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This Book Will Self-Destruct In 10 Hours
extrarice writes: "See here
The "rent-a-book" concept is here. Pay a buck, and you're allowed to read for a cumulative total of 10 hours. After that, the text is inaccessible (unless you somehow access the content you purchased...)"
how doo dey spect me too read dat dang book in only ten ours?
---------------------- Women love me, fish fear me ----------------------
Compare this to my local library, where I can go and get the very same book, for a similarly limited time (except that it's 3 weeks or so, instead of 10 hours, but that's beside the point), and then I have to return it.
One is a physical book, one is a collection of bits. It's very dangerous to draw analogies between them.
Since a few Agatha Christie titles are available here at Project Gutenberg, I assume her works have passed into the public domain by now.
Another bad assumption. Not everything in Project Gutenberg is public domain, which is plainly stated if you read the site and introductory material with each file. Also, just because one (or a few) of a given authors works have passed into the public domain, it does not mean that any others have.
In the end Jefferson supported both patents AND copyrights. Contrary to what "gimme something for nothing" people such as yourself want to think, Copyrights and Patents were created to ENCOURAGE the sharing of ideas.
No argument there -- copyrights and patents were meant to increase the sharing of ideas. The thinking was: if you got exclusive rights to an invention for a limited period of time, you'll be more likely to share it without worry that you won't profit from it. The problem is that this is now being used as an excuse to own ideas permanently. Want to read a book? Pay a publishing company, because they "own" the words. Not the author, but some corporation! A book is permanent property. Want to use a fairly obvious feature for your web site, like updating software over the web? Sorry, you can't, because some company "owns" the idea.
I'll say it one more time: I can't speak for any of the other posters here, but I am not a "gimme stuff for free" person. This issue has nothing to do with what I want for myself or for society; it's about the direct effect technology has on media. The fact is that when technology makes mass copying and perfect reproduction natural and reflexive, then trying to suppress that is pointless. You can do it for a while, but 20 years from now, we will laugh at the idea that you can maintain artificial scarcity.
The idea is not that artists and writers shouldn't make money, or that everything should be free. Technology always brings changes, usually large ones. This is a good example of that. The way people make money is going to change. We can fight it -- and we probably will -- and then eventually lose, or we can try and surf its waves rather than quell them.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
surprisingly, I can tape DVD's fine with my DVD player (it has a DVD and VCR in the same unit). just press the "copy" button!
My other car is first.
just out of curiousity, how is this flamebait you kindgarten dropout reject of a moderator!?!?! fucking morons, use moderation correctly!
----
Stop eyeball fucking me, asshole.
(In my case, an AMD Duron, 800 mhz, 512 megs PC100 RAM), W2k (scanners crash 98 and my software sucks on NT), and a bit of software called Abbyy FineReader, (at http://www.abbyyusa.com)
you could scan a 200-page paperback book decently in about 3 hours--two pages at a time--then proof it for another hour or two, and it'd be close to good.
For an example, visit The Hand of Fu Manchu--pick your format--a 200 page paperback book I scanned in in about three hours (while playing Civilization). Note, I didn't proofread this particular text, as my 9-pound Chinese-American dog was looking at me askance whenever I did the spell check.
They're going to have to ban paperback books.
While the marginal cost of an additional ebook sale is nearly zero (excluding payment processing costs) it is wrong to say manufacturing cost is essentially zero when considering all sales. You have the author's advance, editor, proofreading, cover artist, any internal art (maps, illustrations). None of this is reduced with ebooks. You can cut out the middle man - the book store and save the 50% cut that goes to them however which is what Baen is doing with their ebooks.
Well, the media shifting doctrine in... which is it again? The 7th circuit? Would permit one to do so, would it not? (it's not circumventing CSS at that point, as it has already been decrypted legally)
There is not a fully stocked and operational courtroom inside your Replay. Messages coming out of it don't necessarily reflect the realities of the situation. It can say that the sky is zebra-striped too, and it holds just as little weight.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
But a hand-made index is better at finding a subject than searching the text; it doesn't skip synonmys and stop at words in the wrong context. Any decent technical book will hopefully have a handmade index that beats using grep.
I thought the "C" was for Murdoch is a ****/woman's front-bottom.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
>Most books are already available for free at the
>library, or if not there, on the cheap at a used
>bookstore. How can the pay per read scheme be
>superior for the fiscally challenged? If money was
>an issue, and you read so much, you ought to know
>this.
(1) The paper version will still be availible at the library, paper versions are not going away anytime soon.
(2) The electronic version could be made to be nearly as cheep as taking it out of a library. Most people who cannot afford to 'rent' a book cannot afford to by something to view it on. See (1).
>*Laugh* Alright. I'll just sit back and assure
>myself that publishers will be reasonable. I >think not. If throwing a hissy fit now means I
>will be able to buy books in the future then I
>will happily do so.
As much as you want to pretend to be the victim fighting the system, the publishers are not stupid. References/textbooks are a special catagory that cannot be useful in a short amount of time. Even if they were to release them only as a 'rental', they would be of no use to anyone, and people would stop buying them.
>Blah. Blah. No fear-mongering and missinformation
>here my young friend. I simply have the forsight
>to see where these types of things are heading.
While it may be difficult to wrap you whiny 14 year old mind around the fact that you are not always the victim, you will eventually have to understand that taking a worse possible case is not forsight. You really need to stop and ask yourself is this reasonable and rational.
The phrase "value-removed business model" deserves wider circulation. It accurately summarizes the basic idea, and at the same time, explains why it will fail. Did you invent it? If so, congratulations. If not, where did you first see it?
Am I correct in saying that you can record PPV events you payed for to VHS for personal use to view again in your home for free? Or is that illegal too.
Illegal.
Think of it more as renting a movie .. is it legal for you to dub a copy of that movie then return it. Although its not it will happen.
-jeremy
I understand what you're saying but there's a point you haven't considered. The publisher can release the book in whatever format they want but what happens when that format causes a drop in sales. Companies only live because of profit. No profit, no company hence companies can only ignore a drop in sales for a limited amount of time. Say for example the publisher of John Author books decides, "We're only going to provide these books in electronic format." At that point they have lost a large amount of revenue which comes from someone browsing a bookshelf. Now if you were an author, would you sign with a publishing company that didn't sell your book effectively? I wouldn't. I would sign with a different publisher.
And as for textbooks, if the textbooks are in an unwieldy format and are not easy to use then the teachers feedback to the people who choose the textbooks who apply pressure to the publisher to provide in a correct format or switch to another textbook.
You're under-estimating the power of the consumer. Usefulness to the consumer is the sole reason for the existence of a product. Not the other way round. That is the exact mistake that created the collapse of the dotcoms. They tried to sell products without any justification of the product. Here's Z! We're not sure what it does but we've got a nifty new way to sell it!
Better end my rant there. Thank you for reading. Please come again.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
publishers and authors, who have bills to pay, can't get the money they should be
Huh?? Publishers and authors are doing just fine, what are you referring to? The amount of "book piracy" is insignificant.
As opposed to now, where they cater to the whims of publishers.
Also, as opposed to normal people, who cater to the whims of our bosses.
Get a grip, fool.
Everybody works for somebody.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Hey I can legally record her and myself on a VHS tape and then be able to sell it on the internet and make many thousands of dollars off it!
Allthough, I really prefer the GNUFuck project rather than Rent-A-Fuck
You will not laugh like this when it falls on you and crushes you.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
I don't know about your one mistake, but you seem to be posting on very shaky ground :) The etymology of the phrase is completely unclear, to the point where anyone's interpretation or usage could be considered correct.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
- Don't reduce the incentive, or the desired behavior will decrease. (What you're saying.) Or:
- Increase the incentive, so the desired behavior will increase. (implied).
So let's declare all published authors and musicians exempt from taxes. That would be an increase in the incentive to produce creative works. Likewise, let's give them all free cars at taxpayer expense. If you deny these requests, it looks like you're just supporting the status quo without any real logic - how did you decide the that current level of incentive is the correct one?We need more people helping little old ladies across the street. Let's offer a million dollar reward for doing this. It will be expensive, but it complies with your logic. To turn it around, if the reward were already established policy and I advocated repealing it, you'd point out that this reduction in incentive would lead to a reduction in the desired behavior (helping little old ladies across the street).
On another note, it is the investor's job to make his investment profitable, not mine. I suggest investing in things people are willing to buy, rather than investing first and then seeking legal protection to make your investment feasible.
When will content publishers realize that security/encryption isn't worth a damn when the end party is NOT TRUSTED. Guess what? If I can read/view/hear it on my computer, there is a way of capturing it, and re-releasing it with no protection. This simple fact will never change. And yet the industries will waste countless millions of dollars trying to invent secure delivery/viewer systems, which is a complete fool's crusade.
They know it will never work. And yes, they will spend millions on lobbyists, lawyers, and programmers to make any copying, legal or otherwise, as difficult as possible. Why? Because it's a holding maneuver. As long as there is a return on investment for this protection shit they're working on, they don't care if it's viable long-term. The reason they do it is because for every dollar they spend on this amalgam of law and technology, they get a dollar plus epsilon in return, and epsilon is bigger in the short term for this than for any other investment they could make.
The NSA did the same thing WRT strong crypto for decades... every day they could delay its widespread usage was a victory. Similarly, every day the content industry can delay the commoditization of content is a victory for their side.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
And by the way, people made money being musicians and writers long before copyright law -- even before recording and book-printing.
No, they really didn't. The made a living catering to the whims of and currying favor from patrons. People making money, independently, from music, art, and writing date almost entirely from the 19th century. I.E. *AFTER* the introduction of the printing press and *AFTER* copyright began to be enforceable. Even today relatively few people make much money, or have their sole income from, , music, art, or writing.
I agree that freedom has a price, and that we should be willing to pay the price. In fact I was just saying the same thing on Yahoo! to a gun-control advocate. The problem is the paparazzi do more than "annoy" celebrities. Princess Di is dead and there is a very good chance it was the paparazzi's fault. I knew someone who had a reporter show up at their loved ones funeral and ask them how they feel, do you think that should be protected under the constitution? Respect for peoples feelings and privacy should be a given. I didn't mean to imply that the press have no freedom, just that they didn't have near unlimited freedom.
Your automotive - horse analogy is utter bull. The horsemaker would be out of work, yes, but he wouldn't be expected to keep doing the work. If I writer can write a book, make $10 or so off it, and have everyone just give a copy away, why would he? Why would he spend months and months of his life creating something that he is going to get no return from? Sure he'll probably still write for enjoyment, but if you are entertained by his hard work, why should he have to get a "regular" job? Why should people spend 100's of millions of dollars making a movie, if one person is going to buy it, and the rest are going to copy it?
The thing all you "everything should be free" people don't seem to understand is that it takes an investment to create something, people have to get a return on that investment in order to make the investment worthwhile.
Well, obviously, I read /.
I don't take my notebook to church (do take palm pilot, mainly because I take it everywhere). But on any given sunday, I usually see at least 3 notebooks in the pews, plus a bunch of palm pilots and windows CE machines.
I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me.
Do you have to pay any money to take a book out of the library? And are there any access controls put on actual physical books? [And, yes, I know you do at video rental places which I don't use so don't even say it.]
Naww, c'mon. We all recognize this sequence, right? The hard work's done, the product does what it was built to do, the people who built it have moved on or nodded off, and who's left running the show?
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
Oh please, it's doesn't take a genious to blit a bitmap of Device Context 0 on a Windows machine, and process that. Sod the clipboard or any other commercial software, someone will come up with a downloadable e-book processor (and get thrown into a jail if they visit the states).
How would a watermark propogate to an OCR-ed bitmap? Lets face it, if you want to copy something, there are ways an means to do it. It is just easier and introduces no running costs when dealing with digital media.
After all, if you can read it, you can copy it, even if you have to dictate to a secretary :-)
I don't support the idea at all (and I'm a writer trying to break into the biz), BUT this argument doesn't hold water. Video Rentals. In fact, I believe (could be wrong) that video sales have -increased- since rentals came into play.
I would avoid this out of principle, even without knowing the details.
Haha! You and every other "man of strong convictions."
LOSER.
You seem to see BNW and 1984 as utterly different books. I read them in the same year; perhaps that's why I see them as two sides of the same coin. I think many people do. I remember arguing with my father over which was more likely to come true. I backed BNW, because it continued the trend of dumb and happy consumers. My Dad favored 1984 because a) it's cheaper (who needs soma when you have rubber truncheons) and b)it's closer to the real and gritty texture of life, with all its malfunction and beauracracy.
Anyhow, people frequently use the expression 'brave new world' to refer to an alarmingly different regime under which they'd lose their rights and freedoms. Example: Gene discovery: Brave new world has an ambiguous attitude towards genetic research.
So this ebook-peddler's use of the phrase seems unintentionally ironic.
It's amazing how desperately some people will fight against saying, "oh I misunderstood what he saying, thanks for pointing that out."
No, because it's a joke. You say it's a bad joke, because "they [1984 and BNW] are not the same comment" (1984 would apply to the story at hand, BNW would not), but I say that it's a good joke because a) you can pretend that he inadvertantly put a title in the sentence, and it's grammatical. The whole point of an inadvertant ambiguity is that you "could" take it both ways. (Even if that actual meaning is clear)
b) BNW has to do with the story at hand, because it's a dystopian future in which we're controlled by the government (albeit in this case a government dispensing soma instead of a government chaining you with eyes everywhere). As far as future dystopias go, BNW ranks somewhere in the top ten, and to say that the first step toward any dystopia is to control what people can do with information is a correct statement, and therefore to pretend that he said "We're excited about it! It's the first step toward a {Dystopian depiction's title}!" is, therefore, funny.
Do you think my joke is not funny?
Do you really?
I think if he had used the word "hamlet" to mean a small village, and, inadvertantly, it could have been construed as the title of Billy's play, where the context in which it ORIGINALLY appeared makes it quite apropos to refer instead to Hamlet's story of betrayal (or whatever word you want to summarize it up in), THEN to point that out would be quite funny. It's funny because italicizing it into a title changes the meaning of the sentance without changing its form! (I.E. merely points out an ambiguity, whose alternate meaning is tellingly humorous.)
Do you think, Pn. Person, that I am wrong, and that it is not, indeed, humorous?
I don't mind reading a book in dead tree format, but I'm much more comfortable reading a book that I can get an online copy of for one reason: computers are much better at O(n) tasks like scanning a large amount of text for a specific word than humans are. Dead-tree publishers should be happy each time they see a recent book show up on Freenet, because it means there's one more book I can purchase and read without fear of not being able to find a passage I want to quote/rememeber/reread.
(*grumble* Mozilla find in page O(n^2) algorithm *grumble*)
The shareholder is always right.
I thought you had to lodge the book at a national library or such, or put it in the public domain. otherwise no copyright. One but needs to rock over to the library, and seek to copy a page or two (fair use). Or I will write to the publisher, and demand my right to said material. A refusal to provide, means I can publish said extract unfettered. funny is 100 people did this for a couple of pages each, and a P2P application turned up.
IRRELAVENT! By then, if it's still needes it would have been conferted to take up one square mm on his thumbnail.
You're saying that because your copy is not perfect it's okay?,
Yes, basically, that's the argument, or, conversely, because a digital copy _is_ perfect, that's NOT ok.
The stated problem the IP industry has with digital technology is that "the hundredth-generation copy is just as good as the first."
Note that's "hundredth-generation", not "hundredth copy".
If you have a VHS tape of, say, the Matrix (just to pick on something that seems universally popular in this forum), and you go into business selling copies of it (this is strictly forbidden under the copyright statutes) you can make hundreds of "first generation" copies of that master tape and they'll all be quite good, more or less indistinguishable from the original. If you have a hundred VCRs, you only have to play the tape once to make a hundred copies, and your master will be capable of producing several thousands of copies
But eventually the master is going to wear out. The theory is that then you must start using one of your copies. The copy is called "first-generation" and the second round of copies you're making from that are "second generation" - copies of copies.
By the time you get a half-dozen generations down the chain (maybe even sooner), the quality of the copies will show definate degradation, for either audio cassettes or video tapes, or wood books reproduced on a photocopier.
NOT SO for a CD or a DVD or a digitally-published book. The first and subsequent generations are just as perfect as the master copy. This gives a DVD of the Matrix a FAR greater potential for creating copies than an analog VHS tape.
This is (officially) what the industry is hot under the collar about. This is why we can't watch DVDs under Linux. They claim they're suppressing copying of a digital media that allows for the generation of (many many thousands) more copies than (the many thousands) producable from analog media. What's to keep you (if you've a market for a hundred thousand copies of the Matrix) from just going out and buying a new master when the VHS wears out, I don't understand. It seems like a minimal investment, if you're selling the copies for money, which is the only reason anyone would make enough copies for this to make a difference! The scale implied here is that of _real_ piracy, for big money, and I really have to question the numbers of incidents of this. This isn't a kid with a burner making copies of his friends' CDs. A pirate making one hundred thousand copies of the Matrix is going to need an outlet, and he's going to be visible on the market. Why not go after that end of the business, rather than incorporate copy-protection measures so heavy-handed, and legislate copying prohibitions so severe, that they interfere with the legal and fair use of the product? It's _already_ a big time crime to sell a hundred thousand bootleg copies of the Matrix, yet the IP industry clamors that they need much tighter restrictions (such as the DMCA) to keep this from happening with digital media.
Well, that's the industry's claim. I believe that their sweat is actually because the playable lifetime of an analog media is limited (at which point you have to pay for a replacement) while a digital media is far more durable, and a couple of backups (which - as long as you don't give them away - is obviously protected and legal under "fair use") would make the digital copy permanant. Then the customer never buys another one. That's what they're _really_ worked about, though it's not what they state as the official excuse. It becomes painfully obvious that that's the problem with eBook uploading, as well.
Go back to the deposition from the MPA chairman. HINAL, but he knows "fair use" must be tolerated, and he _knows_ "the DMCA doesn't interfere with 'fair use'". Alas, his definition of "fair use" extends to time-shifting of free TV programs _only_. That's the _only_ legitimate use for that red button on yer VCR. Any other is piracy. Any and all decription or attempted decryption is defined by the DMCA as "piracy", even if it's just to watch yer DVD on yer Linux system, or to upload and read that eBook on yer computer's 19" monitor. Do NOT attempt to burden him with the troublesome technical detail that it's unnecessary for the hundred-thousand-copy pirate to _ever_ decrypt the DVD (or the eBook) in order to copy it, HINAT (He Is Not A Technician).
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Apple shipped over 100,000 copies of OpenBSD based OS software last quarter.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Your quote from Jefferson and your interpretation thereof contains a number of logical fallacies. In the end Jefferson supported both patents AND copyrights. Contrary to what "gimme something for nothing" people such as yourself want to think, Copyrights and Patents were created to ENCOURAGE the sharing of ideas. For example, I LOVE Steven Kings work. Steven has released his latest works on the internet saying that he will keep writing if 75% of his viewers buy. Now Steven writes full time, if he didn't support himself by writing, I would not have gotten to enjoy many of the books from him that I have. A privelage which I am willing to pay for. Without copyright law, Steven would not continue to write, and his ideas would not be shared. I have no problems paying Steven to write full time, because I want him to do so.
If you do not agree with me, then the simple solution is to not buy his books. That's it. But don't try to deprive me of the result of his full time writing, read from someone who does it as a hobby and can give their work away. The same goes for music, if you don't want to pay for Metallica, then go to mp3.com and download some music from people who are willing to give it away.
There's been 7000 OpenBSD users for quite a while according to your (fscking boring and stupid) posts. If things were sick and dying shouldn't your pop counts go down over time? (Even ignoring the use of totally bogus input in the first place.)
I agree that copy protection schemes like this "rent-a-book" junk are a bad idea. But I think there are better ways of fighting it (at least for the moment). Namely, in the courts, and in the stores. I don't think its a good idea to fight immorality and irrationality with more of the same.
Fish
What University is this. This sounds similar to vital books. It's outragous. The University has a digital copy of something and RESTRICTs the educational process artificially, throwing stumbling blocks in from of students.
You need to go to a DIFFERENT university.
It's a moral imperitive.
See New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org
http://www.mrbrklyn.com/amsterdam.html http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Yikes... That would suck to fall asleep after reading for two hours and wake up to realize your book has expired!
thats 80 pages an hour... even being a slow reader I can read a little over a page in one hour
If you can view the pages just copy paste it .... oups I got to be careful, the FBI may be listening.
would disappear in 10 hours, looked at or not. Then we wouldn't be bothered with this crap.
I've worked with quite a few people with dyslexia and also with visual impairments that slow reading(e.g problems with motor control and accommodation that make it difficult for the reader to return his or her eyes to the beginning of the next line).
While it appears that some rude idiiots here on Slashdot would like to portray you and other people who have such problems as mentally impaired, it just ain't necessarily so. I've worked with several who are clearly brilliant -- perhaps even genius-level.
Those who rent these e-books should, by law, make an accommodation for you. Though they may not be in business long enough for this to happen. The market rejected DivX and will probably reject time-limited books as well.
I say that it's a good joke because a) you can pretend that he inadvertantly put a title in the sentence, and it's grammatical. The whole point of an inadvertant ambiguity is that you "could" take it both ways. (Even if that actual meaning is clear)
Given the sentence in question and the extrapolation that you did, that's a hell of a stretch. The punchline requires that you ignore some basic conventions of language. That's why I don't think that it's funny.
b) BNW has to do with the story at hand, because it's a dystopian future in which we're controlled by the government (albeit in this case a government dispensing soma instead of a government chaining you with eyes everywhere).
Did you actually read BNW (I asked this before and you never answered?) People took soma because of social pressure (aside from the riot at the end.) BNW was about the tyranny of the majority. 1984 was about the horror of a pure totalitarian state. BNW warned about the problems that arise when people are given too much freedom (that's why this guy saying "brave new world" isn't incredibly funny.) You seem to like saying "dystopian" but the word (much like the phrase "brave new world") is largely ambiguous at best.
As far as future dystopias go, BNW ranks somewhere in the top ten
Where is this list to which you continuously make reference?
It's funny because italicizing it into a title changes the meaning of the sentance without changing its form! (I.E. merely points out an ambiguity, whose alternate meaning is tellingly humorous.)
And then they can point out Miranda's statement and say that it's an indication that eBooks will usher in a new golden age. Double meanings don't require that you modify the sentence to interpret them properly.
Hamlet's story of betrayal (or whatever word you want to summarize it up in)
There were several themes in Hamlet. This is why people borrow quotes to apply to the situations at hand rather than making reference to the whole work ("Something's rotten in the state of Slashdot" applies here.) You wouldn't compress 45MB of data into 2 bytes (unless there was a VERY simple pattern to it) and you can't very well compress Huxley's novels or Shakespeare's plays into a word either. That's why it's not funny (not to mention that the sentence still isn't correct if you interpret "brave new world" as a book.)
Do you think that it is not humorous?
No I don't think that it's very funny. You should have made a joke about Agatha's "And then there were none" (originally "Ten Little Indians" -- a great book.)
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
But the market will fix this. Profs will not use a book if it is not effective, and if it cannot be effective when rented it will not be used. If it can be rented in a way that it can be effective then there is no problem. It would most likely be cheeper as there is no need to print short run books.
Stallman is trying to prove an extreamist point through hyperbole, something that you should learn not to take too seriously.
LOL!
(And the joke is: Rosetta's this like consortium of agents and stuff who wants to push
ebooks--and have the rights to them; just beat Random House in a court case--
so they're selling Brave New World, even though it's available all over the web for free--
might even be legal, as Huxley renewed the copyright too early... though Gutenberg
won't take it).
Still, so funny.
If I writer can write a book, make $10 or so off it, and have everyone just give a copy away, why would he?
Hmm -- perhaps you should ask Moses, Plato, Socrates, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickenson, Sappho, Shakespeare, Da Vinci, et al.
The thing all you "everything should be free" people don't seem to understand is that it takes an investment to create something
This isn't about what "should be", not at all. It's about what is. Artificial scarcity does not work. Don't want to believe me? Here's Jefferson:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
If you want a more modern take on the subject, try Jaron Lanier's essay on what is likely to happen when the government/courts attempt to permanently maintain the artificial scarcity.
You can't own what doesn't exist, son. It's fake property.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
I think Johnny's reason for suggesting this type of screen-cap method is because it would not violate the DMCA. The DMCA is worded that you can't circumvent encryption which is designed to protect copyright. If you are screen-capping the output of the legitimate reader, then the reader is decrypting it for you, so you don't have to circumvent the encryption yourself, so you are not in violation of the DMCA.
Drewbert
--something witty
Please tell me what brand of laptop you have that only weighs two pounds. I would like to purchase one since I can't seem to find one under 3.5 with out the battery in it.
If adobe's involved ...
this is the kind of thing they've been doing recently. I would avoid this out of principle, even without knowing the details. Avoiding adobe seems much safer than trusting it.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Do you really think James Cameron would spend $200 million on another movie if everyone was just going to copy it?
Actually, I think he would. People will go to the theaters for the same reason they might go to see Hole, even though they can get the music for free. Seeing something in an audience is a unique experience. I could've gotten a copy of Planet of the Apes via the net, without a lot of trouble. But I didn't bother, because I wanted a crowd around me, a gigantic screen with better sound than I can afford, and good popcorn. I don't see that changing, unless we all start running our own private theaters and inviting 200 of our closest friends over for screenings.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
Actually ebooks provides a simple method for circumventing the publishers. After all, while you might not be able to afford to have a book published, nearly anyone can afford a web site. If you don't need an actual paper book, then perhaps you don't need the publisher.
The fact that this format would allow readers to cut out the publisher middlemen doesn't necessarily mean that this particular format will work. First of all, publishers do have a useful function screening and editting content. The best example of why this is useful, to my mind, is Victor Hugo's Les Miserable. By the time Hugo wrote Les Miserable he was so famous that he could refuse to have his book editted. As anyone who has read the unabridged version of that particular book can tell you, Hugo really should have left some of the text on the cutting room floor. To me personally the abridged version was definitely "value added."
Second of all, If I want to read a book without purchasing it I personally prefer to use the library. It is considerably less expensive, I don't give up any fair use rights (I can make copies of pages if I want), and I don't have to worry about being "on the clock" when I am reading. Ten cumulative hours might not be long enough for some people to read a book, but two weeks generally is (and you can always renew). I also enjoy loaning out books (I am a masochist, I suppose). You can't do that with an e-book of this nature.
Now, if the time based rental of the story was quite a bit less expensive, that's another story. I might be willing to purchase such a story if it only cost me 25 or 50 cents.
Sweet JEBUS!!!!
That is the creepiest thing I have read in a long time.
Time will tell if his were prophetic words.
Now, I must go and read Brave New World.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
(open my 10-eBook in Adobe's viewer)
(PrintScreen)
(PageDown)
(PrintScreen)
(PageDown)
(repeat several hundred times... use a macro/script if necessary)
(close eBook)
(read the story at my own bloody leisure)
Oops, oh dear, I appear to have circumvented their access controls. Time for the DMCA police to send me and/or the programmer of my OS's printscreen utility to prison...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Forget the fact that you have to pay hundreds of dollars for a reader before you get any content....
Not. Already have a Palm.
Forget the fact that reading this stuff gives you a headache....
Not. I've read for easily hundreds of hours on my Palm without a single headache.
Forget the fact it's a pain in the neck to flip between pages....
Not. It's easier on a Palm than with paper. I can hold a Palm (sideways, using the Palm Reader) and flip pages with one hand, which is tough to do with paper, especially a hardback.
Forget the fact that there's so few books available in eBook format....
Not. There's more at www.peanutpress.com than I can keep up with. And people said the same thing about CD twenty years ago.
Forget the fact that the competing "technology"(paper books) is superior....
In some ways. (Heh, you thought I was going to say "Not") But ebooks are superior in other ways.
This should be a FAQ, since every ebook article on /. goes through the same cycle
People are going to have to face up to the fact that ebooks have (at least) a niche, and they're not going away. They'll change in form and capability, but they're not going anywhere. They're not replacing paper (yet), but paper is not the end-all and be-all of the written word. If it were, you wouldn't be reading /.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I have an older TV so I bought a RF converter box for my DVD player.
It lets me put the signal through my VCR and record DVD's just fine.
Without it I get a fading in and out of the picture which I assume is the copy protection.
It's worth mentioning that for rental libraries have been around for a very long time, and continue to exist today. (Video stores are essentially the same idea.)
An ineffective security measure does not HAVE to be circumvented, that's why it's ineffective! Take "secure" ebooks. They are already defeating their own protection by decoding themselves for end users to view. It's not even a question of circumventing the protection, the technology is doing that for you. However, thanks to the DMCA, it is a criminal offence to even TALK about it. That is WRONG. Don't you see where that kind of thinking can lead?
Centuries ago when the printing press was invented, book publishers put scribes out of business, because information became a lot cheaper to copy. Now we have a global data network that renders copying information basically free. (A simplification, but for the purposes of this argument, essentially true). The publishers don't want to go the way of the scribes, and they're rich, so they guide the inception of legislation to protect their antiquated outdated archaic profit scheme based on the scarcity of their product. With the Internet, information will never be scarce again, but we will see all the old dinosaur publishers struggling to impose artificial scarcity to keep their profits high.
Have you heard of the book "Thinking in Java"? The author, Bruce Eckel, released the book entirely for free, on the web, and encouraged reader feedback. He got lots of feedback and corrections, and improved his book. Soon, he was FLOODED with requests for a hard copy book to purchase. Now he's made quite a lot of money off something he initally offered for free. Read his notes on this subject.
What is with all these personal attacks!? Ever hear of devil's advocate? I'm not trying to justify anything, or claim I'm some 1337 ebook hacker, I'm merely pointing out WHAT WILL HAPPEN, and how easy it will be. The DMCA encourages (hell, ENFORCES) ignorance of technology. I always thought technology was about the empowerment of the individual; it appears it is becoming a tool of oppression and corporate dominance. Orwell was right, he was just off by a couple of decades.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Except for the fact that there are a lot of IRC channels and web sites dedicated to "book warez".
Some of it is public domain, alot of it is not. Regardless it already exists and has for quite some time.
Build it and they will come I suppose...
It should be 20c for 10 hours and $1 for the whole thing, that is the genuine "eCommerce enabling technology" - pricing that reflects the vastly lower overheads involved in digital publishing.
Except that digital publishing *doesn't* 'vastly lower overheads'. The physical production of the physical book is only a tiny fraction of the costs. The editorial and marketing staffs must be paid, the accountants, lawyers and janitors must be paid. Digital publish does not make those costs go away.
But a hand-made index is better at finding a subject than searching the text; it doesn't skip synonmys and stop at words in the wrong context. Any decent technical book will hopefully have a handmade index that beats using grep.
Good point. I can usually find what I'm looking for in non-fiction; it's fiction books that I find hard to search. They're hard to search because (a) they often don't have indices, and (b) they're more likely to use the kind of language such that I'll remember a passage by some rare word it happens to contain.
The shareholder is always right.
Valued customers:
We would like to remind you that when reading the secure digital version of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" some precautions need to be taken to ensure the security of your reading experience.
For example: when you see the letter "A" in the encrypted PDF, whatever you do, please don't think about the letter "N". In general, try to avoid roating any letter thirteen places. Doing so could result in a degraded reading experience, and a prison term of no less than 14 months.
Thank you,
Adobe Incorporated
Not to mention that you cannot grep, even if you
want, because it's encrypted/protected/whatever.
The difference being that you can learn/educate
yourself much easier using books than movies.
Like in the entertainment education.
And considering the bussines practices, you can
be sure that in 10 years you'll have access to
ebooks only...
Rubbish argument. The imutable law of supply and demand will force the companies to model their business around our requirements.
Even if a publishing company tried to remove from consumers the ability to buy physical books, demand for those books would allow a new/alternative company to fill that niche and offer those books.
Of course all that changes if everyone starts wanting to rent books.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
It was like I watched a regular ('free') broadcasted flick.
Since I payed for the movie in advance, at least I would like to have the possibility of inserting breaks at my convenience (and not when the commercials break in). "This topic is wasted. Please help to keep our environment clean and recycle."
In fact, what you describe is essentially a form of watermarking, and the recent defeat of SDMI by a team of researchers from Princeton University shows that even sophisticated watermarking techniques can be broken.
No they haven't. Most PPV programming still has the "C" symbol beside the programme description, indicating that you can't record it. There are workarounds (usually TBC correctors), but it just gets messy - it uses the same stuff that stops you taping a DVD -- though that doesn't work on my TV-output box with my PC - can tape as many DVD's as I'd like.
Personally, I think 1984's world would be very difficult to force on a dissatisfied populace for long. One would have to make them happy and complacent first, and then bring in Big Brother to keep them that way.
The "a gram is better than a damn" attitude is already here: Prozac, Paxil, Ritalin, etc.
My two cents. You might try appending "I think that ..." before every sentence below.
Argh. This will fail, for the same reason that the DMCA will eventually fail.
If we assume that we are using a device that you own and control (such as your personal computer), then what follows is a universal truth:
Companies who try to evade this universal truth by creating an artificial scarcity of information in an effort to make more money are doomed to failure. Of course, until they accept the hopelessness of trying, we are going to see companies flail about with their lawsuits and congress-bullying to get laws made to protect their budgets from the advancement of technology.
As the amount of available bandwidth continues to increase, I think greedy corporations that deal in the sale (or, rental) of information will finally have to stop suing the world and devise a new, sane to make money. Right now, corporations wish for us to think of information as a scarce, limited-availability, tangable substance. Because companies that deal in the sale of limited-availability tangable substances can command a good price. While electronic information is becoming an unlimited-availability, non-tangable substance, money-hungry companies would have consumers think otherwise through the misuse of laws and congress-bullying. This is why this book-rental idea, and the DMCA, are so stupid.
Predictions:
In the coming decades, as technology improves, I think information in and of itself will become much less monitarily valuable. Instead, the real value will have to be placed on the immediacy of the information. Meaning: Information can and will be disseminated. But, some may wish to pay a premium to be the ones to get at said information first. And that is where the value will lie.
Some folks have also compared this scheme to Blockbuster Video. You can charge rent for a video because said video is a scarce, limited-availability, tangable substance. Namely, a videocassette containing a video in a conveinient-to-use format. You cannot, however charge "rent" for an electronic representation of said video. Because once that electronic representation exists, it instantly becomes an unlimited-availability, non-tangable substance. You can, however, Still charge rent for the conveinience of using a videocassette.
Let's look at music. You can command a huge price for a live performance. You can charge a decent price for a conveinient-to-use piece of media containing a musical performance. But once that media can be read and represented in an electronic format, the representation of that performance loses all value except for that of the immediacy of its availablity.
Let's look at literature. You can command a huge price for a piece of literature written just for a client. (Say, documentation, or a poem, or a biography... etc.) You can charge a decent price for a conveinient-to-use piece of media containing a work of literature. But once that media can be read and represented in an electronic format, the representation of that work loses all value except for that of the immediacy of its availablity. So, as soon as there exists a device which can rip a paperback book into an electronic format the with the speed and ease that a cd-rom can rip cd-audio into an electronic format, we will see the same DMCA, IP, and copyright turmoil in the literary industry that we currently see in the music industry. Even if the DMCA has already been overturned and forgotten about.
This is just the way it looks to me like things will work out. I don't advocate for artists making less money in the future, or for "stealing" the electronic representations of an artist's work. But I think the approaching shift in the way things work will really show the world how much the creators of information are really worth to the consumers of their information. And how much more valuable a live performance is than a recorded one. People will be paying for quality of information, rather than availability.
-Mike
(Who just purchased two music CDs after he had downloaded and evaluated the electronic representations of their entire contents.)
As a commercial auther (text and software), I should be ranting about you advocating the theft of my hard work.
But the thing is... you're absolutely correct. I have no right to make money off of my work; if I fail to persuade people to buy my work under my terms, then I've already lost the sale. I have no one to blame but myself. If my work then gets copied, what more have I "lost"?
Maybe I'm just peculiar in the head, but I actually see myself as having an obligation to offer value on the customers' terms, not demand reward on mine.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sorry, I meant in order of popularity. 1984 is the book, of course.
... they analysed these subjects to a much finer degree than did Blair.)
Haven't you heard of Dostoevsky? When Eric Blair wrote 1984, he was reminding the world of things that guys like Dostoevsky, Machiavelli, and Chekhov had been saying for a long time. In order of popularity, those guys still beat out Blair (as they should
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
No matter what publishers would like to think the consumers control the market. If we just keep buying books, this will be a commercial failure. Just as if all of us would stop buying DVDs this whole affair of region codes and trials would go away. The industry is testing new media. We decide what will succeed and what will be forgotten.
No, he wasn't.
Fuckwit.
mod this up, I haven't heard it put quite so eloquantly in a long while.
Damn it, why isn't there some sort of open standard for these things?
If only we could drop LDP docs onto an portable reader of some sort. Easy, simple, unobfuscated, open.
Is there anything like this? There *should* be.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
First, this is going the way of DivX; nobody in their right mind is going to pay to read a book for a short period. People pay for books they want to keep permanently; for temporary trial reading, they borrow books from the free public library. As far as I can tell, they've just thought of a new way to prove that e-books are not profitable.
Second, is it just me or were they extraordinarily stupid to release their timed ebook in Adobe E-book format right after Elcomsoft's Advanced E-book Processor has been heavily publicized in every geek-oriented news channel on the Internet? What are they saying here, "Crack me! Crack me!"?
Third, making available preview e-book versions of a novel is effective marketing--if it's free. Baen Books has been making the first chapters of new books available for on-line preview for quite a while now, as well as making the first books of some popular series available in their entirety for free--apparently it's been an effective enough marketing tactic that they have expanded their list of free e-books. That's right, expanded! Now, can anyone tell me how effective that would have been if they charged a $1 fee for a short reading period per book in the Baen Free Library?
Do publishers actually think when they come up with these schemes, or did the geniuses that came up with dot.bomb business plans move into publishing when I wasn't looking?
---dragoness
You've got about 6000 years of prior art on that one, buddy.
Paper of course, its easier to handle, it doesn't screw up your eyes, you can read it anywhere, and most importantly - it doesn't charge you money every time you pick it up.
If I only have 10 hrs to read a book and there's a "Shock the Monkey" ad at the top of every page, there's no effin way.
-Mark
Dovie'andi se tovya sagain.
Yes, and just because we CAN make unlimited copies does NOT mean we WILL.
Stop treating us like criminals, damnit.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
Then maybe 100 million dollar movies should no longer be made.
They are overrated anyways.
Good films CAN be made with a low budget.
People WILL support good films.
I have said this countless times...
Maybe writing should no longer be a "normal" job, nor music.
Painting (canvas, oil paint)is already highly UNPROFITABLE for most.
It is NO less difficult, and is not less of an art than the latest N'Sync album.
What you know is wrong, wake up.
What we are experiencing is an anomaly, it has NOT always been this way.
I've overclocked my brain!!!
and I said it sucked when exactly?
(even though I probably wouldn't read the book again, given a choice.)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
so? should this really affect our concernc about whether such copying or ethical? how many people actually share this stuff? my guess is that most fair use personal copying is for personal use, or for the occasional small gathering of friends or family.
I do not have a signature
I go for books every time.. I flat out refuse to buy an e-Book, 'cos it's not convenient.. I can't use it to unwind when I loaf on the sofa or the bed.. I can't take it hiking, or on trips..
I like non-protected e-books that I can download into my Palm. I can pack 4 or 5 books at a time in my smaller-than-a-paperback-book Palm IIIx, and take it hiking, or on trips, or loaf on the sofa or the bed reading it, or pull it out and read while waiting in line at the movies/doctor/store/govmnt office/etc. It's damn convenient, more so than a paperback book--I can't fit a paperback book in my jeans pocket, and I sure can't fit 5 of them there--along with the equivalent of a DayTimer, a small notebook, and a GameBoy!
---dragoness
Except that you are not renting since you are delivered an item that you never need to return to the vendor. Now I am not talking about the "rights" that you have been assigned, I am talking about the physical (more or less) thing that you have been delivered. If you rent an air compressor, you must return it to the rentor since otherwise they are unable to "rent" it to the next renter and they suffer loss. If you rent an ebook then _in fact_ you are being sold an image of that book and the image is _yours_. They can't have the copy back (nor would they want it, as things stand right now).
There is a contradiction here. Try and spearate oneself from the preconceptions about copyright and ownership and just think about the actual transaction. The reason that there is a contradiction is that the initial premise is flawed. One is not renting one is buying and all the natural rights and possibilities inherent in the purchase of that image are there by default, they are only abrogated by the stupid, brain dead, legal fiction that is IP. The technical impediments to making the book work for longer than 10 hours are there for you to "avoid" since you have the image. Its like taking a photocopy of a book, technically possile just a bit tricky. Ever looked at those game manuals that print glossy light grey on a glossy less light grey background? Real tough to photocopy.
The idiocy of all this is ever mounting. What about quotations? Am I entitled to quote the pithy comeback I read in the book for more than the 10 hours I have "rented" it? What if I have a bad memory and have to write these things down? Should I be discriminated against comapred to those with good memories? Since writing it down is techinically bypassing the protection. If quoting after term is ok, then why is that materially different to copying the pages via a screen dump (as another poster suggested), if it is not materially different then is it just a question of scale and if so then to where is the line between "reasonable" and "unreasonable". Is it in the number of pages? What about the "killer" diagram on page 36? what about essay number 6 in a book of 20 it would be less than 10% of the book but maybe the only reason for buying the book in the first place, Sonnet 12 of 200. The list of questions that mire the "legal" framework is endless.
The universe is a righteous place, something is only difficult if it needs to be difficult. Distribution of the output of intellect is not hard, it is only made so when we try to assign the virtues (attributes) of property to the output of intellect. BECAUSE THE OUTPUT OF INTELLECT IS NOT PROPERTY!!! The sooner the law come to terms with this reality the happier we will all be.
end rant.
"The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging."
Our abundance is so overwhelming that our brightest minds have applied themselves to creating scarcity.
I believe that this would actually be illegal in the UK because it discriminates against some disabled people who are not necessarily able to read at the same speed as average.
Yeah, except now it's what, 98 years?
Nobody's ever going to pay $1.00 to "rent" And Then There Were None for 10 hours when they can either get a paperback copy at a garage sale for the same price or less, pay maybe $3.00 max for a copy at a used book store, or get a new paper/hardcover copy for $4.50/$7.00. Any of the above options gets you the book FOREVER.
I'm an avid reader and my friends are avid readers. First of all, we like paper. It feels good. It's easier on the eyes than any screen. No tech-gadget I've yet seen improves on paper for readability. I love the rows of books in my dining room, and enjoy poring through old favorites at all hours. Sitting in front of a computer screen or with some sort of machine in my hand just isn't the same thing. I don't think I could ever hip myself to that kind of change.
Second, the idea of first paying $200-$300 for a gadget to read books I don't even get to keep and go back to at will? Pshaw. Never. I don't care how techie it is, I'm not going to move to some new format that's both going to cost me more money AND deprive me of rights I'm already enjoying.
On a semi-related note, it simply cracks me up that companies like Adobe & Rosetta think that they effectively encrypt data and nobody'll be able to unencrypt it. If we can read it, watch it, or listen to it, we can unencrypt it. Simple enough.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
Johann Gutenburg made the printing press popular in the 1450's. Quickly, he went to England's His Majesty's Royal Patent Office (HMSPO) to file a patent. He made a license such that all peasants were charged three-farthings to read a book for 10 minutes.
Fast forwarding to the present, the feudal system is alive and well, with little technological progress made over the last 500 years as an economic caste system is alive and well. Only a small rich portion of society has any any access to literature and science. However, Gutenburg's descendants wound up owning much of Europe...
If the people making these books get their way, the libraries won't be able to obtain a copy, anyway.
"This first-of-its-kind offering is just the beginning of a Brave New World of literature and technology." See?
:)
;)
LOL! That's ridiculous. Interpreting "Brave New World" as the title of a book in that context strips the sentence of meaning. How about, "This is the Hamletest of days," for absurdity?
Which is why I mention that BNW is practically 1984 -- in order of dystopian rankitude in the mass psyche. (Neverminding the fact that BMW has comparably little big brotherliness, as my first link in the original post indicates...)
Considering that the overall message of BNW is so different than that of 1984, I don't agree. Maybe you could say that they're both bitter social comments, but they're not the same comment. That goes beyond superficial aspects of the stories (like "Big Brother" or "lots of strange people.")
Will you concede I'm right?
I'll concede that you're grasping at straws.
It's amazing how desperately some people will fight against saying, "oh I misunderstood what he saying, thanks for pointing that out."
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Once I've purchased a book that is worth keeping as an occasional reference work, it'd be nice if I could go to the net and look up something from it with nice search, annotation and bookmark capabilities. I don't want to pay much each time I do that - but wouldn't mind if I accumulated a nickle or dime toward a yearly bill.
Works of fiction I'll buy on paper until portable display technology gets a lot better and no more than $50. Of course, if the publisher wanted to sell me "20 top SF novels of 1999" on CD-ROM, I might be tempted to shell out $15.
Rent a Book Eh? Isn't this called a LIBRARY?
Your
The name of the company is also somewhat ironic...imagine where our understanding of ancient cultures would be if the Rosetta Stone disintegrated ten hours after it was first "accessed." They're not the first company to apply the "Divx concept" to books, either...a college-textbook publisher has already tried something similar with one of its titles. If all content gets locked up like this without adequate safeguards to avoid loss of the unencumbered content, we'll all be much worse off in the long run as everyone's bits fall in the proverbial bucket, never to be retrieved again.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
You can't possibly be that stupid. I didn't decide that the current incentive is the correct one, the people who buy the books did. Giving them a tax cut or a free car from taxpayer money, would be taking money all of us WITHOUT or permission or consent. That is a far cry different from me willingly purchasing or not purchasing a book.
On another note, it is the investor's job to make his investment profitable, not mine. I suggest investing in things people are willing to buy, rather than investing first and then seeking legal protection to make your investment feasible.
You are absolutely correct, and that is my point exactly. If creating movies or books ceases to be profitable, they will stop creating them. Do you really think James Cameron would spend $200 million on another movie if everyone was just going to copy it? Right now the movie-going experience is better than home video experience so movies aren't in immediate danger but books are. See my response to this next guy for a more in depth explanation.
To attach new item A "before" existing item B we prepend.
If you insist on being a windbag don't make stupid mistakes on the very first line of your essay. People stop reading when you do.
No sig, the nick says it all.
>(unless you somehow access the content you purchased...)"
You didn't buy the fucking content, genius. You bought a licence to read the content. Who's going to sell a fucking book for one dollar?
Actually, not true. Between
- Cost of the software to create an eBook (Acrobat currently runs ~$900 retail for a single-user license)
- Cost of an ecommerce website that generates those nifty time-limiting keys
you're actually looking at as much or more than it would cost to do a boutique printing run. I could do boutique hardback runs in low quantity for $15-20 each, 10 years ago - and the costs have gone down. Assuming no volume discounts, I can still get a small starter run done for about what it would cost to set up the ebook system. And using Paypal or something similar, my transaction costs are lower - I keep more profit.First of all, publishers do have a useful function screening and editting content. No, you're talking about _editors_. Publishers retain editors, but editors can also be had damn near for the asking - I personally know a dozen professional-grade editors just off the top of my head.
Properly speaking, publishers control (a) the printing press, and (b) the marketing/distribution arm that gets the books out to the booksellers. All the rest is support services, that they may or may not provide. All we're talking about are those two points on the value chain.
... a DMCA circumvention device, just because I remember the book after reading it?
I'm being serious here, what if you reviewed the book and put that up on your website...
Just some food for thought
VK3TST
-- "People aren't stupid. Usually." -- jd
Go read Courtney Love does the math. Musicians still make their living almost entirely from giving live performances, just as the bards, skalds, and street musicians have done for thousands of years. As for authors, check the post above by cprael.
Also go read History of Copyright. The original purpose of copyright is only to get new material published. With the Internet, publishing new material is now a trivial expense. The print publishers can wait and see what's got a strong demand, with that risk removed, we no longer need to give them a period of exclusive right to print any given material. In short, copyright is obsolete.
This is the reason why Sklyarov was arrested.
They've been planning this for a while, using
eBook technology. Sklyarov was out at a very
bad time - just before the launch of this service.
It is sad. Luckily they won't have the huge popularity they'd expect; remember: Content Is Not King.
T.S.: Technical Support, how may we help you? You: Hi, I'm, uh having trouble reading chapters 3-7 of MCSE Made Easy. T.S.: What seems to be the problem? You: Um, well the screen's all fuzzy. T.S.: Just for chapters 3-7? You: Did I say fuzzy? I meant blank, the screen is blank for those chapters. T.S.: Did you try rebooting your book? You: Um, well can't you just read it to me over the phone and tell me what it says? T.S.: Are you sure your license is still valid? Hey, you just called here, didn't you? Freeloading scum!
I know I prefer a good hardcover book to my thermometer any day! ;)
if it happens again, the supreme court will probably get involved.
May it fail quickly and thoroughly. This thing is dangerous. (Not so much by itself, but in combination with the DMCA, extended copyrights, and technological obsolescence.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
As long as this fails quickly, then it won't be a horribly damaging scheme. Evil, yes, but not horribly damaging.
... well, actually, I don't accept that. This in combination with the extended period of copyrights and the DMCA ... every participant in this plan is committing treason against humanity.
If it even starts to succeed, however, it will lock up some proportion of works in a format that cannot legally be viewed (as soon as the current version is obsolete). I already have a great deal of problem accepting that copyrights are legitimate for books that are out of print
Have you tried to read a seven-track 200 bpi tape recently? What about a 9-track 1600 10.5 inch reel? New works being published in this medium are just being thrown away.
It's gotten to the point where I'm going to have to start keeping a list, so I can keep track of which companies are worse than which. Almost nobody seems to be competing for better, though. I'm starting to feel that the entire idea of a corporation is a bad idea. In the middle ages it was an engine of freedom, but since around 1900 (perhaps slightly earlier) it seems to be mainly an engine of corruption and oppression. --- It was probably the case that decided that corporations were people that was the turning point. Maybe if just that case (and it's dependant decisions) could be overthrown, things would become more nearly balanced. Perhaps.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Wrong. The law of supply and demand presumes the availablility of alternate suppliers. Since copyright gives suppliers an inherent monopoly, they have an upper hand in the market.
Take textbooks as an example. If you're taking a class that requires a certain textbook, you must deal with the publisher of that textbook or not take the class. Since the publisher has complete control over the form in which the book is released, it can choose to release the book only in a limited use form that expires after the end of the term. You either buy that form or you can't have the book you need to take your class.
Something very similar holds in other areas of publishing. A very popular author could choose to release his books only in rentable format. Since there's no perfect substitute for that author, people are going to have a very strong incentive to rent instead of buy. And if the big publishers collude- refusing as a group to release except in rentable format, and closing the specifications so that they're the only ones who can produce files that can be read on commercially available e-books- there won't be much choice left.
Again, a free market only works when buyer and seller have free choice. Monopoly sellers prevent free choice, ruining the free market. Copyright grants a monopoly, so the market in books is inherently not free.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
In the UK, Sky manage to transmit a VCR f*cking signal with their PPV stuff so you can't record it. They may have stopped using it as folks got upset when they set the VCR to record the PPV boxing at some unholy hour of the morning.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
Why does it get messy? Most of the Macrovision-type signals either reduce or invert the sync signals to keep VTRs from tracking the video. TBCs digitize and buffer the incoming video signal, find the (distorted) sync signals and replace them with new, properly formed, ones. The "fixed" signal is then sent through a DAC to create the final, corrected, analog video.
TBCs are required anytime the video goes through a mechanical system that is subject to wow and flutter. Video systems are very sensitive to timing, and VTRs drift. TBCs "fix" that time drift associated with VTRs.
Most also let you play with the different component signals-- color saturation and hue, luminance (brightness) levels, black levels.
Just put the TBC where you'd normally put a TV, and the signal it will produce will be perfectly recordable. That's what it's for!
- Libraries are free because they are subsidized by government (usually local, sometimes state or larger).
- Libraries pretty much track everything you read, or haven't you noticed?
- Libraries are quite often subject to restrictions on what materials they can carry, based on content as well as on cost.
- Most libraries only have a few copies of each book, so in general YOU may be able to check that book out for three weeks, but not everyone can.
Don't get me wrong -- libraries are great -- but they are also a very restrictive system that allows you much less choice than you'd like as well as the security threat of the local library tracking every book you check out from them in a database. --KynnKynn's page: http://kynn.com/
The layout is not protected under the copyright of the text itself. Go ahead - print up Stephen King's latest with a different font and paper size, and not get sued.
Besides, my late grandfather had a photographic memory, and could recite the contents of books with nary a flaw, and liked to show off by telling people to refer to particular paragraphs on certain pages, etc.
Heck, even a close paraphrase is still a derivative work, and would qualify as an infringement.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I agree that there will be a change, Steven King going onto the web and charging a $1 or $2 per chapter was a fairly good move, don't you think? The problem is there are many people who don't even want to pay 1 or 2 dollars.
The thing is that maybe you, and everyone else, still doesn't understand, is that you are NOT necessarily paying for the ideas of Steven King, but rather the time it takes him to record those ideas.
I suppose it does not good to argue, because I am not so greedy that $1 or $2 is going to effect me. Maybe you aren't either, but like it or not, most of the people who think copying and distributing as many copies as you want should be legal, are just greedy.
First, it is absolutely hilarious, how little freedom you have in the States. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
:((((
Second. Why the f&cking hell all f&cking benefits from new technologies should go to companies? The business used to be (in Adam Smith's times) about serving the society. It sadly isn't anymore...
If we invent a method of decreasing costs of copying books and making them available to everyone on this damn planet at NO additional cost, why the hell shouldn't the price be decreased???? Why? Why? Why? This is about serving the society and allocating scarce resources. Fuck! This is not about greedy bastards getting rich. No! Why can't people just understand that simple concept? You may curse the USSR as much as you want (although, people don't usually do it today) for the totalitarianism and 1984-ishness, but we had the damn hell lot of a books. And they costed really f&cking cheap. And people actually read books. And the stupid communist government actually stimulated reading. And there was no freaking copyright.
Why, or why people think only about the money and IP. It makes me almost physically ill.
- My answer is that it serves you, and you alone, If cracking the ebook served only the cracker, it would not be a copyright infringement. Everyone has the right to copy copyrighted materials for personal use. More likely, the cracker would be looking to benefit the entire world by publishing the plain text of the book. This benefits everyone who can read and has internet access.
- You steal from the author... I'm always curious about you folks who claim that copying data is stealing. If you're going to call it something totally irrelevant, why not rape? Say "you're raping the author". Or how about murder? If you have some logical case against copying things, you're just impairing it by calling copying theft. Secondly, the main beneficiary of book sales is generally the publisher, not the author. The author gets little or none of the price of a book. Agatha Christie is dead, so she won't get any.
...yes, they're a millionaire. Generally, authors are not millionaires. The median published author in the US gets a sub-poverty-level income from his writing. Typically people write for fame and to spread their ideas.- But they got those millions, because they earned it... This statement is not as simple as it sounds. Make the same assertion of a plantation owner in the slaveholding south. Did he "earn" his money? To a large extent he benefited from a peculiarity of contemporary law. Copyright law is fairly arbitrary. Let me illustrate with only one point - duration. Let's say that book X makes $1000 per year forever. If the copyright term is 10 years, the publisher makes $10,000. If the term is 20 years, the publisher makes $20,000. Which amount is actually 'earned'?
...you discourage the author from producing more of the same material... I want to discourage Christie from writing more books. I don't approve of dead people competing with the living. In general, though, I think that copying of ebooks will discourage future ebook publication rather than all publication. And that's a good thing.
Anyhow, in an internet context we get used to thinking: if it can be done, it will be done. Fretting about the moral issues has not turned out to be productive in evaluating security weaknesses.And B)
You can read the title in the sentence. Watch:
"This first-of-its-kind offering is just the beginning of a Brave New World of literature and technology." See? Of course, it would have been better if he had said:
"This first-of-its-kind offering is just the beginning of a 1984 of literature and technology."
Which is why I mention that BNW is practically 1984 -- in order of dystopian rankitude in the mass psyche. (Neverminding the fact that BMW has comparably little big brotherliness, as my first link in the original post indicates...)
Will you concede I'm right?
Making a VHS (or any other format) copy of analog video introduces noise, so you cannot make an unlimited number of generations.
WTF?
You're saying that because your copy is not perfect it's okay?
More on topic, you purchased the license for a single viewing of the movie, if you want to watch it more than once go buy it.
When I said "manufacturing cost," I was talking only about the costs involved in printing, binding, transporting, etc. physical books, not those involved with marketing, advances, etc. I still don't see savings passed on to the end customer in any significant way, making this a not-very-palatable choice for reading material, once any novelty factor wears off. If the publishers think they can charge the same amount, lock the book to once device, and usurp first sale doctrine rights, I think they're in for a rude, expensive awakening. (I hope.)
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
I think I'll make a very simple encryption scheme, hmm backwards typing, copyright it. then copyright letters for illegal deals etc... Then when the FBI decodes them I'll charge them with copyright violation, and the court would be breaking the law to admit the letters as evidence. After all DeCSS is no Carnivore, but DeCSS is illegal, Carnivore is a 'tool'. Hmm, actually I'll just (c) the letters and rent them to people doing illegal things the DMCAA is getting so draconian it rediculous. (The above could be considered aiding & abetting, but they can't prove it unless they liscence (use of) your letters from you as evidence...) :)
The ADA is horrible! Employers are now paranoid of being sued, because so many things are considered disabilities. And of course, handicapped people are almost never hired, because you can never fire them---you might have done it because they were handicapped; we don't want that.
Sigh.
It's a stupid and broken law, right up there with RICO.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Not to mention the damage to one's vision from staring point blank at a radioactive screen all day. I dont' know about you, but there's nothing like curling up with my laptop in those minutes before I go to sleep. Also, Rosetta Stoned publishing obviously never watched the ORIGINAL Trek. Don't they know Kirk still preferred a good hardcover to his tri-corder any day of the week!
Sorry, I meant in order of popularity. 1984 is the book, of course.
Thanks for clearing that up. That was a very enlightening post. I especially appreciate the points you made about hiring an editor. It seems fairly obvious to me now that hiring an independent editor should be possible. I imagine if you hired out the web serving and the creation of the "secure" version of the e-book to someone else you could still create an e-book for less than a hardback, but it doesn't sound like the slam dunk win that I expected it to be.
Not that it matters. Treating the e-book format as secure is clearly insane, and there is definitely added value in a physical book (except possibly for reference manuals).
Thanks again.
"I have no right to make money off of my work; if I fail to persuade people to buy my work under my terms, then I've already lost the sale."
The bottom line here is that if suppliers don't offer a quality, value-added product, they deserve to meet with failure. All of you who somehow take personal offense at bad products (such as MS Windows) can more effectively make their point by NOT BUYING the product!
Also, an ineffective security measure does NOT give you the RIGHT to circumvent it. Just as with someone who steals cars, the fact that he is ABLE to do it doesn't justify his actions.
It's amazing (and a little disheartening) how people are so quick to admit that they are untrustworthy.
would they be free flying cars?
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Well, I still didn't figure how to use grep on digital media. In the most cases if you can remember enough to supply pattern for grep you'll not need grep. :)
Besides, that has to be the most idiotic idea I've heard in a long time. Books are not about time! The phrase "To sit down and relax with a good book."
That phrase belongs to a different age and a different market than that served by 90% of the consumer publishing today. That is, cheap fiction that is read once and thrown away. The literati would like to believe otherwise, but they are a vast minority. (I make my living selling books and see this effect every single day.)
One dollar. In the US the minimum wage is $6.25. So if you can get to the library and back in 9 minutes and 36 seconds, it's a deal. Since you managed to websurf to slashdot you probably make five to fifteen times that much. It's costing me more than a buck to write this reply.
Then of course reading the book, at minimum wage, is gonna run ya $62.50. For that kindof money you want to make sure it's a good book. You might even consider paying like sixty bucks for it.
A buck is pretty cheap.
Cheap people drive me up a fuckin wall.
Project Guttenberg... Same thing, Free,No special reader needed, and you get to keep the file you download.
Where's that value you said was there?
> [Good argument] for learning to speed read.
I don't have a citable source, but have heard from a psychologist who studies reading, that "speed reading" is just a euphemism for "skimming". Experiments with "professional readers", such as editors and grad students, have (the psychologist claims) shown that comprehension is more or less proportional to the time spent reading. I.e., if you give a grad student an article and say "skim this; you have one minute", that student's comprehension will be exactly the comprehension of a speed reader who spent one minute on it.
I don't mind skimming computer documentation to find out whether I need to read it carefully, but if I do need to read it carefully, I want enough time to do it right.
And as for skimming literature... why bother? Would a one-page summary of your favorite novel make a satisfying substitute?
[Alan, oh, Alan! Where are those <rant> tags you called for?]
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Well, the problem is that the OCR technlogies still aren't fast and accurate enough... and the page turn rate is too small.
=)
No, Evelyn Wood will be picked up by the FBI for teaching people to circumvent access controls, enabling them to rent their books for shorter time periods.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
The market doesn't fix lots of things. It's not magic, and the end results of following the dictates of the market are not guaranteed to take you to the same place that you'd get if you followed the ideals of a good and functional society.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
It was a joke - I know it'll never happen
Checking out a copy of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" from the local library for a week: Free Renting the eBook of Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" for ten hours: $1 Coming up with a new marketing scheme to get more money out of the public: Priceless
I don't know who's dumber, Adobe, the Book company or the EEtimes.com... i'll let it go with the MPAA and the entertainment industry, they were on crack and they probably couldn't figure how dumb their ideas were. But for F*cks sake! it has been on the news around the world for weeks.. Do they not understand that the entire system that their business model is based has been hacked by skylarov? Can they not see that their company is going to _die_ within a week? Its a dumb idea in the first place - one that only a company exec. would be dumb enough to buy. It just proves that _EVERYONE_ who works high up in any company is also high up on crack (especially tech companies).
That is of course, unless, they are releasing the books on purpose so everyone can have free copies?...... nahhhhhhh.
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Ehh, you confuse two things, owning a book (that is owning a physical property called book) and having the copyright to what is printed in the book. That is two very different things. You own the book (if you bought it), it is yours to do with whatever you want (well almost whatever). You can read it, trhow it in the trash bin, burn it up, tear out the pages, give it to someone, well, juast about anything. You can NOT make copies of it and start selling it though since you don't have the copyright of it. Two very different things.
under the Americans With Disabilities Act, or some similar law -- because IT UNFAIRLY PENALIZES SLOW READERS.
Slow reading CAN be due to visual impairment, ADD, dyslexia, mental retardation, physical ailment, or any of a number of other factors that are all classified as "disabilities".
While this does not affect it in the private marketplace (where you're under no obligation to provide equal accessability), it certainly means that if it pokes its unlovely nose into a public place (such as a library) or a government office, it can immediately become a legal target.
And even in the private marketplace -- since it's based on timed usage, it still unfairly penalizes slow readers.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
What, me worry?
I have a better idea: pay a woman a certain amount and you can have sexual intercourse with her. I thik I will patent this concept!
looks like another thing dmitry sklyarov needs to hack.
Why pay $5 for a convenient, low-tech copy that may be read by you and others at will when you can pay $1 for every 10 hours of reading on a headache-inducing CRT?
Yep, sign me up.
So would it be illegal to write a program that, within the 10 hours, zips through the text, doing screen caps, or some other related thing, and saving it to your hard drive, so you can read it later?
I'm sure there's a more sophisticated way to get around this, but that took me all of about 2 seconds to come up with a way to defeat this.
Keep trying, copyright whores.
-J5K
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Is 10 hours enough time to do it?
"I would have brought my book, Professor, but it expired last night."
InigoMontoya(tm)
This signature is self-referential.
for learning to speed read. I like this model personally. I might not want to subscribe to Salon.com for a year, but I might pay a buck to have ulimited access for a day if I ran across some content that was really compelling.
I doubt this will work very well for ebooks though. The average consumer is too used to owning (books, CD's, DVD's, tapes, etc.). It will take a real shift in consumer habits to pull this off successfully and I think we've already seen how resisitant people are (DIVX DVD's for example).
You can go to the public library. Library cards are free, and you get books for a couple of weeks. Overdue fees in my area are a ghastly ten cents a week... maximum of $0.50.
Maskirovka
This is discriminatory against those who read slowly. I mean, why should they have to pay more?
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
This is just another way for them to get you to spend more money. It might be a buck and it might be 10 hours but if I am going to go through all the trouble of downloading an ebook I would like to take as much time as I like to read it.
But you must pay for intercourse (TM).
It's just like a library, but you get to pay, and you won't be burdened by actually getting a physical object for your money.
Got Rhinos?
You rented the use of the book for a cumlative total of 10 hours of reading time.
If you want to BUY a book, do so. If you want to borrow a book, go to the library or get a buddy's book.
If you agree to the terms laid out in the agreement, is that really a problem? Now, if there were no other options around, or the book renters decided to destroy all other ways of reading, that would be a baaaaaaadddd thing, but since other ways already exist and people are already used to owning books (or borrowing) this will be a big hoohaa about nothing.
Ignore it and it'll go away.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
It's really a trick!
By reading these eBooks, you're breaking the law via DMCA by cracking the double ROT-13, plaintext triple encoded. And you'll be doing it for up to 10 hours per work published in said format.
Be afraid, be very afraid....
From the article:
technology that could revolutionize the publishing industry and help jump-start the nascent eBook market
Are they kidding? Is anyone going to pay for this? (Potential Poll Question!)
Some how I think it should say "jump on" instead of "jump start". Or possibly "stomp on".
Usually, I expect stuff like this to pop up only after a market hase been thoroughly established and monopolized. Definately not while it's still looking for a customer base.
I can't remember the last time I had ten free hours in a row for anything.
-- Stamp out entropy. ->dryguy@bellsloth.net
What happens if you want to go back and read a part back at the beginning of the book? I've read "And Then There Were None" at least 15 times, and it's a very good mystery, which obligates you to go back and re-read certain parts from time to time. This is why I don't buy anything but real, honest-to-goodness BOOKS. I can take them in my backpack whereever I want, read them whereever I want, and I don't have to get on my knees for some greedy publisher just to enjoy a good story.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
Also, if you look near the bottom, it says that you can buy it (and presumably own it as much as you own any print book.) for $4.99. So your precious rights aren't being abused. Unless, of course, your "rights" include getting the product for 1/5 of the price it's being sold for. If that's true, I've been wasting an awful lot of my money...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
i hope slashdot is not now against people trying another legitimate way to make money in this capitalist society. god forbid!!
gee whiz.. i just wrote a crack for the software in 10 minutes. ;)
but seriously.. all this ammounts to is another example of corporate greed. used to be that you could buy a book and keep in on your shelf for all eternity. hell, you could give it to your kids if you wanted to and let them read it! now, in the face of online publishing and and an overwhelming sea of free information, paper publishers are scrambling for a new toehold.
if this ever takes off i predict that i'll follow div-x pretty much directly.
Can they pay $0.10 and read the book in an hour? Or slow readers? What happens when they get to the last chapter and there ebook reader craps out on them?
The original divx(the purchasing system from circuit city, not the video codec) had a similar system. After you bought it, it had a way of not being usable after two days. I'm not sure if it was via the dvd player(logging a id number of the video on the player) or some kind of timestamp on the actual media. Of course, with this book technology you can renew it by paying more, a divx was a one use media. (It never found a market because a special player bought at circuit city was required)
Select All Text Copy Open Word Paste Wow. I can now read a whole book in 10 hours. Wheeee!
-=SiGH=-
This sounds a lot like the ill-fated Divx DVD format of two years ago. With Divx, you could buy a DVD and 'unlock' it for any 48-hour period for a few dollars.
Divx failed because it just wasn't convenient enough for the price ($100 more for a compatible DVD player, and you still had to go to a store for the discs), but this rent-a-book concept doesn't suffer the same problem if the books can simply be downloaded.
It'll be interesting to see what happens. If the rent-a-book concept succeeds, that means that renting bits (CD's? software?) might catch on again; if it fails, then don't expect to see anything else become rentable on your computer in the next few years.
10/1/2001 In a last ditch effort after filing for bankruptcy, RosettaBooks.com throws support into the lawsuit against russian hacker Dmitri Sklyarov.
In a press release, they stated that loss of funds was due to the "marketing strategy" that blew up in their faces, enabling eBook users to copy the rented text for only a fraction of the price of the traditional eBook version.</fiction>
--I hate big sigs.
I don't know what people find so outrageous about this.
::gasps at the stunning revelation::
I mean, it's just like renting a movie, right?
Except the content is stored on your own computer...and except people read at different speeds...and except you might want to go back someday and reread...
Hmm. Maybe it isn't just like watching a movie after all.
"Use different passwords for each system. Change once a month. Do not write anything down." "Squeal like a pig!"
Pain(n): when you're telnetting into a box doing somethin cool, and some luser calls for help with a 'critical error' ad
Somehow figure out how to read the content that I "purchased"? Hmmm. Does that mean that I should go back to the Hertz lot, find the car that I rented, then "somehow" find a way to drive it for a few more days?
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
I do not like this at all. The people who support it can point to movie theaters as examples of a success using this type of business practice though. When you see a movie, you are paying to spend a certain amount of time watching a screen. The same thing is going on here... only the books publishers don't have to pay for a theater, since you are reading the book at home.
Would you want to "rent" this book (Agatha Christie's classic mystery "And Then There Were None") for a dollar when you can buy the book for about the same on half.com or a local used book store.
I could, maybe, perhaps, possibly be interested if it was a new book, but not a fifty year old classic (1939).
I have no idea what the RosettaBooks execs are smoking, but it seems to be the same stuff as the guys who make the ebook (you've seen them at staples, office depot, etc.)- a 4 pound lcd screen with a back light (its only reedeeming feature) that sells for nearly $300.
Wake up you morons. Nobody is going to buy (or rent) your (word seems to fit perfectly here) shit.
Who wants to take bets on how long before they hit fuckedcompany? We'll start a betting pool and everything!
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
When are people going to learn that "renting" files that expire isn't going to work for one simple reason: 90% of the people on here (maybe that's optimistic, of course I'm not counting the trolls) could crack the encryption. Hell, I'm one of them. If we have the data on our hard drives, we'll find a way to access it. Don't tell me they're going to use ROT13 to "encrypt" it are they ;-)
----
Stop eyeball fucking me, asshole.
When Bradbury wrote Fahrenheity 451, he seemed to think that it would be a tyrannical state that would suprise libraries and other unapproved channels of information. Who would have thought that it would be the publishing sector that instituted as many controls as they could, at the expense of a public institution (the library?)
I know a lot of people out there speed read.. I can pull a good speed on a book if I want to..
I wonder how long until people all get that skill, and can read the whole thing inside the 10 hr limit?
Then, to all intents and purposes, those who pay the buck get the full book for that buck, instead of the five or so that it'd normally cost..
Bye bye lots of profit..
And what happens then? Companies make you pay $1 for an hour's reading?
If, as it seems, the 10 hours is to allow a feel for the book to see if you want to spend the price of a book to purchase a 'permanent license' (i.e. you have the book in all but physical terms), then reducing to one hour won't let the non-speed readers get a look in..
Oh, what a tangled web they do weave...
Malk
Mmmmmmmmm..... copyrighted thoughts..... *droooooooool*
This sounds like a great idea! It really is too bad, though, that there aren't institutions where one can go to "check out" books for days at a time at no charge.
Searching on www.abe-books.com, I found several paperbacks for $2... Of course these are likely to be reading copies, but remember folks, an ebook has no collectible value.
Good God, I hope the man was joking, and not just Freudian Slipping us an advance warning.... link1 Link2.
In UK examinations, dyslexics are allowed [I believe] an additional 25% more time to compensate for their disabilities as, it's not that they can't read, they just can't do it as fast. The existing music method works because you either can or can not listen to music, it is not speed/ability based. With varying reading speeds, especially with disabilities, surely they're asking for trouble?
Then again, one of the arguments for decrypting Adobe's e-book format was to make it comply with Russian law that would allow blind people to use text-to-speach and look where that got Dimitri.
At my university, we have access to a bunch of technical-type books via a service called netlibrary.com. They let you "check out" a book for 2 hours (during which time nobody else has access to the book), then the book expires and you have to re-check it out to continue reading it. What's more, you can't copy more than 1k characters to the clipboard, and can't print out more than a couple of pages at a time. The real problem is that we can't get books through interlibrary loan if they're available on netlibrary, so we're stuck with reading off the screen for 2 hour blocks. Has anyone figured out a way around these absurd restrictions?
One Word: DivX. People will simply not stand for such a thing, especially if it offers no added benefits (lots of high-demand content only available in this format is what it takes). I think everyone has been used to media they own indefinitely with (at least perceived) unlimited access that anything that infringes on these givens won't be accepted without major incentive. Incentive I don't think can be accomplished (but never say never, right?). It's sickening to see ("consumers will be able to enjoy [..] for a full 10 hours", "Adobe applauds RosettaBooks"), but who will buy it? Especially for a buck, when you can get a "real live" paperback for $5-6 more. And if it's not the same book, there are thousands of other books worth reading.
For instance, DVDs are accepted because most people don't run into region coding problems, and those that do can pretty easily overcome them (although people might wake up if Joe Sixpack starts getting prosecuted). DivX's weren't, because the restrictions crossed the line.
Another example might be Pay-Per-View TV. I'm not sure how popular this is, but my guess is that going to the store and renting something that can be viewed multiple times and at the leisure of the viewer is still more popular. (I don't think this is exactly an analogous situation, but enough mportant elements are there to make it potentially interesting).
I'm not worried about this. It'll probably die the same death a thousand other Really Stupid Ideas have. If anything, I'd be worried that this will stigmatize books in a digital format even further.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
But paper is bulky. My standard ruler is the King James Bible, about 1000 pages, 5 megabytes. One CD-ROM is equivalent to some 130 Bibles, about 5 meters of bookshelf.
I still get almost all of my casual reading in paper form, but, for reference works, digital is definitely superior.
Just think of all those books locked up in public libraries right now. If I could 'rent' one of those for a week and not have to pay anything beside's my membership fee's to the library I'd be a happy man. Yup, logging on to Oxford's site in England and borrowing some of their books would be very nice. As far as I see it this could let public libraries comply with copyright laws while extending themselves onto the internet.
RosettaBooks(orwhateveritis) offers an Agatha Christie novel at $1 per 10 hours of reading time on a computer of some sort.
The copy of 1984 on my shelf cost a bit over $8, and provides me with unlimited reading time, not to mention portability, no need for a battery or external power sources, and I can store it damn near anywhere. Best part is, no one can take away my right to read the book; I've paid for it, it's my copy, I can read it or resell it as I wish.
Really, who's going to pay $1 per reading session - because you just know there will be people who can't/won't finish the book in one sitting - when you can buy the book or read it at a library and take all the time you want...without needing a computer? I had a serious lesson in getting along without the magic glowing box after it decided to suicide during a room rearrangement two weeks ago. Got it running, but not for four days. Guess what? I lived.
Back to the topic - the problem facing Rosetta's model here is the same problem that contributed to the death of the Divx movies-on-disc format. Instead of the illusion of outright owning the content you purchase, being able to use it at your leisure, you're stuck into a time-limited PPV model. Rather difficult to use if you have bad credit, no credit, you have less time available per day than is necessary to read the e-book in timely fashion, and anything else I forgot. I highly, highly doubt this type of e-book will become anywhere near common, despite what some publishers are probably desperately hoping for (much like some studios hoped for with Divx).
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Since this was a press release, instead of a real article, no discussion was made into the protection scheme, how and where the books may be read, or anything along those lines. (Odds are this paragraph is in violation of the DMCA.) I can envision that the system could either get cumbersome fast, or be unprotectable. If the reader requires an Internet connection so that it can contact the server and deduct time from your account, it seems to defeat the entire purpose of an ebook: portability in a handheld. I'm not really into reading long documents on my CRT, especially since it's absurdly unportable, but my Visor is a pretty decent platform for reading in class or in bed or on the couch or wherever. If the timing mechanism were built into the file itself, what's to keep me from backing it up before I started reading and restoring from backup when the time expires?
While this seems worth furthur examination, I don't think this really fits into "Your Rights Online".
That any book they have is available free within the first 10 hours? The way I see it the only thing stopping me from copying the whole thing is the honor system, and we already saw how well that worked when a book was placed online.
No sig for you.
a.) a server which issues digitally signed timestamps (so people don't spoof the clock)
b.) a dedicated secure hardware to view the book with (so people don't do screen capture etc.)
c.) about 600,000 morons who will pay for our
special reader device (so we don't go broke).
d.) The Digital Millenium Copyright Enforcement Death Squads (so people don't film off the screen or copy to paper by hand).
The publishing industry sees the Internet NOT as a means to sell more works, but instead as a means to sell the same works to the same customers at higher prices.
Publishers want to take everyone's money - the kid who goes to the library to read the book, and the student at the university, and the professor who is teaching the class, and the casual reader... and charge them all. Fair use be damned.
Instead, publishers should look at the Internet as an opportunity to capture more readers - not to merely resell to existing readers. But clearly it is easier to develop a business plan which strikes in the face of their customers (want to read? Read quick! You've got 10 hours!), instead of futhering the long-term relationship between themselves and their customers.
Show me a kid who'll pay $1 to read on-line. I'll show you 100 kids who'll go to the library and learn to love to read - and will become long term customers.
speed reading is outlawed. Think about it, buy ten hours worth of reading, finish it in two hours, loan it to a friend who is also a speed reader, they finish in two hours, repeat. Five people who read the book for the price of one! That's four cases of piracy! Four lost sales! This travesty cannot be allowed.
Seriously though, this is still dumb. It will continue to take the goods away from the people who paid good money for them. I would doubt the legality of these lisencing schemes.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I've read an e-book or two (I downloaded a couple of volumes from the Gutenburg project to my Palm), but I must say...there is something satisfying about paper. About holding a book in your hands. About owning a book.
Most of the books I own are not dated "travel guides" or "How to program C in SunOS 3". They're either timeless references such as the Dragon Book, or great fiction such as the works of Asimov and Zelazny. And the joy of owning these books is not just from the one time I read them. These books have depth and purpose, and I keep coming back to them so that I can read them again and see what I missed, or just to see the story from an older pair of eyes.
Most of them hold up very well.
Ray Bradbury has, in one of the earlier prefaces to "Fahrenheit 451," a wonderful description of his love for books. How you can shout at a book and throw it on the ground, or the smell of the paper and ink, or the feel of the pages in your hand. The experience of reading a book should not be a race against the clock! I enjoyed the fact that I could just slowly sink into "Necronomicon," page by page, so that I could really enjoy the work.
Having said that, I see the market for this kind of beast. The readers of Clive Cussler and Terry Brooks and Danielle Steele, the ones who go through pulp garbage like popcorn, can make use of this. I don't pick up the pulp after I've read it to enjoy it again...the second time through, I can see the banality of the mass-produced work.
But if it's Stephen King, I want to let him paint his mental pictures before me, and that takes time. I can't feel rushed, you know? If it's Neal Stephenson, if it's Frank Herbert, if it's someone with the tiniest shred of talent...well, come on then...let me read the damned thing.
If you take away ownership of the pages, it's just not a book any more. It's not part of information. It's no longer a meme. It's just throwaway disposable garbage. And it's great for that sort of thing...but let me keep the treasures!
hello this is gladys malone. fletcher another person at the retirement center wants to use the computer now but he walked away and he is very forgetful so i will probably be able to talk for a while.
i like agatha christie so this is a good idea because younger people can read her my favorite was dumb witness about an rich old lady who get murdered and only her dog sees it. they should put that one on the computers too.
i have never read a book on a computer's tv screen before it hurts my back if i am here too long and i don't even know where to go to find them maybe sean could help me but sometimes he's so finicky about helping me find things new like this nice place to talk to people. last week he put me on something called a ford bronco discussion forum but i didn't understand what they were talking about there. i don't understand these mechanics that's why i always use the full service pump because it's hard to fool with those things and they are to confusing now that they don't use the dial anymore. oh fletcher is back i guess he didn't forget goodbye your friend gladys malone
Hey, don't dis Clive Cussler ;)
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Making a VHS (or any other format) copy of analog video introduces noise, so you cannot make an unlimited number of generations. But if you make a copy of a digital book, the copy is absolutely identical to the original, so a single copy can be quickly reproduced for literally every single person in the world.
I have a great idea!
Lets go to the library!
Its free!!
What an ironically perfect title -- because it describes perfectly what will happen to your content after the time limit!!!
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
It's too bad the writers of The Simpsons never patented their notion of a coin-operated bible next to a coin-operated vibrating bed in hotel rooms.
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
Normally, I would post something like 'I wonder how long it will be until someone hacks this'. Welp, its already happened. I wonder how there business will do once they relize how poor the encryption is.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
This is much like a pilot program for California Library e-books. Under that program, a library member logs onto the library's web site, downloads the e-book into a reader, and it's deleted automatically after a given number of days.
.txt file, there's a great opportunity for publishing houses to expand the usefulness (and paying market) of e-books. Instead of being limited to a reader's on-board data storage, make e-books wireless. There's a host of technologies that could accomodate this... you could even send an e-book over as a compressed e-mail attachment.
Naturally, some companies used to selling paper books are angry. Insead of allowing libraries like this one to use unlimited copies of an e-book, they want to sell organizations the right to loan a certain number of e-books at any one time. That system is by-product of traditional licesnsing models; the customer pays one fee per copy of the product. This allows the e-book publisher to claim more cash in the short run, but it seems counter-productive for a long-term invoice flow.
Since e-books have quickly been sold as so much more than a pretty
The idea is to move away from printed media's limitations, but also to build a community. If you get enough e-book fans online trading their favorite tomes, they'll have reason to put up with the nonsense of a new media and greedy publishers. When a significant community forms, then you really have an installed base. Those users won't just jump ship when the boat starts to rock.
You know blockbuster, where you go to get those cheap videos? Well those evil corporate bastards have made it so you can only watch it overnight, or for a few days, and then you have to take it back! TAKE IT BACK FERCHRISSAKE!!!! Not only that, but now thanks to the ADMC it's illegal to make my own copy for personal use for free whenever I want. Man, they must have bribed a few senators to get that one through! We must rally against it, this corporate mastery! It must be a scheme to keep the little guy, the grass-roots video publishers out of business- CONSPIRACY!
What the hell am I on about?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
i'm getting so sick and tired of our fair use rights going in the toilet every five minutes!
the only other time-release program for books i know of is the local library, and that doesn't cost money and the measurement is days, not hours.
i don't understand how i can continue being a technologist when, with each passing day and after reading stupid news stories like this one, i want to move into the British Columbia wilderness and shoot my own food to survive....
buy
Pronunciation: 'bI
to acquire possession, ownership, or rights to the use or services of by payment especially of money
rent
a usually fixed periodical return made by a tenant or occupant of property to the owner for the possession and use thereof; especially : an agreed sum paid at fixed intervals by a tenant to the landlord b : the amount paid by a hirer of personal property to the owner for the use thereof.
There's a difference. See if you can't figure out what it is.
What's this Submit thingy do?
Forget the fact that you have to pay hundreds of dollars for a reader before you get any content....
Forget the fact that reading this stuff gives you a headache....
Forget the fact it's a pain in the neck to flip between pages....
Forget the fact that there's so few books available in eBook format....
Forget the fact that the competing "technology"(paper books) is superior....
We'll just restrict people's use of the content, charge them more, and boom, it will take off like a rocket!
Excuse me while I go out and buy some stock in this outfit...
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
It didn't take that long.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'm a whore.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
T.S.: Technical Support, how may we help you?
You: Yeah, I'd like to rent that book again for another 10 hours, since I'm working on a project and missed a couple points in the book.
T.S.: Sir, I hope you have a content useage license for that book...
You: Wassat?
T.S.: Sir, you do realize that the 10 hour license strictly forbids you to implement any information you obtained through our book, or keep archived versions in your brain.
You: Um, whatever. I just want to finish my project. Can I rent the book?
T.S.: I'm sorry but you are making it hard for me to ignore your blatant violation of copyright law! A project based on our book would be considered a dirivative of our product, and the license agreement strictly forbids you to create dirivatives from our work!
You: Well, then, what if I make exactly what is mentioned in the book?
T.S.: That would be possible if you purchase an annual useage license. Would you like to include our automatic upgrade option?
You: Oh, no thanks. The design in your books should be just fine until I buy a new computer in a few years.
T.S.: SIR! If you do not purchase upgrades annually, you must destroy your project at the end of the license cycle! If you insist on violating our copyrights, we will need to call the FBI on you!
You: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
I can't begin to count those mornings where I have woken up with the lights on and my head resting on a book that I was reading. I sure hope those hours sleeping doesn't count. They should rather pay me,,,,or I'll sue them..... :-)
but I must say...there is something satisfying about paper. About holding a book in your hands. About owning a book.
damn right, and what about the smell? am i the only one who stops reading every half hour or so and takes a deep whiff of the binding? mmmmmmm..
~~~
While it would be nice to be able to get decent books at far lower then market price (average paperback going for over 6.99 nowdays). But come on, does anyone really think that the format will not be hacked/cracked within hours of it being released? Everything anyone has ever tried for something like this has been gotten around. Look at DeCSS for example, or the countless Serial # systems that software makers produce to try to prevent someone from cracking it the day it comes out. It's a good theory, but can it be done correctly?
Now, about my subject: I used to work in a chain bookstore (Waldenbooks #642), and I know how much they pay for books (about 60% of cover price). Now take out the cost of printing (about 20%) and eBooks should cost about 40% of the paperback price (why pay $20 for an eBook just because the store copy is in hardback?) not close to full price! No matter how much I love "The Lord of the Rings" I would refuse to pay more than $2.50 for each volume and I would want to read it as many times as I choose.
I can understand if they wanted to operate on the honor system like a public library does, but since I'm not taking a physical item from them I shouldn't have to pay to "borrow" and eBook. If they want security they can encrypt it so it can only be read by my reading device (in this case a Palm IIIx).
I wonder if Gates of Redmond is behind this?
10 bucks for 10 hrs...the way they should do this since they are not //wasting// money on paper...install a retina scan so it is computing how much time I actually spend reading the text. That way I wont be gettin ripped off when I get up to use the can.
in other news: e-toilets for rent...buy 10 minutes get 5 minutes on the e-book!
Still, I wouldn't use such a service, unless it was the only source for a particular text I would dearly get a hold of. I prefer buying books, or, should I ever run out of that option, get a library card and borrow them there. That'd be like buying supercomputer power for the price of a not yet antique computer.
Stefan.
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
Just invite them to a conference in Russia and have Russian Police meet them there. If the evil side of things can work for Adobe, I'm sure we can make the good side of things work for us :)
At least they're being upfront about what you're allowed to do.
Consider this, if you rent a car for three days @ $20/day, do you expect to be allowed to use the car whenever you feel like it on any other days. No, because you rented the car. Now, if you actually purchased the book, and then they told you it expired in two years, when the next version came out; THAT would be something to complain about.
This is really sad. I was looking forward to the whole ebook concept. I can carry around a library in a device, the dedicated readers, that is lightweight and easy on the eyes. Once the selection increased it would be so worth it. But with pricing models like this I think I would rather get my written materials on clay tablets.
I may be a pool man, but I am f@#*&ng Jon Bon Jovi's pool man!!!
just take screenshots of your screen. The texts can't be that long, because most people aren't going to read a novel in less than 10 hours unless they don't have anything better to do :P
Many people who have dyslexia, learning disabilities, or impaired vision might not be able to read the book as quickly as those with normal vision, reading speed, and reading comprehension. Also, what about the blind? Few screen readers can talk as fast as a normal reader can scan a book. This could be considered to be discrimination under the ADA.
I bet crackers who are used to crack copy protection schemes will find tons of possible ways to disable the time limit.
As a simple scheme:
existing code:
cmp time_passed, 10*60*60
jge time_expired
; continue normal loop
replace with:
cmp time_passed, 10*60*60
nop
nop
; continue normal loop
Now for this book rental, you're paying $1 for 10 people hours for something that would cost about $5 to buy. What a rip-off. Especially since you can check it out of the library for free and have it for over 300 hours. Oh I forgot, libraries are going to be outlawed since they breed contempt for corporate property rights. Damn.
So many corporate assholes, so few walls to put them up against.
It was lame here and it's lame now.
I fail to see the problem. If you want to buy the eBook, you can. If you want to rent it, you can. If you think eBooks are incredibly gay, you can buy a dead-tree edition.
Now quit whining about things that don't matter and Support the EFF
Why, at some point what you read will be in your computer's RAM, decoded so you can view it on screen. Why not take a memory dump?
*after 48 minutes of trying to read article* but... what... if... you're.... a slow.... reader?
Of coarse, i'll buy a physical book before i'd rent an online one. But having said that, I have to break the law(dmca) just to access steven king's book that I paid 4, since I don't do windoze.
I've been considering stealing satillite service, just because I don't want to pay 20$ for the one channel I really want(TVG).
I've got an old star wars tape that I recorded in 1984. The commercials are 4 products that R still on the market, and I don't even bother to fast forward through them!
Advertising revenue is down alot, and the networks R feeling the pinch. I just wonder when the advertisers will stop paying 4 commercials and make their own IP(films/music) and put them out there for everyone to enjoy, instead of paying an outragious amount of money for a one time slot.
My name eez Hercule Poirot and I 'ave called you all 'ere today to unmask ze murderer. Ze murderer is ....
...
Please deposit twenty five cents for the next two pages
1) What about the americans with disabilities act? Those with dislexia or some other reading disability would have a case against such timed reading.
2) If you really wanted to have the book longer, couldn't you just do a print screen on each page and paste into a word document?
~ now you know
Does this development strike the first blow toward the development of a future world where certain underground malcontents will resort to memorizing literary classics in order to avoid the firemen? Ironic that it's little electronic gizmos rather than people with big red trucks and fire hoses that will be swooping in to save us from the world of ideas.
<Please send $2.95 for the next section>
-Legion
Warning: the following is an illegal device!
Everyone experiences a movie in the same amount of time. But readers read at all different speeds. And it's wonderful to savor a book... read particularly good passages over a few times... refer back to the book later. In short, one of the greatest virtues of books is that they are not time-limited.
yet, if you were to save your bible in MS word format, it would probably take up 2 or 3 CDs. :)
Ah, the wonders of word
Please ! Shit, that is the most ridiculous shit I have ever heard. $1 for 10hours... Now if it was $1 for 10 hours of nude porn sex video chat then we'd have a deal ! Somebody post them on FUCKEDCOMPANY already !
Then of course there's piracy, which I guess is what they're afraid of. It's too easy for me to retransmit something I bought to someone else. I wouldn't do that though; if I spent my $40 on something, I'm not going to give it up to someone else for free. Duh. Of course, if you got it free, you don't care if you give it to someone free. They need to put value into owning something. Additionally, IMO most people are willing to play fair as long as they don't feel they're being ripped off.
But stupid stupid stupid. Here's a situation where people clearly want something—interesting stuff to read. People are willing to pay for that. The problem is where you have a clash of free content (I can write any interesting stuff on my web page and 'publish' it) and paid content (why should I pay if I can get it for free? Ah hell, I'll just steal it). Sorta like free software vs. commercial software. There's value in the commercial stuff, but how often do we need it?
Keep in mind, I fully need my Mac and have no political problems (as opposed to financial) paying for lots of good quality commercial software (WTF people buy outlook, I'll never know). There's lots of room for free software & content. It's really a shame that for the longest time we've had to give up hard earned money for those things.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
You go to the store and pay $3 to rent a tape/dvd. Now you claim you bought the item and are allowed to keep it? This is no different except that its purely in electronic form.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Hmm... didn't Agatha Christie write some of her books in the 20th century?
Nothing has entered the public domain by its full term since 1920 or so. About the time "Steamboat Willie" came out.
I'm wondering if anyone here has ever come across research that was accessible for a fee... Instead of owning a copy of a $50 manuscript, I'd be more than happy to look at it for 10 hours for $5 or less... I wouldn't do this with fiction or any book I want to own, but there are lots of books I only need to look at, and if the choice is own for $35 right now, read for free from an interlibrary loan and get it in a week or two, or read it now for $1, which will I pick?
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Horror/fiction writer Stephen King was found dead in his Maine house this morning. I'm sure we'll all miss him - even if you didn't read his books you've probably enjoyed one of his movies. Truly an American icon.
If a publisher were to release one of their titles only as a 10 hour window rental, would I have a remedy under the ADA? It doesn't cost them anything more to make it a 15 hour rental.. since there is no exclusive commodity that I'm holding up (like there is with video, car or equipment rentals.) What would be a "reasonable accomidation"?
If the ADA and the DMCA got into a fight, who would win? Particle Man?
What bogus idea will Adobe come up with next that will result in yet more technology becoming illegal?
Everytime a new 'technology' like this gets posted on /., everyone goes on how stupid it is, how many better alternatives there are, what morons the lawyers and business execs are for treating customers so badly, and why this idea should be killed. Agreed, but irrelevant. You, the technologically aware computer geek, are not the target audience. These products are made for Joe American who can use (but not administer) his Wintel or Mac, doesn't know how to code, and thinks its really spiffy that he can pay 10 or 20 USD to use some new-fangled gizmo and show it off to his football buddies. You think the latest Linux kernel is neat? Joe American thinks the latest end user computer product is neat. Chances are the latest gizmo won't be around for that long anyways, so whats the harm. No need to start ranting until some illegal or immoral activity happens.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
The first author decides to offer his book *only* in this format. Now all of a sudden there's a book you can't read without renting and that libraries can't offer on their shelves.
Kinda like proprietary software is now.
This technology could renew interest in speed reading ...
Sort of like a library. If I need information on X, I could rent 10 books on subject. Better than laying down $40 for a book you'll use once or twice. It would be useful for obscenely expensive reference books you only need for a short time, or maybe tech books which you only need for a short-term project.
Doomed to failure
(you have now exceeded your allotted time for reading this comment)
... to say that this is a hoax. It has to be, hell I warned of this in a post a couple of weeks ago. I was using it as hyperbole. Gotta be a joke.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Please ignore reason in this instance.
- Please ignore the fact that this new delivery method is fairly analogous to existing delivery methods for library books, movie videos, and carpet cleaners.
- Please ignore the fact that this is just a product or service and not an act of the US Congress.
- Please ignore the fact that many similar attempts at keeping a hand in your wallet have failed (see Circuit City's DivX "standard") by just letting the market decide.
- Please ignore the fact that many people may actually like the reduced pricing structure enabled by this delivery method, and that this may actually turn out to be a Good Thing(tm).
ALERT ALERT. Attention Slashdot member. This is a code RED ALERT. Please proceed to the Slashdot posting web interface and begin ranting. While posting, please also cast negative aspersions on the following people or topics: the RIAA, the MPAA, the DMCA, Bill Gates, and George Bush.Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I like purple, yes I like purple. Purple is what I like. Yes. I like it.
Publishers are cannibalistic subhuman monsters that shouldn't be suffered to live. These are the people who turn what should be art (I'll leave it up to the reader to decide whether art should be compensated, or created merely for art's sake) into a cesspit of the barely tolerable and agonizingly intolerable novels, books, and literature. They are unnecessary in the extreme, but have had decades, nay, centuries to entrench themselves in the human psyche as the only means to literature, while at the same time watering it down to the point where the wise intentionally stay illiterate, the price of sanity.
I say, if we can starve the fuckers, it's more humane than they deserve. While no literary equivalents come to mind, their cousins in the recording industry routinely manufacture bands and performers, using marketing to polish what talent wouldn't ever touch, all for the sake of the almighty dollar. Examples I hardly need name, but I feel obligated to do so, nonetheless. NSync, the Monkees, New Kids on the Block, etc.
The recording industry swindled the airwaves away from the public years ago, then swindled napster away too, the one chance indies might have had to be heard by a significantly large audience. While this is hardly proof, does anyone sincerely doubt that their brothers in sin, the publishing industry, is any less guilty of such crimes?
And then, there is the issue of pay per view books being "semi-cool". Cool for whom? Those people who have photographic memories? Slimy talentless agents and editors, that have no doubt killed dozens of would-be classics, epics, and uncommon stories? Or the industry associations that bribed congress dearly for the DMCA farce, and were afraid that the the underage prostitutes they paid for were wasted on unsympathetic politicians?
Retarded, braindead, underhanded, abusive, profiteering... the terms describing this concept are too numerous to list. Last I checked though, semi-cool was not one of them.
Again, if IP piracy can kill this in its infancy, then stuff that pillow on the baby's face now, and don't let up until it's a morass of dark blue and black bruises half covered in popped, dark red capillaries. And stomp it once for good measure.
Basically, is the sequence of binary digits exists somewhere in Pi, you don't own it. Don't try to tell me you do, either, or I'll laugh at you.
after reading the article, i would ask anyone why they would do this. what if the user is a particularly slow reader, or just "left it on", and when they "came back" discovered that they had wasted a dollar? if you apply the same idea to hard-copy paper-and-ink books of now, the most common by far, you'll see how absurd it is. imagine buying a book (albeit at a cheap price), but after 10 hours having it light itself on fire?. imagine how ironic that would be if the book happened to be Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, ey? also, what happens when someone figures out how to break the technology?
I think, therefore, I'm smarter than our president.
Yes, books are for reading. I read books. Books are good. Reading books are for me. I read books. Yes, I read books.
Read it HERE for free and keep it as long as you want.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
This is idiotic. Compare this to my local library, where I can go and get the very same book, for a similarly limited time (except that it's 3 weeks or so, instead of 10 hours, but that's beside the point), and then I have to return it. So what's the value added here? OK, so it's in digital form. Maybe they have some nice layout/font/presentation going on, but that's about it. Since a few Agatha Christie titles are available here at Project Gutenberg, I assume her works have passed into the public domain by now. So aside from the fact that they actually entered this particular text into a file (by OCR or some other way), edited out the typos introduced in the process, and formatted it, what's the point?!?
"Adobe applauds RosettaBooks for being the first to explore the opportunities that `timed' eBooks bring to the publishing market," said Susan Altman Prescott, Vice President of Marketing, Cross Media Publishing at Adobe. "Timed eBooks offered in Adobe PDF open a number of innovative ways for publishers to market and sell books. For example, they offer a cost-effective way to distribute review copies and bound galleys with the layout, fonts and graphics intact."
.. as opposed to printed books, which are constantly screwing up the layout and require expensive dedicated reading devices, such as eyeballs.
To hell with readers and that little Ruski turd," concluded Altman.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
I thought you said "I put 1 buck to play Daikatana..." I was going to have to smack you. :P
You're thinking of either jury rigged or jerry built. (Jerry built refers to the infamously shoddy Jerry Brothers shipbuilders of Liverpool, and not German engineering. Jury rigged means .. well .. jury rigged.)
This being a minor spelling flame, there is at least one mistake in this message - it's a law!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Did you read Huxley's "Brave New World?" The title comes from a statement that John the Savage makes when he enters civilization. He says "O brave new world that has such people in it." John the Savage was quoting Miranda in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.
See the context of that quote. When Miranda said it, she meant it in a good way (as did John the Savage at first.)
(For a more appropriate quote from Aldous Huxley, see my signature.)
___
The ends are ape-chosen, only the means are man's. -- Aldous Huxley
Hey, I totally agree. I never said it wasn't a dumb idea, just not a particularly evil one :)
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Is anyone else finding that the bindings in a lot of paperbacks actually come apart during the first read, nowdays. It may not be better but at least in digital form pages won't be falling off my screen.
- BTW. I have seen the film, but it was a long time ago, can anyone tell me how the Interview with the Vampire book finishes?
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
Does this mean that I have to be perfectly still while reading the book? Because if I'm moving, then time slows down according to special relativity, and I'm circumventing their 10-hour protection device, which is illegal under the DMCA.
"Knowledge makes us accountable." - Che Guevara
This particular form of protest killed Divx, and it can kill this too.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
who is the self destructing of the who here?
I already self destructed, why do I need to buy the book?
Extra bang good?
Take this personaility test.
Don't you find this a bit scary? Big Brother wants to be able to delete books when they no longer suit his purpose. He wants to delete references to unpersons. He will say paper books are doubleplusungood. The Ministry of Truth will order all books to be in revocable format.
Didn't they learn the first time with DIVX?? Stupid butthole wankers.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
I know a woman who said she was in labor for 24 hours . . . . I wouldn't even want to do something that feels GOOD for 24 hours.
The article says that this could jump start e-books???? How?
Let's see... I pay $1. I get 10 hours of an ebook. I go to the Brick&Mortar library for free, I get a book for 3 weeks...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I signed up for their free trial awhile back. Then I just busted out some offline browsing software that would follow however many links you wanted it to. Yeah, it did download a ton of useless crap (I was on a T1 so it was speedy), but I still payed 0$ for tech books that I otherwise would've payed hundreds for at the local store.
When will they get it? I mean, when will they understand that thay have the potential of providing a service that no pirate ever can rival -- namely the world's collected litterature and recorded music, on-line!!!
If I knew that whenever I wanted I could access any book or any music recording ever made in the world for, let's say, a nickle and some dimes, well, I personally wouldn't care much for Napster and its brethren. Why bother with poorly indexed stuff and uncertain downloads when I can get it cheaply directly from the source?
Intricate and cumbersome copy protection schemes wouldn't be necessary. Presicely as for ordinary CDs and videos, "fair use" copying wouldn't be a problem and the problem of large scale, criminal pirating would be the same but remain within in the juristiction of the "old" copyright legislation. Sure, I would stack my favourite mp3s on disk, and maybe even mail one or two to my pals - but then they would have to place the song somwhere they could find it when they want it. But what if it's much simpler for my friend John, for a negligible one-time fee, just to enter a few characters at the website of BigMediaMultiCorp and get it from there?
Assume I today would like to listen to all Glen Miller recordings from 1941. Or all recordings artist X made with other artist Y. Or that song I heard on the radion with the catchy refraing "Sing La-la-la ... " ... I'd be willing to pay for having all that at my fingertips.
When will the get it? Digital technolgy isn't a threat to media companies - it's an unsurpassed opportunity that does not require either new copy protection schemes or sweeping and overboard legislation!
implicit in most of /. is the belief that what you have in your hands is a physical thing and not a representation of an intangible thing. In the instance of publishing, people do not buy books they buy the pages and the right to read the thoughts conveyed through the ink.
copyright for publishing is complex and distinguishes between the copyright in the layout and the copyright in the text.
ditto music, video, software - almost anything where there is _no_ marginal cost on the additional item.
Here is part of a discussion we had earlier today on free-sklyarov. In addition to the bit below we discovered a company which markets ebook, eTextbooks. The company is called metatext a division of netLibrary. Notice on their list of titles: titles The Declaration of Independence!!! Notice also your right to use it expires in 180 days, even though they are offering it free of charge, for now??? Also notice the list of FULL PRICE ($80.00-$90.00) textbooks from major publishers... That also expire after 180-395 days. If you go to the below link you will see under profitability that the company is recommending their ebook system to publishers since it "reduces the sales of used books" (read eliminate) look here If students thought paying $90.00 for a textbook, that you could keep as a reference was bad. How about one that disappears after the semester ends. Without Dmitry's software, there would be no way to trade a book with a fellow student, lend one or even sell a used book back to the book store. Not to mention you would have to ASK a publisher to renew your copy of the Declaration of Independence... Here is my blurb.... That is like asking Honda if I can drive my motorcycle today. Why do I have to ask a company permission to read, or loan a book to a friend ONLY IF the publisher grants permission. This is the issue. Dmitry is not in prison, but part of his defense, at least in the public court of opinion is did he write something malicious like a virus, or a tool for the greater good. Tell any student that he wrote a tool that ensures they will always have the ability to use a textbook after one semester, whether it be an ebook or physical book and they will side with you. Many programmers keep books from school as reference material. I can see from my computer: A Calc book Java Servlet Programming Java Programmer Reference Oracle SQL Interactive American Government Solaris For Managers All used as Textbooks in previous semesters. Under eTextbooks, they and the 50 or so other books I have in storage, would be gone. What will I have to do pay a monthly, daily, hourly, or per use subscription in the future to use a book??? Who will own the books?? AOL? That is where we are headed folks! We should stop it now!!!! BJY byoungvt@yahoo.com sjrally site
Big publishing houses are just like big record companies. Find a talented person and sell the product of their mind.
Then they turn around and put the screws to consumers, charging like a mother for something they no longer even need to print and distribute!
Mind you, this all takes place over the same public (i.e. by the people, for the people) internet that allows them the freedom to do so.
...that they proudly sell 1984...
The idea was to start with a CD but instead of the regular films that are used that last a long while, the new things had a film that would breakdown after some time of being exposed to the laser's of a CDROM (a few days after first exposure if I remember right).
has anyone thought of the fact that you can walk into a used book store and buy this book for not much over a $1?
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Its the coin operated bible from the Hotel room when homer gets a gun!
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
Nothing has entered the public domain by its full term since 1920 or so.
The exact figure is 1923, thanks to a corrupt U.S. Congress that will do anything for a bit of campaign money, even pass a 20-year copyright term extension every 20 years.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't really get all the outrage. I mean, I hate the idea of licensing rather than owning as much as the next guy, but just because of the advent of e-books and these restrictive terms does not mean you can no longer buy the real book and have it forever. It all boils down to basic economics; if you don't like it, do as I do and don't buy it. The product will fail in comparison to the actual books and will fade away. I have to say that my leather bound books that I can read anytime I want look alot more impressive than any file on a HD that you can no longer access.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
Didn't they learn from all the other failed e-business sites? People will pay for products and services that are actually useful and convienient.
Enough said...
You can get the infomation the same way the rest of us did, buy buying the text.
But what if the required textbook for a given course at your university is available only on a rental basis? Then you have the situation Richard Stallman describes in his dystopian short story "The Right to Read".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now there's finally a good reason for the computer mounted in front of my toilet...
--Steve
If I take that car after the deadline Hertz:
- Can no longer rent it
- Must report it stolen
- Has increased insurance fees
- Must buy a new car if I never return it
Whereas a rented e-book that is cracked by you for keeps:
- Is still fully rentable by the company
- Is not reported stolen by the company
- Does not directly result in increased insurance fees for the company
- Does not require the writing of a new e-book for the company
You see, one is grand larceny (car stealing), the other is copyright violation (cracking e-books).
I like putting it the legal way -- it makes it sound the same as the crime is generally regarded by society -- as a simple violation. Cracking the e-book makes you as bad as the guy that parks in the no-parking zone (annoying, unlawful [not illegal!], hardly anything to write home about, hardly anything to have a criminal record for). Unfortunately, cracking in the eyes of the law makes you almost as bad as an armed bank robber if one looks at the sentences and fines imposed. I fail to see the comparison between how people like Kevin Mitnick and Dimitry Skylarov hurt others and how a gun wielding maniac holds up a bank. I do, however, clearly see the public nuisance comparison to an illegally parked vehicle. I can also (just barely) see how copyright violation could be considered harassment to the author.
But taking cracking your e-book to look at it longer to be stealing is like saying looking through the author's window while they write the book is stealing (since at that point they had no intention of letting you look at the book).
But full blown larceny? No way. Even the dictionary agrees on this.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I've read an e-book or two (I downloaded a couple of volumes from the Gutenburg project to my Palm), but I must say...there is something satisfying about paper. About holding a book in your hands. About owning a book.
So you have a book fetish. Ooookay. Whatever floats your boat. I guess I'm a bit of Neoplatonist in that I see a physical book as only an imperfect vessel for the content. Given a better vessel (and I realize that current e-books aren't better than paper in all respects yet) I won't miss the paper book any more than I do the LP or 8-track.
They're either timeless references such as the Dragon Book, or great fiction such as the works of Asimov and Zelazny.
Well, I'm not sure Asimov and Zelazny are considered great authors outside SF fandom, but I'm fond of them myself. However, I've found that the availability of classic works of fiction by universally-lauded authors like Melville, Hardy, Goethe, etc. in freely available e-book form has caused me to read them on my Handspring even though I probably would have never purchased even a cheap Dover Classic edition of their works.
Next thing you know, it will cost you money to view the EULA for a MSFT product and you'll be out 300 quid just to disagree with the license.
that was such a pathetic troll. please be more creative next time. kindergarden intelligence? wtf were you thinking
It is evil only in that it reveals the future which is being dreamed up for us. It would be legal for a publisher of a paper book to only license reading in enclosed booths where no notes may be taken on the book's content, and you pay by the hour. It would be a bad idea. On books, I have some old textbooks that I read for fun from time to time - the 20 year old ones are as good as the day I bought them. I doubt that any electronic medium will be that long lasting.
This message is encrypted with ROT-26. If you crack it, I will prosecute you under the DCMA...
Encrypted message follows:
Methods of bypassing timed books:
1) Dimitry's program
2) Simply reset your clock to 1 minute after you originally opened the book...
3) Diff the originally downloaded, and not opened files and restore that which changed after you read the book for 1 minute... Write a cron job to do this for you each time the file closes...
4) Screen captures... print, feed to OCR - Volia! Cleaned up text file...
5) If the license doesn't outlaw reading out loud, just make sure you have your friendly Lernout & Hauspie speech-to-text translation program running and read the program outloud... Say that "reading out loud" is a disease and you have to read everything out loud - claim protection under the ADA
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Timed books are obscene. And the comparison to a library is specious at best - I get to keep the book from a library for WEEKS, and can read it at my leisure... I can even call the library and renew the check-out a number of times until I'm done reading the book...
I have bookshelves FULL of books that I bought years ago - and I occasionally re-read them after a few decades (the curse of a nearly photographic memory...). I plan to pass them on to my friends, relatives, and kids when I have them... Try doing that with a 'rent=a=book'...
Some books I have were passed down to me from a few generations ago...
And what's even more obscene is that RosettaNet borrows its name from the Rosetta Stone - a "book" of sorts that has survived for eons - imagine if that was a 'rent-a-stone' instead?
It's our moral responsibility to hack the crap out of this scheme so that other publishers won't even attempt to use it...
Which is why they have the whole secured/trusted PC model they want to force us to use. Secure Audio Path, et al. You won't have root level access to your own hardware. Hacking into your own computer will be illegal.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Hell, maybe it's all a marketing ploy to make sure that it does!
But masters, remember that I am an ass: though it be not written down, yet forget not that I am an ass.
It's like Pay Per View. You can pay $3.99 and see a movie once, or you can pay $15.99 or something and see it as much as you want. Likewise, you can pay a buck to read a book once, or you can pay $7.50 to buy it and read it as much as you want. I just feel sorry for slow readers :-)