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.

Comments

How about making annotations?

[Idaho]

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 :-)

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 :) my opinion *might* change....

You'll like it, we guarantee it!

[ChaosDiscord]

So speaks the NYU Dental school's FAQ on the VitalBook:

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!

Wow, that's conviction. We're so certain you'll love the VitalBook, that if you claim you don't like it, we'll accuse you of lying.

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:

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.

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:

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.

And that pesky used book store where people can save a little money on their education and help protect the environment with reuse:

In the VSTi system, publishers...do not compete against used copies of their own books....

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.

Right of Transfer

[sterno]

One of the things I see a growing need for is a protected right of transfer for any copyrighted material. Essentially the right protects your ability to transfer your access to any copyrighted work to another party at no cost. This right would not be limited to purchased items (something quickly dissapearing it seems), also extending to leased works where you pay for limited time access, etc.

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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Re:This makes a lot of sense

[Captain_Carnage]

No it doesn't; at the very least having the information available gives you some historical insight as to where we were medically at any given point in time.

But the issues are much more serious than that... The DMCA is a very large step in the wrong direction for your freedoms in this country, and this is just another example of how the DMCA is going to strip you and all of us of our Constitutional freedoms if we don't wake up and DO something about it.

This country is becoming it's own worst nightmare; an Orwellian police state. Just look at the DVD lawsuit. People are being prevented from linking to sites because of the content that's there... is that NOT a violation of your Constitutional right to free speech? This particular article is somewhat remenicent of Farrenheit 451, where books were illegalized and burned in the street. Is this the kind of society you want to live in?

There is a war brewing... a war between the techological haves and have-nots. The people who have the information don't want YOU to get it, so they can monopolize their possesion of it and make money from it. That's what this is all about.

What's amazing to me is that we, the geek community, have done very little about this. The work that we do is being criminalized, rather than cherished as it should be. Reverse engineering, the act of figuring out how things work, is all but illegal, now that we have the DMCA. Freedom of speech is diminished, because you can't describe how something works if the creator made some half-assed electronic attempt to maintain control over it, thanks to the DMCA.

Why have we been so quiet about this? Write your congressman and let them know what an abomination you think the DMCA is. Visit the EFF's website and find out what you can about how the government is allowing big business to strip you of your Constitutionally "guaranteed" civil rights.

And when you finally get it, tell your friends.


Check out the OSS linux clustering technology called

Missing the point

[Veteran]

By far the most important part of this is the ability of the producing company to turn off your ability to read the book.

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).

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The law, 100's of millions of lines of code, not one line of which has ever been checked to see if it works.

Re:Freedom of contract

[Paul Carver]

The problem is who's signing the contract and who's being bound by it. In this case, they aren't the same.

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.

So VSTi wines and dines the university president and suddenly all the students are required to either pay the extortion or withdraw from that univerity. Students aren't buying books based on what they need, but rather on the university's contractual obligation. Universities in general aren't accountable to the students, so it's not hard to imagine that a sufficiently unscrupulous VSTi sales force get a large percentage of schools into contracts.

Back in My Day...

[FFFish]

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...


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Re:Freedom of contract

[Robert Wilde]

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.
...
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...

Because your so-called "freedom of contract" has nothing to do with free market capitalism and even less to do with libertarianism. Particularly, as in this case, when the only aim of the contract is to restrict the normal free market for textbooks that would otherwise exist.

The ridiculous thing is that there is nothing new in this attempted monopoly power grab. At the end of the last century, the major publishing houses attempted to destroy the textbook resale market by printing "license agrrements" in the inside cover of books stating the books could not be resold for less than their cover price. The Suprmeme Court, thankfully, found this for the restraint of trade and abuse of copyright that it was. Now, just because the books are released electronically the publishers think they can get away with this again!

In a free market, the purchasers rights beyond first sale are sacrosanct - that's what it means to own something. A contract that restricts the market by dictating how a product may be used after it's sold is nothign more than a barrier to the invisible hand of the market. If you had to agree to use Mobil gasoline in your Ford SUV, not to sell MSFT shares for less than you bought them, or not resell your medical textbooks - either as a libertarian or a believer in the free market you should be up in arms.

You Let them tie their own rope

[FreeUser]

Discussion question: How do you explain this to business people (who run the country) OR build it into the economy?

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:

• The very real structural and systemic threats against our democratic system and the concerted efforts to undermine the same by certain corporate interests
  
• The threats to our rights as citizens incorporated in new legislation such as the DMCA
  
• The attack on our rights to fair use current MPAA and RIAA litigation poses, and the threat that in turn poses to free (as in speach) education and dissemination of information
  
• The attacks on our privacy via key escrow, etc.
  
• The profound political corruption at all levels that is allowing such an attack, unprecidented in both width and depth, on our very constitution itself
  

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.