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