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DRM and the Destruction of the Book

Posted by samzenpus on from the reading-is-fundamental dept.

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.'"

18 of 419 comments (clear)

  1. Silly me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And here I was thinking the content of the book was the most important part.

    1. Re:Silly me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      When you own a book, it's yours to read. Digital distribution is the future, and DRM implemented properly isn't a bad thing. I'll take a cheap digital copy over a bulky, inconvenient physical copy that I can sell or give away any day.

    2. Re:Silly me by Kjellander · · Score: 2, Interesting

      When you own a book, it's yours to read. Digital distribution is the future, and DRM implemented properly isn't a bad thing. I'll take a cheap digital copy over a bulky, inconvenient physical copy that I can sell or give away any day.

      And I won't! Part of the fun with owning books is the fact that you own them. I've bought childrens books that I'll never read myself, but they were some of my fav books when I was an infant, and if I ever get kids I will read them to them, and they will be theirs.

      On top of that one of my prize books in the shelf is a first edition of Feynman Lecture on Physics volume 2, originally owned by a student named Marcley. If you know him let me know. There is something special about old books. Sure, some of them are very dated, but some are as fresh as a daisy, like Tensings old books about getting to the top of Mount Everest.

      Fsck you DRM! You SUCK! The written word is to important to be censored!

    3. Re:Silly me by natehoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd be far more accepting of DRM if copyright law went back to being a reasonable period. It's very easy today to envision an eternal copyright starting the day Disney created anything they feel is of value, and continuing in perpetuity thereafter.

      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. As it is, though, anything written after my father was born is unlikely to fall into public domain before I die.

      Apart from reading it, which is the best part of course, I prefer owning a book. I enjoy sharing them with friends. I appreciate the simple fact that every book I've ever purchased is mine forever (barring damage or theft, of course). No corporation or government has the right to remove my books from my control, and it's impossible to change them - you'd have to come to my house and get them.

      If I could buy an e-book knowing that in a few years the DRM would be lifted and I could freely share it, and knowing that my Doctrine of First Sale rights would be protected in the meantime, I'd seriously consider some form of e-book reader. But recent events and the history of copyright holders have demonstrated otherwise, and the length of copyright means that the money I'd spend on e-books is for a short-term rental on a book, and if I want to rent my books I'll donate more money and time to my library and get them that way.

      Heck, I'd be happy with an analog of the current "hardcover / paperback" model. For the first year or two of a book's existence, it could be available only in a high-priced, heavily DRMed version that is not allowed to be shared. After a year or two, anyone who spent the money on the hardcover then gets an unlock code that allows them to freely share and keep their copy without DRM, and an unlocked "mass market" version comes out at a discounted price that can be shared. I'd happily buy a deeply DRM-encrusted bookreader and buy new releases if I knew there was a sunset provision on the DRM that would allow me to keep and share them in a reasonable timeframe. I'd even pay the same I do now for a new release, as long as the contract clearly stated that the book could be unlocked in a relatively short period.

      Paper sucks. Paper is inconvenient, and clumsy, and expensive, and harder to read, and bulky, and subject to damage, loss, and theft.

      ** BUT IT'S MINE **

      And until e-readers can fulfill that desire, I have no desire to get one.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
    4. Re:Silly me by gbutler69 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not only that, but, soon (very soon I would think) you'll be able to buy a physical book and scan the pages by taking photos of it with your smart-phone which will then OCR and digitize it with almost zero effort. What're they going to do then? Stop printing books at all?

      --
      Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
    5. Re:Silly me by gun26 · · Score: 2, Interesting
      So only "rich people" can afford hobbies? Only "rich people" are motivated to do something for any reason beyond financial gain? What a dreadfully perverted view of human nature you have. The existence of legions of unpublished or published-but-financially-unsuccessful authors out there is proof of how wrong you are. People have been motivated to create things for far longer than the relatively recent existence of mass media.

      Creators who are prospering in a the internet and digital economy are learning ways of making a living that do not depend on charging a fee for every digital copy of their work that exists. Cory Doctorow himself is a success story in the digital economy. The geek-chic musician Jonathan Coulton is another. Neither man will ever have the riches of a Stephen King, say, or a Paul McCartney. But do we really want to cripple the distribution of digital copies of all their work with DRM, solely to create the artificial scarcity to give them a chance - and only a chance, mind - at King-like riches?

      Today the music industry is dying, mostly because they add little to the success of a musician in a digital world. The physical product the have traditionally depended on for their income - a circular disc of plastic housed inside an annoying plastic case that is too easily broken - holds little intrinsic appeal for most people. Hence the success of downloadable distribution for music - including both legal distribution through iTunes and friends and illicit distribution through bittorrent and peer-to-peer networks.

      The book publishing industry is in a lot better shape, solely because the physical product they depend on has a lot more intrinsic appeal for their customers. I, with lots of bookshelves throughout my house, can testify to that myself. As long as people find books pleasing to hold, browse through, or cuddle up with, book publishers will be all right despite the existence of the Kindle and its competitors.

    6. Re:Silly me by ckaminski · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Where I work we recently switched office buildings. And before we knew we had a dedicated room for a library of old product manuals, we were lamenting the fact that management didn't want us taking books and manuals 15 years old to the new building. Our customers still use these products, and online help files of this era do not exist.

      My solution was to slice the binding off books and run them through the Ricoh scanner/copiers and turn them all into PDFs at 20 pages per minute.

      Luckily we have yet to need to do that, but even at my home office I can do the same thing for less than $200.

    7. Re:Silly me by ckaminski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Steven King tried this with a book back in Y2K or thereabouts - and based on *HIS* criteria, it was an absolute flop.

      But that sort of brings a good point into play. With digital books, I could conceivably print them to paper in any fashion I want (for personal use). For instance, I want a nice leather-bound set of King's Dark Tower series - I'd love to get a digital version to get one of the print-on-demand companies to make a copy for me. Or Harry Potter, or Dune, or any number of a classics that I can't get in a particular form.

  2. too much knowledge out there by alen · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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

    1. Re:too much knowledge out there by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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

      That's true, PDF's and electronic books in general spare you the storage nightmare. On the other hand I hate reading PDFs off a computer screen and I have yet to find an electronic device that didn't suck as a ebook reader and that statement covers purpose designed ones like the Kindle as well. Perhaps if that rumored Apple tablet turns out to be more than just vaporware I'll have cause to reconsider... although... now that I think about it I rather doubt it simply because with these eBook readers they can apparently remotely delete and silently 'revise' books in your electronic library after you bought them. Nobody can delete or 'revise' a good old-fashioned hardcopy of some book I have bought and that is sitting in my good old-fashioned wooden bookshelf.

      I can well understand the why the move to electronic readers like the Kindle would worry authors and book publishers. It has hitherto been considerably more work to pirate a book than to do so with movies, software and music and if that changes, all the 'goodwill' authors and publishers get from people downloading their stuff for free using BitTorrent & co. still won't pay their bills. Those bills have to be paid in real world money, not pirate consumer's goodwill. I buy lots of books on subjects such as the history of automotive, aviation and electronic technology. These books sometimes get printed in runs of no more than a few thousand copies by small time speciality publishers. The move to "full digital" inevitably means an exponential increase in book piracy (YAY! we're getting even more stuff for free now) but it's also going to kill off that kind of small scale publishing which I don't see as a good thing. It would mean the death of all but the biggest publishing houses, the ones that are rich enough to be able to survive the piracy. That in turn would mean a considerable reduction in the variety of what is being published.

      --
      Only to idiots, are orders laws.
      -- Henning von Tresckow
  3. I'm not a fan of DRM but... by Lord+Lode · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I'm not a fan of DRM but... by natehoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, sorta. Of course, "DRM" (Digital Rights Management) isn't really a relevant term, but there are certainly reality-based restrictions on copying a paper book. In most cases, it's cheaper to buy another copy than it is to make your own copy.

      But your point is well-taken. A physical book allows you unfettered access to one and only one copy of itself. If you give it away or if it's stolen or destroyed, you've lost it.

      And, yes, that thinking is very much part of the intention of DRM. If you buy one copy of an e-book, you really have the rights to only that copy. Same with a paper book. But when you buy a copy of a paper book, your personal rights to that book are also irrevocable and eternal. Someone would have to come to your house and take it away from you. With e-book DRM, you read your books only at the suffrage of the company that controls the DRM on your e-book reader. They can revoke your right to read it at any time, and have done.

      Of course, it's tough to come up with a perfect analog to the rights we enjoy in a paper book while taking advantage of the new capabilities of an e-book, and maybe they will just always remain two separate and incompatible entities.

      --
      "This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
  4. What happens when the reader breaks ? by Alain+Williams · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have many books that I got as a child, and several that my parents had as kids. I read them to my own kids. I will give some of them to my kids where they may be read to my (future) grand kids.
    1. Will e-books allow this ?
    2. What happens when the reader breaks or is replaced by a new model, will the e-book work ?
    3. What happens when the e-book manufacturer goes out of business or simply decides that it is not worth while to support the reader or the books that I have paid for, will I be able to read them ? (This happened in August 2008 when MS stopped support of MSN Music, so you lost the ability to recover your keys if they became corrupt through no fault of your own).
    4. What happens when the e-book gets old and runs out of copyright, will you be able to give a copy to anyone who asks ?

    I suspect that the answer to all of the above questions is: no.

  5. Re:too much knowledge out there v2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You realize how Rockstar has handled that? In the "right" way: Create a sequel, sell that and give away the previous versions.
    For those that don't know what I'm talking about: Rockstar offered GTA1 and 2 for download shortly after GTA3 was released.

  6. DRM + e-books = 1984 & Fahrenheit 451 by KwKSilver · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  7. Re:Can someone explain to me... by cornicefire · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Is anyone buying any longer? The last time I checked, his book _Makers_ wasn't selling very many copies at Amazon despite the endless ads on BoingBoing. I think everyone is used to getting him for free.

  8. The most important part of a digital book by cdrguru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  9. Re:It Ain't the Paper by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You don't need "publishers" to print books.

    If this were otherwise, you would not exist as all of modern society and
    our current lifestyle is dependent on a few pirates that copied any book
    they could find BY HAND.

    The only digital format that makes any sense is one that can be easily pirated.

    Conflating the creation of books with megacorp publishing houses is a grand fallacy.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.