Slashdot Mirror
'Winston Smith' Speaks Out On MS Reader Convertor
David H. Rothman writes "'Winston Smith,' an unemployed American high school dropout self-named after 1984's hero, told my TeleRead.org site why he and buddies turned out Convert Lit to crack the Microsoft Reader e-book format. Winston makes clear he is pro-fair use and anti-piracy. Alas, new DMCAish legal restrictions in the United Kingdom will force the Dan Jackson Software site to shut off the Convert Lit downloading later this month. Just as in the States, free speech and fair use apparently matter less in the UK these days than they used to. According to Dan Jackson, Winston 'is indeed the real author of Convert LIT.' Meanwhile, if you're in a country without DMCAish thuggery and can host Dan at a new location, email him ASAP."
Stop downloads of it later this month? They may as well just leave it up, because by then there will be about a million different sites available to download it from. Especially now that the Slashdotters know about it, people will host it just to spite Microsoft.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
AC has always badmouthed the US as no longer "the land of the free" and made other off-the-cuff remarks, also saying that he'll be leaving his country if such laws were passed. Yet, suddenly, he's become very quiet. Does he have any plans of following through, or does he just make idle threats? I find it sad someone so prominent in this community would be all talk and no walk.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Winston Smith is not the hero of 1984. Big Brother is the hero of 1984. Big Brother has always been the hero of 1984.
Uhm, after posting his [unobscured] email address on the Slashdot Frontpage, I tend to think that we might want to find the guy a new email addy first...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
All I can say is this thing helped me out of a jam a little while ago. The program is not polished by any means, but it does work.
Our company had a document (Employee Handbook) converted into MS Reader format. (Don't ask me why.) The original files were lost in a disk crash. (Don't talk to me about backups either.) Now the document needs editing. I could have re-typed it, but I'm lazy. A quick Google and I find this program with a potentionaly offensive name.
Hooray! I get to be lazy and violate the DMCA just to retreive a file owned and created by the company I work for. The incident only reinforced to everyone here the value of pdf files and that MS Reader is beyond worthless.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
but I the first time I tried to do a little offline, off computer reading I realized that there was no print function. I didn't want to copy the whole thing or print it out for distribution. All I wanted to do is print off a chapter so I could hop in the car and read a little during my 5 hour drive during a weekend visit.
The people making anti piracy software have to realize that you just can't force people to act in a simple fashion so that it's easier for them. They have to realize that they have to find real and intelligent solutions that work and still allow Joe Legal user fair and useful access to the content that's being provided.
After doing a small search for a conversion program (this was a while back now) and not finding one, I just ditched it and went another route.