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.'"

Comments

Is this really news?

[fyngyrz]

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.

Re:Is this really news?

[sm62704]

America is degenerating quickly. If you think your vote counts, you'd better start using it differently at every level.

I certainly hope you mean by that that you should STOP voring for the Republicrats. Because face it, when that great American corporation Sony gives ten million to the Republican and ten million to the Democrat, no matter who loses, Sony wins.

Re:Is this really news?

[fyngyrz]

I meant what I said, which was fairly general.

For me, it means looking for a mix of libertarian and social service ideals. They're tough to find in one package. I think this is because the libertarians have a lot of trouble understanding certain things. Such as, that people need safety nets in extremis, good "roads" for goods, communications, data and themselves, sewage and other utility infrastructure, a uniform and detailed general education, medical care and a stable currency everyone uses, and that they inherently need all these things regardless of their economic condition on the one hand... While on the other, the republicrats can't seem to understand that the the right to tell someone else what to do outside of as it addresses directly interfering with one another or government's legitimate service to the people was never delegated to the government in any form, nor should it be.

But that's just me. Certainly elections resulting in this type of candidate being elected would represent a huge change; and it approximates what I'd like to see. Others have to answer the question of what they'd like to see and vote accordingly. What I'm suggesting is that if we really look at our current situation, what is going on is not what we'd really like to see.

Re:Is this really news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never attribute to wit that which can be adequately described by typo.

Re:Is this really news?

[PopeRatzo]

America is degenerating quickly.

It's the whole world, fyngyrz my friend. Those who have acquired wealth and power are building an impenetrable wall between themselves and the rest of us, who are useful only as raw materials for their industrial and commercial machinery.

One sad element is that the technician class, of which almost everyone here at Slashdot is a member, has a tendency to the mistaken belief that they will be a part of the plutocracy, just because they can work on the plumbing of the information network that increasingly belongs to the real plutocrats. In reality, they are no better off than the car valet, who believes himself the equal of the jet setter, simply because he is allowed to drive the luxury car from the garage to the curb. The ugly secret is that their salaries, even $100k/yr, in support of their $150k per year lifestyles, is locking them further and further into digital serfdom.

How often I see these newly minted Web 2.0 masters, with their adjustable rate jumbo loans and 42" HDTVs and >$25k in credit card debt, who are convinced they are in charge of their lives and that they are somehow superior to the working-class when in fact the only thing that separates them from the young women sewing shoes in a Vietnamese factory is their enormous debt and high-calorie diets.

I think before the end of the next decade, long before the US sees its first black president, we will come to realize that we have more in common with the illegal-alien day laborers and the North African immigrants who are rioting in France than we do with the Mitt Romneys and George Bushes of the world.

Having become familiar with the plight of the upper-middle or middle-class American who has the ill fortune and bad manners to become sick and require health care and be unable to work, (a story eloquently, and only a tiny bit hyperbolically, told in Michael Moore's "Sicko"), and the middle-aged, advanced degree worker who found himself on the butt-end of the sick joke known as "outsourcing", or the two-income/two kids young professionals who have found that losing one's job to corporate "consolidation" doesn't come with one of those solid-golden parachute exit package, the last decade has served to radicalize me. I no longer see being an enthusiastic consumer as being the same as a loyal citizen, nor do I believe that "what's good for GM (or Microsoft, or AT&T, or Citicorp, or Haliburton) is good for America". I have peeked behind the curtain to find that the free-market orthodoxy that whispers in our ear that 9-figure "performance bonuses" and exploration subsidies to oil companies who have just enjoyed record profits, and a 13000 Dow, and "globalization" will all somehow "trickle down" to the rest of us, and the working-class families who will lose their homes to foreclosure while Countryside gets a nice fat bailout is all part of how a healthy economy works, is really little more than a dodge by those teflon "leaders" who seem to get rich no matter how their corporations perform or how badly the economy tanks.

It's all degenerating quickly. And like battered wives, we continue to pretend that another election is going to "turn things around", and we believe the politicians and their enabling media that it's somehow going to be different this time around. That's why I'm using the little bit of breathing room that my decades of hard work and frugal living have gotten me to do everything I can to subvert the meat-grinder of our corporate magesterium.

Re:E-Book trading

[OS24Ever]

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.

Re:Isn't this sort of like

[gstoddart]

an article on the future of listening to audio tapes?

When a thing becomes outmoded, don't we always let it fall to the side? [snip] electronic reading materials and electronic readers are beginning to be more popular.

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

Nerd = luddite.

[shumacher]

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?

Re:What the constitution actually says

[fyngyrz]

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."

Re:Fair compensation in a digital world

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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? Write on contract only. The contract can be with a single person with a ton of dollars or a ton of people each with a single dollar, or somewhere in between. Once the work is finished, collect your money and then publish it to the public domain. Viola! Ease of duplication is no longer the creator's enemy -- it is now their friend as each person who copies the finished work is no longer stealing from the creator, they are promoting the creator.

1st Objection - How does an author get started? Who is going to pay a penny for an unknown author to write something?
1st Answer - New authors just have to suck it up, the way the majority already do today and give away some of their work in order to develop a reputation.

2nd Objection - How is an author going to make a bazillion gazillion dollars if their book is super-duper popular? The price is fixed before release, what if they under-price it?
2nd Answer - If the book is super-duper popular, by definition that means there will be lots and lots of people who liked it enough to pony up for the NEXT book. So the author can increase their asking price for their next work based on the popularity of their previous work.

3rd Objection - How can millions of people all pay a dollar each to an author's escrow account?
3rd Answer - They can't, at least not without a lot of overhead. Today. But that's just a business opportunity waiting for the right person to come along and start the next paypal.

4th Objection - What if nobody is willing to pay the author's asking price?
4th Answer - That's business. Either lower the price, or cancel the offer. At least this way very little time and money gets spent on creating a product that no one wants to buy. It ain't a perfect system but at least the feedback comes from the actual consumers rather than some intermediate businessman whose only purpose is to sell eyeballs for advertising dollars.

Re:Ok, but...

[4iedBandit]

$10/book to own is too much for me, since I won't read most books more than once.

It's way to much for something that has no physical presence, that you can't share, give away, or resell. It's a money grab. The publishing industry needs to learn from the music industry. You cannot charge an insane amount of money just for the content. At least with a printed book there is a recognizable investment in printing plant, paper, ink, and distribution. With an ebook there's just distribution. Amazon has a significant infrastructure for distribution already in place so adding ebook distribution is really only maximizing use of their existing assets.

Publisher formats the manuscript then sends it to Amazon for distribution. That's a one time expense for them.

Amazon's distribution costs...well how much does is cost to send 100k of data over a network? Storage costs? A 200GB hard drive will hold approximately 400K books given each book is 500k in size (which is insanely generous for essentially a text file with no compression.)

Let's see, refunds for unsold books? None. Expenses for additional print runs? None. Sales lost because a book is out of print? None.

$10 for the e-version when even the paperback isn't that expensive? Get real. Everyone loves to hate on Apple, but thanks to them I don't have to spend $20 to buy one track anymore. $1 gets me just the song I want, legally.

Kindle will do more to kill print media than help it. $5 for new releases I would consider. $2 once it's in paperback I would do. But only if you scrap the DRM, and don't charge me for web sites or loading my own content. If they did that then the only thing that would still keep me from buying it is the absolutely horrible industrial design. Hello platinum colored speak and spell...no thanks.

Re:Yes, it is.

[fyngyrz]

It's mainly about DRM, you're writing about copyright.

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 ]

What I'm getting at is that your comment is a boilerplate "insightful" comment

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.

...karma whoring is gay.

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.

Not a license

[Tony]

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.