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DRM and the Destruction of the Book
Hugh Pickens writes "EFF reports that Cory Doctorow spoke to a crowd of about a hundred librarians, educators, publishers, authors, and students at the National Reading Summit on How to Destroy the Book and said that 'anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself.' Doctorow says that for centuries, copyright has acknowledged that sacred connection between readers and their books and that when you own a book 'it’s yours to give away, yours to keep, yours to license or to borrow, to inherit or to be included in your safe for your children' and that 'the most important part of the experience of a book is knowing that it can be owned.'"
And here I was thinking the content of the book was the most important part.
God spoke. He wants His commandments back. It might get very wet for a long time.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Cory's Sacred Ancestors (or whoever the hell he was referencing) didn't have a clue about what effect the scanning and distribution of a book to 100,000 strangers on the Internet would have on the publishing industry.
Being able to give away, bogart, lend or to borrow, pass as inheritance, or roll up and smoke a book is possible because the book is yours because you own it and the Doctrine of First Sale formalizes these possibilities.
One of the many things wrong with digital restrictions management (drm) technologies is that it tries to do an end run around the democratic process and eliminate these rights, some of which are codified in the Constitution. Some would assert that not only is the constitution the foundation upon which the country has been built, but also that it represents freedom and democracy itself. So these affronts by Bill Gatesists and the other 'freedom-hating' (tm) digital taliban, can be considered as affronts to the US itself if not also to higher ideals.
It may sound harsh to some fanbois, but step back and take off that 'with a computer' clause and see if what they are doing is acceptable. If not, then you know what to do.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I tend to agree with him some, but there is simply too much music, art and knowledge out there to take in the old fashioned way. and if you do own the physical media it becomes a clutter and storage nightmare
i don't buy too much ebooks but in the last few weeks i bought a MS SQL T-SQL ebook app on my iphone to read on the train to work and some pdf's from mannning books. and the convenience factor is very nice in not carrying around the extra weight
the doctrine of stop the stupid lawyer talk
make it law that when someone tries to use GIANT words they don't have to we toss them into a volcano
yesterday i also downloaded 100 free kindle books from Amazon. even if i were to buy them the chances of reading a book a second time in the near future after the first reading are slim to none. if the price is lower than physical than buying an electronic DRM'd book is no big deal. by the time my son grows up there will be more books to read so i don't really care if he never reads any of my old Tom Clancy books. besides, how often do kids do the same things as parents?
...is reading it.
Knowing it can be owned is a distant second, at least for me personally.
"The most important part of the experience of a book is knowing that it can be owned"
Huh?
I thought that perhaps the story told within said book is slightly more important than the media.
Then again, having bothered to (try to) read some of Doctorow's mystifyingly much-lauded short stories, perhaps I can understand his point of view would be different.
-Styopa
Everything is consensual. Whe share ideas and needs, and make deals.
No, I don't want to buy the idea of books as licenses, I like the idea of ownership of the phisical book, with the strings attached to give it to other people, even make a copy. The idea that I don't like, is to elevate a inventation to the sacred level. We born in a blank slate, almost everything is learned, and everything that we learn was invented or created. Theres nothing superior to us, sacred, where we ower fidelity.
-Woof woof woof!
Yeah, that's what the church thought too when the bible was translated and the pressess started running. It'd surely destroy them.
Same as records destroyed the music industry, and home recording, and VHS, and CD-burning, and DVD copying, and Bluray copying, and.. There's an oddly long history of continuous destruction of the publishing business, yet somehow they're still around to pester us with DRM!
What pray tell ARE the effects?
A physical book has a sort of built-in DRM! If you give it away, you can't read it anymore. It can't easily be copied (it requires a lot of scanning and printing to do that). Isn't that kind of thing also part of the intention of DRM?
IMHO though, the world has changed, we now live in a world where information can be copied without any physical restrictions. So I hope that one day humanity will be able to live in that world, instead of trying to enforce old ways onto us with DRM. I'm sure that in a world where information can be copied freely, there can also be culture, people who make money, artists, and so on.
BTW, the most important part of your subject... was left out of the subject (for dramatic emphasis, no doubt). Anything wrong with just writing "Most important is reading book, not owning" in the subject?
Doctorow is a pundit first, and a story-writer, oh, somewhere around seventh or eighth. Bill O'Reilly writes novels, too. But nobody reads them because they want to sit down with a good mystery, they read them because they are a fan of the pundit's punditry and buy up everything associated with his "brand."
for the most part i agree with him, but what did they say?
Basically, he is saying that when we buy a book, it belongs to US to do with what we want. BUT, with the new DRM files, you do not own the item. Not the content. Not a paper. Not even the CD. The reason is that NOW, the gov. and courts are putting limits on what, who, when, etc. of what is OUR belonging.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
While I appreciate reading books I much more enjoying using my local public library than spending a shitload of money on books whose value depreciates faster than .. well anything. And yes I know I am paying for those books through my taxes, but the range and depth of the libraries catalog far surpasses anything I could achieve if I spent the same amount of money privately.
So I am confused now - I support reading books, but don't support maintaining a huge private library. Does this mean I am bent on destroying o supporting books???
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
This was an extremely interesting read. I don't really believe it would go to the extent described, but I'd be very interested to see the sources.
I suspect that the answer to all of the above questions is: no.
DRM is a copy-protection scheme, which is only natural when you are attempting to sell anything that can be easily duplicated. But DRM is a technology designed to enforce a legal concept. Currently, it is used to enforce the idea of "license to read". But it doesn't have to! DRM can be used even when the rights state that the digital copy is owned by the reader. If there is some legal problem with this, the law can be changed. But it has nothing to do with DRM itself. I believe DRM should allow one to transfer their digital copy (of anything), free of charge, to other people, for a limited period of time (loaning) or indefinitely (selling or giving away). DRM should also be compatible across all vendors and the DRM scheme should be taken out of vendors and into the hands of an independent body of some sort. Once such a scheme is in place, I will happily buy DRM'd books.
...why anyone takes Cory Doctorow seriously?
He's a political activist and passable young-adult sci-fi author who contributes to a geek blog. He's an expert on nothing. He has not formally studied anything. He mouths off about copyright all the time, but his grasp of law and legal history is laughable. Yet he consistently makes headlines for saying asinine things about subjects about which he has no expertise.
How do I get people to pay me for saying stupid things about fashionable subjects? What he does is way more glamorous and takes way less actual, you know, effort than what I do.
Stallman's essay with even more recent updates is here
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
This is worse then Nazi Germany / USRR with remote Censors and a way to tack who has what book.
That is a quote from one of Seth Godin's recent blog entries titled "It's not the rats you need to worry about" (http://bit.ly/8RdTE4) I love my books and they can't have them until they pry them from my cold, dead hand! I used to love the idea of e-books and still own many. But I'll stick to the Baen free library (http://www.baen.com/library/) and their http://www.webscription.net. All ebooks in many formats with *no* DRM ever. Karen Bowden
Absolutely. The paper pulp, the glue, the leather, the string in the binding, that's just trash to me. It's the content that matters.
I think that people who fetishize physical books are expressing a reactionary fear of losing control, of losing something familiar to them that they regard as an eternal constant. The problem with that attitude is, physical books are just another form for holding content. Before books, it was the storyteller in the square, before them it was paintings on cave walls. I'm sure there were people who said, "I don't hold with these here books, they destroy the whole storytelling experience."
This reminds me of people who are aghast at the idea of removing "under god" from the pledge of allegiance, because they don't realize it was a recent update to the pledge, added in the 40's to remind those godless communist russkies that America had a potent ally.
But then, what do I know? I could be wrong.
"There are two kinds of fools. One kind says, 'This is new and therefore good.' The other kind says, 'This is old and therefore better.'"
Maybe my turn will come to be the reactionary, when dynamic content replaces static books, and it's beamed into our heads, customized for each person.
Don't take it personally, but I'm not going to read your pithy response to my post.
"The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug."
What if I loan it to everyone? Poking at the evil publishers is one thing, coming up with realistic solutions another. Sadly these seem to be mutually exclusive for a lot of people.
Same type of take, but in a nice narrative http://www.dkeats.com/index.php?module=blog&action=viewsingle&postid=gen13Srv30Nme10_77047_1262110771&userid=1563080430
If copyright was 10 or 15 years, I'd be OK with draconian DRM restrictions on the things that are under copyright, provided there was a way to break it when the items go into public domain.
Then you misunderstand the purpose of DRM. The main purpose of DRM is to do an end-run around copyright expiration - so works "protected" by it *never* go into the public domain.
Imagine you're a publisher, and you want perpetual copyright, even though you know the highest law in the land says you'll never get it. What's the next best thing? Complete control over the books you sell - so you can prevent anyone from copying them ever again, and can even "recall" them if you want to. And you lobby for a law that makes it illegal for anyone to talk about how to circumvent that control.
At it's core, copyright is the ability to say "you're not allowed to say that, because I said it first." It is (supposedly) a compromise between the public and authors. In order to improve our culture, authors are given a limited right to exclude others from exercising their right of free expression.
DRM is a betrayal of this compromise - the public fulfills their part, but the authors never have to fulfill theirs. DRM is the antithesis of copyright, and rather than making laws to protect DRM, any work that is "protected" should be immediately be stripped of its copyright status.
After all, if DRM really worked, they wouldn't *need* copyright law, would they?
I took up Cory's offer and created an iPhone version of _Makers_:
http://www.wayner.org/node/66
Please send along any comments about the interface.
Isn't it about time for a "Oh-no-it's-Cory" tag?
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This kind of stuff would have made Winston Smith's day job so much easier. Rewrite history then push it out so as to override previous copies. And the rulers of the Fahrenheit 451 world could simply revoke the digital certificate of ... every book or every book with ideas they want suppressed. Sound like the media cartels' wet dream? It is, it is. And that of would-be tyrants? Even more so.
I was getting halfway interested in the Kindle until the 1984 debacle. That shows that DRM has a much darker potential than its proponents will ever acknowledge. Fuck all that shit. (Not picking on Amazon; I like it and have had an account there for years.) Corporations cannot be trusted to have any interest in freedom of any kind for the public. No doubt their accountants would show it as a negative (if intangible) item on their balance sheets.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I'm about as anti-ebook as they come, but I have to admit that they are coming and will likely be here to stay. The focus should shift to protecting our rights.
We should:
1. Write to ebook companies asking them for open and compatible formats
2. Support open source ebook projects
3. Demand protection against electronic updates of text ( "Dude, Lincoln was the first -- read your history ebook again, I don't care if you read it yesterday, look at it today ).
4. Contact our representatives & ebook companies demanding the right to keep content and to lend it to people.
Like I wrote, I think these things are inevitable at this point. I'm going to keep buying and using paper books as well as supporting paper libraries to the last moment to safeguard a permanent record of facts.
The sad thing is that many Americans don't care about these rights. They are aliterate ( choosing not to read ) so they don't regularly enjoy and value these rights => they will not fight for them.
Ironically, the ebook readers with gadget appeal will get some people reading.
I think it IS the paper, or at least the medium. (Marshall McLuhan?)
Since it's hard to toss a professor into your car without felony charges, the bound book is the delivery medium of the content, and the part I believe has "hardware value" much like Apple is up to. Rather than some behemoth press in NYC, I do believe the future is the DIY kiosk that takes content of your choosing and cranks it into the presentation medium. Once that process gets down under a minute I think we'll hit a plateau.
When studying moderately difficult factual material, self pacing is important for me, which is the chief flaw of audio editions. Digital only copies tie up the visual space on the computer. I'd accept a cheap disposable reader with stylus/type annotation ability that can then wirelessly email your custom copy to your standard email.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I simply do not see why the tenants of book ownership shouldn't also carry over for music and video ownership as well. Just as I like decorating my bookshelf with books, I also like decorating my DVD shelf with DVDs. That doesn't mean I watch the DVDs... I prefer to rip them and watch them from my mediagate device. Same goes for music. Software should either be protected by copyright or by patent, but not both. That's just a sick perversion of intellectual property protection. Frankly, I lean in favor of copyright protection, but software should not be allowed to disable itself or protect itself in any way -- that's just "booby-trap-ware" and should be illegal as it deprives legal owners of their rights which should not be limited by the seller.
The destruction of the book may well be the wake-up call to the problem of all current copyright protection screw jobs we are experiencing.
Don't worry. DRM fragments the market to an extent that authors and publishers will not abide. As E-Books become more common, there will be many different readers from many different manufacturers each with it's own (incompatible) drm scheme. As an author or publisher are you going to take the time, trouble and expense to accommodate 10 different schemes? No, you'll pick 2 or 3 hoping to cover most of the market but realizing that you are turning your back to some percentage of the total market and that means lost sales. At some point, the scales tip and you as an author or publisher say "Enough!" and release your work with no drm simply so you can reach 100% of your market. So we as readers, buyers and consumers don't have to do anything except sit back and wait. I just hope it doesn't take long.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
My personal reading habits are buying a paperback at the used bookstore for $3.00 (on average), reading it, then selling it back or giving it away. Given the number of dog eared paperbacks on the shelf, I would imagine that this is a fairly common scenario. For people like me, maybe a digital book rental would be better. I never re-read books, so "owning" them is of no real interest to me.
For the people who like to re-read, and keep the books they read, there might be a "purchase" option that is more expensive but DRM free. Given the ridiculously high price of the digital book readers, it only seems fair (to me) to offer this option. I say "ridiculously" high, because I can buy 50-100 used paperbacks for the cost of the reader alone.
Again, just my opinion, but I really like buying books for $3.00, then re-cycling. Adding in all this cost seems to be consumer unfriendly. Then again, I guess nobody is forced to buy this stuff, and I seriously doubt used book stores will go out of business overnight because of e-book readers.
Or one proprietary DRM format becomes dominant -- the microsoft word of e-books, the authors publish to that and say screw you to everyone else.
AND.....we still have the other threats
Ya, I know. Projects like Wikipedia or Creative Commons just wouldn't work if the contributers weren't getting paid.
The crowd-sourcing model pioneered by Ward Cunningham and Jimbo Wales works for the creation and maintenance of collections of facts. But how do we extend the wiki model to, say, the creation of a novel or a video game?
Trash created pre-DRM like Mozart or Wagner just can't compare to the majesty modern DRM'ed works like Justin Timberlake or Britney spears.
You're viewing the past through the lens of Sturgeon's law: 90 percent of everything is crud, and the vast majority of crud ends up forgotten.
There will never be true DRM for books.
And with dragon dictate, even the typing part is easy.
OTH, printing your own personal hardcopy on a personal printer is bloody expensive.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Trash created pre-DRM like Mozart or Wagner just can't compare to the majesty modern DRM'ed works like Justin Timberlake or Britney spears.
Might there be a selection bias going on? We don't preserve everything from "back then"; we sure don't listen to all of it. I predict that in the future, people will still listen to, say, The Beatles. Or Elvis. Or rock out to that riff from Smoke on the Water. Maybe some Michael Jackson song will be preserved.
Not all old music was great. Not all new music is crap. Not even all good new music is worth preserving for ever. But some is.
The real problem is that record companies have shifted their function. It used to be that they discovered and selected talent; now they "produce" talent.
South Park tells a story about this too; see the Guitar Queer-o episode: "The next time you bring me some talent, make sure they're talented". And then in Fingerbang: "These are The New Boys from the Back Alley Zone. They're the new hit." (I'm paraphrasing the name.)
This is a good place to point out that Amazon unilaterally had all copies of 1984 deleted from all customer's devices, totally screwing many people up in the process. Sure the refunded the purchase cost. Big deal. They also apologized later for doing it. But this sent a very clear message that they cannot take back: They can trash your 'property' on a whim, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it as long as you abide by their DRM restrictions.
They say they won't do it again. Sorry, but once trust is lost, is VERY difficult to regain.
At least, it is for people who actually pay attention and think. What upsets me the most is that most consumers don't care enough to change their purchasing habits even after they've been bitten.
Except in very rare circumstances I avoid audio CDs, after what Sony did. I also don't buy Sony products anymore. Sony should have But when I see how many people still purchase Sony products, how PS3s are flying off the shelves, it makes it really hard to care. When the forementioned incident happened with Amazon, schadenfreude is the best description of how I felt. There have been SO many well reported incidents across SO many industries, that people have effectively waived their right to be outraged when such things happen to them.
Society at large flat out doesn't care. Those that know what's going on and care enough to do so will ALWAYS find a way to crack things like DRM so that they can at least protect themselves. Those that choose to ignore the damage that DRM causes, can go cry in their rooms because they should flat out have known better.
I can only hope that if enough people get hurt by DRM they will eventually complain loudly enough to stop this nonsense.
Don't buy DRM stuff. Others will offer non-DRM stuff. Buy that. Capitalism is the solution. It will drive the stupidity out of the market.
My first run in with eBook "quirks" didn't take long to happen. I received a Kindle for Christmas, and having already scouted out some prospective books to purchase I had some novels in mind. The first book I read was Flood by Stephen Baxter - I just finished that last night. Flood is followed by its sequel - Ark (by the same author). However, upon trying to buy Ark I couldn't find it anywhere on the Amazon kindle store. I recalled seeing it when browsing before (that's why I bought this series first, because I noticed both books were available in kindle editions) - however now it was missing. Trying a few different things, I logged out of my Amazon account. Low and behold, the ebook appears for sale! Kindle edition and all - however I noticed a very small notice (almost fine print) below the "Buy with 1-Click" button that read: "Due to copyright restrictions, this title not available in the United States". WTF! It took changing my address to that of a Canadian friend of mine in order to be allowed to purchase this book - thankfully they still accepted by US-addressed credit card.
Copyright restrictions and such on sale of books/music/movies is extremely stupid in my opinion. In the end all it took was changing my address twice - once to Canada and then back - but it's the principle of it all. I'm happily reading my book now; a book that just to purchase I had to be dishonest about where I lived simply so I'd be allowed to purchase it.
DRM is another issue I'm worried about, however with the advent of tools to strip the Kindle and nook DRM, I'm not to worried about moving my books to a new platform once a better read becomes available.
everyday is another shooter.
When ever I think of the book being replaced by its digital equivalent, I think of a scenario 200 years from now after a war destroys a whole nation. The people coming in to see what they can find a library with eBook readers and paper books. The paper books are still a little dusty, but everything on that civilisation up to the first decade of the 21st century is documented and available. The eBook readers on the other hand are another story, with publisher no longer in existence and DRM still in place, the content simply complains that the book can't be read dues to "text license expiry". 200 years of information on this society has now been lost to the sands of time.
Certainly this scenario is a little negative and could occur for other reasons, but the point I am trying to make is that convenience makes for a shitty legacy, especially with DRM in place.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
So use the hardware, but disable the cellular connection so they can't mess with your stuff. Or modify the OS like the Nook hackers have been doing I suppose. Then just don't buy the DRMed stuff, or buy it for the "license" and download a clean copy. While probably not legal, it's at least ethical as you are paying for the content. For real protection, keep your original, non DRM copies on an offline media with MD5 or better checksums so you can tell if something has been tampered with. Or sign them with your own certificate.
IMO, this "license" crap needs to be sorted out. Either I own the physical copy, which doesn't really make sense with digital copies, or I own a license to use the content and which particular file I use doesn't really matter. Of course, I'm also one of the "extremists" that think that Copyright is a trade and must be ABLE to expire, so DRM should be mutually exclusive with legal Copyright protection. You can have technology protect your stuff, or you can have legal protection for your stuff, not both.
Of course, I also think that Copyright for something created in my lifetime should expire in my lifetime, the horror.
is not having to pay for it. Once someone has it in digital form, without some restrictive DRM, it can be shared freely with the planet. That means I can get it for free, without paying. No money.
If Cory sees his financial future in people having his written works without paying for them, good luck. Freedom is nice, but eating is nicer. Freedom can be enjoyed a lot better with a full belly.
Now there is no reason a copy-limited work cannot be resold. There are ways to manage this that do not prevent resale or other transfers. The problem is that if you allow "loaning", "backing up", "format shifting" or anything else that allows multiple copies to exist at the same time you will also have "sharing". And once you have sharing, you will have redistribution. And redistribution means nobody has to pay.
Right now, any ebook that is pretty popular can be found on various sharing web sites. And do not for a moment think that my Kindle is somehow immune to displaying these "shared" ebooks because of something Amazon did. Nope, I can read these shared books on my Kindle.
Hope you like working for free Cory.
I would like to see every e-book reader support improved versions of the Adobe Acrobat encrypted format, one that has been around for some time.
That way, e-book publisher only need to deal with ONE format, not multiple formats like you need now.
Don't buy ebooks that are DRM-crippled. As a matter of fact, I don't buy ebooks unless it's some reference material that needs to be consulted in a regular basis and a search function is a must. For my reading pleasure I aways carry real books albeit the extra volume.
Scientia est Potentia
I like the idea of having access to the titles I like wherever I am, without lugging around a veritable treasure chest, and I like the electronic ink concept. But unless you're happy with smaller 'indy' publishing houses (and there's nothing wrong with those, but I'd like more choice), you're stuck with self-serving, vendor-bound, DRM-laced formats. And I wouldn't purchase one of those at any price - it would be like buying trousers you can only wear on a Tuesday.
The DRM of the Sony Reader allows "any purchased e-book to be read on up to six devices, at least one of which must be a personal computer running Windows or Mac OS X" (citation). 6 devices sounds like a lot compared to what you usually get, but could easily be burned up in a few years. I bought XP about 6 years ago and now it has a better life as a sparkly coaster - silly me, I shouldn't have upgraded or rebuilt my machines. So then the average user would "upgrade", or buy a new copy in the "new format", because that's what all the magazines are saying is "hot".
And you can forget technical PDFs on e-readers, nice idea but think again. You may be able to re-size and convert PDFs with pure prose to the reader format, but forget your fancy diagrams, equations and tables.
Seems to me the publishers are just pissed off that we can lend books to each other (thus breaking copyright, if you read the blurb in the front matter), and that they could never police that. I'll stick to my library-in-a-suitcase thanks, now get your space-age sneakers off my lawn.
An unbroken DRM at copyright expiration is a form of "copyfraud", an illegal distraint of the copy's owner (purchaser).
As if an idea has no force unless you can hold it in your hand and destroy it physically. As if painstakingly copying the content from one place to another imbued the book with some magical force that the digital one doesn't have. DRM is a straw man here. we will never again be at the mercy of the idiots that burned the library at Alexandria. We will never be able to burn every copy of an idea. Get over it Doctorow DRM is here and it will be broken as fast as it is developed. railing against it just makes you look silly. Quietly break it, keep your mouth shut and get on with life. Screaming in the dark instead of lighting a candle does none of us any good.
Why bother
Authors want their works out there. People made music and wrote books long before there was copyright. Even today, there are TONS of publicly available written works of fiction and non-fiction on the internet for free. I won't pretend that all of it, or even most of it is any good, but there are some real gems that people release. Look at even some of the fan-fiction works - many of those are written as "ubers" of whatever characters and have nothing to do with the original work. There are some exceptional ones written for no other reason than because someone wanted to share it.
There are people who get donations for original fiction that is only published on the internet, much like artists used to be commissioned to make new works simply because someone wanted them to continue with their art.
DRM and the whole copyright industry is largely a racket. True artists (and even bad ones) will continue making their art whether they make money or not, because they either want to share, want to improve, or simply because they can.
The problem with DRM is that its a vehicle for insuring that the RECORD COMPANIES get paid.
A far as I know, no accountant from any record company has ever composed any music that I'd want to listen to.
When DRM get implemented such that the ARTISTS get the money, then I'll have respect for it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Digital information is just so fragile. A book will far outlive any hard drive or newer storage medium. Unless the language dies out, the book will be readable for a couple hundred years at least (if the paper is good), while the digital book will have sucumbed to the introduction of newer formats, or the death of its publisher (while still being under protection).
I have bought over 1200 ebook/stories. I do buy stories with DRM attached but only if I know I can remove it. Here are some links:
mobidedrm http://darkreverser.wordpress.com/ This removes the DRM from mobi books
ineptkey http://i-u2665-cabbages.blogspot.com/2009/02/circumventing-adobe-adept-drm-for-epub.html This removes the DRM from epub.
calibre http://calibre-ebook.com/ An open source book management system that also does format conversion.
I have never shared any of the books I have bought although I suppose I would in theory be willing to lend one to someone.
Actually I and O'Reilly profited from the physical-book sales of "Using Samba", which was shipped in electronic form with every copy of Samba.
Nerds, you see, buy physical books. They lose on searchability (unless the indexer actually does his job) but gain on size, weight, cost and readability-in-the-bathtub (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
I read fifty (50) plus books a year, and have since about 1987.
I keep some, re-read some of my faves three or four times.
When I am "done" with a book, it gets donated to a local library or given to a friend with an interest in such books.
IMHO, DRM in combination with the stupid copyright extension act passed some years ago, to me means that more and more books (whether they are entertainment only, or text books or whatever) that should make it into the public domain may never be seen again in any form, of then than already existing books, which will deteriorate over time.
There should be a law requiring that any book published (real book, publication, etc. whether "real" or electronic), non-DRM protected electronic copies should be forwarded for safeguarding by the Library of Congress and at least 8 (if not more) of the major libraries in the country. That way, once the stupid extended copyright expiration happens, these can then be released to the public domain properly. In other words, make it possible for the books to made public domain, as opposed to being obliterated entirely from human knowledge.
It's already happening. The Distributed Proofreaders have the right to alter the text to some extent. You'll never be able to read the author's original version over there.
If I have pay for it I own it.
If I dont own it, I wont pay for it!
That’s author’s right.
Copyright is the right to copy. To publish. Given by the author to the publisher. And a relatively recent invention.
Of course they both exist, based on the assumption that an idea is also a physical product. Which obviously is bullshit, and therefore the whole reverse pyramids built on top are bullshit too.
I’m planning on using the following method for future projects:
- Instead of pitching my idea to a publisher, I pitch it to the general public.
- It will include a clear list of requirements, just like with a publisher.
- Now people can, over a system similar to PayPal, pre-order/finance that game. BUT they don’t actually pay anything. We just make a simple contract (no stupid giant list of terms!!) that if I fulfill the requirements, they will pay that amount.
- They can themselves decide, how much they want to pay/invest.
- With that contractual commitment, I can e.g. go to a bank, and lend me the required money. (Which always [including interest] has to be smaller than the actual committed money, for me to make a profit too.)
- The project will go in cycles, like the spiral model. In a prototype-based, test-driven way.
- When all the requirements are fulfilled, I create a new pitch, with perhaps a trailer, and everything.
- Then I listen to the new input of the people, and create a new list of requirements.
- People can then, based on my bigger commitment, also make bigger commitments. (E.g. raise it from $5 to $10.)
- If I can not continue to work on the project, with the money that that gives me, I have to A) make a better pitch, B) commit to bigger goals, C) market it to more people.
- I will always be completely honest and open to my customers. I try to be someone that gets payed because people think I deserve it. Not because of some nasty trickery/fraud/EA.
And now the kicker:
- If the game comes out, those who committed to paying, will actually own the game! Just like a publisher. They are the only ones who are getting a copy.
- They are free to do with it, whatever they like. Full stop. If someone else wants it too, they can themselves decide, if they want to make it a business, and sell it. Or if they want to give it away to good friends. (Who then of course can sell it themselves, if they find someone who buys it.)
I think that model is more fitting to what software actually is: Information, that resulted from a service.
You see, how far away from concepts like “copyright” that is, and how little those concepts are actually needed.
I await you comments on how this whole idea is horrible, idiotic and will never ever work. ;)) ;)
(Then I’ll learn from you, if you made constructive critique, and laugh at you, if you didn’t
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
A big problem with DRM'd content is that it has a limited life, and not a very long one. When the DRM servers go away, and the readers wear out, the content is gone. This seems to take about five years. If you bought content from Circuit City's Divx (the disposable, encrypted DVD scheme), Microsoft PlayForSure, or WalMart Music, you've already been screwed. (Microsoft in 2004: "PlaysForSure is supported broadly by leading consumer device manufacturers including Audiovox Corp., Creative, D-Link Systems Inc., Dell Inc., HP, iRiver, Rio, Roku, Samsung Electronics and RCA-brand players from Thomson; by online music and video stores including CinemaNow, F.Y.E. For Your Entertainment, MSN Music, Musicmatch, MusicNow, Napster LLC and Wal-Mart Music Downloads; and by retailers including Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Tower Records and Wal-Mart." And where are they now?)
There are now at least 5 different "e-reader" systems on the market, all with incompatible DRM. Most of those will lose out competitively and disappear. Guess wrong, and you're screwed. Yes, with some of those systems you can get content out of the DRM cage and into something else, but it's usually not easy. The Register has an article on what plays on what.
Five years is a short life for a book. With paper books, one can collect books over a lifetime, and institutions collect them over the centuries. That will be tough with "ebook-only" publications.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. - Orwell
A well argued rebuttal
As much as I hate that book, it clearly demonstrated what these modern-day book burners really want. They want to be able to change the content of books and news stories without your knowledge or approval. I know that sounds "conspiratorial", and "paranoid", but keep in mind the recent debacle where Kindles were remotely wiped of their "purchased" copies of 1984 without the knowledge or consent of their respective owners. I considered that event to be a preview of what these assholes have in mind for the future of the written word.
-Oz
There are really two questions being discussed here, the question of format and the question of ownership. Cory Doctrow is only talking about the question of ownership, but I think both questions are interesting.
I am a total bibliophile, I have shelves lining all the available space in my tiny apartment. The feel of a physical book .. the pages under my fingers ... it's all part of the experience. But, when it comes right down to it, it is the story, and the content that is the most important. I have an even larger number of books on my computer as .txt or .pdf files. I own these books, and they are 'physical' just as much as a regular book is. I can pass these down to my children, I can lend them out, I can give them away ... I can also make an unhindered number of copies if I want to. And, in fact many of the electronic books I own have been downloaded from some site or another and are illegal to own.
Eventually, they will make ebook readers that are bound in leather, and are an artifact in and of themselves, rather than feeling like a stiff piece of plastic. I own a Kindle, and for the most part I'm pretty happy. It lets me read my electronic books in a more convenient way. Plus, free wireless :-)
Now, the other question, that of book ownership, is a huge deal. The first question is a matter of preference, and no one cares which way you like to read your books (well, they might care, but it's not really their business). Adding DRM to a book is to deny you complete ownership. If I buy a copy of a physical book, I can photocopy it, and then bind it up to make it into another copy. I just have to pay for the paper. There are devices that will let you do this very quickly and efficiently. Creating duplicate digital copies is much easier, but it is the same principle. Before this, book publishers just banked on the majority of their readers to be too lazy to go to all that trouble, and they would only loose a small percentage of sales. But, now that it is so easy anyone can do it in seconds, they are afraid that the percentage of people who won't go and buy a copy will skyrocket.
To solve this problem, they have tried to limit that facet of ownership, but in doing so they have also limited a large number of other ownership rights, for example the right to lend an item to another person, the right to pass down a copy to a relative, and the right to not have to worry that it will disappear if the company who sold it to you goes out of business. Some of these problems have been addressed, but the idea remains that you do not actually own the book that you purchased (or game, or movie, or song, or operating system, or whatever).
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
So what will it take to get the FTC or the FCC to step in and investigate this, and possibly do something about it? Would they be the right organizations?
But I noticed that your sig dedicates all of your posts to the public domain and that you are a lawyer (or at least claim to be, and on Slashdot no less, which I figure has got to be good enough for most purposes).
As a lawyer, what do you think of Creative Common's CC0? Would you consider putting your posts into the public domain by that vehicle instead of your current sig?
And just so this comment doesn't get modded to hell (one of the first 5 circles, as I think this post up to this point counts as "self-indulgent"), I can understand how your individual comments on Slashdot touch on a wide variety of different subjects and do not necessarily coalesce cleanly into a larger book or collection. As such, the potential for you to make profit off of your comments is very low. For a novelist or poet, however, there often is a large potential for commercial profit. Aside from things like documentation or technical specifications, when (if ever) would you suggest that authors release their material into the public domain?
coding is life
When DRM get implemented such that the ARTISTS get the money, then I'll have respect for it.
I won't.
The reason is the nature of DRM.
What is DRM? It is a technical end-run around our rights; eventually, any copyrighted work will become public domain---it will belong to the people. DRM that works prevents this from happening effectively.
It's like a company bidding to provide a public service, then building a wall around the place where they provide the service so you can't access it.
They're taking what belongs to us. They're denying us the exercise of our rights. I don't think I will ever respect this.
The content is 'an idea'. And it is the most valuable part. But unless it is able to be conveyed from one person to another, it's worthless. Without the ability to convey the 'important part' it's importance is never realized. Thus, as DRM as added, the ability to convey that importance 'drops', in proportion to the manner in which the restrictions inhibit transmission. DRM is essentially "anti-thought". It deletes or hides content and makes it though it doesn't exist. One must always presume that any and every DRM mechanism will require some technology to read and that every technology will be obsolete and unusable in some number of years. How many people can read 5.25" floppies or 5" hard drives or paper tape? How many people can read a DOS 1.0 formatted floppy? Or Word 1.0 file? Eight-track tapes, analog TV signals...time passes and the ability to read obsolete technology disappears. Printed ink on acid free paper will last decades if stored right, if not centuries. No technology required. Only thing better might be engraved stone tablets...
I've been wondering for a while when the first set of law suits will begin for false advertising. So often I've heard the phrase "Own it today..." for all sorts of things that various content publishers are suing people over because those people do not 'own' the work they have. I just saw that phrase on the Harry Potter movie web site. Supposedly, you can "Own it" on blu-ray if the ad on the web site is to be believed. Odd how something as simple as the idea of 'ownership' can get this screwed up. I imagine The Cloud will screw up the idea of 'possession' in the same way.
Don't buy it if it's DRM.