Penguin Yanking Kindle Books From Libraries

New submitter moniker writes "Penguin Group is removing Kindle ebooks from libraries using Overdrive citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content."

Comments

If Everything was "security"?

[LostCluster]

This seems more like a grab for money from book sales than anything technical. Has there really been security leaks coming from online readers?

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Anonymous Coward]

All forms of DRM for ebooks will always be subject to pilfering. Such is the dirty secret of DRM and the built-in excuse for companies to yank their content whenever they feel like it suits their business agenda.

There needs to be a safe harbor for libraries where they can make an owned paper book accessible however they want, including digitally.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[SimonTheSoundMan]

It's easy to strip the DRM out of the files.

Also, my local library supply audio books that you can download from home straight to your PC/Mac using Ebsco. You can take out the audio books for as short as one day. The software downloads the MP3 files to a hidden directory, I found they have no DRM attached. Copy paste to a new directory, you have the audiobook forever.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[francium goes boom]

It has been easy for quite a long time to turn a kindle (.azw) to any other format. All it takes to find free software to do it is a quick google serach. So coming out now and saying security concerns is just dumb.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[SpiralSpirit]

people who can strip the DRM from the books can get the books elsewhere. Those who can't most likely won't.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[SimonTheSoundMan]

I didn't say I do it, I just said you could. ;)

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Penguinisto]

That is also known as stealing.

Bullshit. The files were returned in the exact same condition as he received them.

Now copyright violations OTOH...

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[gweihir]

Copyright infringement is not stealing. Look it up sometime.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[betterunixthanunix]

That is also known as stealing

Only by people who have never looked up the definitions of "stealing" and "copying."

And congratulations, you are fucking over libraries and everyone else (future versions will have ever more draconian DRM or simply not be available in libraries) for your own greed.

DRM is always doomed to fail. It attempts to solve an unsolvable security engineering problem (the secure device in an insecure environment) and the security only needs to be broken once for the whole system to fall apart. For some reason, copyright-based industries have failed to grasp this fundamental truth, and their lobbyists have convinced governments to prop up their bad security systems with undemocratic laws and censorship. They have even convinced the public school system to spread their greed-driven propaganda to young children.

Yet you defend these people.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[plover]

Yet you defend these people.

Maybe he am these people?

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Digicrat]

The same thing is true for the MP3-based audio books from OverDrive. Overdrive has a nice little quirk in it though that you can't actually renew items - only delete them and check them out again. If downloading to a mobile device, this can be slow and also seems to delete any reference to where you left off in it.

I now just use OverDrive to download the books, but then open the MP3s in my phones native app to listen to them - which has a better interface when driving to. Now, is it still a violation of the rules if I don't re-open the OverDrive app to delete them until after I finished listening to it ... which may or may not be a few days past the original "due" date.

Of course, I haven't used the OverDrive system in a while now because it doesn't support DRM on Android, and the collection of non-DRMed audi-books is abysmally small . . .

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Tsingi]

That is also known as stealing.

Bullshit. The files were returned in the exact same condition as he received them.

Now copyright violations OTOH...

You actually return the files? I have no experience with DRM, other than I have to use my pc speakers when I stream content to my HDTV.

One more example of DRM being about protecting business models
I like that thought, I hadn't considered it that way.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

Copyright infringement is not stealing. Look it up sometime.

And hackers just means people who use a keyboard...

Sorry. I'm not saying it's right, but the media war is pretty much won on this one--copyright violation is now normatively bad, and comparable to stealing, for the upper middle class.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[JustOK]

Better to use a duck. Cheaper too because you can put in on their bill.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Imrik]

And yet, the files are neither taken nor used without their owner's permission. The content of the files may be, since the content owner and the file owner are different people, but that's covered under copyright infringement, not theft.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[MimeticLie]

The definition that Google has for "steal" is:

Take (another person's property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return it: "thieves stole her bicycle".

Copyright infringement doesn't deprive the owner of the song of their property. They still own the song. Copyright infringement is illegal, but calling it theft is an attempt to make it something it is not. If we want to have a reasonable discussion of the issue, we should start by being clear about what copyright infringement is and what it isn't.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[MimeticLie]

It attempts to solve an unsolvable security engineering problem (the secure device in an insecure environment) and the security only needs to be broken once for the whole system to fall apart. For some reason, copyright-based industries have failed to grasp this fundamental truth, and their lobbyists have convinced governments to prop up their bad security systems with undemocratic laws and censorship.

On the contrary, the fact that they've turned to legislation shows that do in fact recognize the truth of DRM's infeasibility. When their technical solutions failed, they bought legal ones.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[mustPushCart]

off topic but the drm protection on a game called 'tom clancy's HAWX 2' was never cracked. Its been about 2 years since the release i think and it never will cracked either.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[jvin248]

This is just another last gasp of the traditional publishers. Independents are scooping huge percentages of electronic sales, and electronic formats are growing while dead tree sales are falling. Check out Konrath jgordonsmith.com locke. The traditional publishers are afraid, but the writers who have all the content creation power, get a higher percentage of sales to go alone. The amazing thing is the writers are closer to the readers.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[geminidomino]

Pretty sure they didn't, since the number of users doing it is ever-growing, and the only ones who ever even fire a synapse about the "morality" of the act are the two noisy sides who wank on about it on tech-and-game forums on the web (and the crybaby IP owners who equate not only downloading, but perfectly legitimate used sales as 'stealing'. The douche from the company that shat out 'Heavy Rain' being my recent favorite).

The media can say whatever they're paid to say. The zeitgeist isn't with them on this one, though.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[stanlyb]

And yet, the writer does not OWN the "book", he only has monopoly for some short (originally) period of time. You need to read some history man, and then argue. And then try to find out why this monopoly was transfered to anyone but the author, and his family.....

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[westlake]

Copyright infringement is not stealing. Look it up sometime.

Fair enough:

The United States No Electronic Theft Act (NET Act), a federal law passed in 1997, provides for criminal prosecution of individuals who engage in copyright infringement under certain circumstances, even when there is no monetary profit or commercial benefit from the infringement. Maximum penalties can be five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines. The NET Act also raised statutory damages by 50%.

NET Act

"Indentity Theft" has become a federal offense that can put you away for up to fifteen years.

When your bunk mate is a bruiser named Big Mike the particular sub-section of the criminal code which has you sharing a 6x8 cinderblock cell no longer matters very much.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Artifakt]

The media don't get to charge people with crimes. The Media don't get to play judge, jury, and jailor. Shakespeare can say "Glamis hath Murdered Sleep" all he wants, but the courts are who decides what murder is. As long as there exists a Supreme Court decision that copyright violation is not theft (and yes, there is at least one to that effect), the media can call it 'high puppy mutilating pedo-treason' if they want, but guess what it is. That's right, it's Copyright Violation. How many legs does a dog have if the Media calls a tail a leg?

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Clovert Agent]

Language evolves and drifts, but legal definitions do not.

Theft is a crime with a specific definition. Copyright violation is a different crime, with a different definition. They are both criminal actions, but they are _different_ types of crime. Trying to conflate the two is very successful PR by the media industry, since "theft" has negative connotations that "piracy" does not, but they are not the same.

For reference: try to find an instance of copyright violation which has been prosecuted (successfully or not) as theft. When copyright holders start charging violators with theft, I'll agree that the definition has shifted. Until then, they're not the same and should not be confused.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[epyT-R]

language evolves alright.. right into doublespeak if you're not careful.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[epyT-R]

maybe the game sucks and no one bothered.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[rtb61]

No, it is copying not stealing. When you steal something you deny the other person use of it. When you copy something the other person still get's to use their copy. Copying is setting content free, if it really is 'actually' worth while you might get something back, if it sucks you get bupkis. If your concerned sell real stuff, like food, clothing, housing, medicines all stuff people really need and of course the world will celebrate if you can readily make copies.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not the point. The point is libraries offer access to items without locking them down like you see in some of the games like Assassin's Creed (a game I will not buy (and hence not play) because of DRM bullshit).

Borrowing material so you can "take it as your own" is wrong. It gets more DRM bullshit created, both electronic lockdowns and legal lockdowns. There already are some advocating the only way to play audiobooks is via your locked down iPhone or Android device.

The attitude of "copyright theft is not stealing" and "copy it and have it forever" are what is driving more and more DRM and everyone loses. And what's the benefit of having stolen some audiobook?? Absolutely nothing as you can borrow it again if you want to!!

I love MP3 audiobooks at my library. I can download them at home. I can play them in my non-DRM mp3 player. I can play them on Linux. But if the bullshit with copying continues, they will just lock these audiobooks down. Locked down and encrypted windows media only files already exist for some audiobooks - can't really use those....

Sure, you can always illegally copy an audio file or a video and keep it forever for some reason. Always. But who ends up paying for it? Regular folks that simply want to use the library.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[drinkypoo]

Our local library uses overdrive, and we have DRM-enabled mp3 players which support WMA as well. The WMA books don't expire off the device even though it supports it!

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[drinkypoo]

Now, look *this* up: "Language Evolves."

Yes, it does, and our language has evolved such that it has a term for taking something and depriving them of it ("theft") and another term for copying something without legal permission ("copyright infringement") and ne'er the twain shall meet, except in the minds of idiots. If you can make ten fish into twenty it's a miracle, but if you can turn one song into a hundred songs it doesn't matter who you give them to, it's still not theft.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Mathinker]

> are what is driving more and more DRM and everyone loses

Wrong. Since secure DRM for books and audio is practically impossible because of the "analog hole", the thrashings of the content industry merely drive more and more people to disregard copyright law (for example, even if you cannot use the DRMed files your library supplies, you could presumably withdraw them anyway, and just download non-protected versions for use under Linux, which you would delete after you return the checked-out files to your library). Assuming that democracy actually works, eventually this will cause the reform of copyright law.

The content industry may lose income because the advance of technology has made their old business model impossible, but this is not a loss for "everyone". Many people would rejoice if the large content cartels, which constantly seek to control both the public's consumption of content and the government's law-making process, would break up into much smaller entities which are controlled better by competition between them (and have less ability to game democracy).

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[91degrees]

So what's wrong with stealing?

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[91degrees]

But then we end up making the strange argument that stealing is bad because people are deprived of their property, but stealing is not so bad because nobody loses anything.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Oligonicella]

"the thrashings of the content industry merely drive more and more people to disregard copyright law"

Oh, bullshit. No one "drives" those people to pilfer, they *want* to pilfer and find ways.

"Old business model"? Your entire last paragraph is obsolete with the ability for people to create audio/video/text content and post it to the web. There no longer *is* control of content. You can buy books printed on demand by authors with no affiliation to *any* publisher. Mine, for instance.

Book companies exist because people want their books. People rip off content because they want to rip off content.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Oligonicella]

Google, how quaint. Use a dictionary. There you'll find words have more than one meaning.

From Webster's Unabridged, and sticking with only verb transitive:

steal
1. to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, esp. secretly or by force: A pickpocket stole his watch.
2. to appropriate (ideas, credit, words, etc.) without right or acknowledgment.
3. to take, get, or win insidiously, surreptitiously, subtly, or by chance: He stole my girlfriend.
4. to move, bring, convey, or put secretly or quietly; smuggle (usually fol. by away, from, in, into, etc.): They stole the bicycle into the bedroom to surprise the child.
5. Baseball. (of a base runner) to gain (a base) without the help of a walk or batted ball, as by running to it during the delivery of a pitch.
6. Games. to gain (a point, advantage, etc.) by strategy, chance, or luck.
7. to gain or seize more than one's share of attention in, as by giving a superior performance: The comedian stole the show.

Now, if you'll kindly examine definition number two, you'll find that indeed, copying something without permission is stealing.

This makes you (adj) ...

wrong
1. not in accordance with what is morally right or good: a wrong deed.
2. deviating from truth or fact; erroneous: a wrong answer.
3. not correct in action, judgment, opinion, method, etc., as a person; in error: You are wrong to blame him.
4. not proper or usual; not in accordance with requirements or recommended practice: the wrong way to hold a golf club.
5. out of order; awry; amiss: Something is wrong with the machine.
6. not suitable or appropriate: He always says the wrong thing.
7. (of clothing) that should be worn or kept inward or under: You're wearing the sweater wrong side out.

... number two as well.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[gweihir]

If you steal something, it is missing from its original place afterwards. Only those truly weak of mind can confuse copyright infringement and stealing or compare the two.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[gweihir]

The blogs do not matter. The law does. And it makes a very clear distinction. In fact the two things could not be much more different.

Side note: From an evolution of law point of view, theft being a crime is natural, while copyright is entirely artificial in the first place and hence copyright infringement is too.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[temcat]

This is actually quite an insightful question. The correct answer is simple but it shows exactly why unauthorized copying is not stealing.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[gweihir]

"Identity Theft" again is completely different. While it does not take away the identity of the victim, it does compromise that identity as an identity needs to be uniquely attached to one person to work as intended. No such limitation with copyrighted works. Your argumentation skills (or maybe your insight into reality) suck badly.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Oligonicella]

Only by people who have never looked up the definitions of "stealing" and "copying."

Websters Unabridged - steal - definition number two.

Look it up.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[DrXym]

Not necessarily. The problem with DRM is the "rights" it protects are the content providers. My opinion is that once you purchase content it should become yours and DRM should protect your rights. i.e. if Amazon fucks up and discovers they sold 1984 when they weren't supposed to, tough they're going to have to settle a lawsuit with the providers since any content they sold no longer belongs to them to control. If Penguin sell some books to a library and doesn't like how the library lends their books then tough they'll have to go through whatever publisher / library arbitration mechanisms exist because they can't yank / revoke stuff out there already.

The best thing that could happen is if someone like the EU were to enshrine these rights in law and force providers to conform, i.e. that when you buy a book you are buying the book, not just a licence and that there is a mechanism to sell a book with a nominal processing fee. And also that all electronic content sold should be held with decryption keys in escrow in an open format so that subject to court order, or to platform collapse that the owner can retrieve it. Better yet if there were a single platform across all devices that managed the concept of ownership and transfer of ownership.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Lumpy]

Overdrive is trivial to strip the DRM and keep a copy of the book. It's based on Adobe's DRM setup that is so badly broken it's a single click to strip it.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[bws111]

Bullshit. If you steal a kiss, is a kiss missing? How about if you steal a peek? Steal away? Steal one's thunder? Steal a scene? Steal one's idea? The one unifying theme to all definitions of steal is 'without permission' or 'surreptitiously'. 'Missing afterwards' appears in no definition of steal.

In common english, 'stealing' is a valid word for copyright infringement. And if you are going to say it is not common english but a legal term, again bullshit. The legal term for what you are describing is larceny, or sometimes theft. Theft can mean either larceny OR stealing, they are not the same thing.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[wickedskaman]

*slow clap... into deafening applause*

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[mcgrew]

Google, how quaint. Use a dictionary.

Er, you might want to look up the word "quaint". Google's only a little over ten years old, dictionaries are quaint.

Re:If Everything was "security"?

[Meski]

DRM, draconian or not, is fundamentally flawed, and cannot be fixed.

Content vs business model

[bws111]

How do you separate 'selling content' from 'business model'? Content IS the business model.

Re:Content vs business model

[magnusrex1280]

Content is a thing that exists, whether you have a business model or not. Business model is the system or method you use to make money from a product or service, in this case the product/service is e-reader content.

Re:Content vs business model

[bws111]

The point is that the 'drm is not about protecting content but business models' is stupid. There is no need to protect the content if it is not part of the business model.

Re:Content vs business model

[bryan1945]

I would have to disagree with this. You have your content, but now you need to distribute it. Your model can be old-style physical book publishing, electronic distribution, or just post it up on a website for free. With electronic you can then have DRM or no DRM. So while content is part of the model, it is not the entire model since you have to take into consideration things like the distribution channel(s) that I pointed out above. And don't forget marketing.

Re:"Content" is a business model.

[sqlrob]

No, it's not.

The content gives you something to sell, exactly what you do with it is the business model.

I hate DRM, I swear I do

[chispito]

The editorializing in the summary, however, is so heavy-handed as to be absurd.

...citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content.

Re:I hate DRM, I swear I do

[JimMcc]

It was a bit heavy handed, but if you read the article (Yeah, yeah. I know. Slashdot readers never....) you would fine the quote "...fueling speculation that Penguin’s actions may be directed at Amazon,"

But heavy handed or not, the point is a valid one.

Re:I hate DRM, I swear I do

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering one of the links is to The Register, it could be worse. I've yet to read a single article on The Register that wasn't hyperbolic bullshit. Luckily, I noticed the URL before clicking on this one.

What the Hell?!

[newcastlejon]

"Penguin Group is removing Kindle ebooks from libraries using Overdrive citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content."

(Emphasis mine)
I try not to criticise submissions, but what the hell? I don't care what was done by whom, I thought Slashdot was above such flagrant editorialism.

For shame.

Re:What the Hell?!

[Rick Zeman]

"Penguin Group is removing Kindle ebooks from libraries using Overdrive citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content."

(Emphasis mine)
I try not to criticise submissions, but what the hell? I don't care what was done by whom, I thought Slashdot was above such flagrant editorialism.

Are you new here??

Re:What the Hell?!

[Penguinisto]

Question is, does the spin make the editorialized statement any less true?

I find it disturbing that the answer is, well, "no".

Re:What the Hell?!

[newcastlejon]

Are you new here??

Not so new that I haven't seen that joke a hundred times or cracked it myself more than once. Just because it's been going on for a while doesn't make this sort of 'red top' reporting acceptable.

You must have skin much thicker than mine, honoured elder.

Re:What the Hell?!

[gmhowell]

Are you new here??

Not so new that I haven't seen that joke a hundred times or cracked it myself more than once. Just because it's been going on for a while doesn't make this sort of 'red top' reporting acceptable.

You must have skin much thicker than mine, honoured elder.

No, newbie douche, the failure is on your part. What you state here is not what newcastlejon objected to above where you said:

I thought Slashdot was above such flagrant editorialism.

The only possible explanation is that you are new around here. Slashdot has never been above such flagrant editorialism. The site is founded on such, and has been like that since day one.

Re:What the Hell?!

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

No, it just makes them seem more plausible than they actually are.

Re:What the Hell?!

[newcastlejon]

No, newbie douche, the failure is on your part.

Wow, that seemed harsh. Do you talk like that to people in the real world?

In retrospect it's clear that I should have said "ought to be above...". Still, there's no need to be abusive.

Re:What the Hell?!

[gmhowell]

No, newbie douche, the failure is on your part.

Wow, that seemed harsh. Do you talk like that to people in the real world?

In retrospect it's clear that I should have said "ought to be above...". Still, there's no need to be abusive.

No, I have a far more abrasive online personality. If you can't stand the heat, step away from the flamethrower.

Idiotic summary

[ScentCone]

How is it that we're still not clear on the idea that the content (creating it, using a publisher to find a market for it, charging for it, and making money from that process) is the business model. People who create content for the pleasure of doing so give their work away all the time. There's plenty where that came from. Mechanisms to prevent people from ripping off content don't matter to people who don't have an interest in the content-selling business model.

Creative people who deliberately join up with a publisher, label, studio or other partner to handle their business affairs while they go about continuing to write, record, film and whatnot - they have decided to embrace a particular business model: not doing it for free. Whether or not every or any DRM tool is ideal or practical is beside the point. The issue is that there are people who create things (books, games, movies, music) for a living if they can find an audience, and charging for copies of what they create is the business model. If they can't find anyone to buy it, that's too bad for them. They need to work harder or choose better partners. But if people simply rip them off because it's fairly easy to do so, that's not a comment on the creative people, it's a comment on the people who like to make little entertainment slaves out them.

The submitter's silly implication - that DRM is ever used for any reason other than because being ripped off isn't part of the business model - is, well, silly.

Re:Idiotic summary

[betterunixthanunix]

Value is created by scarcity, and there is simply no natural scarcity of books in this century. We are trying to build walls into our technology so that we can pretend that we still live in a previous century, which is just absurd. We no longer buy stamps to do things like pay our bills or send personal letters, so why are we so worried about whether or not the book publishing system remains relevant?

Sorry, but if people want to make a living writing books, they will need to find a new way to monetize that. We cannot allow the Internet to become a maze of walls and restrictions, we cannot have our computers monitor what we do, all for the sake of keeping an old business model alive. Sorry if you are an author who is not creative enough to monetize your work in this century without tricking everyone into ceding control of their computers to you.

At one time we had people whose job was to tell stories around the campfire; then we discovered that stories could be written down, and storytellers who failed to adapt had to find new lines of work. Now selling books is an obsolete business model, because we have computer networks that can make nearly unlimited copies of any written work at high speed; writers who fail to adapt will have to find new lines of work.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Forbman]

Funny thing about parenting... children tend to live up to the expectations put on them. Same goes for people.

Expect everyone out there to be conniving thieves, and set things up that way to "prevent" that? Well, they'll act like...conniving thieves.

The business model by the content creators is to have someone else deal with the business, aka, The Publishers.

The business model of the publishers, however, does not seem to be "let's adapt to the marketplace", but to try as hard as possible to get the marketplace to conform to the publishers' illusion of reality, including treating other authors (you know, the actual content creators) who realize that maybe they can do better off by themselves due to the variety of self-publishing models available now, and fighting anyone else trying to start new publishing models (e.g., Amazon.com).

The Publishers think they're the gatekeeper between the marketplace and the authors. Well, they're more and more really just coming off like Tom Smykowski from Office Space: "We take the manuscripts from the writers and give them to the Customers. You don't want the Authors giving the manuscripts directly to the Customers! We have PEOPLE SKILLS!!!" ...while most of us here on /. are snarkily like the Two Bobs, with the dubious/skeptical faces on... "So, what exactly do you do here, uh...Tom?"

Re:Idiotic summary

[ScentCone]

Creating content is not the business model, distributing it is.

No, creating content for distribution is the business model. Being hired to do the distribution is secondary to that. Without people choosing to create things that they are seeking to sell, there would be no need for publishers to do the legwork.

Re:Idiotic summary

[bws111]

The scarcity is works worth reading, not the number of copies of books. Copyright was created to help eliminate that scarcity. Authors who write for money (which no doubt includes many very respected and/or popular authors) will just find something else to do if they can't make money off their writings. And that will be a loss for all of us.

Re:Idiotic summary

[NeutronCowboy]

No, creating content for distribution is the business model.

If that were true, the business model would pay out based on how much is created. Instead, it is based on how much is distributed.
Or, put more simply: nobody makes money creating something. The only time that you make money on content is if you distribute it to someone.

Why do you think copyright keeps getting extended? Once you get past a certain point, longer copyright protection reduces the incentive to create something.

Re:Idiotic summary

[ocratato]

Copyrights were originally to stop publishers from making unauthorised copies, and was really a form of censorship.

We need a mechanism where authors can get rewarded for their work. The best time to do this is when the work transitions from private to public. The cost of trying to control a work once it has been released to the public is too high. It will either result in locked down equipment, or draconian laws - neither should be acceptable.

Re:Idiotic summary

[bws111]

And that is exactly what the pirates are: unauthorized publishers making unauthorized copies. And since no-one has as of yet offered a workable solution for your 'best' situation, we are stuck with something that is not the best, but is workable.

Re:Idiotic summary

[betterunixthanunix]

How about authors refuse to publish their books until they have raised enough money? A well known author could publish a suspenseful preview or a first chapter, and then request $5 from each reader until some amount is raised, at which point the book will be published. There is no need for a publishing industry to even exist under such a system, the authors could just use the Internet and encourage, rather than attack, the copying of their books.

Is there some reason to think that such a thing would not work? We could build a payment system into tablet computers to ease such a process, along with a system of sharing books to help authors build a reputation.

we are stuck with something that is not the best, but is workable.

Sorry, but this is not a workable solution:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

Re:Idiotic summary

[bws111]

I see nothing in there that is even marginally better for either authors or readers. It is totally unworkable. Do you really think the general public is going to shell out money for an as-yet-unwritten book? What is the magic amount that must be raised? How much time can elapse to raise the magic amount? What about people who didn't pay? I guess since you are so anti-copyright even people who didn't pay would be allowed to have a copy. What incentive is there for anyone to pay anything under those circumstances? Why would an author encourage the copying of their book by people who didn't pay?

Furthermore, anyone who wants to try such a system is perfectly free to do it today. The fact that by far most authors don't choose such a method says volumes about what they think of such an idea.

Re:Idiotic summary

[betterunixthanunix]

Do you really think the general public is going to shell out money for an as-yet-unwritten book?

Did I say unwritten? No, I did not. People have been known to shell out money for unpublished books:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html

I guess since you are so anti-copyright even people who didn't pay would be allowed to have a copy.

Yeah, and so what? The age of copyrights is over, it is time to grow up and move on with your life.

What incentive is there for anyone to pay anything under those circumstances?

If nobody pays, the book does not get published; people who want the book will pay for it.

Furthermore, anyone who wants to try such a system is perfectly free to do it today. The fact that by far most authors don't choose such a method says volumes about what they think of such an idea.

Or that there is still a substantial market for dead tree books, and that the penetration of tablets has not yet reached a level that would make such a system attractive. We also have a system of ever-more-draconian copyright laws that are propping up old publishing models and businesses, which removes any incentive to develop a new system. I really do not think that the lack of a new system is evidence that there could be no workable alternative to what we have today.

Re:Idiotic summary

[betterunixthanunix]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/jul/16/harrypotter.jkjoannekathleenrowling

Sorry, this is the correct link that should have been posted.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Grishnakh]

I think the idea is that authors start out giving their works away for free, to build a fanbase, and asking for donations. Then, they start putting more pressure for donations: "give more money and my next book will be available sooner". Just look at the free TV show "Pioneer One", which is basically being financed by public donations. I haven't checked, but I imagine it's getting more donations as it's put out more episodes: once people see something they like, they want more.

Obviously, a totally unknown author isn't going to get anything; he'll have to put out something for free to get people interested. But after he's built up his name, he can start getting money from name recognition.

Re:Idiotic summary

[genghisjahn]

Dude's right. EOL.

Re:Idiotic summary

[hawguy]

How about authors refuse to publish their books until they have raised enough money? A well known author could publish a suspenseful preview or a first chapter, and then request $5 from each reader until some amount is raised, at which point the book will be published. There is no need for a publishing industry to even exist under such a system, the authors could just use the Internet and encourage, rather than attack, the copying of their books.

It's already been tried... and failed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plant

I think a better model is charging a reasonable price for ebooks and giving authors a bigger cut to reflect the nearly non-existent printing and distribution costs:

http://www.smashwords.com/

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

Nope. I paint, sculpt and write. I distribute all three. I use three different models to do so. Only two of those models are business because only they generate income. They are two different and distinct models.

The creation is a separate issue entirely from the distribution models. Each model is attached to each activity for personal reasons, but there would be no problem in switching any creative effort to any of the other models.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

"How about authors refuse to publish their books until they have raised enough money?"

Explain how that works for the first time author.

By the way, I'm setting up number ten for publishing. Could you send me some cash I can put in a jar until I have what I deem to be the amount needed to publish it?

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

"People have been known to shell out money for unpublished books:"

I iterate from another post - I'm about to publish number ten. It is completely written. How much can you send me so I can start saving to pay for it?

This is serious. I really have one slated for next year and you can actually put your method into operation.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

You understand that didn't happen with her first books?

Re:Idiotic summary

[ScentCone]

If that were true, the business model would pay out based on how much is created. Instead, it is based on how much is distributed.

No. How much is distributed (purchased) is based on the market demand for the items that were created for sale. This depends on successful (as in, successfully targeted) creation to meet a market demand. The distribution, which is just part of the plumbing that connects the supply to the demand, isn't the business model. It's just a tool used by the creator and the consumer to get the job done, and to allow such things to scale.

Why do you think copyright keeps getting extended?

Because life is different. People and their immediate heirs are living decades longer than they used to.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

There are people doing this right now. They have every right to do this and I encourage them to explore.

Now, why should this be the only model?

Let's not lose sight of the fact that none of this argument is about a person's ability to publish and distribute on their own. It's easily done.

The thrust of all of this is to remove protections for the author, owner of the rights of distribution. Scarcity, lock-down, expense; all of those are red herrings thrown up because it's really difficult to explain in any ethical terms the answer to the following:
Why is it OK to prevent *me* from controlling the distribution of *my* works?

First one must answer that, because that's what copyright is.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Oligonicella]

I want your creative entertainment for free.

You could have saved a lot of typing.

Re:Idiotic summary

[Lumpy]

"We no longer buy stamps to do things like pay our bills or send personal letters,"

You dont know anyone in the military then. WE buy stamps rapidly and send personal letters daily. and every single person that has a loved one overseas right now does the same. Just because your tiny view of the world does not is not an indicator that the rest of the world does.

Re:Idiotic summary

[betterunixthanunix]

Yes, but so what? Do authors with no reputation make enough money to live on under the current system?

Re:Idiotic summary

[Grishnakh]

because it's really difficult to explain in any ethical terms the answer to the following:
Why is it OK to prevent *me* from controlling the distribution of *my* works?

First one must answer that, because that's what copyright is.

Why don't you turn it around and answer the opposite question first:
Why is it OK for you to prevent others from copying or distributing your works? After all, if they're on their private property, using their privately-owned equipment, and not touching anything physical that belongs to you, how does it concern you? Copyright is a government-created monopoly that allows you to legally control what other people do with their own property with something that's completely intangible. The argument for it basically seems to be "because that's the way it's been for the past several hundred years".

Now once you answer that question, answer the corollary:
Why is OK for you to demand that device makers incorporate mechanisms in their devices that prevent the legal owners of those devices from doing what they want with them, all so that you can attempt to have your copyright enforced by a third party's equipment rather than a court of law?

Re:Idiotic summary

[NeutronCowboy]

This depends on successful (as in, successfully targeted) creation to meet a market demand.

I see - you subscribe to the work for hire approach. Any reason you're completely discounting the approach taken by millions of freelancers of "I love doing this, I'll see if I can get paid for it"?

Because life is different. People and their immediate heirs are living decades longer than they used to.

I'm sorry, but that calls for the fucking moron of the year award. In the last twenty years, People have not started to live decades longer. Not to mention that extending copyright to protect heirs is the ultimate idiocy, because the government protected monopoly of copyright will at that point not get the original author to create more. The only thing it does is create trust fund babies and people clamoring for longer copyright terms.

Oh, well. Whatever.

[Turmoyl]

Who cares? There is plenty of content, including new material, from more user-friendly publishers out there. Let Penguin learn from what I hope is an expensive lesson.

Re:Oh, well. Whatever.

[bogaboga]

Let Penguin learn from what I hope is an expensive lesson.

Agreed. In fact I would rephrase this sentence to say:

Penguin will soon be drawing valuable insights from what I hope will eventually become a very expensive lesson.

Congratulations on the FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Proof of the fact that people think that the Penguin group isn't really worried about security? A rant by Richard Stallman (there's no discounting the man is a genius, but he has never been able to grasp the idea that the real world marketplace works differently than the artificially supported one that runs acadamia).

Proof that DRM is about business models, not content? I link to an opinion piece the Inquirer.

I'm sorry, but making incendiary claims backed by flimsy logic is what we complain about from the MPAA/RIAA. WE SHOULDN'T DO THE SAME THING! There may well be legitimate security concerns with the kindle format right now, or the way that Overdrive handles that format, or...

While I don't think "security" should give companies a free pass to do whatever they want, we should probably give them enough rope to hang themselves before we string them up. If we don't, we can look forward to a lot more Sony-level breaches.

Re:Congratulations on the FUD

[betterunixthanunix]

the real world marketplace works differently than the artificially supported one that runs acadamia

Ironically, music, movie, software, and book distribution are all artificially supported markets, propped up by increasingly draconian copyright laws, and academia is becoming more and more profit-oriented.

Re:Congratulations on the FUD

[Oligonicella]

"Ironically, music, movie, software, and book distribution are all artificially supported markets..."

This is simply not true. There's not a goddamn thing to prevent you or me from distributing all of the above without a single major player.

DRM = bad

[slazzy]

This is why I refuse to ever buy ANYTHING with drm, music, software or ebooks.

Re:DRM = bad

[Forbman]

I'm not that far. I'm perfectly happy buying electronic versions of books from Pragmatic Programmers - they come watermarked with my info. At this point, it does feel like mine, and there is no value-add for me to share it randomly, nor to look into ways to strip that watermark that consists of "from the library of..." on each page. I can run it through a PDF-to-Kindle app, if I really want it on my Kindle.

But, the key concept from PragProg is that it feels like mine. There's no other DRM in their eBooks that prevents me from copying the PDF to all my computers (work, laptop, desktop), or, more onerously, to only the One Device that has been blessed by the Publisher as being worthy of me using it on (like plugging your iWhatever into another computer, and it wants to wipe out any content files you may have already installed?), and that I should suffer blindness (e.g., deleting files) if I worship at another altar...

Re:DRM = bad

[rapidreload]

If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck fixing my fucking printer issues and sound cutting out in Linux, compared to the glorious "it works flawlessly" experience with Windows 7. If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck playing crap little "old-school" styled indie games instead of something immersive and deep like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which is only available on Steam, which of course uses DRM).

Perhaps less troll-like, if I followed that philosophy I'd miss out on a great number of wonderful things and my computing life would be less fun and somewhat more stressful (or put another way, the things I'd miss out on would reduce the pleasure I get from computers). Sometimes we have to compromise to get what we want.

Re:DRM = bad

[grantek]

If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck playing crap little "old-school" styled indie games instead of something immersive and deep like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which is only available on Steam, which of course uses DRM).

Something tells me you went for the upgraded neurochip in the game :P

Re:DRM = bad

[rapidreload]

Well... OK you got me. I actually did. :)

I actually had a feeling it was going to be a bad decision later, but I don't like having items on my goals screen that aren't cleared, so I figured what the heck.

Anyways, my rant was a bit harsh in retrospect. I don't like DRM, and wish Steam didn't use it, however I don't expect the gaming world to change any time soon and it's really, really hard to go back to indie titles after playing top-tier games all my life. I dunno.

Penguin Yanking Kindle Books From Libraries

[majesticmerc]

The dastard! He plans to bring illiteracy to Gotham!

When was DRM not about business models?

[hawguy]

When was DRM not about protecting business models? The book and movie industries apparently think they are different from the music industry who has (mostly) learned that if they sell content in a form people want and at a reasonable price, people will buy it. Charge too much or make it too hard to get and people will find other ways to get it. I bought a lot of CD's through the original mp3.com, then after the music industry shut it down, I stopped buying music and have never bought a single DRM protected song... but have picked up a few mp3 albums after non-DRM music started becoming available. But sadly, it's still often cheaper to buy a used (or sometimes new) physical CD and rip it myself than to purchase an electronic album.

Re:When was DRM not about business models?

[reub2000]

Makes sense. I used to buy all of my music from emusic until Amazon started selling MP3s. While I was getting my music fix from emusic the big guys where losing out on selling me music. I don't think most people want to deal with the hassle of DRM, and in most cases it does make things more complicated for the user.

Um...

[jeremiahstanley]

Was DRM ever about protecting content and not business models? The whole point of copyright in general is to create artificial monopoly...

Is it just me...

[rsilvergun]

or does anyone else find it frustrating that /.ers are in favor of unlimited property rights except when they go digital? Seriously. If you just suggest that maybe, just maybe, that we as a society shouldn't allow Apple Computer to sit on 85 billion dollars then you're drowned out in a chorus of "It's THEIR money, let them spend it however they want!". But make it digital, and you've got the same people decrying the evil of buying the White Album for the 15th time.

I guess what I'm ticked off about is, I'm watching our civilization regress to pre-Renaissance levels of wealth inequality and all anybody cares about is the Beatles...

Re:Is it just me...

[mdmkolbe]

And I'm sure those /.ers are just as frustrated when you act as if information is a form of property subject to the same rules as physical goods.

Re:Is it just me...

[proxima]

does anyone else find it frustrating that /.ers are in favor of unlimited property rights except when they go digital

First of all, slashdot is not a monolith. Different people will pipe up in different conversations to say their bit.

Second, there is a fundamental difference between physical property rights and intellectual property rights. The former is inherently scarce (e.g. if you force Apple to do X with its money, it can't do Y with the same money, in general). The latter is not (e.g. my copy of an ebook did not prohibit anyone else from having a copy of an ebook).

This is why some people (I'm not necessarily among them) object to using the word "stealing" to refer to copyright infringement. A copyright holder doesn't "lose" money when someone downloads content illegally, but they do, potentially, lose a sale. For some industries this distinction is important (various professional-level software packages don't bother pursuing pirates, because they know that it will increase its market share to sell to their real customers, the businesses which will pay hundreds for a software package).

Keep in mind that the purpose of intellectual property laws (patents and copyrights) is to encourage innovation. A temporary monopoly gives people a (greater) incentive to create original works, knowing that they can try to extract value from their creations. This inherently limits the rights of others, who would otherwise be able to use and build upon works in the public domain.

The trouble is that this model has been breaking down on a few levels from its original intent. The first is that copyright extensions have kept works from entering the public domain for quite some time. The second is that patents on some inventions, especially software, are/were often granted with too little deference (one can argue) to prior art and "obviousness". Instead of encouraging innovation by small players, big companies amass patents in a kind of cold war against other big companies, and keep small businesses from being able to enter (because in many industries it's basically impossible not to be sued for patent infringement for something). You see entire company purchases made just for the building up of patent portfolios (arguably a large part of Google acquiring Motorola, for example). This isn't innovation, it's a new cost to doing business in these industries.

Do I subscribe to all of the above? No. But it's not inconsistent to strongly believe in physical property rights but think that intellectual property rights have gone too far.

Finally, it's fine to argue that wealth inequality is not an ideal outcome. To describe it as "pre Renaissance" is to imply heading into the dark ages. Within the western world, even fairly poor people live much better than the richest of that era, by most reasonable measures. To say that "all anybody cares about is the Beatles" when the news is plastered with the Occupy Wall Street protests rings pretty hollow to my ears.

Re:Is it just me...

[LordLucless]

or does anyone else find it frustrating that /.ers are in favor of unlimited property rights except when they go digital? Seriously. If you just suggest that maybe, just maybe, that we as a society shouldn't allow Apple Computer to sit on 85 billion dollars then you're drowned out in a chorus of "It's THEIR money, let them spend it however they want!". But make it digital, and you've got the same people decrying the evil of buying the White Album for the 15th time.

No, those two views are perfectly harmonious.
"It's THEIR money (they earnt it), let them spend it however they want" = "It's MY content (I bought it), let me use it however I want"

Re:Is it just me...

[qualityassurancedept]

Well, 85 billion dollars really isn't that much money in the grand scheme of things and it took probably tens of thousands of hours of work by some of the best educated people on earth to accumulate it, but I digress... you don't buy music or books anymore but rather you lease the content for private use, basically. Its like saying "I rented this apartment and now I am moving it to another city" and then hiring a truck to come and actually haul away the physical structure that the apartment you rented is in. You don't own the physical structure. You don't own the content. You paid a fee to enjoy it.

Re:Is it just me...

[LordLucless]

you don't buy music or books anymore

And yet, bookstores, music stores, and video stores all offer to sell me these products, not rent them to me (unless they're also in the actual rental business, of course).

rather you lease the content for private use

Oh, right. You mind showing me the lease I signed when I bought my last album? I guess I didn't buy that chocolate bar yesterday either, just "paid a fee to enjoy it". Should I expect cadbury to add a EULA to their bars, stating that, as I am only licensed to use it for immediate, personal consumption, I shouldn't bake with it under penalty of law?

Re:Is it just me...

[qualityassurancedept]

You don't own Lady Gaga's music just because you bought a CD that allows you to listen to it, so you can't transfer that property to another and you don't have a right to manipulate it however you want. That seems pretty obvious to me. I don't own Star Wars just because I bought a DVD with Star Wars on it. The purchase of the DVD only means that I own the right to watch Star Wars by means of the DVD on the intended playback device. You can't just go photocopy a Harry Potter book and give it to a friend either, incidentally. The only reason the photocopier example doesn't come up very often (and almost everyone accepts the legitimacy of that restriction) is that the format isn't very appealing: who wants a photocopy of a book? "Hey I just bought a Star Wars DVD, get George Lucas on the phone because I would like to set up a deal whereby he pays me royalties for my ownership stake in the Star Wars franchise!" You don't own any of it.

Re:Is it just me...

[LordLucless]

You don't own Lady Gaga's music just because you bought a CD that allows you to listen to it, so you can't transfer that property to another and you don't have a right to manipulate it however you want

Really? What law restricts me from selling my CDs now?

The purchase of the DVD only means that I own the right to watch Star Wars by means of the DVD on the intended playback device

Oh, so now the vendor of the DVD can limit to playing it on a device of their choice? By what law again?

You can't just go photocopy a Harry Potter book and give it to a friend either, incidentally

No, and the reason for that isn't some "rental" or "lease" agreement I implicitly signed when I bought (note the verb there - "bought") the content. It's due to a law of the land adding limits to what I may do with my possession in this specific case (that is, do not redistribute). The law adds a number of restrictions to what you may do with your possessions - you may not stab people with knives, for instance. This doesn't mean you don't own knives, or that the knife manufacturer somehow grants you a vegetable-chopping licence, and it doesn't mean that I don't own my content either.

"Hey I just bought a Star Wars DVD, get George Lucas on the phone because I would like to set up a deal whereby he pays me royalties for my ownership stake in the Star Wars franchise!" You don't own any of it.

Some strawmen just aren't even worth the trouble of lighting on fire.

Re:"Content" is a business model.

[brit74]

> The content gives you something to sell, exactly what you do with it is the business model.

Except for the fact that the pay-for-content copyright-based business model is often the best business model when measured in revenue (especially for high-development-cost content). Sure, you can give your content away for free and attach ads, but then you're often making pennies on the dollar. That's why ad-based content has the cheapest development costs - because the profits can't support expensive development costs. (Interesting aside: the original Battlestar Galactica TV show was cancelled despite being very popular because the profits couldn't cover the expensive costs of creating the show. Star Wars succeeded because they were charging money for tickets.)

In that context "protecting the business model" really means "protecting a good business model".

Editor shouldn't let commercial press releases...

[Burz]

...set the tone and scope of a posting when the subject is laden with conflict of interest. In this case it's DRM.

IMO Penguin's smokescreen deserved that backhanded comment and I do not consider it out of place on Slashdot.

What's the difference?

[rsilvergun]

If you can sell it, it's property. You can sell copyright, so it's property. You own what you can sell. You can disagree over whether it's a valid property right, whether it's good for society. But if you can sell it, it's a property right.

Re:What's the difference?

[TwilightXaos]

If you can sell it, it's property.

That is an interesting conclusion. How did you arrive at it?

Re:What's the difference?

[rsilvergun]

I guess it just goes back to the old phrase, 'if it quacks like a duck'. I've become very practical minded these last few years. Ideals piss me off. People ignore the way things really happen when they don't mesh with their ideals. However else we want the world to be, copyrights are just as much a salable asset as land. Hell, if Apple computer was sold today, wouldn't their copyrights be a big part of their value.

Basically I'm a socialist. I got this way because I saw how much power large corporations wield, and I realized the only thing that had any hope of standing up to an international corporation was a strong centralized government. This is where my hatred of ideals comes into play. People are terrified of strong central governments. Their ideals tell them that strong central gov'ts are bad. But from a practical stand point, what the hell difference does it make if I'm being oppressed by my gov't or if I'm being oppressed by a corporation. Do you think the union reps murdered by Coke somehow care that they were killed out of profit motive instead of broad political ideals? And honestly, if you strip away the rhetoric ever single dictatorship that's ever been has always been about money. Ghaddafi wasn't ousted because he was brutal (he was, but that's a coincidence). He was ousted because he kept too much of the oil profits for himself. Slavery in Southern America? It had nothing to do with that State's rights clap trap, and everything to do with wealthy slave owners with a lot of money invested in slaves and a desire to use the slaves as a social buffer to keep poor white people in their place. I guess the point is, at least with the gov't I've got a fighting chance.

Re:What's the difference?

[mdmkolbe]

Things that you can buy/sell but that most people wouldn't call property:

• Education
• Legal advice
• Delivery of a letter or package
• Medical treatment
• Advertising
• A hair cut
• Maid services
• Someone choosing to settle out of court instead of suing you
• A judge's favor (i.e. bribery)
• etc.

Re:What's the difference?

[kramerd]

Try calling them assets instead of property. This should clear up your confusion.

Re:What's the difference?

[stdarg]

I guess it just goes back to the old phrase, 'if it quacks like a duck'. I've become very practical minded these last few years.

I don't think it's practical to look at one characteristic and ignore all the others. The real phrase is "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."

But from a practical stand point, what the hell difference does it make if I'm being oppressed by my gov't or if I'm being oppressed by a corporation.

From that stand point, why are you against corporations? Like you said it makes no difference which one is oppressing you.

I'll tell you one thing. It's a lot easier to boycott Coke than it is to boycott the federal government. From a practical stand point your position makes absolutely no sense. It would be much smarter to keep your potential enemies smaller and weaker (many small corporations) rather than centralized and all powerful. No matter what evil corporation you look at, it pales in power and size to the government.

Re:What's the difference?

[phorm]

A.K.A services, where you pay to have something done (or sometimes not done). You may sometimes get to keep the result of a service, but it's fairly obvious the GP was talking about tangible goods.

Re:What's the difference?

[mdmkolbe]

it's fairly obvious the GP was talking about tangible goods.

"Intellectual property" isn't a tangible good. The GGP talks about "intellectual property" being like any other property.

Re:What's the difference?

[rsilvergun]

It's harder to boycott than you think. If it gets bad enough Coke just changes their name. Yeah, Coke isn't going to do that, but their marketing makes sure it never gets that bad. Look at Union Carbide & the Bhupal disaster. All they had to do was dissolve the corporation in a buyout and there were no real consequences.

You can't keep you enemies smaller & weaker. That's not how it works. Power naturally tends to gather into the hands of a few lucky individuals. And you're wrong about corporate power. Look at the bank buyouts. 90% of the electorate was against them, but they went through anyway. Corporations are already more powerful than the gov't. Look at AT&T. We broke them up, and 20 years of mergers later they're bigger and more powerful than before. That's how it works. What state gov't can possible stand against AT&T, or Goldman Sachs? You're being divided and conquered. You're losing, whether you like it or not...

Re:What's the difference?

[rsilvergun]

You're right, I did leave out one distinction: you have to be able to TRANSFER ownership. Then it's property. You can't transfer ownership of a service, because it's a skill.

Wrong

[Burz]

they have decided to embrace a particular business model: not doing it for free.

You are soft-pedaling a profit motive that prefers to monopolize markets. We have seen for-profit publishers associations attack people who create and use public domain, GPL and creative commons works - even attacking the very idea of the public domain in legislation and insisting that the tech sector is “mobilizing to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’”.

Bodies like MPAA, RIAA, Sound Exchange, ASCAP, GEMA have taken an increasingly hostile stance toward any author who is not under contract with established publishing corps even when the content is being offered for free. People who publish under CC and public domain are being DOS'ed with undeserved DMCA and 'three strikes' notices.

It is your mamby-pamby presentation of for-profit publishing that is idiotic.

Copyright Infringement =/= Stealing

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what the RIAA got for Christmas? ....... my bicycle!

Re:Copyright Infringement =/= Stealing

[Mathinker]

My condolences, Joel, but maybe you should get yourself a real trial lawyer?

Don't sweat it, I hear that personal bankruptcy (especially at your age) isn't as bad as one might think....

Re:Copyright Infringement =/= Stealing

[91degrees]

My condolences, Joel, but maybe you should get yourself a real trial lawyer?

Why? If the RIAA prosecuted a copyright infringer for "theft", they'd lose. The case would be thrown out and the lawyers would be sanctioned for wasting the court's time.

If they prosecuted for copyright infringement, they'd have a much higher chance of success.

which titles?

[apcullen]

I guess the impact of this hinges on which titles are referred to by penguin books' "latest titles". I always thought of penguin as a reprinter of Dickens and the like. Are there any new and relevant authors with Penguin now?

Re:which titles?

[stanlyb]

Actually yes, i am big fan of sci-fiction, and it hearts me to just look at all these amazing titles that i want to buy, only if they are under $10. E-book only. Last time i relocated, i had to leave 2 box of books (50-100 books), which is the reason why i only buy e-books. Anyway, shame on you Penguin, shame.

Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The summary declares, without any evidence whatsoever, that Penguin's motives are not what they say, and furthermore that this is "One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content." If the examples are evidentially supported to the same degree as this one, then exactly how sure can we be about the trend? How much evidence do we have, in total, towards the hypothesis that companies do not use DRM to protect their content?

I'm not trying to take the companies' side here. It just frightens me that the standard of evidence required to become slashdot fact is so very low. Once you believe something to be fact, it will influence your beliefs, and what you believe to be fact in the future. If one starts accepting facts with such a low standard of evidence, the bullshit can snowball until the most tenuous of hypotheses can seem so sure that one will defend it against anything but the most blatant of contradictions. I've seen it many times, and I've had it happen to me before.

Here's another topic to think about. Everyone knows that the government is simply eating out of Big Corporation's wallet, right? How do they know this? Think back to all the times you think you've seen examples of this, and really consider the following questions: "Is this the only explanation that this at all likely? Can you find some kind of contradiction in the version of events that they offer? Did you even listen to their version of the events?". While seemingly disproportionate mistrust of government is vital to democracy, it doesn't hurt to fact check once and a while!

Thank you for reading. I hope you take some of this on board.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

These kind of bullshit arguments like yours could only work for 1st grade kids, not for slashdoters, so please go to your local bar and try to read some classic books about dialogue, argument, and who Aristotel is. Please.

I don't know... It would seem like a little bit of a step down from the pure mathematics and philosophy that I do every day.

Your argument boils down to a burden of proof issue. You claim that the burden is on me to disprove Big Corporation's influence on government. Why? Explain to me exactly why this is the case. Bear in mind that, while I accept that most people believe it to be so, I am calling into question the inference "Everyone believes X, therefore X is probably true", so the fact that people widely believe it to be true is not really evidence in this argument. Is there some other reason why I should provide proof that such a connection does not exist, rather than wait for your proof on the issue?

While you think of a response (I'm sure you can; you did pass the 1st grade, right?), allow me to point out that it is a staple of empirical reasoning to assumes your null hypothesis that connections do not exist, and require proof to say anything different. In first year statistics, they teach you how to formulate null and alternative hypotheses, and the difference between them. The null hypothesis is something we assume to be true by default, until evidence is presented against it (specifically, for an alternative hypothesis). Anyone who wants the scientific community to believe their alternative hypothesis must provide evidence against the null. Now, the null hypothesis is always in favour of randomness, against connections or structure, probably because out of the phenomena in the world, we have found many more that appear not to be connected than we have found phenomena that are. For example, if I wanted to establish a connection between taking vitamin C and being struck by lightning, the null hypothesis in this case would be that there is no connection. It would be absurd to believe these things have some kind of correlation without some kind of evidence.

Allow me to explain something about Aristolean logic. One of its features is that, once abstracted symbolically, the specific names or objects used in your argument don't mean anything other than their placeholder symbol. For example, I can make the logically valid modus ponens argument:

"If it's raining, I will get wet
It's raining
Therefore, I will get wet"

This abstracts to P ---> Q, P, Therefore Q. Being valid is not a property of the rain or the wetness, but of the symbolic expressions that argument abstracts to. Any other argument that abstracts to the same thing will also be valid. This, of course, doesn't just apply to modus ponens, but to any valid argument. If you wish to invoke specific properties about whatever it is you're dealing with, you must add extra premises. For example, if I said:

"It's raining
Therefore, I will get wet"

then it is not technically valid, and requires the extra premise, which is a property of raining and wetness, that "If it's raining, I will get wet".

Consider now your example. You believe that, for whatever reason, Big Corp corrupts government is the null hypothesis. Since you seem to have no evidence for this, i.e. no added hypotheses, to distinguish government or Big Corp from other objects, it would seem you would have to also logically accept any statement "P corrupts Q" as a null hypothesis. Do you have any evidence contradicting the hypothesis that "Free political speech corrupts the heavy metal layers in the ionosphere?" I thought not.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Have you been living under a rock? Or are you seeking a reputation as an astroturfer?

Corruption by moneyed interests is a recurring theme here on Slashdot and many other sites, and much of that posting references hard news. Then again Slashdot is hardly the epicenter of concern for corruption on the web. So I suggest you try your strangely abstract (to put it kindly) arguments on a site like propublica.org or groklaw.net instead (and see how long your arguments last).

Thank you for demonstrating my point so nicely. Whenever I ask this same question (and I have done so many times), I inevitably get this kind of response*, pointing out that it's obvious, that it's widely believed by many people. Note that this does not even address the question! It does not at all contradict my position, since my contention is that such a low standard of evidence can make patently absurd hypotheses both seem obvious and widespread. Therefore, citing that it's obvious and the opinion is widespread does not, at all, provide evidence for it.

Also, since I want to foster a habit of directly answering any question that has any expectation of being answered, allow me to categorically respond to your first two questions. I have not been living under a rock. I have seen many of the news stories, and corresponding speculation, that both fuel, and are fuelled by, these stories. Very, very few seem to be strong evidence towards the hypothesis, where the official explanation seems significantly less plausible than the hypothesis that they're lying to cover corruption. A vast majority, on the other hand, tend to be mostly speculation, where the official explanation makes sense, and the speculation only seems more plausible if you take the corruption to be a foregone conclusion.

I'm also not an astroturfer, nor do I have any ambition to become one. I do wish, however, to promote logic and reason, even when (or especially when) the logical conclusion is highly contentious and held in low regard. For example, because I'm questioning the evidential basis belief in the hypothesis, you're now hoping that embarrassment over being duped by Big Corp/government could be used to convince me, in lieu of actual evidence.

Oh, and my day is going delightfully. How's yours?

* The only response I have ever received that addressed the question at hand, was someone who promised me that they had seen concrete evidence towards the hypothesis that Big Corp is corrupting government, but lamented that he could not find it at the time.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

Still missing the point? Or pretend to? My college education was in math, my university was in math too, and computer science is just a coincedence, as it is for the most slashdoters. We are used to logic, but we are also used to the practical one, not the abstract one, at the end of the day, we all make programs that actually works. With this said, you are forgetting (conveniently) some base facts:
1.Government is paid by our taxes.
2.The taxes are paid by us, you, me, regular Jo, commala, you name it.
3.Who do you think has the responsibility to prove anything at all? ME, that is paying their salary, or THEY, that are paid by ME?
Since the very beginning of our civilazation, there is not even one single case of responsible government, not even one, i repeat, not even one. In any math book, this fact proves that there is not even one responsible government. Simple enough, ain't?
....
Just for the sake of the argument, even if all this argument was some abstract argument, regarding the classics like Socrat, to name the most famous of them, the burden of proving anything is also abstract, and it is my duty to put this burden on you, to force you to argue, even to follow your argument and twist it until even you start to argue with me, and thus argue with yourself, and then i would have one another battle won. Which is exactly what you are actually trying to do, but again, not here, not on this forum, not with the highly educated professional that happen to read and post on this forum. Go to your local elementary school and continue to train your logic and argument (and don't come back).

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Still missing the point?

I guess so. I admit I took a stab in the dark, since your first comment didn't make much sense

My college education was in math, my university was in math too, and computer science is just a coincedence, as it is for the most slashdoters.

Oh right, I get it. When you assumed I didn't have the experience of first grade logic, you knew you were probably wrong, and were just being a wanker.

With this said, you are forgetting (conveniently) some base facts:
1.Government is paid by our taxes.
2.The taxes are paid by us, you, me, regular Jo, commala, you name it.
3.Who do you think has the responsibility to prove anything at all? ME, that is paying their salary, or THEY, that are paid by ME?

I accept both 1 and 2, and 3 is not a statement. In fact, I can make hide nor hair of 3. I don't understand at all how employment structure has any bearing on burden of proof. In fact, it would make about as much sense to say "I pay scientists with my taxes indirectly through government grants, therefore they need to prove to me that God does not exist, not the other way around!". I don't see, at all, how the conclusion follows from the premises. And, judging by your unwillingness to actually make a clear point, and instead bury it rhetorical questions, neither do you.

Since the very beginning of our civilazation, there is not even one single case of responsible government, not even one, i repeat, not even one. In any math book, this fact proves that there is not even one responsible government.

Uh, no, a mathematics text book would only consider a deductively valid argument from a set of axioms a proof. A statistics book might be more favourable, as they work heavily with inductive reasoning (which is what the "Every example of X I have seen has had property Y, therefore all X has property Y" reasoning is called), but even then they would put some caveats on it (for example, if you only saw one such government that was irresponsible, and no others, then the stats book would not look favourably upon the inference).

That aside, the more troubling hole in your argument is the lack of evidence towards your assertion that there has not been even a single case of responsible government. In fact, what do you mean, exactly, by an "responsible" government? Can you comprehensively list the governments you've seen, as well as evidence for each that they have not been "responsible"? If not, then citing that doesn't really help your argument in the slightest.

Just for the sake of the argument, even if all this argument was some abstract argument, regarding the classics like Socrat, to name the most famous of them, the burden of proving anything is also abstract, and it is my duty to put this burden on you, to force you to argue, even to follow your argument and twist it until even you start to argue with me, and thus argue with yourself, and then i would have one another battle won.

Which is exactly what you are actually trying to do, but again, not here, not on this forum, not with the highly educated professional that happen to read and post on this forum.

Are you serious? Really? Are you even trying to make sense any more? You seem to be under the impression that putting together nonsensical sentence fragments is the key to winning an argument, but it just makes you look like an idiot and a troll. Judging by our respective mods, your highly educated peers agree with me.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

I have to admit, you are idiot. Sorry, but let me prove it:
Proving that you are idiot, and that there is not even one responsible government:
1. Lets take USA government: not responsible
2. Lets take Greece government: not responsible
3. Lets take any random government (your choice, idiot): NOT RESPONSIBLE
....
based on the famous math deduction: EVERY GOVERNMENT IS NOT RESPONSIBLE.
Now, little boy, go and kill your math teacher for giving you the false feeling that you actually NOW math.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

btw, idiot, go and tell your employer that you are going home, and that he does not have the right to tell you what you should do while you are working for him, and while you are being paid by him, you stupid idiot. Oh, and dont forget to post the answer of your employer....i mean your ex-employer, you moron.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

btw, you must have been a politician, you wrote so many words, and yet you said nothing. ZERO.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

Oh, one more thing idiot, you cry river for not giving you and example and definition and prove (like what? idiots like you?) that government A is irresponsible, but you, idiot, did you bother to ACTUALLY give any prove for the opposite? Sorry? What did you say idiot? NO? You don't wanna to???? It is your right to not incriminate yourself??? Moron.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[Burz]

Have you been living under a rock? Or are you seeking a reputation as an astroturfer?

        Corruption by moneyed interests is a recurring theme here on Slashdot and many other sites, and much of that posting references hard news. Then again Slashdot is hardly the epicenter of concern for corruption on the web. So I suggest you try your strangely abstract (to put it kindly) arguments on a site like propublica.org or groklaw.net instead (and see how long your arguments last).

Thank you for demonstrating my point so nicely. Whenever I ask this same question (and I have done so many times), I inevitably get this kind of response*, pointing out that it's obvious, that it's widely believed by many people. Note that this does not even address the question!

It addresses your question by pointing out how inane it is. Apart from the sites I kindly provided to you (which further addresses your question-in-a-vacuum) you could simply click on the 'corruption' tag here on Slashdot.

You're not interested in information. Your delicately-worded inquiry amounts to argument in bad faith.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I have to admit, you are idiot. Sorry, but let me prove it:
Proving that you are idiot, and that there is not even one responsible government:
1. Lets take USA government: not responsible
2. Lets take Greece government: not responsible
3. Lets take any random government (your choice, idiot): NOT RESPONSIBLE

*facepalm* Exactly where did you get your so called mathematics education?

Oh, one more thing idiot, you cry river for not giving you and example and definition and prove (like what? idiots like you?) that government A is irresponsible, but you, idiot, did you bother to ACTUALLY give any prove for the opposite? Sorry? What did you say idiot? NO? You don't wanna to???? It is your right to not incriminate yourself??? Moron.

Not that I actually expect you to understand this, since you seem to have missed my more obvious points, as well as the point of logic in general, but I was never actually claiming that governments were "responsible" (whatever that means) or that they were uncorrupted by other influences. It would be closer to correct to say that I was claiming that there wasn't sufficient evidence to do so, but that's still not quite correct. What I was really saying was that you should always be aware of how much evidence you have towards a hypothesis, and adjust your sureness accordingly to fit the evidence. Now, it may well be the case that every government is intrinsically "irresponsible"; I'm not contradicting you there. I'm merely asking for evidence.

Now, you have stated, repeatedly, that every government is irresponsible. You have given two examples, and failed to back up either one of them. Compare to the following argument:

"Every person is a donkey
1. I am a donkey
2. You are a donkey
3. Let's take any random person (your choice, idiot): they are a donkey
This proves mathematically that everyone is a donkey!"

Notice I have given absolutely no evidence that either you or I are donkeys (although, from talking to you, it's quite clear you're an ass). I have said, take any random person, and claim that they will be a donkey, but provided no evidence for that either. In fact, from walking around and talking to people, I'm fairly sure I've seen at least one which isn't a donkey, so the conclusion is false. So, it should be noted that arguments in the above form do not necessarily imply the truth of their conclusions, i.e. they are fallacies.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

Stupid idiot, you what, know only one story and you repeat it over and over and over? Keep trying growing your little......whatever it is.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

It addresses your question by pointing out how inane it is.

I'm not sure how asking for evidence is inane.

Apart from the sites I kindly provided to you (which further addresses your question-in-a-vacuum) you could simply click on the 'corruption' tag here on Slashdot.

If you think this addresses my point, then you clearly have not understood it. Perhaps if we work through an example. I looked at the list of stories tagged with "corruption", and took the first one on the list:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/19/2124236/france-to-tax-the-internet-to-pay-for-music

Surely if I looked around here, I could find some evidence to support the hypothesis of corruption, right? Well, no, I found an article without any comment on whether this is due to the corrupting influence of corporations on government. I also looked in the comments, but found nothing there either (from a quick skim read). Surely it must be a corrupting influence? Again, not necessarily. Protecting the music industry is consistent with looking out for the interests of the people, given how popular their product is, and how difficult it is to make demand match sales when anyone can pick it up for free. So, this story appears to be a bust. Let's try the next one on the list:

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/11/17/2228251/the-443-million-smallpox-vaccine-that-nobody-needs

This one's a lot meatier. It points out that Siga obtained a no-bid contract to supply the US with the smallpox treatment, and that Siga is a donor to the democrats. It doesn't actually accuse the party of corruption, probably because it realises the evidence is just not there, and probably in no small part because they know they can state the facts suggestively enough that people will make the logical leap for them. Again, the comments offer no help, and the official explanation makes sense enough. So, once again, despite the high standards of rigour required to tag a story with the word "corruption", the actual stories themselves seem not to contain any evidence towards any such corruption actually existing.

So, now that I've established the difficulty in finding evidence amongst slashdot, and that pointing me to general sites indeed does not address my point, perhaps there is a specific story which is different? Can you find one where the official explanation contains a contradiction, or where someone in the know admits to corruption existing?

You're not interested in information.

Well, yes and no. I actually am interested in any evidence I can accumulate of the government's alleged corruption, but information on that topic is not what I expect to gain from this conversation. What I hope to do instead is make people aware of the basis for their beliefs, not just on the topic of DRM or the government, but all topics. Government corruption sticks out in my mind because I have not seen a topic with such an apparent high ratio of certainty to evidence, but it is by no means the only topic where that ratio seems high. What I ask from you is to think critically about things which are common sense. Exactly what makes you think they are true? Is it just that everyone else thinks they're true, or is there something beyond that?

Your delicately-worded inquiry amounts to argument in bad faith.

Thank you. I do word my arguments delicately. I try to word them to obtain optimal clarity, so that my reasoning is readily apparent to everyone, while not oversimplifying it and introducing weaknesses. That's one of the reasons why they often turn out so strong. I'm not sure how you obtained the conclusion that they were in bad faith, but that, like all ad hominems, seems lik

Re:Where's the evidence?

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

You lost an argument. It happens to the best of us. Get over it.

Re:Where's the evidence?

[stanlyb]

LOL, boy, you need to go see some special doctor, really, you'll thank me later.

Summary misrepresents article

[Anonymous Coward]

The summary makes it sound like Penguin is going in and removing books that are already in libraries. According to the article they're just not releasing new books as e-books. I thought the article was going to be about how penguin is using DRM to do something really nefarious like take back books people have already purchased.

"Lending" ebooks makes no sense

[91degrees]

It's a digital file! You're not lending anything! You're making a copy. all the data is being copied. You're just arbitrarily blocking access to someone.

We complain about "intellectual property" being confused with "property" but this is doing exactly the same thing. It's completely arbitrary, and the suggestion you should be able to lend electronic data makes as much sense as eternal copyright.

We don't need the same rights but we do need new rights. Ones that aren't available with physical media.

Re:"Lending" ebooks makes no sense

[stdarg]

I don't know, by that argument electronic representations of money are also not property.

There's got to be some protection for intellectual property. On the other hand there needs to be balance -- it's legal for me to share my money for instance, or loan it to a friend. Electronic books shouldn't have more protection than money, that's for sure.

Re:Penguin Yanking?

[Issarlk]

In other news, Pakistan just added "Penguin Yanking" on it's list of banned words for SMS.

Re:Yeah

[Oligonicella]

Artificial scarcity is not the point, that's straw - ownership of distribution is. Artificial scarcity is simply what some people holler when they don't want to pay what the author/distributor wants for something.

Solution? *Very* simple. Don't like the price? Don't buy the item.

Copyright duration is the problem

[dmcq]

I have no particular problems with people protecting their investment however they wish and with DRM. My main concern is with the totally obnoxious and excessive duration of copyright and there should be provision for removing DRM when copyright ends. It should last no more than the 20 years of inventions which also are a big investment, often much larger, on the part of the people who make them. People are I think conflating the problems in their minds and it sours the whole business.

Re:Copyright duration is the problem

[alexo]

Come to Canada, we have the wonderful Bill C11 (soon to become law) that criminalizes tampering with DRM.

False advertising in the headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I haven't had my coffee yet, my groggy brain was, in all seriousness, expecting to see a photo (I'd accept even photoshopped) image of a penguin yanking books from library shelves to throw them on a fire.

I feel really disappointed. :(

Inside "joke"

[Mathinker]

Whooosh.

Re:Inside "joke"

[91degrees]

Unless the joke was that it's meant to be nonsensical, in which case "whoosh" indeed, my objection was that the joke made no sense. "I did not commit theft" would have been a perfectly valid legal defence had he been charged with theft.

Re:Inside "joke"

[Mathinker]

Ohhhh. You didn't notice that an AC had somewhat changed the topic in the middle of the thread?

"I did not commit theft" is a pretty nonsensical reply to "Guess what the RIAA got for Christmas? ....... my bicycle!"... my post, however, is a reasonable reply to that --- although, I admit, a rather weak attempt at humor.

A "Re: ...." post title does not really mean much, you really shouldn't read anything into it. All it means is it was a straight reply. Do you often have this problem with "sticky topicitis" on forums?

Re:Inside "joke"

[91degrees]

I humbly accept your "whoosh". Except I was completely oblivious even to the whooshing sound.

Did I hit a nerve?

[Mathinker]

> Oh, bullshit. No one "drives" those people to pilfer, they *want* to pilfer and find ways.

What "people"? I was addressing a specific person in that post, and explicitly stated how he was an example of my thesis. I was not aspiring to try to explain all the possible reasons why people would want to disregard copyright law --- just him. His reason, in the scenario I gave, had nothing to do with "pilfering" (at least as I would understand your use of that term).

You, on the other hand, claim to understand why everyone "pilfers" --- whatever that exactly means in your eyes. How interesting. Have you always had this super-power?

Do you always think that disregard for copyright law is automatically associated with "pilfering"? It seems it isn't necessarily, or at least with large-scale "pilfering" (the linked study shows that many Americans think it is OK to share copyrighted works on a small scale with family or friends, but many less engage in larger-scale infringement).

> People rip off content because they want to rip off content.

Pray tell, what would you call the kind of disregard of copyright law I actually proposed in my post? Is that also "pilfering" or "ripping off"?

And as for your opinion about the content cartels having totally lost their marketing power versus small independents --- I rather think you're being naive.