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Read To Your Children, Go To Jail (Not Really)
The property struggle of our generation will be fought not in the streets of
Matewan
but in the tiny print in license agreements.
Glassbook
is Adobe's attempt to e-books, but they have a few details yet to iron out. Take Alice's Adventures in Wonderland for example -- check out the
permissions
you acquire when you "purchase" this "book."
Thanks to Art Medlar
and TBTF for this one.
Update:
Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently I misinterpreted the meaning of "this book cannot be read aloud"; Glassbook tech support tells me this refers to its capabilities, not, as labeled, permissions. I apologize for that. But I don't understand why, after this story was posted, they decided to change this. Now if you download Alice, you'll find it can be read aloud.
Incidentally, Adobe is using the text of Alice as transcribed by the awesome Project Gutenberg, whose entire purpose for existence is to bring reading material to as many people as possible. One of the first things I did when I got a laptop was to download a couple dozen of their books. In ASCII format. Say what you like about vi, at least it doesn't tell me to shut up.
As far as helping Gutenberg goes......
About a year and a half ago, I wrote a nice little utility in perl that would parse a Gutenberg etext, and break the chapters out into seperate files, write them into nicely formatted html files, create a table of contents and a framset document so that all you had to do then was double click the index file and you had a nice little 2 frame interface. This could have been used to make nice ebooks using html. I offered this utility to them to provide on their web site for anyone who wanted to download or for them to even use as a cgi so that people could click a title and see it in a nice web interface. They basically told me to piss up a rope. They were not interested in offering this to anyone. I think I still have a copy of the perl scripts laying around. I know I converted a few ebooks and read them in a browser window very conveniently then moved on.
I realize that ASCII text is lowest common denominator, but its awefully nice to be able to view in a browser, when you can adjust your font and size and not drive yourself crazy reading it. If Gutenberg does not want help, screw them.
Now, the best idea would be a coupla drivers that flipped the screen 90 degrees to the right and did the same for the mouse. This way folks who have nice little light laptops could actually hold them like books and read. Hell, I'd never carry my laptop into the john as it is, but if I could sit there and hold the thing like a book and just scroll my finger down the toucpad to scroll the text, then you've got something.
As I am not a programmer, I have no idea what type of trouble this might be, so perhaps the more technically minded of you can enlighten us?
Briefs submitted this morning by an angy Florida resident suggest that by using the product, you obtain a psychic power that gives you the clairvoyant ability to discern the text of the project gutenberg manuscript of the same name.
When you speak the words of this similar but different literary access source aloud, you are not reading in contradiction to the licence, but rather exercising the explicitly unmentioned right to use "The Product" as a psychic assistance device in full compliance with the contract.
In a bizarre twist, the Supreme Court of Florida has recently ruled that this licence conflicts with the Florida election laws and even if it didn't that the word "cannot" in the last clause of the licence implies that under some cases it "can" be read aloud and that further it would be an abuse of discretion in the case of the presence of psychic powers to inhibit the public's "right to know" which is guaranteed by the Florida and US Constitutions as well as the plain meaning of the text of the licence. Therefore, the licence must be construed, in light of the clearly overriding interest that children not be kept ignorant that the licence in fact confers an affirmative obligation to speak the words of the book aloud while receiving the psychic assistance of the device. Anyone not reading the book aloud will be forced to count ballots in Miami-Dade county.
Scholars expect that the US Supreme Court may reverse the Florida Court. The familiar 5-4 conservative majority is expected to rule that the Florida Court's remedy, which, as applied, would allows some children to hear the story, also prevents children in other counties from witnessing the psychic demonstration and thus violates the equal protection clause. Scholars agree that the fact that remote counties are clearly out of earshot will play heavily in the deliberations.
However most copyright scholars predict the justices will also rule 8-1 that the original licence violates "fair use" under even the most draconian reading of the DMCA, but Justice Ginsberg is expected to argue that the Florida Court's status as the final arbiter of state contract law precludes US Supreme Court action on that grounds.
When asked for comment, George "Dubya" Bush said that it didn't matter to him because he couldn't read anyway, although he seemed interested in having Dick Cheney read the story to him. Al Gore, who seemed on the verge of tears about something else, said that while he strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court, he would accept their ruling, and noted that if Adobe didn't want people reading the book, he had a lockbox for sale. Jesse Jackson on the other hand complained that Alice in Wonderland was a racist text and compared the issue to Selma.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean -- no more, no less. H. Dumpty
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
It's a pretty easy inference from those restrictions that Adobe is trying to force anyone interested in getting e-Alice into getting it directly from them, and from no one else.
I'd love to see this taken to court. A healthy dose of mainstream public exposure is what's needed here to begin spreading the memetic antibodies against the trend of eroding fair use rights. I suggest we all stand outside the Adobe headquarters (it's next to the Hilton in downtown San Jose, right?) and read Alice in Wonderland aloud from our Glassbook Readers.
I can see the fnords!
What if I memorize the entire book or some piece of it, and then declaim that in front of my children or my microphone?
If you want to see my screen shot of the EXACT SAME thing, then check it out. Notice I chose the contents page. Or if you don't believe that, try the Title page. Yes, the period is missing on the Read Aloud part. But it's still listed there.
That screen shot is real - whether they are serious or not is another question.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Maybe a Slashbox with the Gutenberg titles du jour? That would be nice to have.
sulli
RTFJ.
but i think mozilla did some funky stuff with the submitted field...
oh well... there it is...
tagline
... hi bingo
It's quite possibly a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act to intentionally disable speech readers, though, since they aid visually handicapped people in reading the books.
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
Ok, there's too much misinformation here. The restriction is purely electronic and prevents the ebook reader from sending the text to a text-speach converter. It other words, it prevents computers from reading the book to you, making it more difficult for one to create an audio tape or CD of the book and selling it for free.
Talk about letting your imagination run wild. Settle down people. Let's see if adobe comes out with an ebook authoring program before we complain too much. And it looks like an extension of PDF anyway, so we'll likely have open source readers and modifiers soon(which is exactly what adobe wants to prevent...)
-Adam
Bumper sticker of the day:
Honk if you've never seen an uzi fired out of a car window.
The book cannot be read aloud? Are PDFs going to come with a voice recognition plugin to make sure that you aren't reading the words in the document out loud.
I think I understand what they are saying. I think they just want public readings to be considered against the terms of the agreement. They should have it worded differently though, and specifically stating that is what they are opposing.
Are they really -that- much better than paper? I mean, okay, they save space. I can fit the Bible and a good half-dozen classics on my Palm and still have room for otehr stuff, and I don't have to lug around a few pounds of paper.
Beyond that... isn't it easier to just turn a page? Instead of scrolling the text, just move your eyes? Are we so freakin' lazy we don't even want to move our eyes, just push a button to scroll down a line?
I mean, beyond the absolute silliness of this, isn't it fairly (for low values of fairly) common for folks who have trouble reading to read aloud in an effort to understand the text?
Sorry, you can't learn to read on this book. Hey! Stop sounding that out!
Not representing or approved by my company or anybody else.
If you actually download and install a beta copy of the eBook reader, you'll find that the "Read Aloud" permission setting has nothing to do with whether or not the book can be read aloud to your children. In fact, the setting refers to a function of reader software, which you can use to have a synthesized voice read the book aloud to you if the book comes with that permission. The book pictured does not, so the top button on that bottom line of buttons on the left only says "Read". Were the "read aloud" pemrission enabled, that button would say "Read Aloud", and a synthesized voice would read the contents of the book through your speakers. Yeah, it's stupid and maybe even slightly ominous, but it's not nearly what it has been made out to be here.
Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
"My God, Vanessa's got a smashing body. I bet she shags like a minx. How do I tell them that because of the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?"
"I hope I didn't say that out loud just now."
The reason copyrights expire are so that other people can benefit exactly as you describe in your example. The corporation didn't create Mickey Mouse, Walt did. So what it boils down to is protection first of the copyright holder, then the consumer. Walt can no longer be protected, so why should you have to pay $100.00 for a Mickey Mouse lamp because the company that made it has to give Walt Disney Co. $50.00 for each lamp?
It also spurs innovation. What has Walt Disney Co. done lately? Shouldn't they be more encouraged to create new material than rely on licensing fees for Mickey Mouse? I'm certainly not saying they don't create new material, and that material should be protected for a reasonable amount of time - just like the original laws stated. The original laws were much more reasonable. Of course, that's just my opinion.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Now if Capitalism is the opposite of Communism, why are the two starting to sound so damn similar? What is the difference to the individual between the goverment owning everything and a oligarchy of corporations owning everything? Hello???
This bothers me immensely, and I've never been the "The only good Commie is a dead Commie" type. I have friends who think that Capitalism is the best system there is and Communism is a horrible menace to be fought to the very last right-thinking American. I'm starting to think we desperately need a new way of doing things, because it dosen't look like Capitalism is much of an improvement over Communism from where I'm standing.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Voice recognition could be used to check whats on teh screen, and automatically listen to the surrounding sounds, compare the noises to the text on screen, and if there is a 90% match or more, employ a high powered electric shock to you and flash a warning that you are violating the copyright agreement, and that further violations are punishable by death.
If you continue to read aloud, the electric shock will increase in intensity until it resembles the power that GW Bush has been sending through all of those inmates in Texas.
A just punishment for obvious copyright thiefs who are stealiong from the poor artists... THIEF...
tagline
... hi bingo
I see 4 programs at freshmeat for Gutenberg front ends. Are any of these widely adopted? This seems like an ideal candidate for XML. A DTD to define structure and XSL for presentation...hmmmmm
Whether fortunately or unfortunately, the movers at PG are extremely resistant to the notion of using anything other than plain ASCII text; while they appear somewhat unreasonable about this, they are legitimately looking at a longer term scope. XML happens to be "hot" this year, but it may be something else that is "hotter" a couple years down the road.
Jumping into XML would mandate defining a whole lot more "structuring" information than anyone can necessarily agree on. One person's "not enough structure" may be another's "too much structure," and there may well not be a "happy enough" medium.
By all means, more tools to do automated processing of PG texts would be a Good Thing; transcribing more texts would similarly be a Good Thing. Sending Project Gutenberg $20 wouldn't be the most horrible idea on earth...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I mean, no company should have ANY rights as to their text being read aloud or not. If this holds up, our freedom of speech will literally be erased at a stroke! Corporate Bastards.
All right, for arguments sake, I MIGHT understand if a company said specific corporate secrets (like passwords) cannot be read aloud BY EMPLOYEES as a necessary security precaution (if they have reason to be really paranoid). But CONSUMERS getting BOOKS that the company demanding this DOESN'T HAVE EVEN COPYRIGHT ON? Does this, for example mean, that if I have the book in my right hand and the laptop in the other I can't speak because I might be reading from the laptop? Yes it does. It may also preclude analysis like reading "Once upon a time a princess picked flowers in a meadow" and saying out loud "A long time ago a young girl played in a field."
Corporate Bastards.
-Ben
There is no way this can be correct. I suspect the image has been doctored. Look at all of the restrictions. The lines end with a period except the "Read Aloud" line.
Someone needs to pay more attention when they are doctoring images....
The only two email addresses I can find on their site are support@glassbook.com and info@glassbook.com. Their phone number is 781-434-2000. Offended slashdotters might want to ask those addresses what the hell is going on.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
That looks like a very EASILY produced phoney. I'm not sure that it is phoney, but if it is it would have been very easy. It's on a weird site and it's got no background as far as I can tell. They don't talk about where it came from or how it was captured or anything. Seems questionable.
Besides that though, doesn't it seem weird that they can admittedly take the text from project Guttenburg, and then throw on a ridiculous "You May Not Read This Out Loud" agreement to the end. Doesn't Project Guttenberg have some sort of GPL limiting what sort of stupid clauses may be attached to their works? If they don't have one, then maybe they should consider adding one.
--
RumorsDaily
Such restriction of access seems to indicate a bias towards non-compliance or thwarting of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Forbidding audible rendition of the material, whether performed by human or machine, to someone incapable of accessing the material in the sole manner provided and allowed appears to me as mean-spirited at best.
Actually, all it implies is that the first name of the guy who submitted it - and who hosts it - is "Art." Duh - check the submission.
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
Download the E-book from Adobe's site.
Grabel's Law