX strategy, it's the Windows strategy.
Now, if that mandated purchase thing goes through... ick. I'm a med student, and I've given up on buying the required textbooks, because they're not useful for the course. If I want a reference, I'll go to the library, or read the online fulltext the library kindly provides.
On a side note... $600 a year for dental textbooks? And that's the *discount*? Damn! Either dental school contains a lot more info than med school, or dental profs have many more favored texts.
The truth is, though, that the content of most textbooks - certainly, not inroductory-level ones - doesn't need to change much at all. How different is the information contained in a ten-year-old "Chemistry 101" textbook or a history or literature text from the content of today? Not much, unless you're reading the "newly revised to make Poltically Correct Morons Happy" history books or something.
Open Source Textbooks are a simple idea: get a bunch of qualified people together to collaborate on a "definitive" text that's well-written, contains all the necessary information, and the put it up on the Net in various formats (PDF/text/HTML/whatever) for students to read online, download and read offline, or simply print out. When it's decided that enough new information has become available to warrant a new "edition" (version), then the changes are made and the 2.0 version posted.
In this way, we could remove the profit from the greedy textbook industry and at the same time save students a lot of money which they may not have. Textbooks are a huge expense for students, and the textbook industry charges insane amounts for them. It's a nice racket - on the one hand, they claim they have to charge a lot to cover the expenses of new editions, and on the other hand, they try to make it as hard as possible to buy used copies, and use every trick in the book (pun intended) to force professors into requiring the latest editions of text when the older editions are still 100% usable.
Having a full set of excellent Open-Source textbooks, written by prominent people in their fields and used by forward-thinking (and student-considering) professors could greatly enhance education by not only making it cheaper to be a student, but also making the works available to the interested general public.
I believe there is a project like this already underway, but I don't have the information at hand. Anyone who's interested, write me and I'll see if I can find it and send it along.
I wrote Dr. Dean Edell concerning this issue. While it isn't strictly health-related, he may indeed decide to share this with his (large) audience, since he has a generally Libertarian POV, and strong opinions regarding medical education.
These are the exception, not the rule, and even then their "damage" is questionable. I think you need to take a longer view, and view them more on the aggregate. i.e., What have companies done for us vs. What have they ACTUALLY cost us?
Software EULAs: They may suck. People are certainly entitled to get upset with companies that place them. But is the mere existence of a bad EULA proof of it being bad for society? Has the quality of software truely diminished since the introduction of the EULA? The consumer still has a choice. Software still does alright by the consumer (though I'd be the first to say that software industry is terribly immature).
Stupid Patents: Again, more the exception than the rule. If you talk to any patent laywer worth his salt, he'll tell you the real test of patents is not their existence, it is how they fair in the courts. In terms of actual quantifiable dollar damage due to stupid patents the figures are pretty low. What's more, there are hundreds of thousands of usefull products and services that exist today because of the patent.
DoubleClick: Ok, they suck. On the other hand, how many other viable revenue alternatives exist on the web for budding websites? How much preference do most consumers place on their privacy? If they don't care that much, who am I to say they should?
My.MP3.com: Very grey. Here we have a for-profit corporation (mp3.com) that wants to profit off of others intellectual property. I'm not so sure that it is unreasonable for the intellectual property owners to want to determine the terms and conditions of their property where it reasonably offers to potential to affect their revenues. For instance, let's say that my.mp3.com uses this service to launch themselves into centerstage, such that the IP owners become obselete. As much as you may find the record labels distateful, is it so absolutely wrong for them to want to protect profits? I don't think so. As much as I, as a consumer, may want a service like my.mp3.com, I'd hardly say that makes RIAA evil. Also, we may well see my.mp3.com coming back soon, or if not them, then some other similar service.
Yep, that will be the wave of the future. It's all about revenue streams isn't it? What we're seeing here with Textbooks parallels very nicely with what's happening with software and music. The publisher's want their revenue streams to come in nice and effortlessly and to be as big as possible. But just like with software someone with enough smarts can create a "open" or Free "as-in-speech" textbook that can be distributed and improved upon and derived from, freely.
31. You receive one of the following messages:
"An error occurred during current date check which will prevent further execution of a TrialWare-enabled product."
"Sorry, this software is too old to use. Please contact your school about obtaining a more current version."
"An error occurred during current date check. Please contact your support resources."
Your VitalViewer TM is time and date sensitive. It is scheduled to expire early next semester. If you change the date and time, the application will complain. This is a security issue and will not be changed. If you have changed the date and/or time and are receiving one of the above messages you will need to go to the Dean's office. Please bring your laptop with you to the Dean's office as you will install the application right there. We cannot provide you with a copy of the application.
I can already see a new layer of campus bureacracy - the Dean of Information Technology and Copyright Enforcement.
Ultimately, loss of choice. You may not see it this way, but in places outside geek culture, where it isn't all about hardware and software and your next mp3 player, the world is very different. Try finding a quality piece of furniture or a decent set of dishes for less than an arm and a leg. Try raising kids. Try finding a car that seats six or carries equal cargo that gets 25-35MPH. Try being a single parent. Try meeting the insane goals of the college fund expectation.
Is your quality of life actually less? No.
It actually is roughly the same as ten years ago. The supposed prosperity for Americans is mostly for those who have a jobs that give them a lot of disposable income, which many, many, many lower income people don't. In most cases, families have to have two income earners or they simply cannot make ends meet. This is in part due to the pressure that the prosperity myth puts on people to buy things which they simply cannot afford or need, but also due to the fact that marketroids see themselves as entitled to the contents of our wallets.
Consumer choice is something that simply frightens these people to death. Corps don't want us to have choices or think for ourselves. An informed consumer is a dangerous one--and problematic for their bottom line.
Is the average Americans worse? No.
See above.
Have the size of libraries grown? Yes.
This depends on your point of view. My local library has levelled off in terms of non-fiction. My personal collection has grown by roughly 10 times during the same period, mostly due to inter library loan.
Is music cheaper than it was before? Yes.
No. A CD costs about 50% more than it did 10 years ago. I bought the first 25-30 CDs in my collection for about 10 bucks a piece. Price fixing had more to do with it than anything else, but I don't expect the consent decree to do much about that, either.
Have the costs of specific medicines and treatments gone up on the aggregate do the corporations? No, they've gone down, it's only society's expectations that have gone up.
Tell this to all the people who leave the doctor's office and can't afford the 100 bucks in prescriptions. Patent medications are horrifically expensive, as is any doctor's visit. Cancer patients are sitting ducks. Let's not get into Buroughs-Wellcome and what they do to AIDS sufferers. Why do you think herbs, homeopathy, and other alternatives have sprang up with such vehemence? Why does CNN have an article about how people are buying animal medicines to treat themselves? I would say that your assertion here is misinformed.
All these, and many more, mythical complaints, yet few provably bad results.
I don't see anything about these issues as mythical, but maybe I am actually old enough and conscious enough to have noticed the last 20 years--where were you when CD technology was introduced? I was a freshman in college.
There is one word for this: FUD.
Or in the case of your assertions, simple, gross, unadulterated convenient fictions.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
Capitalism is an economic system, not a philosophical, political, or religious one. We cannot make the mistake of jumping from a body of solid mathematical inference about the behaviors of financial markets to a core set of laws and morality to govern a society. If there were a social policy that would kill the poorest 5% of the population every year, but reintroduce ten thousand times as much money as they had held into the economy at the same time, modern economics would call it a Good Thing. (Come to think of it, that doesn't sound that different from the way that many national and international policies are formed.)
Personally, the day that I am required to constantly license everything that I read, listen to, watch, or learn from some orginial copyright holder is the day I invest in a typewriter and a shack in the woods. From that shack, I will begin writing down every thought I can, and using that body of work to flood the market with free ideas, which will of course bring about a devaluation on an agreggate basis, and get me shot by the Economic Police in short order.
Books are kept in various national libraries, as are newspapers, magazines, etc., but who is keeping archives of significant web news and content? This needs to be addressed, or we are going to lose a large and important slice of history. It needs to get stored in non-digital form, too.
Phil.
Software EULAs: The consumer does not have a choice. Every one that I've read disclaim all liability for everything. They all say that their program may do absolutely nothing, but it'll still be your fault for buying it. I can't think of an instance where a court decision was made on because of a EULA that I didn't agree with. However, I believe that if most consumers knew all of the things they are agreeing to when they open a software package, that they'd think three times before opening it.
Software Patents: I'm not saying that companies are pure evil and should all be destroyed. I'm just saying that, given the chance to stomp over user's rights in return for money, they'll do it.
DoubleClick: If consumers (here I go speaking for them again, sorry) knew that a human could view their surfing habbits and what catalogs they order from, they'd be a bit frightened. Most people have an expectation of privacy that doubleclick violated without telling them. Guess why DoubleClick didn't warn the people that were affected by it? IMO it wasn't because they thought the public didn't care.
My.MP3.com: Revenue was not being taken away from the record labels. People had to buy the CD first before they could access it online. Mp3.com was allowing owners to access the music over the internet. Yes, they might have been making a profit from the extra feature, but ISP's also make a profit for providing access to someone else's content.
Another (slightly offtopic) thing i have heard from a friend was that there was a prof on campus (who was a woman) that taught a biology class (not sure what number) said the following: "If you have a penis between your legs there is no chance you will ever get anything more than a 7 in this class." I was shocked when i heard that things like this were happening in an institution of higher learning, but it goes on to show that more and more Universities do NOT determine grades by understanding of materials but by other unrelated means.
Stories like this along with stories posted previously on /. such as the one about how university research is becoming increasingly aimed at practical and marketable ideas that can be sold to large companies are making me weary of the integrety(sp?) of all institutions of higher learning.
I got a feeling that shit like this is only the beginning.
Ceres
It seems to me that ever since the Cold War and the rise of communism, the western world has become ever more tied to money and capitalism. Hence, most people have become very greedy, at least relative to how they might be if they lived in pre-Cold War conditions.
Because of this, it appears that the pursuit of money, combined with the ability of corporations to combine their assets and hire lawyers inaccessible to normal people, has become very dangerous to individuals like us.
These opinions are my own and not necessarily
These opinions are my own and not necessarily
the opinions of God or any other supreme being.
No printing costs severely reduced marketing costs, gaurunteed student purchase, no student used text market. I was told when I was in university 5 years back that textbooks were generally the highest profit part of a publishing company. Also what happens when your powerbook dies the night before an exam? It's been known to happen. What a horrid deal.
I would have replied sooner, but I was on an airplane. (Now why don't we have 802.11 in the air?)
First off, I think everyone here was taken aback by being compared to facists, evildoers or harbingers of a RMS nightmare.
There are quite a few misconceptions that are permeating through the thread. Let me try to clarify some of these...
1. This isn't the situation that RMS describes. A licensed user can let someone look at their book. They aren't allowed to give copies of the books to their friends, but then again, you can't legally go xerox a whole book either. (This is regardless of the DMCA.)
2. The users who decide to continue the service will get to keep those editions of the books that they have when they leave school. We are working out the details so that a subscription model is in place for those folks who have graduated can have the most up to date references in one place.
Contrast this with the 40 year old dentist who still has their textbooks from college. Do you want them to be using those 15 year old books as a reference or the latest available information? Right now (before VitalBook), they have to purchase the latest edition at full cost - with us, they can pay less for a subscription and stay up to date. If they don't want the subscription, then they just keep the last edition that they recieved.
Either way, they get to keep access the books if they paid for them in school.
It is almost entirely like the CodeWarrior subscription model.
3. VitalBooks cost less. There are a lot more books than the required amount before, and you get all that extra content for the same price as you used to pay for less content on paper. You get more information for the same cost. This isn't a price gouging ploy. You get more for the same price you would have paid with a paper version.
4. Information isn't free. Someone had to write the textbook, someone had to draw the drawings, someone had edit the content, someone had to review the content to make sure the content was correct. That goes into most every book.
5. A VitalBook disc has ~ 7 GB of content and over 100 books on one disc.
6. Schools determine what books go onto the disc. They give us a list and we try to get every book on the list on the disc. Usually, we even put more on the disc. I don't know of a case where we limited what a school could put on a disc - notwithstanding those publishers who we could not negoiate a license with.
7. Our WWW site sucks. It is so bad that we have been obsessed about making a good product that we dropped the ball on Internet marketing?
8. Why is purchase mandated at the schools who use the system? So that 1) it is ensured that students have the materials required for class, 2) by requiring everyone to purchase, you eliminate the casual piracy that goes on (if we didn't do this, we would have to charge more, 3) by allowing people to search across multiple books and manuals at the one time, the schools thought this was good stuff for the students to have.
9. We don't restrict publishers from being available on the disc. There isn't a monopoly on information here.
10. For quite a while some schools have required purchase of computers - sometimes they even specify brand...Is this a monopoly?
11. Dental school curriculums are a fixed entity. Everyone goes through all of the classes. Therefore, at some point during your time at school, you will need the book for a given class.
12. Can I share it with others? You can show them the books, but you can't copy it. The FAQ on the site is poorly worded.
13. We don't sell computers.
14. Our affiliation with Total Sports...We share a common investor. Our net infrastructure is shared with them for the time being.
15. Copy-restriction schemes are a necessary evil for electronic versions of content (otherwise you won't get electronic versions of some content...). I don't think there is any good argument around this. The honor system doesn't work. Does it? (unless you are Stephen King...)
What is a fair and equitable way of making sure that authors, illustrators and the middlemen who bring a electronic product to market get paid for their work?
We would love to know. Let us know if you have ideas.
Thanks,
Engineering, Vital Source Technologies
"...and I don't know why we didn't make as much money this year. We're already putting out a new overpriced 'updated' edition every year. What else can we do to shaft students? Make time-limited textbooks or something?"
"Good Idea, Ted."
"Ha, ha, Jim. That would be pretty funny, wouldn't it?"
"No, seriously."
"Hmmmm..."
-Legion
I've successfully gotten through college without purchasing too many text books. In the field of mathematics, the textbooks are extremely small, and so I would just photocopy the 200 pages (reducing slightly to fit two pages on a sheet), and use that. 100 x 5cents = $5. These books generally go for $80-$100 each.
I would also check books out from the library. I checked out a physical chemistry textbook for p-chem, chemical energetics, spectroscopy, and a year of research. I saved over a hundred dollars (and somehow avoided library fines). I've never had any literature courses, but one could be sure that I would get those books from the Gutenberg Project if not from the library.
Of course, there were even a few courses that I just plain went without a book in. I would pay attention during the lecture (well...), and somehow would get by without failing. Homework sets were a problem in some classes, but I rarely turned in homework anyway. I purchased my Organic Chem textbook my freshman year. After realizing by the end of the two semesters that I had never read it, I decided that I would make sure I need a text book before purchasing one.
I suppose since I'm working on a doctorate and want to stay in education that I will at some point end up being a professor. I vow now that I will never ask any student to purchase one of these digital books. I will teach my courses in such a manner that a student could get by with any general textbook in the subject (hence be able to use the library), and make any problem sets available on the course web site (as well as in printouts for those who don't like computers). Education should not discriminate against people who don't have limitless financial resources (or cheap people like me).
Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
I wonder if RMS could have patented the idea when he had it. THus prevented the the idea from being used. Just a thought.
You are right, I was quoting a story I had read a long time ago and it involved the Koran "argument" you quoted above, so that was how I came to mention the Turks.
Anyway, I would like to retract my posting altogether.
I have checked a few web pages such as
http://www.unesco.org/webworld/alexandria_new/
http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/
(the latter contains a description of the history of the ancient library, at
http://www.bibalex.gov.eg/ancient_library.htm,
which also lists the sources of the various claims/stories.)
It seems that the library was damaged, books taken away or destroyed, etc. many times during the third and fourth centuries out of a variety of motives, including also the anti-pagan riots incited by Christian leaders.
The story regarding Omar seems to have been made up in the 12th century according to a lot of historians, as it seems that it was mentioned first around that time but never between 640 and the 1100s.
For publishers, VSTi offers a content distribution model that
Let's take these one at a time:
"guarantees 100% market penetration at participating schools"
In other words, students will have absolutely no say in their textbook purchases if their school adopts this approach. As it is now, students at least have the choice of buying used books (I'll get to this in a moment) or shopping elsewhere for discounts.
"significantly increases the number of titles students purchase each year"
Having spent upwards of $300 per semester on textbooks when I was an undergrad, I can honestly say that this is not a good thing.
"significantly reduces overhead costs associated with manufacture and distribution of textbooks"
Do you think the distributors will pass those savings on to the students? Whatchoo talkin bout, Willis?
"promises continued licensing of publisher materials through continuing education"
Ah, there's that "new economy" buzzword. Did you catch it? Hint: it starts with an "L" and we'll all be grabbing our ankles for it soon, if the coprporations have their way.
A bit further down on the page, I found this gem:
"gets rid of the need for used books"
Pardon me while I choke back my bile. A full-time student on a slim workstudy income absolutely relies on used textbooks in order to afford a full schedule worth. Bah.
-Legion
Dentist: "There, that isn't so bad, is it?"
Patient: "ih uuuuuurts u astard!!!!!!!!"
Dentist: "We'll have that root canal wrapped up in another minute.
[turns to computer, sounds of keys tapping]
"Hmmm. Say, you don't happen to know what a General Protection Fault is, do you?"
"I will gladly pay you today, sir, and eat up
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Actually, the word "they" brings the connotation that the subset being referred to consists of more than one individual, whereas the words "he" or "she" do not.
In order to preserve the proper connotation, the proper answer would be to use the word "it", instead of "he" or "she". However, use of the word "it" brings on a set of other incongruities, most notably the reader of the sentence would not know whether the individual of the set being refered to was a human, a dog, or a box. In order to resolve such ambiguities, one must select either the word "he" or "she". Depending on the context the word is being used in, one (and only one) choice is appropriate. In the case where the context cannot resolve the ambiguity, the proper word to use is "he".
Or have we forgot English 101?
Actually, it would be great if there were a sexless pronoun in the english language, but unfortunately, there isn't. One can "break" the language syntax and use the word "they", however, as pointed out above, this can cause problems as well.
I say that we start acting like adults and get off this "politically correct" bandwagon - and start thinking!
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
At least they started with medical textbooks, a field where the content should be outdated (at least some of it) in a few years. This will prevent patients from having their doctors referring to really old texts for information. As for not letting someone else read it, think of it this way, they can as long as it is on your computer with your code. Much like a real book, they can't properly use it if you are too. The fact is that selective knowledge texts are really expensive to produce, and the cost can be brought down through electronic distribution, but the balance of the authors' rights to compensation must be accounted for. I like the fact that you can prevent unauthorized viewing. It protects the author. Information doesn't yearn to be free. It doesn't yearn at all. We may yearn for free stuff, but someone has to pay. If enough medical students dislike this, let them create an opensource medical text.
You've got to be kidding? You mean that they'd rather have the books shredded and ripped up than have them donated to libraries or charities or prisons!?!
Now that is arrogance and cruelty. There are so many people in the world who aren't literate, or aren't literate enough and would be helped by having books. Why not donate them to Africa or South America for people to learn english from? No. They rip them up and destroy them instead.
Forget it.. They're as fucked up as the RIAA/MPAA.
(As a side thing, there are times when a book's cover gets ripped off or falls off.. It's happened to several of my paperbacks. Will I be called a thief if I sell such a book?)
You have that wrong; since a pc is not stereo equiment, it IS legal to rip cds to mp3 for your own use on your computer. It is also legal then to transfer them to your Diamond Rio (i meantion that product since it is the one that brought about the court ruling. Do a search on /. for it, you'll find that mp3s on your computer IS legal).
Once a copyright holder has been payed for their work, they have no right to restrict futher sale of it.
The reason for Copyright's is NOT to maximize profit. It is to encourage works in the public domain. Though it create's a monopoly, that monopoly is intended to be as mild as possible.
As there's one author and 6 billion people on this earth who may benefit from that book, I'd much rather have the author screwed, than allow that author screw 6 billion people perpetually.
Besides, it is the doctrine of first sale that let's libraries exist, that let's used bookstores exist, that let's you sell or loan a book to a friend.
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
If you're going to complain that all of the above is unfair to the author, you must like the DMCA, as it allows the copyright holders many rights they never used to have.
Oo! Look! A man made entirely of straw! If he only had a brain...
I must like nothing. I don't agree with the doctrine of first sale, it was fine back in the days when people didn't even have reliable postal service, but now it's all too easy to transfer copies from place to place.
However, I don't believe that copyright holders should be granted a monopoly on production. They should be able to set a price, but then should be required to sell printing rights at that price to anyone who wants to buy them (of course, for this to work, they couldn't be allowed to keep changing their prices; they'd have to start high and only be allowed to lower the per-copy price). If you go to watch a movie, your ticket should include the price of a legal copy of the movie, and you should be able to buy a cheap DVD of the movie (for which no additional payment is offered to the copyright holder) on your way out.
The purpose of copyright is to encourage the production and distribution of works, not to maximize profit nor to maximize the number of works available in the public domain. The concept of fairness to both sides is central; there must be a balance between making sure there is an incentive to produce and distribute works, and making sure the works are not shut away from the public.
I don't like the DMCA because it gives the copyright holder much more than a guarantee of profit, it gives him control of his customers' use of the product.
If copyright was shortened to five years and limited to the right to set and charge a royalty from all publishers, and this was balanced by making copies non-transferable, I think we'd have a system that worked much more smoothly than the current one. Libraries and used book stores would no longer be the enemies of publishers, and would have access to all books over five years old. Copyright couldn't be abused to force distributors into monopolistic contracts (MS), to hide dirty little secrets (Church of Scientology), or to extort money for access to cultural icons created by men long dead(Disney).
I think it's a good balance: five years of guaranteed income from everyone who accesses your work, but no control over who gets it and under what terms, and then it becomes part of our cultural heritage.
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How long are we gonna sit back and and take it up the A** . Congress bellied up to the hog trough on this one and passed a law that is so lop sided its going to crush the pigs that passed it! I think its funny, let these people run with it as far as they can, its just more rope to hang them with.
A few realistic issues:
(1) Students prefer printed, bound books. I bit the bullet and got mine printed, but it required a large initial investment. Print-to-order via Kinko's worked ok for a while, but it was about double the price.
(2) Open source may not be a good way to write a textbook. It's not like code where people can generally agree on whether there's a bug or not.
(3) HTML would be the easiest format for an open-source book, since the source is human-readable ascii. You could use CVS, etc. But HTML sucks for producing a printable book. I use PageMaker,which isn't CVS-able. I suppose Tex might work, but in my opinion Tex is a dinosaur, and I don't know if it's capable of doing all the illustration and page formatting the way publishing software can.
Find free books.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, no moderator points at the moment...
Find more at ntk.net
The thing that is different is that the modern information "extremist" knows exactly what intellectual property is and doesn't like it. Gnutella, Freenet and all the diffferent internet cooperative technologies aren't just here for kicks. People are already looking at what's happening and reacting.
Sure this country was created with the vision of private property but this country is blip in historical time.
Sure, the powers-that-be are the biggest, baddest thing that's existed so far. But there's always tommarow.
"Information wants to be free..." is an effecto of the growth of technology, of the future just the same as US colonization was tedency that turned to be irrestible.
Remember that NII - the "information superhighway?" Neither does anyone else. But NII was intended to be a read-one internet. And failed on the undoability of such closed systems.
There are many kinds of inevitability. Economic is one. Structural is another. The rulers with little tech savy are being bitten more and more by structural forces. Cool.
Windows seems "economically inevitable" but as a professional windows programmer, I'd say that it's internal contradictions have a strong potential to undo it.
Everything is inevitable once it wins.
The trick is to win and the battle isn't over.
Well? I put a mancle on your wrist and in EXCHANGE for my not whipping you, you work from dawn to dusk.
This is based on monopoly of force, sure. But a monopoly of information works that same way.
I give you the password to your food container for you working from dawn to dusk. Now, it's information slavery
Beyond the incredible screw over and the inability to get old knowledge, consider the possibility of inserting "better" ideas into texts.
Undesirable ideas could be wiped out at the stroke of an update. Certain people could be given one story, others could be given different story.
A remote controlled internet - for the benefit of others.
Didn't Ray Bradbury use this idea more creatively in Fahrenheit 451?
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
Don't American universities have student associations, and staff associations (here in socialist old Oz we even have the temerity to call them unions) to fight this kind of battle?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.
War is necrophilia.
ofcourse. it's the american(tm) way. Destroy something of worth rather than letting someone else have it. I could think of a few uses, and most do not involve shipping to the third world. Orphanages, homes for the elderly, hospitals, etc.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
See http://vitalviewer.com/files/impsites.ht ml. Apparently, VitalSource will be concentrating on the health sciences for their textbook system.
Maybe it's time to just start whacking all of this stuff up on freenet or some other "un-censorable" information sharing technology. Paying someone an assload of money to use their book as a reference for a limited amount of time is complete BS.
Maybe someone should start up an auction site out of the country that caters to the US and sells copyrighted material (not copies, originals) since Ebay and many of the other large auction sites will not even allow auctions for software, certain books, or CD's.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I've been following this discussion in detail and since I work for the NYU Dental School, I would like to make a few comments about your explanation of your product. I feel compelled to clarify a a number of the issues that your product brings and explain to you why most reasonable people would agree that your product is not an acceptable means for the transmission of education
First, let me say that when you introduced the product to the University, that it was not reviewed by the IS department. Your company had done an end-run around the department, and because this, I resigned from the school.
The reason why people are so upset by this is because, unlike what you claim, your product does FAR beyond traditional protections of Copyright. Actually, I think your fully aware of this because you state right on your website that your going to end the situation where Publishers are competing with their own used books. Since the right of second sale is guaranteed as part of the Fair Use Doctrine, right from the start your talking against yourself.
The truth is, your product can not be allowed to stand because it DOES threaten the foundations of Democracy and free speech in this country. When the Copyright Office was making it's review of classes of works to be be exempted from the DMCA, continually people were asking specific cases. You would have qualified as that specific case because you intrude on our Fair Use constitutional Guarantees in the following specific ways.
First of all, one can not copy the textbooks on the disk. It is a legal fact that owners of Books have this right under Constitutional Law, but you deny it to your customers.
Secondly, you claim that you are licensing the material to the students. In this case, the contract would not be valid because you couple it with a mandate for ALL the students in the program. In order to be a participant in the educational activities at the university you Must Purchase the media and the player. Contracts in which both partners are not equally allowed to fairly negotiate are non-binding under case law.
New York University was concerned about some of these Fair Use issues. As such, they guaranteed that printed books of all the material will be available for students if they choose to buy them. But this is not nearly far enough because it is a doubling of the expense to obtain what Students already purchased in the first place.
On a broader level, if the VitalBook product is allowed to pass without challenge, it will be mean the inevitable end to public education and a free exchange of information.
Next will be the medical schools, then the engineering schools, then undergraduate schooling, then High School Education, until we reach the point where privately owned libraries and freedom of discussion will be outlawed. As this products works, and with the abusive power brought by the DMCA, I don't see my Grandchildren ever owning a copy of Curious George or the Cat in the Hat in the future. The publishers will have no incentive to produce paper copies for home ownership. They'll just Lease digital copies for a year to year rental.
Now - I want to answer some of your points.
As your aware, is not allowed to to give Their copy to someone else, and according to your FAQ, they can not share it with upper classmen because you threaten to sue them in plain black and white on your web page. Furthermore, they can not Sell their books to other students either. The prevention of this alone is a violation of the students rights, even under the DMCA. If an Upper Classman wants to use a lower classmans device to find a paragraph of material - you website makes it clear that in your opinion this is a violation of Copyright. Yet, every single court decision and Section 107 of the Copyright Act, and the US Constitution says your just plain wrong.
Sirs - This is just NOT GOOD ENOUGH. College Students who pay they're hard earned money should be able to keep their book without your permission as part of their basic right to property under the 4th amendment of the US Constitution. What your describing is Stalinist at best. I shouldn't even have to give you any reasons why someone may not finish all four years of Dental school, because it's irrelevant to the point that your stealing the personal property of the students if they leave the school, but let me clue you into some of the reasons why someone might not finish the four years, which would then mean they would not be allowed to keep their books.
Reason Number one why students drop out - They run out of money and the financial pressure of staying in school becomes too great. They might try to re-enter later. Or they might not. But they've completely lost their books, or the right to recoup the costs of the books by resale...which is one of your stated aims in your "Partners" section.
Reason Number Two - Students may transfer to a different school using a different product or books. Now, all the education they did until this point become valueless because your time lock turns of the software.
If they want to subscribe to get the latest information or not is a personal decision for the graduate, and has nothing to do, whatsoever, with the discussion.I want them to use whatever information they choose to use and not be dictated to by VitalBooks. Dentists have continuing education mandates which makes it important to them to get further education. Your completely crossing the line when you ask this question. They have Dental Association Journals, Research etc available to them. They have no need of your product to stay up to date. I definitely WANT my dentist to have the original books he learned with as a point of reference when continuing his education as a professional. Your product simple doesn't make that possible.
But they don't have Fair Use of them. They can't make a copy of an excerpt for distribution at a Presentation, which is completely Fair Use and legal under Copyright Law. And then you can go out of business, or their computer can break. Your system makes the safety of all the information the Graduate is using dependent on your good will and health as a private corporation. This is not a risk the public should be asked to bare. This is only relevant if we were talking about an open market. Since your program mandates "100% penetration" of the "Market", and since students do not own the books, but are forced to pay for them, your discussion of the relative cost is confusing.Your promising Vendors that they will make more money because they'll sell more books, and then argue that it's cheaper for the student. How is this Magic performed? Hmmm
Well - for one thing, you prevent the right of second sale, eliminating the used book market, as you point out on your web site.
Secondly, you are forcing students to buy material they don't want or need by taking the purchasing decision out of their hands and force feeding them material which may or may not be apropiate for their personal use. So your price fixing and using extortion.
And your point? It's not up to public to assure a profit. For God Sakes, NYU Dental changes over 60K a year in tuition, and then make a tidy profit with their dental clinics. Let them publish their own material on the Internet if need be. - Oh - but that's that you and your publishing partners are worried about in the first place. If NYU Dental, the Largest Dental School in the US gets serious about self publish material cheaply with the Internet, and inexpensive tools for video production and editing, then they cut the publishers out of the picture all together.........
So? The NY Public Library in multiples of that. Ever hear of Index Medicus?What's the point. Everyone has to carry the cost of 100 books because you insist?
Oh - your being very Coy. Of COURSE you include MORE on the disk than NYU asks for. It's part of your guarantee to publishers. The question is why should NYU have to PAY for more than they're asking for.. No - you dropped the ball in Civics and consideration of the welfare of the public. Your website is quite good enough at making clear your total disrespect for Students and the American Publics right to own what they purchase and freedom to educate. That's just not true.. For your own website:the core concept of the VSTi solution hinges on the concept that static content is no longer sold to students for a one-time payment; continually updated information is now licensed to students for a recurring, yearly fee. Students license books from year to year, with the opportunity to continue those licenses throughout their professional lives as continuing education. This gives publishers the opportunity to offer continually updated information in exchange for a revenue stream that adds additional revenue each year, instead of simply replacing revenue each year.
In the VSTi model, students are mandated by universities to pay a yearly fee licensing their reference curriculum. That fee is forwarded to VSTi, and VSTi is the conduit through which individual publishers receive license fees for individual titles.
Publishers receive a mandated, preset fee for every student for every title chosen by professors. Because the service is a global curriculum application, the fee comes in from each student each of the four years of their studies.
So, a book that in the past was "required" or "recommended" for a given course, and which carried the weighty overhead of production, distribution, and return, is now licensed by every student every year and distributed digitally. The reason for mandating the students is to stifle competition and destroy the market.
What you call Casual Piracy is called "Fair Use" and is constitutionally mandated by our founding fathers to protect the public from peopleYes - and NY State has laws against this called the Second Source rule. This is actually a criminal violation of NY State Law.
Run that by me again? Your making them pay for material that they don't need and prevent them from reselling it in the after market.
It's worded perfectly
We don't sell our rights! Don't publish and die as a business. That's your problem.http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
What good is an artistic work that can never be shown, can never be used, and sits moldering away in some storage archive?
Nobody's *obligated* to sell their artistic work. That's why an artistic work NOT in the public domain can potentially do so little public good. If you want to maximize [commercial] artistic works, make copyright infinite in length. Yeah, in a few decades, you won't be able to SEE I Love Lucy anymore, but it'll be 'out there', furthering the public good, won't it?
You're also forgetting that copyright is a DISINCENTIVE to producing non-commercial works. Not every work out there was created by Disney for money, some were created by artists scratching an itch. (Linux, Hornet.org, etc)
I like your idea though, it's something I might agree with. But I don't think it's workable, the artistic work doesn't have to be sold for money, they may choose to distribute limited copies, and never sell another. (Beanie Babies) Or they may want to (as you suggest) use copyright to 'censor' their past.
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
And while I'm at it, since I don't have to be restricted by those niceties of business law and all of that, I might decide to take aim at the competition. I'm probably not going to do it with the yellow pages. After all, this is my turf, and that's my money they're raking in...
*whup* "Get along, little electrons. Heeyah!"
We at Vital Source Technologies think that the discussion that has taken place here has been important and has been, for the most part, lively and useful. We feel like our product and company intentions have been mischaracterized, but that isn't the point of this message.
The point of this message is that there is a line; a line of decency and respect that has been crossed in the actions of a few people who have taken their views to an extreme that is deplorable.
We aren't talking about hacking, flame mail or the like - we are talking about physical threats of harm that no community should tolerate or respect.
No one should live in fear for the expression of their ideas.
Thanks for listening.
Ok so you don't like your life. How does this determine that things are worse than they used to be? How do you hold companies responsible? The price of basic goods and services (i.e., food) have relative to the wages of at least 95% the country. This is an economically provable fact.
Today you get more car for your money than you did 20, 40, or even 60 years ago. Today's cars are drastically safter, faster, and more efficient (relative to their size, weight, etc.). You just can't make that comparison.
College tuition has risen, but you really can't blame companies for this. The economy's success is largely to blame. More people are seeking and getting advanced education than ever before, and most are willing and able to pay substantially more than before. Yet we have essentially the same number of respectable schools as we did before, so this means more demand. Furthermore, there is tremendous waste going on in academia. I know, for instance, at most of the Ivy league and equivalent schools, the tuition could be reduced by roughly 10k without the need to change anything significantly (other than tuition, of course).
Maybe for you it is the same, or then again, maybe you just haven't counted. On the aggregate, however, there are thousands statistics, and other similar measures, demonstrating that life has actually gotten easier on the aggregate. You may call it a prosperity myth, but unemployment is at its lowest point in history. Most people are earning significantly more money, and not just the middle class and higher.
Libraries on the aggregate, not just your local library, duh.
Ok, so you once bought CDs for roughly 10 bucks a piece. You are the exception. On aggregate, after inflation has been accounted for, prices have fallen by something like 10%.
Ahem, this is one area with which I am quite familiar. The price of the SAME medicines has gone WAY WAY down. The difference is that people are far more concerned about healthcare these days and are willing to pay more. This demand has resulted in drug companies creating drugs which would never before be economically viable, due to lack of demand, lack of technology, and lifespan of the product in question. Those cancer patients that you talk about, simply would have never even had the option for that kind of care back then. AIDS patients? Forget it.
Just because people are doing "crazy" things does not mean medicine is worse. A drug company, may, for instance realize that this treatment also works on animals, and market a version which does not cost as much. This, however, does not mean that they could just lower the price, since the costs are not the production costs, it's R&D, education, and some marketing. In addition to the increased availability of extraordinary treatments and medications [which cost more], we the HMOs to make get reimbursed terribly difficult. Doctors find it very difficult to get paid, many are leaving or want to leave the profession. Medical manufacturers also find it difficult to get reimbursed, which is also a large issue. Patients find it difficult to get the treatment they need/want, because no one can afford to do things for free.
Welcome to the brave new world!
A slip of the tongue hardly makes me ignorant. One may be entitled to recieve, but the giver may not be entitled to give. In other words, while you may entitled to listen to that music in any way you see fit, the copyright owner still may be entitled to determine who distributes that, even if it is to existing owners. It is a fine distinction. What makes it grey, is whether or not allowing control to this extent is really in the best interest of society.
Though some may claim the Seagrams et.al are doing this out of malice, I find it hard to believe. The issue, at its core, is profits, whether directly or indirectly. I know, for instance, may of the other record companies are trying to create their own my.mp3.com clones, or wish to license with my.mp3.com. That does not fit with the assertion that they're trying to make you pay twice for that same music, or that they just want control for controls sake...
Or buy a copy every ten years or so. [...] This is Very Scary stuff here. The idea is that the content (book) is now controlled by a company who can turn off the content because someone hasn't payed up in the last year.
Reminds me of some hypotheticals that a former co-worker and I were tossing around a while ago -- I was trying to make the point that the capabilities and/or limitations of a technology can affect the de facto operation of a medium, setting parameters on it that do not necessarily correspond to the law and/or morality (big distinction, by the way), and yet these parameters come to be taken for granted, so that they are assumed to be part of the legal and/or moral nature of the thing, rather than mere side-effects. Whichever party is receiving the extra benefits comes to feel entitled to them, and then, when changes in the technology change these parameters, they protest. Here goes:
Suppose that at some time in the past, paper and printing technology were such that books would deteriorate and become unreadable after some period of time (like before acid-free paper, non-fading inks, etc., but say the period was much shorter and more regular, i.e., that a book would last exactly five years). For some books that you only buy to read once for light entertainment, it wouldn't be so bad, but for anything that you want to have in a personal library, e.g., great literature or reference material like dictionaries and encyclopedias, let alone technical literature or journals, you'd basically have to replace everything peiodically, buying a new copy of the same book every five years. Basically, there would be no such thing as owning a book in the normal sense -- sure, the volume would be your property while it lasts, but you'd really only be renting the contents. All else being equal, the books would probably be somewhat cheaper, because you're not getting as much value. Publishers might even offer some sort of discount on the replacements, e.g., 50% off a new copy of the same title when you bring your old one to be recycled. They could do this as a promotion, to encourage you to replace your books, but this would be entirely promotional, there's not necessarily any notion that by buying it the first time, you had in some sense bought a right to have its contents available to you forever.
Now, suppose an advance in printing technology makes it possible for books to last forever. It's most likely, of course, that publishers would just resist adopting the new technology (see DVD-audio). How about this instead: suppose someone invents a process that can be applied to a book to make it last longer (e.g., a chemical treatment to prevent the paper from yellowing, the ink from fading, etc.). In this case, people would go buy the chemical, treat their existing books, and never again need to buy replacements. Now the publishers would protest, arguing that "When you buy a book, what you're buying is the right to have access to its contents for five years; if you want to keep it past that point, you have to pay again," and they would try to insist that customers still owe them a payment for every five-year period that they own a book -- they might even argue that the books' deterioration serves as a copyright-protection mechanism, since it "effectively controls access", and try to have the chemical banned on the grounds that it makes it impossible for them to collect their payments. Customers would argue back, "No, we bought the book, to do with as we please. Before, we were buying a new book each time, not renewing our rights to the old one. The only reason we had to keep paying before was because of a technological limitation; you're not actually entitled to those ongoing payments."
How does that sound? Maybe when you buy an Encyclopaedia Britannica set, they'd say that if you pay extra for the gold coating on the edges, you're not just buying a few grams of gold, or paying for the extra production costs, but actually paying for the right to own the books for a longer time. And no, you can't paint a gold coating on them yourself, becuase that would be violating their copyright.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
There is a larger issue at work here than just this evil notion of "control". Though all intellectual property ultimately revolves around control, control is just the means by which one attains the ends (i.e., profits). This issue is really not so different. Just as the labels will not allow you to pirate music, they don't want mp3.com to provide that service. They frankly don't want to "control" for controls sake, they want to profit. The more pervasive piracy is, the less likely they are to sell CDs; the more use of my.mp3.com, the less capable they are of positioning themselves in mp3.com's position [which erodes their ability further supplement their profits and promotional opportunities].
Though my.mp3.com certainly gave the labels a much needed kick in the butt and provided the consumer with a benefit, the body of law still looks rather favorably on the IP owners (the labels)--it seeks to protect the creator(s). It grants the labels certain rights and priviledges. Although the my.mp3.com service may not negatively affect current sales, it can affect future profits. It is of undeniable interest to the labels.
The essential question is: How do we, as a society, balance the label's interest against the consumer's interest? If you deny the interest of either party, you are avoiding the question. In my opinion, siding with my.mp3.com is to favor the short run over the long run.
If my.mp3.com goes unchecked: In the short run, you, the consumer, enjoy easier access to your music collection, and the label still seems to do okay. In the long run, the label runs the risk of being marginalized and hurt. Despite the fact that this service brings up new questions, I'd lean more towards allowing the labels the OPPORTUNITY to have some control over their properties, and thus preserve a more traditional notion of IP in a modern era, where individual sales of physical items likely wont mean what it used to. A bunch of labels have already started on a project to do their own my.mp3.com type service. Those who don't, will still face the wrath of the consumer, and will likely reduce their profitability--both in record sales and in online efforts. In short, I'd give the labels a chance.
The only reason the RIAA was able to sue was the confusion caused by the fact that my.mp3.com's software didn't make you rip and upload the MP3 directly (which would have been completely legal for them to provide). This is functionally equivalent to shared-dictionary compression, where you simply indicate which blocks of data you have rather than transmitting the entire message directly. The US Navy does this sort of thing with those extremely low frequently radio links which can be used by a submerged submarine but have low bandwidth; instead of sending the plain text, they'd just transmit a few symbols from a large code book available on each end of the connection. In addition to being very secure, it's much faster to send a few 4-letter symbols than a few hundred characters of English text. Sending a CD over a 28.8k modem is quite similar to sending a text message over a link measure in tens of bits per second.
The similarity in MP3.com's case is that the end result is identical - every single CD will be bit-for-bit identical and, assuming identical settings, every MP3 will be identical, just as in those large codebooks. Sending a few cryptographic hashes to confirm that you do in fact own a copy of a CD is a lot more efficient for a modem user.
Every single step would be legal if you were the only person doing it. You bought the CD, so you can legally rip an MP3, upload it to a private webserver and listen to it from work. You can use a compression algorithm to speed that transfer. You could even use a shared-dictionary setup, but there wouldn't be any point for a single user. The RIAA is claiming that it infringes upon their rights for you to listen to a stream of bytes if it was converted by someone else, even if you own an identical stream of bytes. That's why I say that this case is about control.
Some software companies attempt to do the same thing in their licenses. I've bought a few products where the shrinkwrap license claims that the CD is only to be used with a single machine. By the wording on the license, a network admin like myself should make sure that a single CD is never used on a different system, even if we own 30 licenses. In practice, not even the manufacturer's lawyer would try to claim that it's a crime that I grabbed a different CD to install a couple files, since they're all identical and we have a legal license for every user.
I find it interesting that the NYU links and some of the VitalBook links are all 404ed. Anyone want to bet that we won't be seeing hastily sanitized versions shortly?
Neither I, nor the labels [if we're to believe their legal documents], are confused about the key facts. Just because my.mp3.com is providing a service that is "fair use" for the customer, does not mean they are legally entitled to provide the service. As arbitrary as it may sound to you, it is within the rights of the intellectual property owner to make that determination. What's more, they actually have a pretty reasonable motive. I'm not sure if you noticed this or not, but my.mp3.com is a for-profit corporation. Mp3.com is not interested in charity--they have every intent to profit. These profits can come in the form of ad revenue and increased brand awareness [due to my.mp3.com]. Furthermore, if the internet is even half the boon people claim, mp3.com may be in a position to exploit this opportunity to turn themselves into a major player [not to mention marginalizing the labels in the process].
Likewise, if the labels were to put themselves in the same position [by replacing my.mp3.com], they too might enjoy the benefits. Why shouldn't they want to? Why do you assume their only reason for acting the way they have is to either be malicious or the result of ignorance? How can you still cling to this view, in light of recent efforts on the label's part to do the same thing?
Even if you are totally unappreciative of the labels' current position, a ruling in mp3.com's favor would set a precendent that might have possibly negative repercussions on future labels.
Imagine, for a moment, if the labels decided to change their business model such that they only charge, say, 4 dollars for a CD. However, they would do this under the assumption that people would utilize their cloned service on a regular basis. Though they would not force you to use it [i.e., you could theoretically just spend 4 dollars, without any tradeoff], they would, by virtue of their IP rights, be the sole provider of the transformation service for their own records. Thus people would come. They would they enjoy continuous ad revenues, marketing data, etc. They would also be in a position to capture music lovers' eyes, and reduce the very expensive marketing efforts they now need to engage in. It might even allow them to cut out the middlemen entirely [i.e., skip the CD step entirely].
The point is that, here we have a potential benefit for society that would be cut out by allowing mp3.com's interpretation that "fair use". It is not that irrational to defend IP in this application. Though I have no interest in the labels, I think this form of IP control should be allowed, and I think we should let the markets decide.