Slashdot Mirror
An Acerbic Look At the Future of Reading
theodp writes "Using Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' own words against him, Mark Pilgrim offers his chilling take on The Future of Reading with a mash-up of Bezos' Open Letter to the Authors Guild, the Amazon Kindle Terms of Service, Steven Levy's Newsweek article on the Kindle, 1984, and Richard Stallman's 'The Right to Read.'"
I understand his points, but I think they are less relevant to a subscription service, which is what I want. I want to pay $X/month and be able to get as many books as I can read. I don't need to own, just to rent. Basically, a paid library where the benefit is that I can get the books right on the device because I'm lazy. $10/book to own is too much for me, since I won't read most books more than once.
I'll tell you what is happening here. It's the same thing that is happening on other fronts - precisely the same thing.
The constitution was written with the idea of the government serving and protecting the people, watching out for their welfare, arranging things so that this was first and foremost concern in those areas the government operated.
This emphasis on copyright benefiting the business interests any any expense to the citizen's interests is the exact same change in emphasis we have seen for the takings of land, the decreases in freedom of speech, the ridiculous idea that software can and/or should be patentable, the intent to force you to wait through commercials, the powers allowed to the insurance companies to pre-qualify applicants, the insane readings of the commerce clause that allow the government to attack the citizen for any act at all, the outright hijacking of the news outlets by commercially oriented entities — the problem is that it is like the tale of boiling a lobster. It's all annoying, but none of it is annoying enough, by itself, to really get the citizens up in arms.
America is degenerating quickly. If you think your vote counts, you'd better start using it differently at every level. Because the "same-old, same-old" is what got us here.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Support authors who publish their content using Creative Commons style licenses. What little writing I do is published using CC licenses, Wikipedia is moving to CC, and I never would have even heard of Cory Doctorow years ago (still one of my favorites) if not for CC.
I'm considering licensing the majority of the content on my educational resources site under a CC license. Seriously, support these kinds of effort at (1) making high-quality published works accessible to a broader audience, and (2) supporting authors who are willing to try new business models to earn a living.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I don't need to own, just to rent.
You've never heard of a "public library?" Damn, just when I'm starting to like the 21st century* some bozo reminds me that the mamon worshipers are trying to take away every good thing I've taken for granted all my life.
-mcgrew
*click the sig for explanation
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I'm sure it was part of the agreement to get the books in electronic format in the first place was that you couldn't sell, or re-transfer the license. It's just the publishers wet dream to close up the used book stores/libraries around the world so if you want to read it, you gotta pay full price each time you want it.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
The issue with all electronic media is the ease of duplication. That's what all the DRM stuff is trying to address, and making such a mess of everything in the process.
This is nothing new: there was never any physical impediment to sitting down with a paper book and a Xerox machine, or even writing it out by hand. But it was laborious and time-consuming, sufficiently so that few people bothered. It was easier and cheaper to just buy a copy of the book.
So how you you do it? If I'm going to sit down and write a book I expect to be compensated for my efforts. How can you ensure the author's rights to fair compensation in a world where files are so easy to duplicate? It's clear that there is a business model issue here, so how would you fix it?
...laura
You know, I see this sentiment on Slashdot quite a bit. Apparently a lot of people around here think the printed word is archaic and is in the middle of being phased out as obsolete.
I can assure you, that books in their physical, paper form are nowhere near being obsolete, outmoded, or about to be left to fall by the side. This isn't about abandoning an old file format of a word processor. To many people the actual physical book is still the preferred method of reading. Hell, send me a long enough document, and I'll print the damned thing and keep it on my desk.
I buy a tremendous amount of books, I don't want an electronic reader of any form, and I'm fairly sure that a larger proportion of the populace does their reading against the old-school dead-tree formats than any form of electronic format.
While your assertion that "electronic reading materials and electronic readers are beginning to be more popular", might be somewhat true, they're only more popular than they used to be. They're simply not more popular than paper.
I would say that people who argue that paper books will go away in the short term have their heads so far up the ass of technology as to not really have a clear view of the world any more. I would say it would be years, if not decades, before we actually see electronic formats really supplant paper. And, you can have my physical books when I'm dead and gone -- I don't personally foresee giving them up any time soon. Books have a warmth and tactile feedback that a cold, digital screen will never offer to me.
There will be people who want electronic books, and they're welcome to them. But, I and countless others want real actual honest to goodness books. Don't look to see them fall by the wayside for a long time.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Many would identify me as a bit of a nerd. I have a moderately low UID, I work in IT, and I have too many features on my cell phone.
Part of the nerd world tends to be life on the "bleeding edge" of technology. While a nerd may not always own the latest and greatest, he or she will tend to at least follow the news and allow that to influence their purchases. They probably got involved in the internet, BBSing, mobile internet, and any number of other technologies before their non-nerd friends.
But today, we have DRM. I've bought DRM, and I've skipped purchases because of DRM. DRM really annoys me, because it interferes with my interest in the latest techology. While the Kindle might not have been a "must-buy" item for me at its current price, if it were to be subsidized below $100, it would have entered my consumer radar, had it not been afflicted with the restrictions Amazon has placed. While I currently subscribe to a music service, (Rhapsody, if it matters) I tend to buy music that I wish to keep on old-fashioned CD. I'll rent DVDs, but I'll seldom buy them because I don't want to violate the DMCA to get them on my PMP.
Blu-Ray? HD-DVD? I have no idea; who's farting on my pizza less?
When I go out to eat, I don't have someone screwing up my food on purpose, and when I'm getting a haircut, they don't reserve the right to shave areas I'm not supposed to be able to see - why is it then that all of these great technologies have to come with a little "oh by the way..." restriction?
There's no irony in it at all. You see that "limited time" clause? That's what is changing to the public's detriment. I would know - I own a literary agency.
What I said was "emphasis on copyright benefiting the business interests any any expense to the citizen's interests is the exact same change in emphasis" which is not the same thing as blaming copyright for problems. I don't think copyright, per se, is a bad thing at all. What I think is specifically a bad thing are the changes in copyright law that provide rights far beyond the period where most material will be germane to the culture that has evolved since the material was produced. If the material is no longer germane, it is, by definition, no longer promoting the "useful arts."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So far the reviews for the Kindle are all pretty positive
Among people who were willing to spend $400 for a device that offers few objective benefits over a free public library membership, maybe.
The rest of us are quite happy reading the ink-and-paper volumes that have been the standard for millenia.
Tell me something, then. DRM (Digital RIGHTS management) is managing exactly what rights?
C'mon, Bob, ten seconds, The question is, what's your name? Eight seconds Bob, you can do it... you know this one, Bob... [ a nod to Cheech and Chong ]Oh. I see. You think slashdot moderation works, therefore you think that posts are designed for the approval of these moderators. Well, sadly, slashdot moderation does not work, and never will, until or unless it provides for (a1) recovery of posts lost to bad mods, or (a2) stops downgrading good posts (moderator accountability is key here), and (b) actually uplifts all the posts worth reading. In the meantime, all savvy slashdot readers read at -1 so they don't miss all the great posts that the manifestly broken slashdot moderation lets fall by the wayside. So, no, not posted for any reason to do with "karma." Bzzzt.
And try not to be so homophobic, eh? I know it's tough, but you can probably manage it if you try. Because being homophobic is boilerplate for declaring one's self an unvarnished idiot.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
When you buy a book or, say, a video game, 90% of what you pay is the license.
That is *not* what you buy.
You purchase a copy. That copy is yours. You don't "use up" a license. You use a copy.
The whole idea of copyright is simple: allow the creator of a work to provide limited licenses on *copying.* The only rights the author has is the right to control copying of the creation. That's why it's called a "copy right."
This whole idea of licensing copyrighted works is from the software industry. It involves the *license* to create copies of the work. Of course, in most cases, the work is useless without copying onto a hard drive, so it kinda makes sense, in a strange way.
However, when you purchase a book, you are not making a copy. You are purchasing a copy, and that copy belongs to *you*. You may sell it, lend it, and even copy small sections for purposes of academia or research or review (SEE fair use). You can do anything you want, as long as you don't make a copy, because only the author has the right to authorize ("license") copies.
Please resist the urge to voluntarily give up your rights. Don't let them convince you that sharing is bad. It isn't. That book is yours. That console game is yours. You can sell them, lend them, or do anything else you can do with a physical object. Those are your *rights.*
At least, those are your rights in the United States, and in many other nations. Check with your local government to be sure.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Not true. You can load as much content as you want onto the Kindle for free via a USB cable. The only time you pay to get your own content on your Kindle is if you have Amazon download it to your Kindle wirelessly. For that, they charge 10 cents per download. Currently .pdf support is a bit sketchy (it doesn't format complicated .pdf files especially well), but the folks at Amazon are working on changing that. It does support .doc, .txt files, or whatever... Which look just fine on mine when I load them.
---As my daddy used to tell me: "You gotta be smart before you can be a smartass."
I used to feel the same way about books, until I started one of the Baen.com ebooks online and found myself reading the whole thing in front of my computer. It turned out that this particular book had a sequel that was also part of the Baen's free library and so I downloaded that too. This time, however, I spent a little bit of time coercing the ebook into the plucker format so that I could read it on my palm.
Next thing I knew I had purchased the entire series, including the final version of the book as a $20 advanced reader copy so that I could get it before it came out in print. What's more, I realized that what I really liked was reading, not books. All of a sudden I saw used book stores for the creepy, smelly places that they really are instead of the magical place of wonder that I had built them up to be in my head.
I liked being able to fit an entire library in my pocket. I liked being able to read in the dark without waking my wife. I liked being able to search my book collection with grep. I liked the fact that I no longer got ink on my hands from a cheap paperback, or had to worry about breaking the spine of a book. Most of all I liked the fact that I no longer had to plan time to read. I always had my palm with me, and so whenever I got a bit of time, even just a few minutes, I could make progress on whatever it was that I was reading. You can't do that with a book, unless you happen to be a security guard.
What's more, even including the price of the pda ($70) I was actually saving money by reading ebooks. I did this by only purchasing unencrypted ebooks, which are generally priced at paperback prices (or less), and by utilizing resources like Project Gutenberg
The real reason that ebooks have not taken off to this point has nothing to do with the format, and everything to do with the price of ebooks and ebook readers. The Kindle is a perfect example. Seriously, who wants to pay $400 for a dedicated ebook reader? I will grant Amazon.com that the price of the books for the device are mostly reasonable. They are still a little steep, considering the fact that they will be delivered digitally, but not as bad as most ebook vendors. However, $400 will buy a large pile of hardback books.
Eventually, the ebook folks are going to get things right, and that will be that for books. Oh, there will still be some folks that stick to their books in the same way that some music lovers still purchase vinyl, but the mainstream will move on.
This kind of juxtaposition is what I had in mind when I expanded a /. comment in this piece on the Kindle.
I think the Kindle gets so much press because it's technologically so damn impressive but legally so damn irritating. Until there's a way of solving the hurdles to distributing books, I wouldn't even consider buying the Kindle.