But oddly enough, at least some people have found that free on-line editions of textbooks make the print versions sell better, too. See Flint's Prime Palaver #6.
Re:In the beginning, there was...
on
DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 4, Informative
RTFA. The submitter's blurb simplifies Flint's point to the point of incorrectness. DRM didn't and doesn't cause piracy--there would be piracy without it. But it does promote piracy--there is more piracy with it than there would be without it. Flint himself never claims that DRM "causes" piracy.
The contention that "information wants to be free" is a catchy way of saying "the properties of digital goods are such that their natural marginal cost is zero or practically indistinguishable from zero."
Yep. But Flint isn't talking about the people who use that quote correctly. He's talking about the people who use it as an unthinking justification for piracy--you know, the ones who tack onto the saying, "Therefore, we shouldn't pay the content creators for the information, because the information wants to be free." And you can't deny that the people who do that are a lot more visible than the people who use it correctly, therefore the saying has gotten tarred with that brush.
Personally, I think that information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Most "rare" materials aren't available in DRM form. What causes the copyright infringement isn't the DRM but the fact that you can't get it at all. If they're available with DRM, then the supply is large: just go pay for it and download it.
That's part of Flint's point. If there's no ebook version of it at all, a for-sale DRM-free ebook version of it is so "rare" as to be unavailable. But if it's available with DRM, then a for-sale DRM-free ebook version of it--which is, again, what people want--is also so rare as to be unavailable.
If I'm looking for an apple, and you offer me a cart full of oranges and say, "See, there's plenty of fruit," it's still not going to satisfy my desire for an apple.
What is DRMed and also "high-priced"? Songs are a buck on iTunes. Movies are twenty bucks on DVD. It may be more than you want to pay but it's not a vast amount of money.
Songs are the exception, and that's mainly because Steve Jobs bullied the music companies into going with the 99 cent price point. You can bet they'd raise the prices if they could. And even Steve Jobs doesn't like DRM any longer; neither does Bill Gates.
But look at some of the books on eReader. For instance, A March into Darkness by Robert Newcomb. $17.95 for the DRM'd ebook at eReader, $17.79 for the unprotected hardcover at Amazon. Granted, this probably isn't the best example because the list price for the hardcover is actually $26, and you can knock 10% off the eReader price by using their newsletter discount code, but it only took me two minutes of searching to find it. If I wanted to look longer, I could probably find a lot more egregious examples. And anyway, with Baen able to sell their ebooks profitably for $5 or less each without killing print book sales, even of their hardcovers, there's no earthly reason an ebook should cost $10, let alone $18, apart from the dual evils of pricey DRM (do you know how much eReader charges for their ebook services? People I know who've checked on it say it's quite a lot) and publishers not wanting ebooks to "cannibalize" print sales.
Sixth column of a series
on
DRM Causes Piracy
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· Score: 5, Informative
Wikipedia should institute Project Wonderful ads. They're unlike "traditional" banner ads in sort of the same way Wikipedia is unlike traditional encyclopedias; potential advertisers bid on advertising spots until they reach an equilibrium point. Advertisers pay per day rather than the gameable per-click, and a significant portion of the money actually goes to the advertisee.
In my experience, some spammers will also forge the 'from' address to be the address of the intended recipient of the spam, and then send it to an address they know will bounce (i.e. with an autoresponder) to try to get past spam filters or something.
You know, if you just put a ziplock baggie around whatever reading gizmo you're using, then you can read in the tub quite happily and not have to worry about getting water spots on paper pages.
The product demonstration video notes that consumers can bring in their own books to have printed and bound, too. Since the gizmo doesn't have any way of determining the copyright legalities of something a consumer wants to print, presumably it would operate under the same principles as self-service copiers at Kinko's: You're not supposed to violate copyright with them, but nobody's really looking over your shoulder to keep you from doing so.
Google Books could indeed be a source of printable material for this gizmo. Bear in mind that Google will only provide full text for books that are verifiably in the public domain; for everything else, presumably they might cut a deal with the publisher so the publisher would get profits from a consumer purchasing a POD copy of it. This could actually be a pretty big boon to publishers who couldn't afford to keep older books in print with full-sized runs but would still like to profit from them. Remember, the long tail and all that.
Likewise, printable-on-demand books could come from any ebook vendor who didn't restrict the use of their books via DRM. And heck, it would be great for printing out and binding the sold-as-PDF books you can buy cheaply from on-line roleplaying game shops, or the included-only-as-PDFs instruction manuals on a lot of hardware and software these days.
Apples and oranges. The IBIS binder is industrial-grade equipment, meant to be used by a POD print shop. The Espresso is supposed to be a miniature, one-off print shop all by itself. It won't be able to do books as rapidly as an industrial operation, but it will also be accessible to the average consumer where a print shop would be too costly and time-consuming.
Besides, the video notes that depending on the speed of printer and so forth that is used in the Espresso, it could go as quickly as one completed book per minute.
Also, Eragon was originally published by a small publishing company formed by the author's parents.
A lot of small press companies are using print-on-demand to get their works printed, rather than contracting for traditional print services. The tabletop roleplaying game industry does this a lot, and also sells PDFs that gamers can buy and have printed and bound at Kinko's. Personally, I'd a lot rather have it printed and bound by one of those POD machines; given that the POD machine is supposed to produce a professional-quality book, it would probably be head and shoulders above what Kinko's turns out. Might even be cheaper too.
Actually, the video said that depending on the speed of the printers that were used, it might theoretically be able to be as fast as one book per minute. Presumably the one book in seven minutes is the speed that the prototype that's been in operation since March is able to deliver.
I'm surprised the writeup didn't include the manufacturer's website, which includes a Quicktime movie of the machine in operation. It's a pretty neat-looking machine, though considerably larger than the "ATM for books" illustration that they came up with for the news story would suggest—about the size of one of those huge printers that sit behind the counter at Kinko's.
I downloaded WengoPhone, gave it a whirl calling TalkShoe to log in. While it did call the SIP address just fine, unfortunately the dialer didn't generate the proper touch tones.
Which means it's not going to be useful to me. Pity.
Seriously, ChaCha.com seems to be a sort of stripped-down version of Google Answers: a way to get help from a real live person in finding the answer to your search problem. Faster, too. And cheaper. It's not surprising Google Answers would go under...
Further amusement comes from this article about the movie's filming, with this quote from the owner of the house used to double for Katz's:
Mercaldi said she was looking forward to seeing the film, with her home of 13 years as a co-star, "especially since they trashed it," she said. "The character was a real slob, so it doesn't look like our house."
Why is it that every comparison of HDTV technology is always plasma vs LCD, with never any discussion of DLP? I know there are DLP sets, and some of my friends say that DLP provides a much better picture than either LCD or plasma. Why aren't these sets part of the comparison?
If Peter Jackson has anything to do with Saul Zaentz, he should take care. Zaentz treated a certain other Peter rather poorly in conjunction with the production of the Lord of the Rings animated film.
Oddly enough, this isn't the first time someone involved of making a film of Lord of the Rings has been scrood over it. It isn't even the first time it happened to someone named Peter. If information posted at Conlan Press can be believed, Saul Zaentz made a number of promises to Peter S. Beagle in return for his writing the script for the animated LotR, and then reneged on them.
Any CoH player who might have complained about having to pay $10 for an on-line code or $15 ($30 less one $15 month of game time) to get a couple of spiffy powers which are in-game useful, plus a few new costume pieces for their outfits, should take note of this.
...there will be a razor blade thingie that is the size and shape of your entire face, lined with blades, to clear away every last bit of stubble in one single swipe.
The only question is how long it will take to get there.
I have a friend who tells me he met Stallman at a convention once. Afterward, he remarked to a friend he was with about Stallman's case of con-grunge, and his friend said, "Oh, no, that's the way he always is."
Of course, someone's personal habits don't necessarily have much to do with the quality of the code he writes or the viewpoint he espouses--but they sure don't help when it comes to politics and personal image.
Slashdot Mirror
Flint addresses this in his second Salvos column.
But oddly enough, at least some people have found that free on-line editions of textbooks make the print versions sell better, too. See Flint's Prime Palaver #6.
RTFA. The submitter's blurb simplifies Flint's point to the point of incorrectness. DRM didn't and doesn't cause piracy--there would be piracy without it. But it does promote piracy--there is more piracy with it than there would be without it. Flint himself never claims that DRM "causes" piracy.
Personally, I think that information wants to be anthropomorphized.
If I'm looking for an apple, and you offer me a cart full of oranges and say, "See, there's plenty of fruit," it's still not going to satisfy my desire for an apple.Songs are the exception, and that's mainly because Steve Jobs bullied the music companies into going with the 99 cent price point. You can bet they'd raise the prices if they could. And even Steve Jobs doesn't like DRM any longer; neither does Bill Gates.
But look at some of the books on eReader. For instance, A March into Darkness by Robert Newcomb. $17.95 for the DRM'd ebook at eReader, $17.79 for the unprotected hardcover at Amazon. Granted, this probably isn't the best example because the list price for the hardcover is actually $26, and you can knock 10% off the eReader price by using their newsletter discount code, but it only took me two minutes of searching to find it. If I wanted to look longer, I could probably find a lot more egregious examples. And anyway, with Baen able to sell their ebooks profitably for $5 or less each without killing print book sales, even of their hardcovers, there's no earthly reason an ebook should cost $10, let alone $18, apart from the dual evils of pricey DRM (do you know how much eReader charges for their ebook services? People I know who've checked on it say it's quite a lot) and publishers not wanting ebooks to "cannibalize" print sales.
Other editorials in the series include
Column #1
Column #2
Column #3
Column #4
Column #5
All of which are available in their entirety, despite the "1/3 to 1/2" thing.
Good reading.
But the story says it's "a trial with a unique defense." Not "a firing with a unique defense." The defense in the trial would be IBM's.
Eh, I said it was blatant nitpickery.
Technically, it's not "a unique defense." Pacenza is the plaintiff, not the defendant.
Wikipedia should institute Project Wonderful ads. They're unlike "traditional" banner ads in sort of the same way Wikipedia is unlike traditional encyclopedias; potential advertisers bid on advertising spots until they reach an equilibrium point. Advertisers pay per day rather than the gameable per-click, and a significant portion of the money actually goes to the advertisee.
In my experience, some spammers will also forge the 'from' address to be the address of the intended recipient of the spam, and then send it to an address they know will bounce (i.e. with an autoresponder) to try to get past spam filters or something.
You know, if you just put a ziplock baggie around whatever reading gizmo you're using, then you can read in the tub quite happily and not have to worry about getting water spots on paper pages.
The product demonstration video notes that consumers can bring in their own books to have printed and bound, too. Since the gizmo doesn't have any way of determining the copyright legalities of something a consumer wants to print, presumably it would operate under the same principles as self-service copiers at Kinko's: You're not supposed to violate copyright with them, but nobody's really looking over your shoulder to keep you from doing so.
Google Books could indeed be a source of printable material for this gizmo. Bear in mind that Google will only provide full text for books that are verifiably in the public domain; for everything else, presumably they might cut a deal with the publisher so the publisher would get profits from a consumer purchasing a POD copy of it. This could actually be a pretty big boon to publishers who couldn't afford to keep older books in print with full-sized runs but would still like to profit from them. Remember, the long tail and all that.
Likewise, printable-on-demand books could come from any ebook vendor who didn't restrict the use of their books via DRM. And heck, it would be great for printing out and binding the sold-as-PDF books you can buy cheaply from on-line roleplaying game shops, or the included-only-as-PDFs instruction manuals on a lot of hardware and software these days.
Apples and oranges. The IBIS binder is industrial-grade equipment, meant to be used by a POD print shop. The Espresso is supposed to be a miniature, one-off print shop all by itself. It won't be able to do books as rapidly as an industrial operation, but it will also be accessible to the average consumer where a print shop would be too costly and time-consuming.
Besides, the video notes that depending on the speed of printer and so forth that is used in the Espresso, it could go as quickly as one completed book per minute.
Also, Eragon was originally published by a small publishing company formed by the author's parents.
A lot of small press companies are using print-on-demand to get their works printed, rather than contracting for traditional print services. The tabletop roleplaying game industry does this a lot, and also sells PDFs that gamers can buy and have printed and bound at Kinko's. Personally, I'd a lot rather have it printed and bound by one of those POD machines; given that the POD machine is supposed to produce a professional-quality book, it would probably be head and shoulders above what Kinko's turns out. Might even be cheaper too.
Actually, the video said that depending on the speed of the printers that were used, it might theoretically be able to be as fast as one book per minute. Presumably the one book in seven minutes is the speed that the prototype that's been in operation since March is able to deliver.
I'm surprised the writeup didn't include the manufacturer's website, which includes a Quicktime movie of the machine in operation. It's a pretty neat-looking machine, though considerably larger than the "ATM for books" illustration that they came up with for the news story would suggest—about the size of one of those huge printers that sit behind the counter at Kinko's.
I downloaded WengoPhone, gave it a whirl calling TalkShoe to log in. While it did call the SIP address just fine, unfortunately the dialer didn't generate the proper touch tones.
Which means it's not going to be useful to me. Pity.
Seriously, ChaCha.com seems to be a sort of stripped-down version of Google Answers: a way to get help from a real live person in finding the answer to your search problem. Faster, too. And cheaper. It's not surprising Google Answers would go under...
Why is it that every comparison of HDTV technology is always plasma vs LCD, with never any discussion of DLP? I know there are DLP sets, and some of my friends say that DLP provides a much better picture than either LCD or plasma. Why aren't these sets part of the comparison?
If Peter Jackson has anything to do with Saul Zaentz, he should take care. Zaentz treated a certain other Peter rather poorly in conjunction with the production of the Lord of the Rings animated film.
Oddly enough, this isn't the first time someone involved of making a film of Lord of the Rings has been scrood over it. It isn't even the first time it happened to someone named Peter. If information posted at Conlan Press can be believed, Saul Zaentz made a number of promises to Peter S. Beagle in return for his writing the script for the animated LotR, and then reneged on them.
Guess that's how it goes in Hollywood.
Any CoH player who might have complained about having to pay $10 for an on-line code or $15 ($30 less one $15 month of game time) to get a couple of spiffy powers which are in-game useful, plus a few new costume pieces for their outfits, should take note of this.
...there will be a razor blade thingie that is the size and shape of your entire face, lined with blades, to clear away every last bit of stubble in one single swipe.
The only question is how long it will take to get there.
I have a friend who tells me he met Stallman at a convention once. Afterward, he remarked to a friend he was with about Stallman's case of con-grunge, and his friend said, "Oh, no, that's the way he always is."
Of course, someone's personal habits don't necessarily have much to do with the quality of the code he writes or the viewpoint he espouses--but they sure don't help when it comes to politics and personal image.