Slashdot Mirror
Old-Fashioned DRM Protects Harry Potter Book
RMX writes "The Telegraph has a nice article
about the steps that Scholastic is taking to
protect the content of the print version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. They're delivering 10.8 million copies and need to ensure that this content isn't accessable by anyone before midnight. Technology includes high-tech (GPS to monitor delivery trucks progress and check that they did not deviate or stop.), low-tech (steel boxes & locks), social engineering notes (crates stacked up in the warehouses of delivery companies across America are marked: Please Do Not Open Before Midnight), and legal threats (As a final layer of security, booksellers have been forced to sign legal forms acknowledging that if they break the embargo, they will never again be supplied with a book by Scholastic). Think how much cheaper and easier it would be if they just used an E-book s with DRM.
I'm all for Harry Potter protecting his rights; but it seems we keep getting closer and closer to the world described in
Stallman's visionary The Right To Read article."
Yeah I was thinking the same thing... how, exactly, does a fictional character protect something? This is one of the shittiest, worst-written /. articles I've ever seen. I'm actually HOPING this one was a troll, because it pains me to believe someone could be this much of a 'tard.
...but it seems we keep getting closer and closer to the world described in Stallman's visionary The Right To Read article.
Once again the ugly head of FSF Fanaticism intrudes where it doesn't belong.
Geez, you guys, get a freaking life already! This story has nothing to do with the right to read. Don't be silly. The bookseller isn't the customer. The lorry driver isn't the customer. The thief breaking in and stealing a book isn't the customer. Nothing in this story whatsoever affects the customer's right to read a book he has purchased. Hell, there ain't anything here that would even trivially inconvenience them!
And you guys wonder why the general public doesn't take you seriously...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I'm sure there are some true fans of the Harry Potter books but the majority of sheeple just let themselves be dragged mindlessly into the craze purely because it's a "cool" thing to do because everyone else does it.
The reality and sadness of the matter is had these people read any Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl or even Terry Pratchett, they'd realise that there's hardly a single iota of an original idea in any one of Rowling's books.
It's very clever manipulation by the corporations involved to use "oneupmanship" as the way of getting the sheeple to rush out and buy the book at the stroke of midnight next Saturday ("I must finish it before Johnny down the street does") but those of us with even a little common sense realise it's clever marketting wrapped around a sub-standard product.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.