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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?
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
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?
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."
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.
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.
I think they just want public readings to be considered against the terms of the agreement.
Even that is out of the question. The text is public domain now. They may have claims to the particular 'e-typesetting', but not to the words, or the story as a whole. By reading aloud, the reader is stripping away the typesetting and just conveying the public domain portion.
Even if they publish a work that is still in copyright, no matter what their legal rights might be, it is against all convention to claim that reading aloud to a group or lending (either personally or by a library) is forbidden. It is also against the public good.
Apparently, they also wish to prevent fair-use excerpts of any book (even one where the entire text is fair game). Next they will ban bad reviews, I suppose.
What I really can't wait for is a book intended for children too young to read and their claim that it cannot be read aloud.
The question also comes to mind, does text to speech for the visually impared count as reading aloud?
Methinks I'll just store the text from Gutenberg and skip the copyright hairball. Glassbook? Thanks but no, thanks.
I was sceptical myself so I installed the reader and the book and sure enough it is not doctored. So perhaps someone needs to pay more attention when claiming images are doctored.