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Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine
langelgjm writes "In a closely-watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court today vindicated the first-sale doctrine, declaring that it "applies to copies of a copyrighted work lawfully made abroad." The case involved a Thai graduate student in the U.S. who sold cheap foreign versions of textbooks on eBay without the publisher's permission. The 6-3 decision has important implications for goods sold online and in discount stores. Justice Stephen Breyer said in his opinion (PDF) that the publisher lost any ability to control what happens to its books after their first sale abroad."
will not stop the publishers from making DMCA requests / filling strikes that can cost you $35 a pop.
Like, seriously? The supreme court saw reason and is judged in favor of the consumer?! Will wonders ever cease!
No better time to start making money.
I think I speak for every politician and lobbyist when I ask "Who the hell are these nine impostors, and what have they done with the real Supreme Court justices?"
Quoting the judge: 'the publisher lost any ability to control what happens to its books after their first sale abroad'
I'd like to see this concept applied to anything that is purchased outright. If the publisher lost the ability to control what happens to the book then shouldn't Microsoft lose the ability to control what happens to an XBox after first sale? Modifying the hardware of something that you own should NOT be against the law.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
I wouldn't be surprised to see a bigger push towards e-books. That is a way around the "problem" for the publishers.
GENERATION 27: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Doesn't this apply to the first sale of any media abroad?
Now lots of online businesses peddling second hand goods will spring up in no time.
What about pdf books and eBooks? Can they be traded online or offered free by the legitimate purchaser?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
you can already resell your Oxycontin scripts on the street. i know of people who may or may not make $1000 a month doing so.
but copyright is the least of your problems
Seriously? Reselling a physical product you bought legally needed the highest court in the land to adjudicate?
I'm not surprised to see Justices "Whatever helps big corporations the most is best for the country" Kennedy, and "Whatever the republican party says today is the founder's original intent" Scalia writing a dissent, though. I don't know what could have made Ginsberg side with them though.
This may be one of the most important decisions this court has gotten right in years. This was absolutely huge because of the implications of what would have happened if it had gone the other way. This is critical in terms of the idea of actually owning what you buy, without this manufactures could simply make things out of country and avoid first sale rights. This could have affected pretty much every aspect of Americans daily life and is a good first step in restoring Intellectual Property sanity.
It's funny how property rights have historically been a right wring agenda item until they are shown to be just as important to the left as well...
Of course, now they'll start publishing region-specific versions of the texts so the Asian version will have the wrong problem set for North American coursework and prices will increase.
What happens if a country has no copyright law so all copies are legal? Can we then get all of our softwares/books/music/movie for next-to-nothing legally?
If they wrote it....they'll want the latest edition.
--- Mercutio was right.
There will be a huge push now for electronic books under the guise of "convenience" but what it really comes down to is that they will want to "license" the book rather than sell it. At the same time, the electronic versions will simply continue to make the publishers less and less relevant especially for new titles.
Don't you have to show ID when picking them up?
If it's prescribed for Joe Bob then the pharmacist will want to see the ID of Joe Bob.
It's so clear cut how do 3 judges find the other way?
Surely they don't also think that if I buy a pair of shoes at Target I'm not allowed to turn around and sell them to someone else? But they think if I buy a book at Target I shouldn't be allowed to sell it to someone else? Or it's just that if that Target store happens to be across the border in Canada that changes everything and in that case no I can't resell the shoes?
may be found at this link. Surprisingly, Scalia was the only justice from the conservative wing to dissent.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Where do you think the current books on the shelves are printed?
It is great that this happened, but seriously, it is bad that 3 of our supreme court judges disagreed. I know I read the decisions for the exact reasons why, but I'm afraid of lawyer-speak infecting my brain and giving me an aneurysm.
6-3? What did the 3 think? This is mind boggling. And kind of frightening.
Is there any way we can say the same about cell phones? Even if they were bought under contract? As long as I am still using their service I should be able to unlock the phone!!
The majority opinion was written by Justice Stephen Breyer and he was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas. The majority opinion was that you loose control when you sell something. Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Samuel Alito said that congress was free to change the law if they wanted, but sided with the majority. The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She was joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and Antonin Scalia.
So it's come to this. Time for publishers to get the region-locked books out there as soon as possible! Then, as everyone knows, it becomes a DMCA issue, and that's one they'll NEVER get rid of! It has the word "millennium" right there in it! That means it's futuristic*!
*: For definitions of "futuristic" locked in a period of time when marketeers thought the word "millennium" was futuristic.
i don't know exactly how its done, but there are scam doctors who will write lots of scripts for it
and its pretty easy to fake a NY State driver's license or state ID card
Many here do not understand event the definition of capitalism:
private ownership and operation of property
that's all it is.
Denying people's right to private ownership and operation of property is denying capitalism. It's a good thing that this judge went in the right direction, but what is troubling is that this was ever even a question: can people own property?
Can people own and operate private property? Can you sell your own stuff that you made or bought? Isn't that a strange thing to ask in a society that is supposedly capitalist? But of-course it is not a strange thing to ask, because the society is no longer capitalist. Capitalism really exists as a concept in a free market economy, because capitalism in fact requires individual freedom. Denying freedom to the individuals will automatically deny capitalism and what do you have when you do not have capitalism because you do not have freedom?
Well, you may still end up with some people owning and operating private property but not all people being able to do it, because the governing principles changed to deny all people equal protection against government intervention by law.
It is when you do not have equal treatment of people in the context of their relationship with their government by law when you really no longer have free market but you also lose the principles of capitalism for most people.
Again: capitalism is ownership and operation of private property. This is a basic fundamental right, all other rights are only an extension of this one right. If you have no right to own and operate private property, you will not be able to have resources, you will not even be allowed to own and operate your own body. And that's true even today, look at this lack of capitalism, lack of free market and thus lack of freedom even to do what you want with your own body. All these government officials telling you what you must or are not allowed to do, eat, smoke, drink, ingest, who you can and cannot have sex with, etc.
Unfortunately it is now news when a judge actually protects individual freedoms in a rare case of outbreak of common sense or decency or something like that, it's no longer the rule, it's the exception.
You can't handle the truth.
The breakdown of votes is very different to what I'm used to seeing on Supreme Court cases – you've got Breyer, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan in the majority, and Scalia, Kennedy, and Ginsburg in dissent. That's really weird; usually you've got Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts on the conservative wing voting together, with Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor as the liberal bloc. Kennedy is a bit of a swing vote, though he's gone more with the conservatives recently, and Scalia used to occasionally vote with the liberals on civil liberties cases, but he doesn't any more and is now pretty much an elderly partisan crank. Roberts occasionally crosses the line (as with the decision upholding PPACA) but it's rather unusual to see so much intermixing between the liberal and conservative blocs.
Just goes to show that copyright as a political issue doesn't neatly break down along existing partisan lines.
when was the last time you actually showed an ID to pick up a prescription?
They'll just stop publishing in countries where the cost of parallel imports is more than the profit they make from those countries.
drugs are controlled by FDA / health care laws.
And obama care 2.0 may even put in to some price controls as well.
Prescription? I don't recall, but over the counter cold meds, every freaking time.
It's funny -- there are all kinds of incentives for big business to move jobs offshore, or import cheap labor, but when the general public makes use of the same process, they complain. And they got 3 judges on their side, including a "liberal" judge (Ginsburg) and a lieralish judge (Kenedy) and of course Scalia. Expect a legislative solution to be purchased soon so that this "egregious" decision can be fixed and we can go back to falling wages and increasing corporate profits.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I'm willing to bet that they sell the prescription after they fill it. Now its possible they have a doctor friend write them a half a dozen fake scripts with fake names and aliases, but that's a good way for a doctor to have their license revoked. The FDA requires doctors to have a certain level of safe guards in place to prescribe a serious quantity of prescription pain meds. Now I suppose they could be writing a bunch of small prescriptions for 10 or 15 pills here and there, but the FDA tracks all those prescriptions.
will not stop the publishers from making DMCA requests / filling strikes that can cost you $35 a pop.
DMCA request doesn't apply here at all, because no copies are being made. And anything else can now be classified as tortuous interference with a business, so that could get expensive.
Guise of convenience? I'm pretty sure they really are more convenient, my room is rather small and I do a lot of traveling, I can easily break the DRM on my books so that I have backups, but with paperbooks, I'd never be able to keep as many of them.
It's easy to say greedy publishers, and to an extent they are, but unless you're in the habit of buying used books or live in a huge house, you're going to have to get rid of them over time anyways, but with ebooks, you won't likely ever hit that point.
Err, electronic versions make them more relevant. Lazy college professors require you to purchase the online license from publishers like those in question(Wiley) because the website comes setup already with all the quizzes, homework, and tests preconfigured. This is basically standard in every university and community college I've researched in the past 6 years or so. It's too easy for the professor to pass up
if you have insurance what is the point of an ID when picking up your prescription?
Scalia, Kennedy and Ginsburg are over all much more authoritarian than the rest. Being authoritarian is in some ways at right angles to liberal vs. conservative. So they grant greater latitude for the Government to enforce rules.
Not quite. From what I've seen, at least in some online-only colleges, it's web software that displays textbook material in a non-portable form. You don't purchase, license, or have any rights to the content at all. You pay for the right to use the reader.
This is a very tough case.
Copyright Law exists in order to further the useful arts by balancing the needs of the producer and the needs of the public. Let's look beyond the cheap shots that have already begun to permetate this thread and discuss in those terms.
Basically, this ruling amounts to telling wiley and sons (the producers) that they cannot reliably price discriminate for foreign markets. you might say "so what? tough cookies." but let's think about that for a moment.
basically, wiley has two choices at what price to set the textbooks at in thailand -
Price A - low price that thais can afford.
Price B - USA price or near to it
with price A, they can engage in fair competition in the thai market and earn a fair profit. at this price, they dont have too much to fear from piracy.
with price B, they can expect to sell few copies as piracy will be rampant. as it is highly unlikely that this is at the profit maximizing price, their profits will be lower.
this ruling basically compels them to either sell in thailand (a presumably much smaller market than the usa) at a price closer to price B or to make economically useless changes to their textbooks to make them unsaleable in the USA, such as printing them only in the thai language. or, they can do even worse stuff like arguing for import tarriffs from thailand to the usa on books.
even worse, it prevents them from doing things like giving away their textbooks in africa at a loss.
and even then, if they have to price at price B in thailand, their unit cost goes up and presumably they might have to raise the prices of US textbooks. a lose-lose.
first sale doctrine is important, but i dont see why it must apply accross borders given that there are other legitimate considerations, including the need to educate globally.
i cant say that this is a bad ruling, as ive not read the rulings, but offhand this issue is far more complex and in need of serious thought than some are giving it credit for here.
This means this is overturned as well.
Big win for Costco and Costco members.
The real question is why the Asian market texts were in English. I used to teach in China and all the books they were using were in Chinese, except the numbers and units of measure which were mostly in Arabic numerals with normal SI units using the normal alphabet used in Europe.
I'm really surprised that they're printing enough international edition textbooks in English for this to be a real problem for them.
New York state now requires, as of about three weeks ago, that a valid photo id is shown when picking up some scripts.
John
Every time I pick up my daughters ADD meds.
If you read TFA, "the Court held that a copyright owner’s right to control importation under 602(a)(1) is a component of the distribution right set forthin 106(3) and is therefore subject to 109(a)’s codificationof the first sale doctrine". That's their reasoning. Simply put, if you believe that the copyright holder has the right to control distribution, than importing (new or used) denies that right. This is, in itself, a reasonable interpretation, which is why this is a supreme court case, at the balance between two rights. I think sanity prevailed, which is important.
This is already the case. During my grad studies, only 20% of foreign editions were identical. The rest had either wrong page numbers or different questions (sometimes very similar questions with just a different set of numbers).
Yes, but the point is that they will push the electronic versions for reasons different than the reasons their advertising states.
Don't you have to show ID when picking them up?
I drop off and pick up prescriptions for my wife and kids all the time. I don't recall ever being asked for an ID.
The DMCA also gives teeth to those who are accused if they are falsely accused.
As opposed to the current system where they push things for reasons that are completely above the board?
A minor quibble, but those controls are primarily DEA requirements, not the FDA. One of the other methods they use is to look at the percentage of DEA controlled medicines being prescribed versus that of the non-controlled medicines. Too bad if your practice is a statistical anomaly, you must watch what you prescribe so that you do not go over the quota.
Perhaps for text books but what about novels? What about travel guides? What about how-to guides? Once a writer achieves a following, they can self publish the electronic versions and use FaceBook and other social media outlets to attract an audience. The self published books can be pushed on Amazon quite easily. Publishers may be useful though for an unknown author who needs assistance in getting the attention they deserve. However, after that first book published by the publisher I suspect many authors will jump ship.
What does this mean (if anything) for region-locked movies - can I legally break the region lock (or buy a player that does it) so I can watch a movie I bought overseas?
Camera makers have dealt with this in the US by making grey market items ineligible for US-based service. Not a major factor with books, but certainly a factor with lots of other grey market items. Many companies use this as a way to enforce higher US prices, as they argue the US warranty justifies the higher US price.
Organization? You must be joking..
A cleaver media consultant will find a way to attach a clause to a treaty that will over ride this decision.
I hope this caused some synapses to fire.
Totally off topic, but you have to wonder. It's taking the DEA (not the FDA) years to prosecute doctors who are running obvious "pill mills". When you look at these docs, they're prescribing more than 2 standard deviation more narcotic scripts than the 'average' doc. Of course, there are occasionally some reasons for this - an oncologist or hospice doc for example, but too many of them are obviously fraudulent.
If they can't get the guy writing 500 scripts for 250 80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient) then the onsey-twoseys are going to get mostly overlooked.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Although I haven't seen it in recent years older international editions had different questions in the review sections.
The instructor would say: go to page X and answer questions 1-5. When you turned in your homework you would quickly find out that your answers would be totally incorrect since the questions were different.
I still have a few more semesters left, so I hope that the textbook manufacturers don't start utilizing that tactic again. At least not until next year. The difference in price is just ridiculous...sometimes well over $100 per text.
Your doctor gives you a prescription, you buy the drugs in a pharmacy, and then sell those pills in a bar. You've never been in a seedy bar, I see.
It isn't one system v.s. another. The current system is deceptive as well. The point still holds.
well plan B was the end of lot's US jobs as this could of driven all kinds of production out side of the usa.
If I'm interpreting the beginning of the dissent correctly (starting on page 42...) the excuse for dissenting is more or less "Congress is copyright-maximalist, so we should be, too." (They quote a portion of copyright law that apparently DOES seem to explicitly say that importation of foreign-made copies is a special case).
I'm not going to wade through the entire 74 pages of opinion right now, but at a glance this does sort of look like "judicial activism" - nice to see such a thing happening in a "pro-human" manner more than "pro-corporate" for once, but it suggests we really need to be hitting Congress a lot harder to try to get this mess corrected.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I'm a pharmacist in Virginia. It's the law to show an ID when picking up a schedule II script.
Guise of convenience? I'm pretty sure they really are more convenient...
Electronic copies can be more convenient. But currently, they are not. Why are they not more convenient? Well let me see if I can find a source... Oh yes here it is:
I can easily break the DRM on my books so that I have backups...
If you notice, this person here has to run cracking software just to get their files to play nicely and not destroy itself if this person tries to do the basic tasks of backup or use on an 'unauthorized device'.
You see, they can be more convenient, but they are not. The eBook market is a minefield of incompatibility and artificial restriction. It takes away huge capabilities present in real books, and offers it back in a crippled/reduced capacity and calls it a 'bonus feature'.
Want to give your book to a friend? Hand it to them. Done.
Want to give your eBook to a friend? Well, first lets understand what format of eBook you have, which vendor did you purchase it from. Depending on the vendor, and their software, you might be able to lend it, but only once, or not at all. I'm not sure. Oh wait, your friend is using this specific type of software right? Oh he isn't? Well, guess you can't lend it to him. So he wants to use the software, hope he agrees to all the terms and conditions associated with the use of such software.
Am I exaggerating? A little... No wait, I'm not exaggerating at all, it really is a mass of incompatible formats, competing ecosystems, overly-limited 'rights', and flawed laws which make even your simple 'remove the DRM' action illegal (depending on how cranky a prosecutor is on a given day)
eBooks SHOULD be more convenient, but right now they certainly are not.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
They generally make decisions that are pro-establishment. Part of that is because the establishment has better lawyers (business v. individual cases) or the non-establishment is unsympathetic (criminals) or the establishment has some influence on which cases come up (if it loses in the Circuit Court of Appeals, the SG's office decides whether to appeal based on whether or not they think the case is a good test case--so the first circuit case for whether it's okay to record police officers on Boston Common, for example, doesn't get appealed because it's not a good test case for the government) or the justices have experiences on the prosecutorial side of the system and so tend to favor it.
However, they're also nine people looking at the law and making decisions based on what seems to make sense to them, in situations where the law can be read to favor either side. Kind of like where all of the courts of appeals had said that committing a crime "with a firearm" included even having a firearm in your pocket at the time a crime was committed. The Supreme Court overturned every circuit because it was an idiotic reading of the law.
Here, the law is more ambiguous--the question turned on whether a duplication in a foreign country, where the U.S. Copyright Act did not apply, was a duplication "under" the U.S. Copyright Act. Because duplications under the act are susceptible to the first sale doctrine.
The Court held it was a duplication "Under" the act.
The way textbook sales are handled has to be some kind of extortion violation.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Guise of convenience? I'm pretty sure they really are more convenient, my room is rather small and I do a lot of traveling, I can easily break the DRM on my books so that I have backups, but with paperbooks, I'd never be able to keep as many of them.
It's easy to say greedy publishers, and to an extent they are, but unless you're in the habit of buying used books or live in a huge house, you're going to have to get rid of them over time anyways, but with ebooks, you won't likely ever hit that point.
With a licensed ebook you don't have the option of reselling it. When you're done with those paper books, you can resell them and recoup some of your cash. If it weren't for getting screwed on your resale rights, I'd be on board. If the ebooks were like 50% cheaper than print it might be worth giving up on the resale rights. Unfortunately the ebooks I've looked at were the same or more expensive than printed books.
A better "edge" example would be blood/conflict diamonds. Diamonds are legal, generally.
But the US does ban diamonds from certain countries, and requires certification from others:
http://www.policyalmanac.org/world/archive/conflict_diamonds.shtml
As the link points out, there are ways around these restrictions (altering the "country of last export" by moving them around before importing them to the US).
Blood/conflict diamonds are mined by people who are very oppressed. One could argue that many things from China are created by people who are very oppressed (low pay, terrible work conditions, high suicide rates, etc.).
BlameBillCosby.com
This is what the companies in question will say. That they will not make available cheaper versions of books available for developing countries. IMO if you don't make your books available at a decnt price in developing countries, alternatives will appear. I wonder what would happen if users start shopping at the Indian version of itunes where mp3's are sold at 1/5th the price of the american version. What will courts say then?
Or another way of phrasing the question, how can Supreme Court judges be such sociopaths (the dissenters), after all their education and a long and successful career and no longer needing to prove anything nor toe any party line?
You'd think they'd know what is right and what is wrong, and vote 9-0.
This till court decision "sale" meant "renting", or maybe "licensing", that you don't own what you think you are buying but you are given a very restricted set of permissions of whar you can do or not, even for "real life" objects. Publishers are getting hold on the abuses that they are able to do in the digital world and exporting them to the real one. If that trend continued, when you "buy", is not that you own something, but that you are the one that is owned.
I take it that you're serious. Where do you have to show ID for over the counter cold medications?
The only time that I can recall showing ID when picking up a prescription, was for some feminine stuff the wife needed. Can't remember what it was now, but it was a controlled substance, script was written for a female, and I'm obviously not female. Pharmacist asked for my ID, then when he walked behind his little hidey-wall, he called the wife to verify that I was her husband.
Once in my life, did I have to show ID.
"Over the counter" means "over the counter" - nothing needed except cold cash.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient)
I have back pain, you insensitive clod. BACK PAIN It hurts!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Or any other schedule 2 medication (in the USA anyway)? Maybe you just aren't using the right drugs?
If you do, stop calling at three in the morning, your insurance will not buy you two 30 day supplies per month.
They don't care about non-scheduled drugs, but you have to show ID to pick up anything at my Walgreens. Oddly enough they don't care if you're not the actual prescribee, though you do have to know their address and maybe SSN - can't recall. They did copy my license info.
No, the point really doesn't.
The federal government protects the profits of big pharma by banning the re-importation of medications and medical devices sold in other countries. Hopefully this ruling sets a precedent for a challenge to that ridiculous prohibition. There's no valid reason that a drug should sell for $X in the USA and sell for a tiny fraction of that price just over the border.
Funny how the government is all in favor of "free trade" until it threatens some deep-pocketed special interest group.
but such that you need to take 250x80mg? 90 pills I can see, 3 a day. even 120 at 4 a day. But 250 pills a month is an 8 hour extended release every 2 hours; get yerself a fentanyl patch instead.
If you live in the US you can not purchase "over the counter" cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine without presenting an ID. It's a possible precursor to methamphetamine and legislators had a knee-jerk "for the kids" reaction.
Please don't read my sig.
Every month when I pick up my scheduled medications. The things that are schedule 3 and 2 are a surprising list of medications that one normally doesn't suspect.
Totally off topic, but you have to wonder. It's taking the DEA (not the FDA) years to prosecute doctors who are running obvious "pill mills". When you look at these docs, they're prescribing more than 2 standard deviation more narcotic scripts than the 'average' doc. Of course, there are occasionally some reasons for this - an oncologist or hospice doc for example, but too many of them are obviously fraudulent.
If they can't get the guy writing 500 scripts for 250 80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient) then the onsey-twoseys are going to get mostly overlooked.
The FDA isn't prosecuting them, but will pull their license if they are found to be prescribing more than they are expected to. And it doesn't take them that long to bust the pill mills in FL these days. They're often raiding pill mills within 6 months these days.
But for me, more importantly whether this changes the earlier cases, where retailers such as Costco could not buy in the grey market and resale them in the US (Omega watches).
It would be nice if an author now and then would actually find an editor before self-publishing.
I've had a less than satisfactory experience when it comes to my purchases of self-published books.
I take it that you're serious. Where do you have to show ID for over the counter cold medications?
Missouri.
Actually, that's not completely true; the full disclosure is that you have to show ID, give your address and phone number, have your name added to the database, and you get a little check-mark next to your name, along with the quantity of Pseudoephedrine you purchased. Try to buy too much in too short a period of time (the amounts and timeframe are, of course, unpublished information), and you get a knock from the friendly neighborhood Sheriff, wanting to know where your meth lab is.
As it's absolutely fucking ridiculous to be treated like a damn criminal just for having a case of the sniffles, I tend to forgo the medication these days and just tough it out.
The only time that I can recall showing ID when picking up a prescription, was for some feminine stuff the wife needed.
Ready for some irony? They never card me when I go pick up prescriptions for my wife. Ever.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient)
I have back pain, you insensitive clod. BACK PAIN It hurts!
So go see a chiropractor.
It kinda surprises me how many "smart people" don't seem to realize that developing a heroin addiction isn't going to do shit to fix whatever's causing you pain.
It's kind of surprising home many smart people think that doctors and chiropractors can do anything for certain types of neck and back problems. I have a friend who hurt her back playing college basketball. She had 4 surgeries that just made her back worse every time. She takes narcotics because she needs something for the pain. Otherwise she'd probably want to kill herself. Is she an addict? Certainly. But you can't take narcotics long term without becoming physically addicted. It is physiologically impossible. That doesn't mean she is abusing them and out on the street trying to supplement her prescriptions. Also, heroine is an opiate but not all opiates are heroine.
No problem. I'll gladly crack the DRM and then share it with everyone. If the publishers want to be scumbags and time limit or not allow me to re-sell my ebooks when I am done with them, then I'll share them with everyone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You've never seen Breaking Bad? Cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine are used to make meth. Here in one of the self-proclaimed meth capitals of the country (Missouri) anything having pseudoephedrine in it is behind the counter and you have to show an ID. I'm pretty sure it's statewide, but it's at least in several counties surrounding St. Louis.
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
Anything that contains pseudoephedrine requires ID now. I take it you haven't tried to buy any in the last five years.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
And not only do they check your ID, they actually report the date, and amount of pseudo-ephedrine that you purchased against your ID. http://www.nplexservice.com/
No more sublaxation talk. Dr Bob outed himself.
I take it that you're serious. Where do you have to show ID for over the counter cold medications?
...
"Over the counter" means "over the counter" - nothing needed except cold cash.
Incorrect. Since 2006, any over-the-counter medication with pseudoephrdrine (or one of several other ingredients) requires ID due to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Methamphetamine_Epidemic_Act_of_2005 . Thank the meth-heads.
A few things to consider.
1: there is a very large and not particaully rich country called india where english is one of the official languages (the other being hindi but afaict that isn't used much for technical stuff)
2: some countries deliberately establish english speaking universities in the hope of being more attractive to foreign talent.
3: Even in the UK which is english speaking and fairly rich afaict there is far less tolerance and pushing of overpriced textbooks than in the USA.
Put all of these together and at a university level there is going to be a pretty big market for textbooks in english outside the USA and in general those outside america aren't prepared to pay as much as those inside america. The textbook vendors want to split the market so they can choose a different "most profitable price" for the USA and the rest of the world.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
And based on my meeting with a publisher rep yesterday (I work in education, publisher was Pearson) the book is only "yours" for a year. Retake the course, or take the next level up course more than a year later, and you can't even use your "own" book for reference/refresher.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
You can mod all you want, but you can't sell the device/process that makes the mods. Even selling you moded console after you are done with it is grey.
...
Unless your console is a cell phone that was under contract with a cell carrier.
Unless your local prosecutor is having a bad day.
Unless
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
The defendant in this case made no copies, he simply imported paper books already sold in Asia.
There are other cases winding their way though regarding First Sale in the ebook world, we will have to wait for one of them to get to SCOTUS.
Students ARE in the habit of buying and selling used books, at least here in the US.
To verify your identity.
Sure, insurance paid (some of) the cost of the prescription, but what does that have to do with identifying the person who picks it up?
Ehh, I'm slipping. One of my sons bitched not long ago, because the store didn't want to sell him the cold medicine he wanted. Yeah, I should have realized.
The wife does almost all the shopping, I suppose that she has her name in that database. I'm just out of touch, I guess.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Maybe the point might but I'm not really sure one way or the other.
Where do you have to show ID for over the counter cold medications?
If you look like you might be under 18 and are trying to buy something with DXM in it, you're supposed to get ID'd(in the states, mind you).
Convenience? eBooks may be much, but convenient, they are not. Well, at least the ones that are for sale.
A dead tree edition is convenient. My buddy needs to look something up or wants to read it? Here's the book, return it when you feel like it. The only equipment he needs to read it is a pair of working eyes and the knowledge how to translate the printed symbols into meaningful expressions (aka "reading").
With an eBook, first of all the question arises if we have the same kind of reader. If not, well, there's a pretty good chance that he won't even be able to read it, even if I can give it to him, which is anything but a given either because of omnipresent DRM.
If you were talking about some kind of open document then yes, I could easily agree, they're very convenient. I have the PDF version of quite a few papers that I need on my laptop, and it's heaps easier to take those along when I travel. I can also easily hand over a copy to people who want to read them as well (before anyone asks, yes, I do have the right to do so). I can store thousands of pages that would fill a laptop case by themselves and have still lots of room for more and for other stuff.
That would be very convenient if it applied to other documents as well. But eBooks are usually not really like that. They are locked down by artificial restrictions that strip them of the convenience they COULD have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The reason for this is that your state, more than any other, has HUGE amounts of meth addiction.
Seriously, Missouri is so fucked.
The only states even close are Ten. and Indiana. You guys actually need to be doing waaaaay more than making people show ID for over the counter meds.
http://io9.com/5989152/a-map-of-state+by+state-meth-incidents-in-2012--what-can-we-take-away
it is not one of...it is THE meth capital of the country. Bar none.
http://io9.com/5989152/a-map-of-state+by+state-meth-incidents-in-2012--what-can-we-take-away
There are "open book cases" in my town now, think of it as some publicly accessible bookshelf where you put your old books and take home the ones that are there and are interesting to you. At first I thought they'd be plundered the nanosecond they are put up, but it seems to work out pretty well, and they see quite some use, too. One of those things is near the train station I frequent and no matter when I go there, someone's always standing there perusing the book, and people actually do bring books, too, not only take them out.
I kinda cannot see anything like this with eBooks.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"The absence of such lawsuits [the owner of a consumer good authorized for sale in the United States being sued for copyright infringement after reselling the item or giving it away] is unsurprising. Routinely suing one's customers is hardly a best business practice."
Yeah, well tell that to the fucking RIAA and MPAA mafias.
Well, considering how my profs usually were very keen to hawk their own books, I guess they really have to be VERY lazy to pass up the opportunity to force their students to buy their publications...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You look at our economy where we treat the symptom rather than curing the disease and you wonder why people do the same?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Last week. But then again, in our drug crazy system I'm wondering when they start tracking how many Aspirin you bought in the last month...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Last week... Opioid medications require picture ID to pick up.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
First you want us to RTFA.
Then we have to RTFMO.
Now we have to RTFDO.
When will it end? Harry/Draco fic? Is that enough for you?
Hold it, wait, you can actually GET cold medicine that contains pseudoephedrine? And you can get it as OVER THE COUNTER medicine?
And you're complaining?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
is outdated. I realize the importance of the medium to date, but with audio and video being so much more efficient, writing in all it's forms is on the way out.
Never say never. Ah!! I did it again!
capitalism in fact requires individual freedom
No, capitalism does not require individual freedom. That's free market. Free market and capitalism are not synonymous
You don't even understand your own definition.
Many here do not understand event the definition of capitalism:
private ownership and operation of property
that's all it is.
Nowhere does that have individual freedom in it.
It's entirely possible that people themselves become the private property of others. It's not actually possible, it happens all the time throughout history. It's called slavery.
Principles of capitalism? That has not been lost. What has been lost is free market, and thus individual freedom. MOAR CAPITALISM will not bring that freedom back.
Copyright is seldom a partisan issue. Conservatives are especially conflicted on the issue since on the one hand they generally support big corporations; but on the other hand they support free markets and oppose government regulations (and copyright is essentially a government-granted monopoly).
This particular decision seemed to break down generationally with the three oldest members of the court voting in dissent. I choose to take that as a hopeful sign that things will get better as the copyright maximalists eventually die off.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Hey doc, could you prescribe some $drug? And tell me what kinda disease I have to have too?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A chiropractor?
Anyway, you can probably live 30 or 40 years with a narcotics dependence. That's a lot better than you'll do if you stop moving around at all and stay in bed.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This is the new China, not the revolution-communist-crap you may remember from the times of Mao.
The new party creed: If there is a market for it, we will produce it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Am I exaggerating? A little... No wait, I'm not exaggerating at all, it really is a mass of incompatible formats, competing ecosystems
This and most of the problems you state are not problems of DRM, they are problems of competing standards. Thats not a problem that magically disappears when you get rid of DRM.
If you really want to fix things, you should come out with your own master standard that fits everyone's use case...
legislators had a knee-jerk "for the kids" reaction
It was hardly a knee-jerk reaction, if we had effective border control it would have been a very effective strategy. Meth is some seriously bad stuff, worse than Crack and about as bad as PCP but MUCH more common than PCP ever was.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The doctrine of first sale is a limitation to copyright, in that it holds that the copyright owner's right to monetize a copy of the work ends with the first sale of the copy. For what it is worth, with the sole exception of the US, the doctrine of first sale is not recognized by any major nation on the planet Basically, what the first sale doctrine means is that US companies end up facing competition from their own products via the resale market, as the continued existence of used car lots, used bookstores, and used record, tape, and CD stores in the US amply attest. Those resales are protected under the doctrine of first sale. In my opinion, this SCOTUS decision means that book publishers in the US now have one more incentive to stop selling dead tree books, which can legally be transferred for monetary gain by a non-copyright owner under the first sale doctrine, and switch over to renting digital ones, which would not be protected under first sale doctrine. Thus, this affirmation of the first sale doctrine by the highest court in the land is probably not a good thing for people in the US who want to own the books that they are paying for, because publishers are just going to stop publishing books that can be transferred for monetary gain without their permission.
I guess it depends on the DRM that comes on your e-books. In the case of the courses I took over the last 3.25 years for my masters program, it was generally as simple as printing the chapters to PDF from the reader application.
Yeah, it put my e-mail address on every page but they were then searchable PDFs and easily transferable. Being that the books were 'free' as part of my program, it was a no brainer to choose that route over regular books (my preferred method). It was doubly important being that I worked for the University and my entire tuition, up until the time I left just over a year ago, was covered as part of my employment.
YMMV.
I am sure that there have been many standards that are not in use as they dont implement the latest and greatest DRM offerings. The problem may not go away instantly and by magic, but I am certain that the standards could easily be settled when vendor lock in and DRM is made far less important than actual useability.
yup, Pearson is absolute shit. Now that they say that you can use either IE or safari, you still cant use safari. Restricting all E-edition stuff tio active-x is just wonderful.
If a frog had wings it wouldn't bump its ass when it hopped.
If grandma had balls she'd be grandpa.
We don't have effective border control, so this did little to nothing to stem the availability of meth. It doesn't matter if it's worse than crack or PCP, this was legislation that didn't do what was intended which is a hallmark of knee-jerk legislation.
Please don't read my sig.
maybe more convenient to store, but I'd much rather read a dead-tree version. Not to mention, they also want to sell ebooks over dead-tree because they are cheaper to produce, but still sell at the same price.
Same price to sell, no used market, cheaper to produce...
Yep. Greed uber alles.
So I'm at the Pharmacy:
me: Hi, I'm here to pick up some prescriptions.
Pharmacist: OK, here you go. amphetamine. That's $10.
me: Oh, while I'm here, can I pick up some pseudoephedrine?
Pharmacist: Driver's License please.
I was required to show my ID to purchase Sudafed, because it could be made into methamphetamine... but not required to show my ID for actual amphetamines.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Honestly, DRM is the problem. Let's say that we have no DRM, but we still have different standards. Let's say we're talking about pictures, instead of books. Well, you have PNG, JPG, GIF.... Hrmm it appears it's pretty trivial to have one player that can handle all the formats when you don't have the DRM restrictions. The formats would need to differentiate themselves in functionality, or the best would win. The main differentiation right now is the DRM schemes.
How are they convenient when the publisher's idea of an e-book is images of the book you have to view in their (slow) online viewer that has to be web-connected? Sure it is lighter, but I like books you don't have to log in to view. And flipping through pages is a pain when it involves loading more images in the slow viewer.
While certainly not perfect, there's online converters out there that will automatically convert an e-book from over a dozen formats into almost as many. PDF->EPUB, for one example(though it's noted as being one of the ones more likely to have problems).
Once you get rid of DRM, open source/free ebook reader programmers are free to implement a way to read that format. You're no longer tied to the publisher's choice in readers.
Nothing is ever perfect, but my DRMless ebooks are a lot more usable to me than the few I have that are locked up with DRM*
*Which I mostly got for free; having been burned by DRM in the past I place a serious discount on anything encumbered with it. Oddly enough, I don't crack anything anymore, I'm at a point in my life that I'm willing to pay for stuff, not to mention that a lawsuit, much less criminal charges, wouldn't be worth the even low risk. There's plenty of free media out there if I want it.
I don't read AC A human right
Sounds like he's leaving the door open for domestic publishers to milk us dry.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
cold pills? I thought Heisenberg made biker meth with phenyl acetone. I haven't seen the latest season, though
and, once when I was denied, I found out that there is a per diem average that you are allowed to purchase. I wasnt sure if I could purchase a smaller amount that wouldnt trigger whatever rules are in place, so I asked how much I was allowed to buy " right now " . This triggered a phone call to security. I left.
Basically I wanted to buy a 30 day supply 28 days after a previous 30 day supply, because I happened to be there and it would be convenient.
I went to a doc, got a very similar perscrition that insurance has to now pay part of , for the great deal of only 4 times the OTC price. They will say that the perscription versions have higher consistency. I say the FDA wont allow inconsistent drug manufacturing at all. There is your wonderful insurance premiums skyrocketing again.
The only equipment he needs to read it is a pair of working eyes ...
Actually one eye is sufficient. Even more convenient!
Actually if people are taking the opiates for the pain they are much less likely to get addicted.
and it works best when you buy it with bleach, kitchen cleaning solutions, and a stack of rubber gloves...
What he means by 'guise of convenience' is stuff like this "Users trade privacy for functionality" - Melissa Meyer, Yahoo CEO. Companies are designing everything to phone home, and are limiting functionality unless you fully submit.
Good-bye
Scalia didn't have his shadow (Thomas).
You look at our economy where we treat the symptom rather than curing the disease and you wonder why people do the same?
...
Touche, sir.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient)
I have back pain, you insensitive clod. BACK PAIN It hurts!
So go see a chiropractor.
It kinda surprises me how many "smart people" don't seem to realize that developing a heroin addiction isn't going to do shit to fix whatever's causing you pain.
It's kind of surprising home many smart people think that doctors and chiropractors can do anything for certain types of neck and back problems. I have a friend who hurt her back playing college basketball. She had 4 surgeries that just made her back worse every time. She takes narcotics because she needs something for the pain. Otherwise she'd probably want to kill herself. Is she an addict? Certainly. But you can't take narcotics long term without becoming physically addicted. It is physiologically impossible. That doesn't mean she is abusing them and out on the street trying to supplement her prescriptions. Also, heroine is an opiate but not all opiates are heroine.
Outliers exist in all things.
Sorry 'bout your friend, that's gotta suck.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
How many times has Slashdot promoted stories telling you that YOU have no Rights, because the provider of your goods can have you accept some form of EULA that controls what you may do with that product. Textbooks come with a EULA, just like that copy of Windows from Microsoft.
If an item is bought outright, with no further regular payments required, and no 'termination' date when the item must be returned, it is a PRODUCT not a SERVICE. Software is not a special case. Do you betas get this? Software is NOT a special case. There are no special cases.
'First sale doctrine' means yours to do with as you like (and here the shills will try to confuse you with suggestions that such freedom could include illegal copying, which is and always has been a nonsense). Yet, when people attempt to sell their copies of Microsoft products, not only does Microsoft illegally interfere with this trade, they also pay shills to spam sites like Slashdot with comments telling you that only a EULA defines your rights. These shills say "you are not a lawyer, and Microsoft pays for the best lawyers, so you are wrong, and the MS shills are correct".
You do not need to be a lawyer to know your rights. You do not need to be a lawyer to understand the difference between a service and a product. The games on Valve's Steam, for instance, are PRODUCTS. You have an absolute right to sell and transfer these products. The disgrace with companies like Valve is that they will honour your rights ONLY if you make it clear that you know what they are. To other customers, they lie.
Consumer Rights bodies were set up by governments in most civilised nations to compensate for the fact that few consumers had the confidence or knowledge of the law to demand appropriate treatment from the companies they did business with. Sadly, in recent years, governments have fallen back in lock-step with big business, and funding has been removed from consumer rights advocacy groups. This has been accompanied with a massive rise of corporate shilling on sites like this. Consumers hear big-mouths screaming "you can't sell your copy of Office- that would be WRONG- think about it- would MS allow that in the EULA you accepted when installing Office."
This is why the shills HATE the first sale doctrine. You don't need to 'think' about it. You merely need to know that a product is yours to do with as you like, including re-selling it. And, by the way, the nonsense about the illegality of unlocking phones- well the moment your phone is no longer part of a 'service' (yours to keep without further payment), unlocking becomes your right and the US government admitted as much when they responded to the massive on-line protest.
The Copyright Act they were looking at was based on Common Law. Congress basically codified what was before a self-evident personal property right. The Supreme Court based their opinion on a Common Law interpretation of the Copyright Act.
Us Americans have the innate right to "bear arms". While some favor polar bear arms, I am sticking with my choice of "grizzly arms" and will get them as soon as they are available for implantation.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
A chiropractor?
Yup; I went to one years ago when I threw my back out, and it's thanks to his work that I'm not stuck taking narco's for the rest of my life.
Anyway, you can probably live 30 or 40 years with a narcotics dependence. That's a lot better than you'll do if you stop moving around at all and stay in bed.
Seems "better" is subjective in this regard... Personally, I'm not sure I would prefer living in a perpetual, drug-induced haze.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Outliers exist in all things.
Sorry 'bout your friend, that's gotta suck.
Isn't that the truth? I feel bad for her too. She was an amazing athlete, and thankfully the school was generous enough to keep her on her full ride athletic scholarship as a team manager (Title IX FTW there, they would have dumped her if she was male). She's been on the meds a long time, and there are days where she can't get out of bed. But she appreciates life far more than some people I know who have far fewer problems.
Think this through. Yes, ebooks are more convenient, at least for some, because of lack of space, etc. They are also usually cheaper and we are told because there is no printing and shipping cost involved. Right now, the competition for ebooks is printed books. When printed books go the way of the dinosaur, what will be in place to hold prices down? Yes, they will still be more convenient from a storage perspective, but not a cost perspective. What if your ebook textbook costs you $300 like your paper texbook and your ebook version expires at the end of the semester?
If you buy a paper version, you can always sell it to defray the cost. That is not the case with an ebook, at least not unless you break the DRM and violate the DMCA. So, yes, if you are willing to break the law, then just about anything can be more convenient than following the law. That is, unless you get caught. Those prison cells are probably a lot smaller than your dorm room and have even less storage space.
So go see a chiropractor.
Everyone I know who uses one is addicted to them. It's like they program in their adjustments a timeout, so that it needs to be re-applied. I don't know of anyone ever "cured" of pain by a chiropractor.
Learn to love Alaska
You left out trying to use your ebook when your wifi is down or you are away from a wifi signal. One could argue that is a flaw in the design of tablets, but that is besides the point. Most tablets don't allow for you to easily store what you want on them and easily retrieve it. At least not tablets from a company that's logo is related to the concept of original sin.
There's also a downside in the ruling. "Piracy" is used again to mean "unauthorized copying".
Cause paying $2000 a month for something that costs $4 a year overseas seems kind of insane to me.
America!
I'm glad it worked for you - even surgery is usually not any more effective than placebo with back pain, so what the hell - you might as well try, right? My mom's chronic back pain went away when she was bucked off of a horse.
That said, if the chiropractor doesn't work - if your back is so damaged that you are talking about narcotic dependence - then it is definitely the lesser of two evils to be physically dependent on opiates.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Perhaps one reason all four of those justices ruled that the law is X when they would have preferred Y is because they aren't supposed to decide what the law SHOULD be. That task belongs to Congress. The Court is supposed to read the law and apply it, not make it up based on their own preferences. To the extent any of the justices voted against their own preferences I applaud them.
And this is another reason why I am glad that I was a math major in college.
Most of the books are old enough that you can choose to buy the original edition or the newest edition with the only difference being that some small errors are fixed. Unlike some subjects where one year is the first editions, the next year is the second, and up until the fifth, then they start a new series of textbooks, my eighth-edition textbook is the eighth since 1948.
Then again, the most recently published textbook I own is Euclidean Geometry - With Computers!
So go see a chiropractor.
Everyone I know who uses one is addicted to them.
Not sure if it was your intent, but I laughed my ass off when I read that. Excellent work.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
OK lets talk about things that have nothing to do with lockin?
1) Should the system export simple text or export typeset text? Typesetting can be important for advertising, poetry, math while untypeset works better for fiction?
2) Should should the system allow bitmaps, and if it does multiple bitmaps for different sizes or should vector graphics be mandatory?
3) How should graphics be grouped? Should they be attached to specific pages, i.e. the system preserves layout or just specific
4) Should the system resolve advertising at time of read, at time of publish or at time of sale? If time or sale or time of read can the system make use of other information like: age, other ads you've responded to... Note this has a huge impact on the cost of books. People willing to tolerate ads get much cheaper media.
5) Should the system support multimedia: sound and video or no? For example foreign language textbooks.
6) Should the system support testing? Should the end user always be able to override the testing or should the testing be under the control of purchaser not the end user?
There was nothing knee-jerk about it. After years of discussing they put the ban in place and meth production dropped off sharply. They allowed the sale again and meth production shot back up. They banned it and meth production dropped sharply.
You may not like it, but this piece of drug legislation is doing exactly what it is supposed to.
Correct. This is the scenario that will prevail. Don't fight the first sale doctrine because we can just encrypt our way out of the problem. Since we - and only we - can say who may and may not decrypt, that is akin to complete control over the first sale doctrine.
Even if they encrypted in ROT13, it stills counts as a DMCA violation if someone decrypts the book. It doesn't matter how trivial or hard breaking the encryption is.
That's what I'd do. I'd implement a mild (easy) form of encryption and then selectively apply the DMCA as I please.
Um actually Scalia did not write the dissent, Ginsberg wrote the dissent which Kennedy joined and Scalia partially joined in. (and reading the dissent, Ginsberg disagreed with the majority because she thinks that Congress "wanted" to limit first sale - interesting how she is willing to go for the author's "intent" here but refuses to look at the intent behind the 2nd amendment...)
Vicks formula 44: contains alcohol, often abused, despite danger of liver damage. Carded.
Nyquil: same as above
Pseudoephedrine: can't even buy it (the real thing) anymore, because of meth cooks. In the RARE event you actually find it as a generic and it is actually for sale, you get carded, and your purchase is recorded, to prevent you buying in bulk from multiple sources. This is to prevent meth cooks from making their product. Big brother is TOTALLY watching on that shit. Sucks to be you if you buy several boxes so you have some at work and some at home, or have several sick people in your house.
Anymore, about the only things you don't get carded for are NSAIDs.
FTFW
andy
Where in the world do you live?
Here, people would drive to the book cases, fetch all the books, and sell them on eBay, used book stores or thrift stores. And not even feel that they did anything morally wrong.
I'm a college professor and I write my own tests, and insist on a real book, thank you very much.
If you really want to fix things, you should come out with your own master standard that fits everyone's use case...
Obligatory...
ok, some good points here, but... this goes well beyond the idea of a book available in electronic form. Increasing the experience isnt a bad thing, but a book can be just as useable in pdf form as in a dead tree form. Text, pictures, whitespace, all relaying thoughts and ideas.
I see the direction you are going, is an e-book a file, an app that plays a file with rich content, or is it an entire classroom ecosystem?
Was going for "insightfully ironic", as the claim that chiropractors "cure" seems absurd to someone like me where everyone I know who goes to one does so indefinitely. Not like my physical therapist after my surgery, where I had an end date before my first treatment. Even my sister's acupuncturist had a treatment plan with an end date. Chiropractor addicts have their weekly adjustment scheduled indefinitely. That doesn't sound like a "cure" to me. At best, it's treating the cause of the pain, not the symptom of it, but that's still not a "fix."
Learn to love Alaska
I don't think that it matters much what their motivations are, but rather, the stated rationale they give towards reaching their end goal (that is, shouting "eBooks are convenient!" when in reality they just want to lock that puppy down and circumvent first-sale doctrine entirely).
I'm sure they are convenient for both publisher (drops the cost of ink and paper to practically nada), and for many consumers (store it on a tablet!)
OTOH, while you may find it convenient and such, there are a lot of us old curmudgeons out here who prefer their books on paper.
The old-school books don't require batteries or eyestrain, no DRM, and the format won't ever become obsolete. Sure, they take up space and weigh a lot in quantity. So what? I've had a going personal library for decades now, and it's not a bother to me. I have this habit of upgrading the pile once in awhile. This means I get rid of the obvious crap (and any books I no longer have a credible use for), keep the good stuff (the awesome books I want to read over and over again over the years, old textbooks, etc) and over time my little personal library has gained in quality. As a bonus, no publisher or author can ever take them away from me - and not a few of them are even autographed. By the way, I can read 'em anytime I want, even when the power goes out.
Long story short - you go right ahead and chain yourself to the publisher's profit motives. I prefer mine on paper, and I prefer them to be mine once I buy them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
These problems don't go away with pdf. Assume I pick a pdf.
1) PDF demands line by line spacing but I can either kern or not. Should the e-reader support both?
2) PDF allows bitmaps and simple vector graphics. But if I want different resolutions I need to run different pdfs. How should I handle view (low dpi screens) vs. print?
3) PDF group everything with fixed position on a page. The document has no idea what is grouped with what, grouping is a reader function? What should the e-reader do?
4) PDFs don't allow for any variable content, so 4 is resolved.
5) PDF's do allow for unlimited callouts and hyperlinks. They also can imbed arbitrary multimedia...
6) PDFs don't support testing
As an aside though, to a limited extent PDFs do support DRM.
Kennedy is not even a "liberalish" judge. He's a conservative judge appointed by Ronald Reagan. He perhaps isn't up to the wacky standards of Scalia and Thomas, but that doesn't change who he is.
One of the things that really annoys me about the last 30 years is how Conservatives keep getting us to move the idealogical goalposts, even though the general public's ideology hasn't changed much at all.
That doesn't mean she is abusing them and out on the street trying to supplement her prescriptions.
From my readings, it's quite possible to be an active addict(IE taking the substance) of opiates essentially for life and still be a productive citizen. Without all the controls we place on opiates, it would actually be quite cheap to provide heroin. I'm not a chemist, but from my research it's about equally difficult to make aspirin and heroin. A quick wiki trawl reveals that aspirin is salicylic acid(historically from willow bark) is treated with acetic anhydride and phosphoric or sulfuric acid. One of the ways to make heroin is treating anhydrous morphine with acetic anhydride.
One report was that, under equal drug controls as aspirin, they'd be of similar price. IE a couple bucks a month for medical grade drugs at therapeutic doses.
I understand that being addicted to a drug is a bad thing, but you have to consider the risks.
1. Physical harm: Can mostly be mitigated via ensuring that the supply is clean and of consistent potency(not a problem for medical grade).
2. Financial harm: Addicts will sacrifice anything for their fix. If said fix is $10/month, it's not much of a sacrifice
3. Productivity harm: Does it matter there will be productivity loss is from pain without the drug? What if they're MORE productive because the pain being treated burns off most of the negative affects(not a doctor, but I've heard that therapeutic uses of opiates to treat pain don't lead to the same issues that using them for recreation does).
Basically, at some point you need to consider that maybe just leaving them on the drug is the cheapest, most effective treatment for their addiction. Especially if their condition means they're still in pain. People pop enough pills already. My parents and grandparents are on at least 6 drugs each. Mom's closer to 12.
I don't read AC A human right
Well, you have PNG, JPG, GIF.... Hrmm it appears it's pretty trivial to have one player that can handle all the formats when you don't have the DRM restrictions.
So you're not just getting rid of DRM - you're getting rid patent restrictions as well? Then it becomes illegal to provide a device that handles all formats unless you pay all the owners of the formats... they'll get you either way.
It's not that I disagree with you on the general idea - I'm just wondering how far you're willing to go.
Um... copyright does prohibit making (unlicensed) copies of software, just as it prohibits making unlicensed copies of books, paintings, musical recordings, and so on. That applies as much to a modern copy of Windows as to an archaic player piano paper roll. It also applies to textbooks. It is (legally) distinct from first sale.
The difference is that the person in question here actually paid for each copy that was purchased, then re-sold those copies. The right to do that is what was upheld. Duplicating a copyrighted work without a license to do so - such as using a hole-punch to duplicate the information encoded in strips of hole-punched paper - is still illegal, and has been since well over 100 years ago.
Just to be clear, I don't in any way disagree with the sentiment you were expressing (that software should be treated the same as other copyrighted works). I'm mostly objecting to your choice of example, implying that creating unlicensed copies of a purchased (but copyrighted) work should be legal just because you bought one copy and are therefore allowed to "do whatever you want with it". That has never been the case for copyrighted works, and copyright is an old, old law. If your example had been publishers trying to stop people from reselling the paper rolls, that would have been analogous.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Now lots of online businesses peddling second hand goods will spring up in no time.
You're right, it's happening already! Look at these evil merchants of second hand books I found just searching online:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b?ie=UTF8&node=465600
http://www.abebooks.com/
http://www.powells.com/
If somebody doesn't do something soon, we'll be seeing merchants of second-hand records and CDs and videos as well!! I've even hear rumors that there are some brick-and-mortar institutions springing up and collecting second hand materials and LOANING THEM OUT FREELY TO ANYONE WHO ENTERS! Have we reached such a nadir of respect for commerce and capitalism that we're going to allow every moocher and freeloader in the 47% to simply BORROW someone's intellectual property without paying for it?! I'm shocked the Supreme Court would hand such a victory to the Marxists and Linuxists.
Just because it gets you high doesn't make it "intellectual" property.
Sounds like a symptom of rent-seeking.
I wouldn't limit the practice to chiropractors - pretty much every doctor I ever went to, with the exception of my current one, was nothing more than a glorified drug-dealer. I always had a sneaking suspicion that they had no plans to actually diagnose me, since they were making a killing from prescribing useless drugs (had gallbladder disease).
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Yea, but it will be increasingly an American problem. The world consumes an unfortunate amount of American (pop) media, but more local content. This will be good for everyone! So happy to get to own things :)
My take on the Kagan/Alito concurring opinion was basically "Either Congress or the court (not sure which) screwed up before, but that's no excuse for screwing things up more here."
It seems to me that Kagan/Alito really didn't want first sale outside the US to permit import, but that was no excuse for making first sale not apply AFTER the item was legally imported into the US, which is what ruling the other way would effectively do. More or less, they wanted to vacate "Quality King" and even invited Congress to do so through legislation.
If you notice, this person here has to run cracking software just to get their files to play nicely and not destroy itself if this person tries to do the basic tasks of backup or use on an 'unauthorized device'.
How easy is it for you to make a backup of your paper book, anyway?
By default, if you're in a "walled garden" at least, your book license survives your device and a new reader can easily be re-authorized; this is actually far easier than replacing the few books that were in your lost backpack (or, worse yet, your library that burned down with the rest of your house).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
Hrmm it appears it's pretty trivial to have one player that can handle all the formats when you don't have the DRM restrictions
And it would be trivial to do so with a system WITH DRM restrictions.
Say, what percentage of MP3 players support Ogg and FLAC? Just curious.
Yes, that was the joke.
His original plan was to buy a bunch of cold medicine, Jesse warned him off of that. The next plan was to steal materials for making biker meth
Where in the world do you live? Here, people would drive to the book cases, fetch all the books, and sell them on eBay, used book stores or thrift stores. And not even feel that they did anything morally wrong.
Yep, pretty sure that would happen here too (Florida, USA).
Good on scotus but I'm betting that legal fees still wiped out his profits.
Yup. When textbook vendors are pitching books for a course, I pretty much stop listening as soon as they start rambling on about all the digital bullshit. I sure as hell don't mention any of it to my students or recommend that they look at or sign up for any of it. Unfortunately, this kind of temporary license push for e-texts piggy-backs on the trend for education to be simply 'credentials for a fee'. Many of the students don't care about the material and wouldn't dream of keeping the text as a reference. You're lucky if they even bought the text, and luckier still if they wait until the end of term to sell it again. So the publishers, already living large off of the cash cow of academia (annual updates to core science texts? the fuck?), are simply adapting to the emerging niche of student apathy. Don't be surprised if they're soon selling even shorter term-licenses. Anything to make sure they get paid *every single time* a pair of eyeballs looks at their repetitive, inbred, regurgitated material. But I'm not bitter or anything...
Physical texts always come with that stuff too. Definitely not unique to digital.
Well, he did side with (5/4) majority that murders under the age of 18 can't face life in prison without parole which in the ultra-conservative political climate we live in (I'm including the DNC in this characterization) coupled with the public's thirst for ever harsher prison sentences, it seems enough to call him liberalish. But yeah, I get your point. And agree with it.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Um... have you tried a little program called Calibre?
> And it would be trivial to do so with a system WITH DRM restrictions.
false. The way DRM works is that the content is cryptographically encrypted. And only the vendor has the decryption key.
> Say, what percentage of MP3 players support Ogg and FLAC? Just curious.
pretty much all of them.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
And it's too crappy quality for my professors to use it. Perhaps you should find a decent university, with professors whom are actually advancing the field?
Being owner to a couple of different tablets I wouldn't mind trying out the eBook scene but the fact that eBooks cost just as much, if not more even, then the physical dead tree versions it just isn't economical to me.
If both formats are around the same price then I would rather have the physical dead tree copy that I can do what I please with which includes re-sale rights under the First Sale Doctrine that corporate America has been hell bent on destroying for the past 200 years.
false. The way DRM works is that the content is cryptographically encrypted. And only the vendor has the decryption key.
WMA uses DRM, and a far sight more MP3 players support WMA than FLAC.
pretty much all of them.
ORLY? Blackberry, iPhone, Creative Zen dont support Ogg; the Sansa clip only added it with a later firmware. None of them support the free MonkeysAudio, or Opus, or Speex.
Incidentally, they all support DRM'd WMA. So much for your argument that "DRM is the problem, not multiple standards".
This comment is coming in kind of late, so no doubt it will be little seen, but everyone seems to be overlooking that it will take only a slight improvement of book scanning technology to let everyone with a paper book duplicate it as an e-book. Let the publishers try to offer their product by license only; left them try to evade the first sale doctrine; it just won't work. When you can buy a $300 scanner that will turn the pages of your book and produce either PDFs or an optically character recognized file, this whole issue is just going to go away.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Hang-out on a college campus too long swooning over lefty profs who live outside the real world and you'll have no common sense left...
The synthetic personhood of corporations is an absolute necessity in the modern world. It's pretty amusing that so many younger people miss the plain meaning of the very words "corporate" "incorporated" "incorporation"... education, sadly, no longer includes even a smidgen of Latin, so for the uneducated let me suggest you look-up "corpus". We give a business (a group of investors) a pretend "body" (legal personhood) so that the resulting entity has legal standing to be treated as a person under the laws... this is a benefit to the business because it can then enforce legal contracts and go into courts to sue, and it's also a burden to the business in that it is a legal "person" that can have laws and contracts enforced against it and can get dragged into court and sued. Without this personhood, a guy like Steve Jobs would have had no time to do anything productive; he would have had to spend all his time signing every contract for what we call "Apple" and would have had to appear in every court case involving what we call "Apple" etc. He would have been personally liable for everything Apple did and his personal finances would be at risk anytime any employee of his anywhere on Earth did anything... it's likely that in such a situation most entrpreneurs would never let their businesses grow beyond what they needed to support their families. Are you an employee? If you are, then in a world w/o corporate personhood you would have to have your employment agreement with the owner of the business himself... and if anything happened to him, the business would cease to exist (as happens with sole proprietorships) and your job would end. That's only a sliver of the complications of a world without "incorporation". You need to really THINK about all the implications of the utopias that are far-too-often pumped-out by academic dreamers in ivory towers...
I have always maintained that in order for an ebook to validly claim to offer more features and more convenience than a regular book, it would have to be backward-compatible with printed books as they currently exist. This means that an ebook should have at least 20 (more might be better) paper-thin pages that can be easily leafed through, in between a front and a back cover. In short, it must have a form and function exactly like a real book, something you can pick up and handle exactly like you always have. The difference would be the utilization of a true overwrite-able high-res e-ink, so that you could download or store on-board whatever reading material you like, one book standing in for any and all books. With such a book you could do everything you can currently do with a book, and then some. Downloading different reading material is just the start, you could add functionality like an onboard dictionary for unfamiliar words, instant pop-up footnotes, fully animated pictures, web-connected hyperlinks, all kinds of possibilities open up with such a device. It would in every sense be a traditional book, and it would also have all the capabilities of the devices we currently call ebooks, but it would also be capable of so much more. Until such a book is created, ebooks will remain a crippled technology, lacking even basic functionality taken for granted since the days of Gutenberg. I can only hope that I live to see such a book, and I might, since the technology for it is almost there right now. But the ideal backward-compatible perfect ebook would contain no DRM! It couldn’t, because to do so would break the backward-compatibility, as there is no such DRM found on current printed books. This is my biggest fear: the tech will be there, but the industry will reject it and try to bury it, the way they have initially rejected every single attempt at an improved digital media experience to date. These people just refuse to learn.
"Those laws were created by people chaffing against the abuses of what would most likely be compared to one of our modern multinational corporations. The notion of corporation as person would likely appall the whole lot of them regardless of political faction."
You should actually try reading what our founders wrote; they were not on a rampage against businesses of any size or shape... they were trying to minimize and restrain government. Government has courts, police, jails, armies, soldiers and the belief that it has the right to seize your stuff and kill you with nobody else having the right to intervene. Business is in the private sphere and is constructed as a series of agreements freely entered into by free people who are free to participate or to walk away; our founders were very much in favor of free people coming together voluntarily in contractual arrangements. Business does not have the power to jail you (it has to go to government, where you and your peers have a say in order to try this) or take your stuff (again, it either has to go ask government for help in this, OR you have to have entered into a contract permitting this...and the business needs government to enforce said contract) or kill you (business has no right to do this at all... even "assisted suicide" where you WANT a business to kill you is mostly illegal in the US).
We have long-permitted labor unions (often organized as corporations) to exercise "free speech" rights... so rulings like Citizens United which balance the scales are only fair and rational, no matter how much they are hated by extreme leftist whackjobs who'd grown very happy with a situation where their political allies had a big advantage. The only part of modern corporate personhood our founders would have an issue with is the manner in which Congress has rather recently allowed corporations who have bought copyright portfolios to shift the duration of the copyright from being relative to the life of the mortal human CREATOR of the work over to the potentially immortal imaginary person BUYER of the work; in a SANE world, the courts and congress would allow a business to get a copyright and enforce it as usual, BUT its duration would remain tied to the life of the human who was the primary creator of the work.
You know whata even easier than breaking drm? Downloading the shit for free off bittorent . I have literally millions of books on my 1tb drive. Fuck these publishers, i hope they starve in the streets, and their piss covered corpses are gnawed upon by rats.
all your idiotic questions aside, pdf format works fine for me.
Your friend is likely physically dependent on her pain meds, which is perfectly normal for longer term use. However, that is different to being addicted. I'm basically agreeing with you but physically dependent is the phrase you were after.
Our founders were not a bunch of anti-business "occupy" activists out to camp in city parks and crap on cop cars.... They were struggling against a big government that was far away from, and out of touch with, the people it ruled. They were opposing excessive taxes (which were MUCH lower than the taxes we now pay) which were, in part, being used to oppress them (the king thought he had the right to send troops into people's homes to take things and to live there with the homeowners for a while...among other things). The only businesses they attacked were the ones effectively aiding the king, and during the course of the war that followed, they were consistent in even destroying their own homes and businesses where necessary. There was no rally by our founders to trash all businesses... indeed almost every one of our founders was a businessman and they intended that the government be VERY small and do little more than national defense, international diplomacy, patents, trademarks, and making sure business (commerce) worked smoothly across state lines... they intended all else to be done by state governments, local governments, charities, businesses, families and individuals.
The Supremes weren't behind the ruling banning NSLs. That was one California judge. BTW, California does not have the highest reversal percentage (several districts had a 100% reversal rate), though they do have the most cases that go to the Supreme Court and the Supremes reverse, on average, something like 70-80% of the cases they take.
Go to a doctor with knee pain, and he'll "manage" the problem with drugs. I went to an orthopedic surgeon with a knee problem and he cut me open and re-arranged my parts until they worked again. Doctors suck at referrals. "I don't know, go see this guy instead."
Though the surgeon prescribed Vioxx, and gave a month of samples for free. I asked whether Vioxx helps, he said it treats some of the symptoms of recovery (restricts blood flow to help restrict swelling). That sounded like it would retard healing, so I asked. And he said that yes, it would likely prolong healing to regularly take it. So I didn't. Even with a knee surgery, I took no pain meds. They wouldn't let me leave the hospital without narcotics, but they couldn't make me take them. I threw them a the Vioxx in the trash. This was just before the Vioxx recall.
Learn to love Alaska
> this person didn't really buy the books for himself which is what the first sale doctrine is for? he had relatives buy books for the purpose of reselling them in a country where people have a lot more money. i'm surprised SCOTUS didn't find for the publisher. this is a pretty big expansion of the first sale doctrine
That's because you are a consumer and are most familiar with goods being purchased for consumption. In fact most goods are purchased by merchants for reselling or adding value and reselling. Is a farmer selling a case of Apples to a wholesaler able to put their foot down when they learn they will resell them to a supermarket FOR A PROFIT? OMG! How unconscionable! Hardly: That's how they make a profit, and profit is what makes the world go around.
One of the few good things about our courts is that they are very pro-capitalist. For example if you spot and and buy something from a seller who doesn't understand it's truth worth (the proverbial Botticelli at a garage sale) the courts will not reverse the sale even if it can be proved you knew and took advantage of them because that's capitalism, baby. They can reverse it on other grounds (e.g. seller was a minor, inebriated, fraud) but not for this. If your wish was granted and first-sale doctrine was wound back or blown up by Mythbusters then anyone selling anything would have a control over the operation of downstream businesses and be able to interfere with their ability to make a profit.
Am I exaggerating? A little... No wait, I'm not exaggerating at all...
Well yes, you are exaggerating. A lot.
For every example you have that a printed book is more convenient there is another example where the eBook is more convenient. There is a use case for both, and some may prefer one over the other, but that does not warrant this one sided rant. If you want to argue that eBooks could be even more convenient, then be my guest - there is certainly room for improvement.
There will be a huge push now for electronic books under the guise of "convenience" but what it really comes down to is that they will want to "license" the book rather than sell it. At the same time, the electronic versions will simply continue to make the publishers less and less relevant especially for new titles.
While it's true that you only license the book when you get it electronically, for a large majority of cases, that's all the purchaser (or renter?) wants anyway.
That is probably b/c they change the order of the chapters every year slap on a new version number and tell the schools last years book is obsolete and force everyone to upgrade to the new book rendering all the old books being resold worthless.
Wonder how this will affect the Monsanto model...
"The usual claim involves violation of a technology agreement that prohibits farmers from saving seed from one season's crop to plant the next, a common farming practice" ---Wikipedia
eBooks are incredibly more convenient if you pirate them. otherwise, they are a PITA.
A few years ago there was a lawsuit where Omega (a maker of fancy watches) sued Costco for copyright violation claiming that because designs on the watches were protected by copyright, Costco couldn't legally import the watches from overseas (which it was doing since it could source them cheaper than what Omega USA was asking for).
Does this new supreme court decision override the decision in "Omega S.A. v. Costco Wholesale Corp" and allow Costco (and others) to parallel import these products?
Then somebody else will provide a different product that fills the unmet demand in those countries. Of course then the original provider just created a new competitor who will export their less expensive product back to the home country at a lower price.
No way. You can't torrent a paperback.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
ORLY? Blackberry, iPhone, Creative Zen dont support Ogg; the Sansa clip only added it with a later firmware. None of them support the free MonkeysAudio, or Opus, or Speex.
Incidentally, they all support DRM'd WMA. So much for your argument that "DRM is the problem, not multiple standards".
If you have music in one format and need to convert it to another and there is no DRM involved, it is relatively easy to do (though only lossless if the formats are lossless).
They might all support WMA's DRM, but that is only because none of the music publishers sell music players, well, besides Apple, and you'll note that the format they prefer only plays on their own players. If Apple decided to stop supporting WMA then you'd have the eBook mess all over again. That's a decision they will make based on what they feel their own best interests are, not what the consumer's are.
Sure, you can have DRM that is more standardized, but in the case of eBooks that isn't the status quo, and it likely won't ever be until Amazon stops selling eBooks.
In any case, the only real point of DRM seems to be to keep no-names out of the device business. If you want your Amazon eBooks to work you have to buy their reader, and if you want your Apple music to work you have to buy the iWhatever. It does nothing to prevent piracy, readily demonstrated by the fact that anything that anybody would care to pirate is already pirated DRM-free online.
So, while you're right that a variety of standards is a big part of the problem, the fact is that it is DRM that helps publishers and device manufacturers to keep a variety of standards in place.
To be clear, I wasnt defending DRM, I think it has issues, etc.
So, while you're right that a variety of standards is a big part of the problem
Thats all I was saying.
You are just wrong. Its trivial to have a reader that handles a bunch of book formats, and really that hass been a non-issue for decades (had such readers on Palm back in the day), see your web browser or LibreOffice for examples. DRM is the only issue.
will not stop the publishers from making DMCA requests / filling strikes that can cost you $35 a pop.
===
As far as I understood, these were not copies, but legal copies, sold at Thai prices. The students paid for the books, and then resold them on Ebay, of course, they may have photocopied the entire book for personal use first.
In this case, my sentiments go with the publisher. He and the author deserve compensation for the costs of production, and commissions. The author did not publish the book for his health, did he?
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Given that now 18 states have now outlawed the Death Penalty entirely, up from 13 in 2007, I suspect a deep look crime issues may show that the general public really no longer has much of a "thirst for ever harsher prison sentences". These days I'm even hearing a lot of (generally younger) Republicans complaining about the excessive expense of it all.
Interesting tale about the Vioxx, I had never thought of that.
Will definitely keep it in mind when/if I ever have to go under the knife. Thanks.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Oh, no need to, I still have a stack of rubber gloves. I usually buy them together with doggy treats and condoms. Just to see the sales person freak out.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One of those pinko commie socialist countries in Europe. Ya know, one of those that cannot enjoy the wonders of capitalist achievements like a banking crisis.
Surprisingly, people here are less concerned about making a quick buck if they notice how them making a buck causes more damage than they themselves gain from it. Maybe that's why we still have a working environment, a working economy and even a more or less working political system.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now it is time to start going to nations in which the large companies sell their goods cheap at, buy them and simply bring them back and resell them here.
It has always ticked me off that so many of the medical companies sell their drugs and equipment for a fraction of the price in all other nations compared to what they do here. And no, it has nothing to do with regs. After all, it is the exact same piece of equipment. It is called, you charge what the market will bear.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
This case was NOT about copying the book and making it on a foreign press. It is about a company that charges 1/5 of the price overseas than what they charge Americans. Interestingly, the books were still made here and then shipped there (IOW, extra costs) and then sold there cheap. So, are they dumping on foreign nations? Or is that a profitable item that they are then gouging Americans on? Considering that they do not charge even Europeans what they Charge Americans, I would say that they are gouging the US.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You take their word that production dropped sharply?
I don't, if production dropped sharply I would expect a sharp jump in street prices. That never happened.
What happened it that after a ban a pseudo they saw a sharp drop in sales of pseudo. Which they choose to interpret as a sharp drop in production.
Abracadabra; it's working.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Fortunately I teach a couple of Linux classes at the community college/AS degree level.
I use lots of web resources, and quite a few books - a few pages from this, a chapter from that one, etc. Fortunately, our county library system has a Safari subscription (The Animal Books from O'Reiley) which my students can access free of charge.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
You take their word that production dropped sharply?
Yes. The FBI compiles and publishes crime statistics. If the aggregate statistics didn't coincide with local ones that would get noticed. If they do than you have hundreds of independent case studies.
I don't, if production dropped sharply I would expect a sharp jump in street prices. That never happened.
Not necessarily. That's called velocity. Supply changes induce demand changes or they induce price changes. In this case demand dropped off which was the desired result. Meth became harder to get. In general during the 1990s dealer prices were stable but street prices were slowly falling which made it less profitable. What does seem to happen though is sharp shifts in purity. Meth becomes rarer and harder to get, purity drops, Meth becomes less desirable and less available leading to lower demand... Eventually it stabilizes at a new lower level with high purity.
I hate to be the one who tells you this. But the FBI crime statistics DON'T correlate with locally reported crime stats worth shit.
FBI samples people, and reports their answers (e.g. were you the victim of a violent crime in the last year). So for drug labs they ask: did you cook tweak in the last year?
Locally reported crime state are consistently under-reported as cities fight to have the best numbers, having their police paint a rosy picture.
Neither method will get you a better picture of drug supplies then looking at the price on the street.
Sacramento was where the tweakers started (H.A.s in the late 70s), nothing has changed, tweak and tweakers are still everywhere. It is cheap, 'pure' and common, same as always.
The government has a long history of claiming success in the drug war. They claim to have won against cocaine while the average street price halved and the average purity doubled!
The government has won exactly one battle in the drug war: ludes. They did that by shutting down legal production worldwide. Not an option for most drugs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The result false in favour of the reseller of a used books and gives them the right to resell the book to others on ebay or other channels even if the book was purchased abroad.
I currently have over 2000 books. About 1/3rd are hard cover, We too have a small home, but one entire wall in the living room is a book case. I also have the inexpensive Sauder book cases in my den, the shop and IIRC 7 of them in the basement Rec room to keep them neatly stored. We also have 5 computers that are networked with over 10 Terabytes of storage with, book, music and video (legally recorded). I also have 100's of VCR tapes, which I am about to erase and pitch. There are also, well over 30,000 digitized family photos covering generations It took a lot of years to accumulate these books, photos, and recordings Yes we (my wife and I) also have several e-book readers. The only and I do mean "only" time the readers are convenient are when traveling, or reading books from the library.. To sit back and read, the real book is far more convenient and comfortable. I have gone to purchase a new release only to find it available in e-book form, but not as a real book. There are many books I do not have because that was the only format in which it was available. IF I were still traveling a lot on business, I "might" purchase a few of these, otherwise I'll go with out which now days means "I ain't buying". As for DRM and the DMCA I have not purchased a single CD nor do I down load or stream music, since Sony screwed their customers with the root kit and the recording industry went bat shit over protecting everything. You would probably guess by now that we are avid readers, avid listeners of music. I have been a photographer for many decades. DRM and the DMCA have cost the entertainment and publishing industry literally many thousands of dollars where we are concerned. The industry claims they are losing massive sales to piracy, but I wonder if perchance, if there are many like us who have just stopped purchasing and have enough books and music on hand, or peruse used book and CD sales to keep us content. It wouldn't take all that many for the lost sales to amount to a very large sum. They'd never notice a few thousand sales to one household like us, but a few thousand such households would hurt, particularly if they mistakenly attribute the lost sales to piracy instead of customer disgust. I can't pass a yard sale with books or CDs showing.
Nice post. You sarcastically exposed the e-book scam. It's time folks realize that it is a greed driven industry not one of convenience. I can only read so many books a day so why not carry the hard copies. Sure if I were a student having to carrry 10 text books across an x acre campus then having them all on my tablet would be easier. But forget about reselling them after the semester is over, or sharing with a classmate who could not afford my $500 e-medical text. And in the future what will libraries look like? Oh, I forgot. there are none in our e-future.
80 mg Oxycontin tablets / month (suitable only for a seriously terminal cancer patient)
I have back pain, you insensitive clod. BACK PAIN It hurts!
So go see a chiropractor.
It kinda surprises me how many "smart people" don't seem to realize that developing a heroin addiction isn't going to do shit to fix whatever's causing you pain.
It's kind of surprising home many smart people think that doctors and chiropractors can do anything for certain types of neck and back problems. I have a friend who hurt her back playing college basketball. She had 4 surgeries that just made her back worse every time. She takes narcotics because she needs something for the pain. Otherwise she'd probably want to kill herself. Is she an addict? Certainly. But you can't take narcotics long term without becoming physically addicted. It is physiologically impossible. That doesn't mean she is abusing them and out on the street trying to supplement her prescriptions. Also, heroine is an opiate but not all opiates are heroine.
Almost. Heroin is an opioid as it has primary affinities to the mu opioid receptor. To be an opioid it must be a ligand for any opioid receptor(k,mu ect.). Now opiates are opioids derived from P. Somniferum (opium poppy) like morphine, codeine, thebaine. All opiates are opioids but not the reverse.
Heroin is diacetyl-morphine (discovered when Bayer was acetylating everything they touched which led to their most well known drug ever, acetyl-salycitic acid or Aspirin.) which makes it a semi-synthetic opioid like hydrocodone, the former from morphine the latter generally from thebaine.
It was developed to battle the cough from TB while being less reinforcing than morphine. They were truly embarrassed to discover heroin is inactive and bioactivates to it's pro-drug in the central nervous system, morphine. Due to the pharmacology heroin enters the brain more quickly following injection than morphine, after which the physiological effects are identical. The subjective size of the "rush" has to do with how quickly the brain reaches peak levels, making heroin preferable to people abusing it recreationally, and inconsequential for the treatment of pain (in most countries).
Why Britain still uses Heroin in palliative care is beyond me when there are stronger, less stigmatized drugs like oxymorphone.
Nope. I have no idea how to make batteries, but I DO KNOW how to make a BOOK. You do not resell your books, you TREASURE them. (your market is just a dt slower than BOOKS).
How easy is it for you to make a backup of your paper book, anyway?
My paper book is as easy to backup as the mechanism I choose to use. I can choose the easiest method available to the medium.
My non-DRM eBook is as easy to backup as the mechanism I choose to use. I can choose the easiest method available to the medium.
My DRMed eBook is as easy to backup as the mechanism chosen for me to use. The chosen option will necessarily be more complex than necessary for the medium, it will never serve my best interest, and the option is very likely to be 'No option'.
You see, to paraphrase the children's verse, "Anything DRM can do I can do better."
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
By default, if you're in a "walled garden" at least, your book license survives your device and a new reader can easily be re-authorized; this is actually far easier than replacing the few books that were in your lost backpack (or, worse yet, your library that burned down with the rest of your house).
Please go back to point 1 in my post:
"eBooks CAN be more convenient than books, but currently they are not."
The reason they are not currently more convenient is due to DRM. For eBooks without DRM, they are actually very comparable to physical books in terms of convenience. The drawbacks associated with eBooks are almost all ameliorated by the benefits.
I'm not here to say that physical books are superior to eBooks in all aspects, I'm saying that with DRM the benefits associated with eBooks are not being realized.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Point one in my post:
eBooks can be more convenient. They are currently not more convenient. The reason they are not more convenient is because the implementation of DRM negates a huge number of benefits that eBooks(as files) posess, but are unable to realize.
If you take out DRM from eBooks, I have zero complaints which are not just byproducts of the medium. ie: Physical books require light to read, occupy space, etc; eBooks require electricity, require support equipment, etc.
Those type of complaints I don't care about, because they are byproducts of the physical medium. The reason I complain about eBooks is that someone is inserting flaws and degrading the capability of eBooks. With those intentional degredations, I am stating that eBooks are not more convenient because it is impossible to make such a blanket statement about a condition (DRMbook capabilities) which may change with or without notice.
When I say: "These are the benefits of books" those will remain the benefits of books forever. The concept of 'books' is static. Tremendous variations to be sure, but I can be reasonably sure that at least in my lifetime, the definition of 'book' will be the same.
However, consider if you consider DRM to be an aspect of eBooks, you can't say, "Oh well here is what an eBook is, and this is what you can do with it." and have that definition remain static for more than a few months. If you had a DRM'd 'eBook, and asked me 'Can I read this?' I would have to ask you "Well, who controls the license?", "Is that company still in business, are they still running the licensing servers?", "What reader device are you using?", "Does that device support the DRM implementation of your particular eBook?"
Then you might ask, "Can I give this book to a friend?" I would have to ask "Does the DRM permit you to give books to people?", "Has this particular eBook been licensed with 'giving' rights?", "Do these 'giving' rights transfer beyond the first 'give'?"
These answers to these questions may change with time. As companies change their policies, so do the DRM rules and applicability. Therefore, you can't really define eBook when you include DRM in the definition of eBook, and if you can't define something, you can't state that it has any particular property or capability (or convenience), if such properties are subject to change from ebook to ebook and from one moment to the next.
With a book, there is nothing between you and the content. With a DRM'd eBook, there is something between you and the content, and that 'something' is variable.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
region-coded books in 3, 2, 1...
there is no "guise of convenience"
It's quite obviously extraordinarily convenient...for the publishers.
eBooks can be more convenient. They are currently not more convenient. The reason they are not more convenient is because the implementation of DRM negates a huge number of benefits that eBooks(as files) posess, but are unable to realize.
You keep conflating the two interpretations of "more convenient". Is an apple more convenient than an orange? You could certainly make that point as you don't have to peel an apple to eat. An apple would be even more convenient if it didn't have a core that was hard to eat or had to be thrown out afterwards.
If you take out DRM from eBooks, I have zero complaints which are not just byproducts of the medium. ie: Physical books require light to read, occupy space, etc; eBooks require electricity, require support equipment, etc.
The list goes on, ..., ebooks can be bought instantly, often in places where the physical books are not available; ebooks can be stored on multiple devices, I can read the same book on the subway as I'm reading on my bedside; I can easily find the ebook rather than looking for which shelf or in which box I put it or which friend I loaned it to; I can travel with 50 different ebooks in my carryon rather than 1; I can instantly look up a definition, a translation, do a text search on the book, see all references to a character or place; I can easily read with one hand or lay it on a flat surface (for workouts, bath tub, ...); I can receive corrections and updates to the ebook automatically; and several more.
None of these features are "negated" by DRM. For you, personally, DRM is big issue, but it is clearly not for a huge number of people. All the problems you mention are trivial to me and many others and I expect you're exaggerating them for yourself as well. Let me address your issue with "Here is what an eBook is and this is what you can do with it." I primarily use Amazon, so I can easily tell you that it performs 99% of what I would do with a physical book right now and does a hell of a lot more. I have absolute confidence that I will still be able to read that eBook on any number of devices in a few months and I have little doubt that I will be able to access that book in 3, 5, 10 years. I even have a reasonable chance of being able to read that eBook in 20 or 50 years.
No, I don't know that every specific feature will remain the same, but I don't care (much) as long as the primary function still works, which it has a very high probability of doing in the near future and decent probability in long term. About as high (in the case of Amazon, at least) as it would for a physical book, actually.
In the rare case I want to "loan" a book to a friend I can send him a link electronically and he can download a copy of the eBook himself for a fee (which may very well be the same fee that I paid). All without the hassle of driving over to his house to hand the physical book, keeping track of it so I can pester him to give it back when he's done, only to find that he it's got coffee stains and many of the pages are wrinkled because he read it in the bath.
Paper books and eBooks are not the same, they don't have to do everything that the other does for them to be tremendously useful - this includes loaning or reselling. It would be great if eBooks also had those features, but that is a bonus, not a requirement. If you can figure out a way to get rid of the DRM while still protecting the publishers and booksellers, I suggest you let them know. They're not idiots and they're only as greedy as every other for-profit business - it's just that this is a difficult problem with no easy solution. The absolute freedom and guarantee you demand is not reasonable and you wouldn't want to pay the high cost to pay for it.
My paper book is as easy to backup as the mechanism I choose to use. I can choose the easiest method available to the medium.
So... almost impossible then? Copying a file, even a DRM-encumbered file, is far easier than photocopying a book (or repurchasing it, which is the normal "backup" procedure.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
EPub seems to be the most compatible and since it's just XHTML underneath you'll never lose the ability to read it. Many publishers layer DRM on top but boycotting them should help in the long run.
If you haven't seen this, you'll like it: ..."
"* * * The Book * * *
New Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge Device
http://www.simplysharing.com/book.htm
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