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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...)"
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
- 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/
- 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.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.
> [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
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.
What, me worry?
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.
"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
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
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?
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)
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.
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!
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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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 wish to use her beyond the terms of the agreement. I've created some equipment in my basement that would allow me to keep her for longer than the alloted time. I would not have paid for her 24/7 services, so you aren't losing business anyway. Supplies of human females are essentially infinite and it doesn't cost anything to create another one, so it's not "theft", it's just "copulating".
I hope you understand.
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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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
Let me get this straight:
Yep, sounds good to me. Not! Being a Luddite, I'll do just fine reading what's already been published on paper if this actually were to take off. Unfortunately, one of the first big markets for this crap is already a captive audience: college students . If you think this topic doesn't fit into YRO, you haven't been watching the direction things are headed.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
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
Warning: the following is an illegal device!
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
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
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.
What bogus idea will Adobe come up with next that will result in yet more technology becoming illegal?
If this is true, then it's prior art in public domain. Find the source.
Someone tried to patent the waterbed, but it was first mentioned in a book by Heinlein. He testified, and the patent died.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
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.
... 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?
"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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!