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.'"

Comments

Re:Doctrine of First Sale

[mcgrew]

What Doctorow says about books applies to music and movies as well. For decades, records and tapes were yours to loan, share, give away... you OWNED them.

The constitution says that Congress can give a "limited time" monopoly on publishing to "authors and inventors". Period. It was included to protect authors and inventors from publishers. It gives Congress no power to protect publishers from anyone.

Yet, somehow in the 1950s the record companies got copyright law to let them screw over the artists, making phonorecordings automatically "works for hire".

If you want to pirate a Cory Doctorow book, just go to his website. They're available there for free download in many formats. The same goes for Lawrence Lessig's books, on his website. I urge everyone to read Lessig's book Free Culture. His and Doctorow's books are available under a Creative Commons license.

The Constituton is, in fact, the cornerstone of all US law. However, Congress ignores it and the Supreme Court lets them. Of the four boxes, we'd better start being more effective with the first three before we're forced to use the forth.

Quirks and eBooks

[kagaku]

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.