Stallman: eBooks Are Attacking Our Freedoms

Barence submitted note of a paper written by RMS called The Danger of eBooks saying "Free software guru Richard Stallman claims consumers should reject eBooks until they 'respect our freedoms.' He highlights the DRM embedded in eBooks sold by Amazon as an example of such restrictions, citing the infamous case of Amazon wiping copies of George Orwell's 1984 from users' Kindles without permission. He also rails against Amazon for forcing people to identify themselves before buying eBooks. His suggested remedy? Distributing tax funds to authors based on their popularity, or 'designing players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.'"

Comments

I sort of agree

[Jack Malmostoso]

While generally I don't share the same extreme views of RMS I must say that I am finding very hard to warm up to ebooks.
I've been considering a Kindle for a while now, but the idea of not being able to *really* own my book is holding me back.
Additionally, I suppose one could accept the restrictive terms of ebooks if the price was substantially lower than their dead tree counterparts, but this does not seem to be the case.
If I'm going to spend my hard earned cash, I prefer to have the physical book mine to read, re-read, share and lend.

Re:I sort of agree

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

As is often the case, RMS is being sufficiently blunt, and proposing a set of possibly-unworkable solutions sufficiently far from the status quo, that he gives off that "extreme" vibe.

As is also often the case, it is pretty hard to argue with his thesis: Your traditional B&M bookstores, while hardly bastions of cypherpunk anonymity, were perfectly happy to take cash for whatever you felt like buying, and had neither the time nor the margins to use their cameras for anything other than trying to deter shoplifters.

Your online booksellers, Amazon etc, up the ante a bit by tracking your browsing of their inventory quite closely, and by virtue of the fact that(while this isn't impossible to get around, prepaid debit cards, and the like) the basic coin of the realm is credit/debit cards, generally establish an excellent correlation between buying history and buyer ID.

Ebooks up it still further, since they are tied directly to an account, and a CC, and frequently use(sometimes weak; but illegal in the US to break) DRM to control what you can and cannot do with what you 'own'.

Ebook readers up it still further, in that they can, and are known to, track not only your inspection of the inventory and eventual purchase; but your reading habits. The ones with location capabilities(such as all whispernet kindles), are known to report user location data to the mothership as well.

Obviously, most of these measures are somewhat slackly implemented, and a dedicated privacy-enthused individual with some time and technical skill can likely circumvent at least some of them; but that doesn't really change the fact that there has been an overwhelming increase(largely private sector and ebook driven) in the amount of transparency and control exercised over the population of readers. That simply cannot be usefully denied.

Re:I sort of agree

[The0retical]

I travel a lot and I read a lot so I've also been eyeing an ereader for quite some time. Until recently I've pretty much refused to buy one because I send paperbacks back and forth with my father after one of us gets done with the book and the idea of DRM offends me on pretty much every level. I also read quite a bit of sci-fi, specifically from the publisher Baen, and was unable to find any of that specific publishers books on Amazon or BN. After some searching I found that Baen does offer Ebooks for a couple of dollars less on older releases than a paperback and about half the price on new releases (hardcover only at the moment) through their own webstore without any DRM restrictions. As a result I am buying an ereader when I get home and will be directly supporting a publisher who sees that DRM is an awful idea, and has the advantage of not supporting a middleman like Amazon or BN.

I hope more Slashdotters will support publishers like Baen on their endeavor if only to show that DRM is not needed.

Re:I sort of agree

[xtracto]

Solution:
1. Buy eBook in a restricted format
2. Download "free" format from here
3. Profit

eBooks is a technology and can be used to improve the status quo. But of course it also can be missused to restrict consumer's freedom

Re:I sort of agree

[Moryath]

For archiving things to a small space - say, carrying around your gaming book collection to a convention (old school RPGA player, I used to have to haul a ton of books with me; then I started just photocopying the one page with the content I needed on it and keeping it in the character sheaf because of airline restrictions on carry-ons and checked bags) - ebook readers and digital copy are wonderful. Your example of your notes is another great example of where something like that is actually useful.

For actual, enjoyable reading? I'd rather have a real book in my hand. It feels better.

For many books, I'm not going to read them more than once, so I'd much rather have the physical copy. I can give it to a friend when I'm done. I can loan it to someone. I can donate it to a library, or trade it in to a used book store. I can do NONE of those things with the current generation of ebooks.

I like to go camping. Good luck finding a charger for an ebook reader in the woods. Batteries for a flashlight, or a nicely bright campfire, and a real book please.

Re:I sort of agree

[stonecypher]

"but the idea of not being able to *really* own my book is holding me back."

I really own my kindle books, but that's because I have a USB cable, a basic understanding of filesystems, and an immunity to the ridiculous paranoia that runs around places like Slashdot.

Re:I sort of agree

[sakdoctor]

That's a vote for DRM though.

1. Can't find eBook in a non-restricted format
2. Download for free
3. Profit

It doesn't matter if the industry reacts by piling on more DRM though. Someone who isn't me, i.e. the consumers who accept DRM get screwed, and I get a superior free product.
Zero tolerance on DRM!

Re:I sort of agree

[ArhcAngel]

You still have the problem that you are telling Amazon DRM is OK by buying the Kindle.

Re:I sort of agree

[cpu6502]

I don't agree.

"Distributing tax funds to authors based on their popularity" - Isn't that what Canada already does with singers? Well it has not worked. Only the 'approved' singers that are members of RIAA get the tax handouts, while independent non-corporate-owned singers get the shaft.

No I think we need to allow the free market to work. We've already seen the cost of music plummet from $18 a just released CD to $9 at discounters. Or if you prefer singles, instead of spending $3.50 for a cassette-single you just download it for 99 cents.

I fully-expect the same price pressure will drive down the cost of E-books to around 2 or 3 dollars. i.e. Half the paperback cost, since there are no resources wasted on paper, printing, or shipping.

My distrust of government (gee - wonder why) makes me automatically reject that idea. Put the power in the hands of consumers ("Hell no I won't pay $15 for an ebook. Fuck that."), not the politicians that are bought-and-paid-for by Amazon/corporations.

Re:I sort of agree

[AmiMoJo]

I wouldn't say his idea of the government collecting and distributing money to authors based on popularity is particularly extreme. That is basically what the music industry bodies who collect royalties do, only they make it so you have to join their little club to be eligible to receive. In Canada the government taxes blank CDs and pays the money to the artists via the industry body, so all RMS is saying is that we should cut out the corrupt middle man and just pay people for their work directly.

That seems like the only reasonable solution to me. Make all electronic mediums free and compensate from taxes. People can still sell physical copies, and trying to sell pirate material would still be illegal, but copying for private use would no longer be copyright infringement. Using any sane estimation of "lost" sales per pirate copy the tax would be pretty low.

Re:I sort of agree

[Daniel_Staal]

In addition to Baen, there are a fair number of stores online that sell ebooks without any DRM. (For at least some of their catalog.) My favorite is Fictionwise. (Look for 'Multiformat Ebooks'.)

I think Stallman would have been better to highlight and point out those stores, and encourage people to use them.

Re:I sort of agree

[gstoddart]

I wouldn't say his idea of the government collecting and distributing money to authors based on popularity is particularly extreme.

No, but it's still stupid in that all you do is pay people according to their popularity, and give no consideration to what works are actually being read by specific people.

That is basically what the music industry bodies who collect royalties do, only they make it so you have to join their little club to be eligible to receive. In Canada the government taxes blank CDs and pays the money to the artists via the industry body, so all RMS is saying is that we should cut out the corrupt middle man and just pay people for their work directly.

Again, they're paying that out based on 'popularity' and what essentially amounts to record sales reports ... so, all of the money goes to Lady GaGa and Justin Bieber.

If I'm not listening to either of them, the levy amounts to a subsidy of successful artists in proportion to their success ... to me, that makes no sense. I explicitly don't listen to those artists who are going to benefit from this formula.

Hell, the formula provided by the corrupt middle-men, so why should I trust them?

That seems like the only reasonable solution to me. Make all electronic mediums free and compensate from taxes. People can still sell physical copies, and trying to sell pirate material would still be illegal, but copying for private use would no longer be copyright infringement. Using any sane estimation of "lost" sales per pirate copy the tax would be pretty low.

How is this reasonable? You tax me on the assumption I'm ripping you off, and then compensate random people based on a formula of how successful they have been and assume that they are being 'ripped off' in proportion to all of the moneys collected.

In the case of the 'tax' on blank media ... what if I'm not using the blank media for anything but backing up my own legal, digital information? WTF am I doing paying a tax to support artists if the media isn't being used to copy their stuff?

I support the artists I like by buying their fucking albums ... why should my money go to support some band I can't stand? Because some stupid formula says that that artist deserves 3% of the net revenues of all music because they accounted for 3% of sales in stores? And if you're taking it out of any other tax pool ... why should my parents, who don't buy music, be subsidizing artists?

I just don't get the logic behind this "compensate the most popular ones" ... it's stupid when the music industry proposes it, and it's stupid to do it for books.

Re:I sort of agree

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I think that some subset of the American media market has compulsory licensing and a collecting agency(ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) as well, it covers 'public performance' or such if memory serves.

The general issue that seems to crop up with these collecting entities is that they are efficient and enthusiastic when it comes to extraction(whether it be shaking people down directly, lobbying for taxes on recording media, or whatever); but suddenly find themselves strangely helpless when it comes to paying out to those poor starving artists, especially the ones not in the pockets of local media conglomerates or RIAA-alikes. In addition, despite being 'compensated' by every poor sap who buys an external hard drive to back up some files, their enthusiasm for lobbying in favor of anti-piracy and pro-DRM measures ends up being undiminished.

In a theoretical ideal world of good governance, I'd be very fond of the idea; but its application seems frequently to degenerate into a stiff tax on what people were using for piracy 5 years ago, along with substantial amounts of money disappearing before they see the artists, and minimal diminution in the ferocity of attacks on end users...

Re:I sort of agree

[MBGMorden]

I do, but my bookshelf cost $24.95 (it's one of those screw-together cheapos that they sell in department stores - but it works fine). Used ones at thrift stores cost even less.

Realistically though, such things are ultimately an optional cost. I don't HAVE to purchase a book shelf in order to read books. If I want to I can just stack them in an a corner and they still "work" just as well. The investment in an e-Reader is a REQUIRED investment.

As to the out of print books, that's fine, and I have read a few of those (but on my computer, not a dedicated device), but out of copyright free works are outside of the scope of the discussion when talking about the market economy of e-books, as they essentially operate outside of that economy. Those same works still cost $4-5 dollars in paper form where the words themselves are free to reprint with no cost. The vast majority of that price is in printing and distribution costs since there are no royalties to pay. Why is it that a book that DOES have such royalties only has a $2-3 premium over out or print works yet in e-book form they have a $10 premium?

I know, I know. Economics. The price is set at what the market will pay. That's fine. I just happen to disagree with the market on this issue, and I'm not willing to pay the going rate.

Respecting freedom

[tripleevenfall]

In a way, this is a very ironic post. I think that respecting freedoms involves me respecting others' right to give up their freedom if they feel like they want to in exchange for having the cool new device.

Some subsets of humanity, perhaps indeed the largest subset, only learns by experience. It might take them losing all their books, down the road, or having to buy an entirely new device to keep "owning" what they already "own" before they learn. This is a new technology. We can't get upset yet that the general public doesn't get it. They have to get their knuckles rapped before they will realize.

Our job is not to legislate their choices for them, it's to support and sustain better alternatives so they will come over when they see the light.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that respecting freedoms involves me respecting others' right to give up their freedom

Your argument applies just as poorly to something to like debt bondage.

Re:Respecting freedom

[somersault]

He's not forcing anything, he's just making suggestions. His suggestions are a little over the top though. I suggest just making the eBooks cheaper. Then the whole sharing point becomes kind of moot if it's cheaper for you to buy a copy for your friends than it would have been to buy the book and then lend it to all of them (in which case, let's face it, you'd probably not get it back anyway after a couple of lends). Cheap app store pricing models have shown to be pretty damn successful.

Perhaps stupidly, I've actually bought eBooks over paperbacks even when they've been slightly more expensive (I did start off only buying if they were cheaper). I just really like reading on a tablet though - so much better than having a real book.

Re:Respecting freedom

[rolfwind]

If there was a right to give up freedom, shouldn't you be advocating for voluntary slavery?

The problem with allowing people give up some of their rights is that it not only effects them, but it will be passed down to their kids. In this case, a legacy of proprietary e-book libraries may have a very real effect.

Once, government was once seen as a protector of freedoms of the general public, and not just the bailer-out of large, well-connected banks and car companies/union. I would like to see a return of that role.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Hijacked Public]

If he is advocating tax funds be distributed to authors, he is certainly advocating the forcing of something.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Our job is not to legislate their choices for them, it's to support and sustain better alternatives so they will come over when they see the light.

Part of the problem is that ebooks are not a simple 2-party issue. As a society we all have a stake in how the market works -- if we didn't have such a stake there would be no justification for copyright law in the first place. So, given that books are part of our the way they are handled is a question for all of us to decide, not just the individual buyer and seller.

Re:Respecting freedom

[king neckbeard]

He's suggesting replacing the government giving away our liberties with the government giving away our money, and only giving our money away if we need to and only to the extent that we need to to support authors. It's a compromise, but it's in the direction of more freedom and less forcing.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Moryath]

I just really like reading on a tablet though - so much better than having a real book.

Please, pray tell, what is "so much better" about it?

Every ebook screen I've seen, unless the book was specifically designed for it, either displays far less data per page (say, 1-2 paragraphs at most) or comes out fuzzy on the text. None of them can render illustrations worth a damn.

Battery life, from every one I've seen reviewed, is atrocious. So is page memory - I don't want to lose my place in a book just because I forgot to plug the stupid thing in to charge overnight or because I switched to a different book.

Though I don't wear glasses, we tried to give a Nook to my grandmother and she couldn't use it. She likes to read outside and has to put on her prescription sunglasses, and the Nook's "antiglare filter" means the screen is simply black when viewed through them.

So what do you find "better" about a tablet?

Re:Respecting freedom

[bmo]

>I think that respecting freedoms involves me respecting others' right to give up their freedom

You advocate a dog-eat-dog world.

You are advocating feudalism.

You are advocating slavery.

All with that one phrase.

Unconscionable contract terms are unconscionable. There is a long tradition that says you cannot sign away your first born or your rights. Such things are not allowed in a civilized society. You want absolute freedom to do as you want, to subjugate others? Go back to Somalia and start your own gang there.

I believe I have the freedom to call you an ass.

--
BMO - burning karma because shit like this.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Mike Mentalist]

The Kindle screen looks practically the same as a book page and you can adjust the size of the text. It also saves what page you are on for all books you are reading.

I prefer using the Kindle simply because it is easier and more convenient. I read my books on it and I also have an Economist subscription for it.

Re:Respecting freedom

[cpu6502]

>>>It's a compromise, but it's in the direction of more freedom and less forcing.

You live in a strange world if you believe Government taking a vacuum cleaner to my wallet (and handing the cash to strangers) is "more free" than my choice to simply not buy e-books from amazon.

I call the latter maximum freedom, because the choice is in MY hands, where it belongs, not in the hands of some corporate-bribed politician.

Re:Respecting freedom

[mcmonkey]

Obviously the US Civil War, which was about giving states the freedom to deny freedom to some people living inside their borders. There were a bunch of other issues as well, but that was the hot-button item.

The US Civil War actually has quite a few parallels with the debate on this thread, but I'd argue that if anything it is a good reason for why people SHOULDN'T have the freedom to give up freedom. In the case of slavery as it was practiced in the US this wasn't even a voluntary choice, but the history of indentured servitude isn't much better.

OMFG. This conversation is brain numbing. If you want you talk about the freedom to give up your freedoms, try something like the minimum wage. But Slavery? Is there any documentation, any historical evidence that any slaves in the US were "voluntary"?

As far the indentured servitude which followed, yeah it was a choice if you think 'starve to death or owe your soul to the company store' is a choice.

This is the same BS we're been getting from the fascists for the last 140 or so years. (Yes, I know they weren't called fascists in the beginning, but that's what we call it now. I'm thinking of fascism as the partnership of business and government to the advantage of business and the detriment of the people.)

The Jim Crow system in the US wasn't about the freedom to discriminate. It wasn't about private business being free to chose who they do business with. It wasn't about private citizens being free to take poorly paying jobs. It was about government subjugation.

It was government enforced segregation. You can't make the argument that businesses should be free to refuse service to black people if the freedom doesn't go the other way. And most of the post-slavery US history, in the South a white business owner wasn't free to say, I will serve white and black people at the same counter, and I will have one set of restrooms for my white and black customers.

So bringing this around to the topic, this paper must be a fake. RMS is really suggesting we pay authors through taxes? That we get the government involved in every book sale?

The danger with DRM is it will eventually become law. (Yes, I'd like to think the correct statement is, "may become law," but I don't think this is a question.)

Things are moving towards a system where it will be illegal to make or sell an eBook reader which does not incorporate DRM. Corporations will make it illegal it distribute content other than approved channels.

You may not mean to, you may not realize it, but for every Apple product you buy, where you can only get approved apps through the Apple store, you're helping this happen. For every eBook reader you buy, where the the company has the ability to delete "your" books, you're helping this happen.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Microlith]

His point was that it is unethical, if not outright wrong, to put people into a position where they must make the decision to give up freedoms for access to things.

Just because you're enraged that someone might be opposed to excessive corporate reach (to the point where you'd only have an unintelligent expletive-laced rant to blow in the face of someone who is concerned far more about your freedom than you are) doesn't mean he's in any way wrong.

Congratulations on being an over-emotional tool who can't construct a decent argument.

Re:Respecting freedom

[Hatta]

Once, government was once seen as a protector of freedoms of the general public, and not just the bailer-out of large, well-connected banks and car companies/union

You're wrong. Government has always operated for the interests of the most powerful. Protecting the general public is nothing but a cover story.

Diderot famously said, "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." This should be updated as follows:

s/king/politician/
s/priest/corporate executive/

Re:Respecting freedom

[tripleevenfall]

Dramatic poster is dramatic

Re:Respecting freedom

[praxis]

How about these objections:

1) I would like to have first sale rights to my books.
2) I would like to be able to donate books to the library after I am done reading them.
3) I would like for books I donate to my library be in circulation at least as long as physical books.
4) I would like to be assured that my books won't vanish without my knowledge or permission.
5) I would like to be able to read my books without a third party knowing which pages I've read at what times and *where*.
6) I would like to be able to purchase my books without divulging my identity.

Yes, not all of these concerns are true of all readers or distribution schemes, but I've yet to find a reader that addresses all of them.

Re:Plain old pdf

[Ceiynt]

Buy your DRM book, then run it through Calibre, problem solved.

Re:Plain old pdf

[Anonymous Coward]

I exercise my freedom by not buying ebooks with DRM in them.

I remember

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember when my dad was going to be sent to the gulag in Siberia for a typewriter he possessed. I was a kid and the KGB raided our house. I don't remember the exact details of why but they let him go. I do know the typewriter had the letters removed so it wasn't exactly illegal. He was copying a book that the government considered illegal/immoral. It was something about the Communist party and the mass murders; information that is now public.

With ebooks the copy part is easy these days. It can be distributed within minutes all over the world. Someone will break the encryption and publish it. I don't think we should reject ebooks, just not pay for ones with DRM in them. I doubt a lot of controversial books will have DRM in them anyway. If the information they contain is THAT good, someone will copy it by hand if necessary and distribute it. If you're worried about some cheesy novel and that amazon tracks you, find a warez copy. Information will be free, it'll just be a little harder to find than googling it.

Re:I remember

[VortexCortex]

A book doesn't need to be controversial to be worthwhile. Far from it. And breaking the laws you disagree with is just another way of beign a thug. Trying to change the law is one thing but to break it is not a valid form of protest.

Rosa parks was the worse thug of all.

Hint: Sometimes, when you want to stand up for your freedom against oppressive laws you have to break them. Especially if breaking the law harms no one...

An alternative

[boristhespider]

which is surprising in its simplicity: don't buy from Amazon if you don't want their DRM. There are places that sell eBooks without DRM at all (Baen is one of the ones that comes to mind and would appeal to a lot of people on /.), and then there are the other places -- almost the entire market other than Amazon -- who use ePub with Adobe's ADEPT DRM. ADEPT is relatively flexible. It's also, if one is so inclined to do it, very easy to unlock. I tend to view the unlocking of DRM on a book that someone's purchased a bit less dodgy than going onto torrent sites and finding some scanned and OCR'd ruin of a PDF. You get the publisher's version of the book, *and* you've paid the author (although yes, the publishers as well).

What I would like to see though with eBooks:

sane pricing -- no-one will ever convince me that it should cost more to buy an electronic copy than it does to buy a paperback even if I do see the argument that the author, the editor, the type-setters and all the marketing and promotion cost money so it can't be given away *too* cheaply

the dropping of DRM completely -- seriously, if they're happy to use ADEPT then they're basically happy to not use DRM in the slightest, it's so easily broken

standardisation around a set format -- Amazon are the hold-outs here, sticking with Mobipocket formats while everyone else (even Sony) settled on ePub

quality control from the publishers -- I bought "Glue" by Irvine Welsh, and it's so riddled with scanning errors that I may as well have downloaded a dodgy scan and OCR copy. The amount of times "um" became "urn" was quite surprising. Even worse, one of the characters is called "Gally". That became "Gaily" almost every time he was mentioned. For all I know, he was actually "Gaily" and it became "Gally". "Glue" isn't the only eBook I've bought from a publisher that clearly doesn't give a shit, but it's probably the most absurd. If they're going to charge on the basis of the eBook being edited, they should at least fucking edit it.

Well he is right.

[unity100]

If, something that is now in public domain, is wiped off of my device by the decision of some corporate whores somewhere, that is an open attack against my freedoms.

Re:Plain old pdf

[wjousts]

Except you just sent a message to the seller that you're okay with DRM.

Re:Plain old pdf

[GameboyRMH]

Same here. And why did RMS come up with all these complicated alternate solutions? All you need is an online store that sells DRM-free books cheaply, like GoG already does for games. Simple.

Re:Voluntary payment for goods

[stonecypher]

"On the other, I can't help but think that the time spent creating such works is finite, and once complete no further time or resources are spent"

Speaking as a published author from a family of published authors, not only is this not true, but it completely misses the point.

Why would anyone write the books if they didn't receive a benefit? It takes *years*.

If you steal, you reduce the impetus for people to create. Simple as pie.

Helps you understand why indie game studios die, doesn't it? (Also speaking as the owner of an indie studio whose contract was pulled because of changing piracy rates during development.)

Maybe just stop trying to come up with excuses that it's okay for you to take things without paying for them. It isn't.

Re:Bitcoin to the rescue?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I suspect that the problem is not that privacy is impossible; but that it is very much not in the interest of any major player in the sale of ebooks, the licensing of publishing rights for ebooks, etc.

While the mathematical work in cryptographic privacy schemes is extremely interesting, you could get 90% of the same results with little more than basic file and database record deletion commands if the actors involved were so motivated. If Amazon wanted you to have privacy, they could not gather information about your browsing of their inventory, not collect location data from whispernet kindles, purge all records of CC transactions the moment the risk of chargeback had timed out, etc, etc. Shockingly enough, they don't. Gotta monetize them consumer metrics!

That's really the trick: most of the clever technology for anonymity/privacy is designed to address the problem that the actors in conventional monetary, DRM, networking, etc. systems have a strong interest(and ever increasing capability) to monitor what people interacting with those systems do. If they didn't have that, the mathematical cleverness would hardly be necessary; because everyone would be purging logs as fast as they became unnecessary for immediate security purposes. The trouble, in the case of Ebooks, is that(since the main actors selling them are among those who have a strong interest in collecting user data) the majority of providers, especially of commercially popular material, would have no incentive to accept payment systems that compromise their ability to do what they want, or build reader or DRM systems that do so. This means that, while technologically quite feasible, privacy-preserving architectures are likely to remain content-light, somewhat-less-than-polished, backwaters.

There definitely isn't anybody tracking my reading of Project Gutenberg etexts with Weasel reader on my rockin'-it-old-school Visor Edge; but that particular solution is not, shall we say, going to lure away the kindle's customer base...

Re:Plain old pdf

[lxs]

You need a third party plugin, after installation you can import your Kindle or DRMd epub books into Calibre and the DRM will be removed in the process.

Kindle store, not the device

[NoNeeeed]

I agree with him in so far as the Kindle store is concerned. Being able to effectively "un-sell" a book as happened with 1984 is basically wrong.

However that's a product of the Kindle store, not the device. About two-thirds of the books on my kindle have no DRM. Some of these are Project Gutenberg books, others are Pragmatic Programmers ebooks which are sold in DRM free formats.

There is nothing to stop you from buying a Kindle and then never buying a single ebook from Amazon if you really want.

As with all these sorts of things, the problems lie in the services and publishers, not with the technology.

Re:Taxes. Yup, that's the answer.

[MBGMorden]

Well, I don't have time to RTFA, but if the summary is correct, Stallman says eBooks "don't respect our freedoms", and his solution is take taxes and distribute them to authors whose books the individual taxpayer may or may not wish to read. Because that really respects our freedoms. What a tool.

Not to mention that one of his biggest complaints is the assertion that identification should not be possible (with the underlying assertion being that the government shouldn't know what you're reading).

How in the hell are you going to make a workable system for determining author popularity without identifying readers and what they're reading? If it's anonymous and not tied back to a real person the smart authors would just scam the system to inflate their "popularity" through anonymous voting.

DRM Free Stores

[darkwing_bmf]

Just buy DRM free ebooks. There are plenty to choose from. I especially like Baen Books. They specialize in Sci-Fi/Fantasy and have a free library where you can get selected full books from authors for free so you can find out which ones you like the best. Smashwords is also good. Their focus is self publishing authors and they sell every genre.

Re:Plain old pdf

[mcvos]

I'm against the very principle. Legitimate customers will be restricted in what they can do with their purchase, whereas pirates get higher value. DRM is destroying the market.

Re:Plain old pdf

[binarylarry]

yeah! great idea!

You could call it the "Please Don't Warez All Our Books Store"

That way your entire product line doesn't end up on TPB. It's business model is perfect!

Is Stallman THAT obtuse? Is it possible?

[ScentCone]

I suppose that when he spends as much time as he does twisting himself into knots to explain some of his positions, that it's possible he doesn't actually mean to sound as Orwellian as he does. But really ... force people to spend part of each day (on pain of imprisonment, if they refuse) working to provide food, rent, and iTunes accounts for writers that they'd never in a million years otherwise choose to support? I don't want to spend part of every day laboring on behalf of a guy writing a book about alien abduction and its impact on the arrival date of the antichrist, or about the personal triumphs of Hugo Chavez, or some pedofilic manifesto.

And of course Stallman will have to expand on the details a bit ... because how shall we compensate that guy writing a book in a coffee shop in Brussels? Should US tax dollars pay his way through life, too? Or would Amazon have to work with the government in Belgium to tax the people of that country so that people in the US can read the bad Neal Stephenson rip-off the guy's working on? Do US taxpayers also get to pay "writers" who happen to be false personas representing propoganda committees in China, producing books extolling the virtues of censorship in a healthy society?

Ah. Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group. Not that said government would play favorites or use any sort of capricious policy in deciding which writers get money. Not that anyone would jack up download numbers to skew the how-much-money-should-they-get stats, of course. And if that was a problem, well, all we'd need would be more government monitoring of who's downloading what, right, Richard?

Why do people even listen to this clown? The fact that he'd even mention such an idea shows what a bunch of toxic and mixed/contradictory premises make up the foundation of his world view.

Re:Is Stallman THAT obtuse? Is it possible?

[blahplusplus]

"Well, obviously this calls for a single world-wide government to tax one group and provide a living for another group"

We already have this, they are called corporations. The names are just different, why aren't corporations privately taxing one group (consumers) and giving it to another group (shareholders) while at the same time denying their customers rights and flouting the law? There is little difference today between giant corporations and government except the name by which one calls them.

Re:Is Stallman THAT obtuse? Is it possible?

[king neckbeard]

Which is just as morally poisonous, and for all the same reasons.

I agree that it's not desirable. And yet, it's happened.

"Accurate?" What does that even mean? I only care about one form of accuracy. If I don't want to buy a book, I want that to cost me $0. Stallman, on the other hand, is talking about charging me money anyway, and then laundering it through a gigantic new government bureaucracy that cannot help but involve untold thousands of new government workers, overhead costs, and the involvement of that government in choosing which writers get rewarded how, with other people's money. And in the current state of affairs, that would be with money borrowed from already bankrupted future generations.

I mean that the money you don't want to spend but are forced to anyway goes to those you would wish to spend it on. ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC collect the money in the US, and their methods are horribly distorted

Which makes it less morally repugnant ... how?

Because he isn't insisting on it, but is rather throwing it out there as an option.

Re:Voluntary payment for goods

[Quiet_Desperation]

Why would anyone write the books if they didn't receive a benefit? It takes *years*.

Is that human years or Stephen King years?

Like him or not, Stallman's on to something

[HikingStick]

First off, I'm all for eBooks and eBook readers. I've used my eeePC as an eBook reader for a couple of years now and I like how convenient it is. Yet, there's still one big limitation to most eBook formats, and it's one of the things that I think really ticked Stallman off.

With a phyisical book, I can buy it new or used. Once I'm done with the book, I can dispose of it as I see fit:

• 
  lend it to a friend,
• sell it second-hand, or even
• cut little snippets out of the book and plaster them all over my refridgerator, bulletin board, and/or bedroom wall.

Unfortunately, all of those secondary dispositions are largely eliminated in an eBook format. When I'm done with a book today, I can throw it on the bookshelf in my family room and then suggest that my wife or one of our kids pick it up and read it. If a friend is visiting, and notices a book that grabs his/her attention, I can say, "Go ahead and take it, and let me know what you think once you've finished it."

Stallman may be jumping toward solutions he can envision, but the problem still remains: the rise of eBooks threatens the way we share knowledge. You may argue that the Internet will never let DRM win, but do we ever want to end up in a world where we have to rely on DRM-breakers to keep knowledge free? eBooks threaten the intellectual vitality afforded us by the first sale doctrine. If we can't preserve post-first-sale rights in a digital world, we might as well go back to an age where books were kept on chains and only accessible to a few.

Re:Plain old pdf

[TheRaven64]

Do you honestly believe that DRM prevents books ending up on TPB? It used to be that typing the title of my first book into Google gave an illegal download site as the top link. Right next to it were a load of books that were only available in hardcopy or DRM'd version. At my request, my publisher now has a clause to my contracts stating that they're not allowed to use DRM when distributing my books. It does nothing to prevent piracy, and it does piss off legitimate customers. You'd have to be a complete moron to think that was a sound business strategy. They had no objection to the clause, because they had no intention of using DRM.

Re:Tax Funds

[mcgrew]

As Cory Doctorow has pointed out, nobody ever went broke from piracy, but many artists have starved because of obscurity. That's why he posts all his books on his website in ebook form for free. He credits his status as a NYT best seller to that. There's no need to give tax money to authors and artists, if the work is good people will buy it despite being able to get it for free.

Re:Plain old pdf

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...why EXACTLY would you throw their stuff on TPB when it is dirt cheap and they are nice to you if they did indeed follow the GOG model?

I have bought probably close to 50 games from GOG since I first heard about them. Could I have pirated those games? Of course. So why did I buy them from GOG? Because not only is GOG cheap but they give you extras such as having all their games tested to work on x64 (you'd be surprised how many games even a couple of years old don't run well on x64) and along with that which is VERY important to me since I've been on x64 since late 05 they give me, in no particular order: soundtracks, avatars, guidebooks, keyboard layouts, calendars, behind the scenes, expansion packs pre integrated, and a VERY nice forum full of helpful folks that have everything from mods to walkthroughs to howtos, all in an easy to use format.

This of course doesn't even bring up the fact that nearly all their games are less than $10, most under $7, I can download them as many times as I want (not that I would ever need to thanks to the next part), are trivial to backup onto a USB HDD (just a single .exe or on large games an .exe and several .part files, simple) and of course have NO DRM, don't phone home, don't bitch if I want to have them installed on more than one of my machines, has a nice Adobe Air based download manager, in short everything "just works" and at a killer low price point.

I think you'll find pirates can usually be broken down into two camps: 1.- those that can't afford the crazy prices they are asking for the product, which is a classical reason why a black market springs up like piracy, and 2.-those that are tired of being fucked by DRM. I have often bought games off of Amazon only to leave the pretty box unopened and use the pirate version. Why? Because the shitty fucking DRM don't work, and in fact can seriously fuck to the point of reinstall x64 OSes. While I don't I can see plenty getting fed up and just not bothering with the buying part when the pirate version is the better product by a HUGE margin and for an example of how buyers get fucked by DRM watch this video (warning language NSFW, but if you watch it you'll know why he is POed) .

But I think you'd find if eBooks followed the GOG model piracy would be almost non existent. I mean why bother? If it is cheaper, faster, and you get all kinds of incentives to buy, why bother pirating? In fact I'd say my PC game purchases have easily tripled since finding out about them, ironically while going on forums trying to get my PITA legal copy of Redneck Rampage to run on XP X64. I was so frustrated trying to get DOSBox and all the other hoops I had to jump through to work I gladly rebought only to find it all"just worked" while giving me all kinds of extras like the expansions and the cuss packs. After that I was hooked and I'm sure if we saw the same on ebooks there would be tons of folks like me lined up with their CC out.

But instead they'll try to assrape you on the price to prop up the dead tree version and most folks will do something MUCH worse than piracy....they simply won't bother at all. And sorry about the length but as someone who has had to deal with the messes DRM can cause, such as drives thrown in PIO mode or computers stuttering and glitching because the DRM crap code was throwing conflicts, I personally wish the garbage would DIAF.

Re:Plain old pdf

[TheRaven64]

The PDF versions of my books from InformIT are watermarked. It doesn't bother me, because I never sell books, but I can imagine it would irritate some people. Watermarks are usually easy to remove if you really care and, more importantly, they don't restrict you from doing anything. I'd prefer it if they didn't bother, but it's a compromise that I'll accept for now.

Re:It doesn't work like that

[darkwing_bmf]

I'm sorry if you misconstrued my post. I wanted to show that DRM free ebooks were available if DRM was an issue preventing you from buying ebooks. If it's not an issue to you then buy whatever you want.

The reason I personally won't buy DRM'd ebooks is because in my past I bought a lot of DRM protected music files (wmas). Then Microsoft turned off their authentication servers and those files became basically worthless. They still worked on the portable music player I had them on, but I couldn't transfer or play them anywhere else. Eventually that music player got stolen and my music investment went with it. If the files were DRM free I could have transferred them to any music device I had as well as backed them up somewhere else.

Re:Voluntary payment for goods

[cpu6502]

Warner Brothers
MGM
Sony Pictures
Bantum Publishing
PennyPress
Dell Magazines
etc

Hire authors as full-time employees to churn-out fiction, just the same as engineers/programmers churn-out schematics and programs.