Actually I really like this DRM proposal and here is why.
When I lend a real book, I no longer have it. I even am taking a risk I will lose it. This addresses both of those.
first, imagine a transferable DRM system. I can lend my book to someone else. But I have to transfer the ownership to them so that I no longer can read it or lend it to anyone else. That seems fair in the way that it emulates the rights I have for physical property I own. I think this might be a headache to implement.
Actually this capability exists in the Barnes and Noble system of Lend-Me. Its just that the Publishers got together and forced B&N to remove the Gift/resale, multiple SERIAL lending, loan recall, and long term lending features.
It wasn't that hard for them to implement, it was simply a book keeping entry in the B&N servers. It enforced the single copy paradigm so that you could not read a book you had loaned, but you could always recall your books. It would be easy to make this widely implemented across multiple ebook sellers via a simple digital transaction.
But the book publisher stepped up and forced B&N to limit this. And when Kindle got lending capability, the same rules were applied.
There aren't any non-DRM versions available for every book.
Virtually nothing on the best seller lists will be available without DRM.
So what you are really saying is you restrict your reading to those books which are released without DRM, which are often out-of-copyright works (old) or from a few authors that insist on being DRM free.
For your own use, true. Nobody would know, and nobody would care. You can photocopy your entire hard cover library for that matter, or scan it to ebooks for your own use and nobody would come and arrest you.
But you can't give/sell a copy to someone else, and retain your own copy. That is what "copyright" (the right to copy) is all about. You don't have that right, even if you bought the book.
Unfortunately in their zeal to prevent you selling copies on the street, the people YOU ELECTED have made removal of DRM a criminal act.
Bah! No eBooks for me until I can stroll into my local public library, or better yet, download from the library site at home. I already carry a bag of some sort almost everywhere I go so a dead tree book can go along with me in place of some extra-cost/yet-another-electronic-device/theif magnet.
What rock have you been hiding under?
Most public libraries (of any size) have ebooks for loan, and you can download them to your computer, smartphone, ereader, or what ever. All for the price of a library card. (Free in most US locations).
Any library supporting Adobe Digital Editions ebooks, served up to you via their OverDrive service. You can also get music, Books on Tape the same way.
If your local library does not yet have this, check with regional libraries. Many of these will offer you a library card, or honor your local library card.
The Lend-Me system form Barnes and Noble, and Kindle's equivalent are designed to make an eBook more like a paper book, namely, you have a copy that is yours to keep, lend, trade, re-sell. When you lend your copy, you don't have it to read, just like a real book. If you sell your copy, it does not remain on your device, just like a real book.
It uses the Adobe Digital Editions DRM scheme, which attempts to objectify a digital file, (giving it properties as if it were a physical object). Its a reasonable solution, which if done correctly would have served both user and publishers well, allowing unlimited serial lending, gifting, selling and book banking of ebooks.
Unfortunately, the restrictions imposed by the publishing industry prevent these systems from being used to their fullest potential, and actually work against their best interests. (To say nothing of the interests of the customers).
They limit lending to once per book. Even after the borrower returns it, you can never lend it again. They limit lending to 14 days. I've got lots to read, 14 days is not enough. They prohibit gifting or resale.
Had they used this as it was originally designed, unlimited serial lending, request return of lent books, permanent transfer to a new owner (sale/gift) it would have actually increased the value of ebooks, justifying higher prices.
Instead, the lock-down just encourages stripping of DRM, and once that is done, the book is in the wind.
Thieves will always be Thieves. There will always be traffic in stolen digital items, just as there are in stolen physical items. Black markets will always exist, just as illegal knock offs of physical items will always be sold.
But the restrictions imposed by publishers mean there can be no LEGITIMATE market in digital items. You can never legally trade or sell your possessions. Someday this will have to be decided in court. In the mean time publishers aren't trying too hard to punish DRM stripping because they know that the imposition of such rights-robbing DRM is probably illegal and they do not WANT this decided in court.
Amazon makes a market in used books. Why not make a market in used ebooks?
Calibre can not convert DRM epubs to other formats. Calibre does not support stripping of DRM.
Stripping DRM is illegal under the DMCA in the US (there are exceptions, including for the blind OR when no version is available for your platform, none of which has been yet tested in the courts). Other countries may have different rules.
I assume I have misunderstood, as you appear to be suggesting that Google should introduce something like slashdot's moderation system as the cornerstone of their search operation.
Yup you read it right, that's exactly what he said. I spit my coffee.
In a story about how someone set up an elaborate way to Game google page rank, the suggested solution is to make gaming the system drop dead simple and bot friendly. Unbelievable.
The sad part is someone is sure to jump to the defense of this in 3...2...1. Knowing the love for all things crowd sourced and cloud stored, Wikipedia like solutions (WikiRankia?) will probably be suggested. That would be gamed before it launches.
To play devil's advocate, who says that JC Penny did this themselves?
They didn't do this them selves. They hired it done.
From TFA:
PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.
Hiring digital taggers to spray your graffiti all over the net and then insisting you are innocent is a transparently thin defense.
In spite of their denials of persuing a link-spam scheme their first action upon getting their Google Spanking was:
PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.
.
So they essentially said "We didn't do it" and promptly fired the bunch that they hired to do it for them. Plausible Deny-ability lives.
But Google already had started repairing page rank well before this story broke. It appeared in the Official Google Blog and was discussed here just last month.
I, (and I suspect Google) would sure like to hear your suggestions on how this sort of thing can be prevented. The best minds in the industry from at least two companies have been struggling with this for over a decade, and you could pretty much name your salary if you have a solution.
The simple fact is it is almost impossible to reliably detect cut and paste web sites who's only purpose for existing is to host google ads or which embed links directly in their text to game page rank. If you've figured this out, Google is hiring.
I'm sure there are competent people there. If nothing else, the companies hired to manage their networks would recruit them from anywhere. The government employees are more likely to be cronies of the powers that be than they are to be competent.
The point is, they are unlikely to have an excess of them hanging around against the day when the government decides to filter every facebook posting, and set up a man in the middle attack on each one. It takes a lot of people and a lot of coordination to start such a process across half a dozen of ISPs.
Its far easier to just force the ISPs to route facebook.com traffic to a honeypot, because all you really need is an entry in your in-country DNS servers. Since the honeypot does nothing but server fake pages, the users think their account is deleted.
My position isn't weak, yours is delusional, and the Amish have nothing to do with the topic under discussion. You can walk away from being Amish. You won't be hauled into court by the state and put on trial for your life simply because you changed your beliefs.
You don't want to discuss honor killings I see. Is that because your position is destroyed by their very existence?
These are all facets of the same problem. Egypt is far more advanced in the the area of women's rights than most countries in the region, but even there they have a long way to go.
Have you looked into TouchDown? http://www.nitrodesk.com/features.aspx It has all the server side control you could want. And its just one of a dozen offerings by different companies.
And Push is no big deal, In fact it isn't even unique. IMAP IdleD is just as effective, and just as reliable and it is free and unencumbered with patents because its just TCP/IP.
With Secure Imap and secure smtp there is no third company involved to sell out your account to some foreign Arab state, because the only mail server is in your home office. You don't need Rim's servers building a nest in your network, and you don't need to hand your mail to them to deliver. Any random mail server (Windows or Linux) can handle it by itself over ssl, encrypted both directions. Add something like TouchDown, and its even encrypted on the phone.
The solution Rim is selling was needed back in the 90s. Once everyone got on board, they stopped looking around, so they didn't notice Apple and Android did the same things. When you sit down with a knowledgeable Android user, you will find there is nothing your blackberry can do that Android can't do cheaper.
The government is just as ruthless in holding down dissent as some Arab states. There hasn't been an open election there in decades, and the president is looking to hand the government over to his daughter and son-in-law. He's playing a 4 way power broker between major powers, but he can only keep that up till al qaeda moves in, as they have already started doing.
He dies, and that country spirals out of control. Its Egypt all over again.
People over and over again seem to fall for this mistake. Saudi Arabia is the only country that requires women to be escorted with a "mahram." No other Muslim country makes this claim that it's a requirement,
That's nonsense, and you know it.
While the Taliban ruled Afghanistan mahram was the norm. In many tribal zones in Pakistan this is still the norm.
But that's just one part of the problem. Shall we talk about Honor Killings? That practice is actually spreading, even to Canada and the US.
But I notice a lot of signs in English, and a lot of women in the streets. The mere fact that women are allowed to participate without a brother or husband present is refreshing.
I'm not sure this means they are less religious. Maybe just differently religious.
A pretty wide range of Algerian providers (Telecom Algeria, Wataniya Telecom Algeria, SPA Anwarnet, Smart Link, Orascom/Djezzy, etc.) have direct international connectivity, as seen in the BGP routing table. See here.
That makes it pretty hard for a tin-horn dictator to proxy all of these. (Algeria is not known as a great source of networking expertise).
I suspect it would be much easier to put up a dummy facebook server (honypot) and simply have it deny all log in attempts. A few dns entries at each ISP suckers in a lot of people.
Let's see -- you are in the government, facebook is outside your country, and it's _hard_ to ensure that all facebook connections get routed through your MitM box?
Well in some governments, that would be far more likely than anyone using firesheep. But other posters insist that you are still asked for your password over a SSL connection when deleting accounts.
I don't know about Algeria's internet structure, but something like this would be pretty hard to set up quickly if there were more than a few backbones. The traffic load would be enormous, you would have to filter every FB access and selectively delete the accounts, AFTER successfully pulling off your MitM.
I seriously doubt there is enough in-country expertise to do this on any grand scale. (I don't discount that France might be helping them).
In short, I suspect its far more likely they are simply blocking specific people, or routing certain internal IPs to a honeypot and some users are too dim witted to determine the difference, and obligingly key in their passwords.
I also don't discount the whole story is apocryphal.
Slashdot Mirror
The entire Arab World would be too busy dancing in the streets to blame anyone.
Says who.
Israel has a lot more to lose with a nuclear Iran than does the US, and they have been doing deep projects like this since dirt.
Ham radio
SAT Phones
Heliographs
Direct Dial up to a foreign ISP
Once the phones and the net go down, Joe in the street is dead in the water.
Further its illegal to encrypt ham traffic in most countries.
Well that level of irony can be unhealthy for your company's checkbook.
Now users will be in a position to demand a company phone for company work rather than just using their own.
That's fine if your company is willing to pay the expense.
You have something just as bad:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_and_Related_Rights_Regulations_2003
And as such, they have a very limited selection.
Actually I really like this DRM proposal and here is why.
When I lend a real book, I no longer have it. I even am taking a risk I will lose it. This addresses both of those.
first, imagine a transferable DRM system. I can lend my book to someone else. But I have to transfer the ownership to them so that I no longer can read it or lend it to anyone else. That seems fair in the way that it emulates the rights I have for physical property I own. I think this might be a headache to implement.
Actually this capability exists in the Barnes and Noble system of Lend-Me. Its just that the Publishers got together and forced B&N to remove the Gift/resale, multiple SERIAL lending, loan recall, and long term lending features.
It wasn't that hard for them to implement, it was simply a book keeping entry in the B&N servers. It enforced the single copy paradigm so that you could not read a book you had loaned, but you could always recall your books. It would be easy to make this widely implemented across multiple ebook sellers via a simple digital transaction.
But the book publisher stepped up and forced B&N to limit this. And when Kindle got lending capability, the same rules were applied.
There aren't any non-DRM versions available for every book.
Virtually nothing on the best seller lists will be available without DRM.
So what you are really saying is you restrict your reading to those books which are released without DRM, which are often out-of-copyright works (old) or from a few authors that insist on being DRM free.
You bought it, you do what you want with it.
For your own use, true. Nobody would know, and nobody would care. You can photocopy your entire hard cover library for that matter, or scan it to ebooks for your own use and nobody would come and arrest you.
But you can't give/sell a copy to someone else, and retain your own copy. That is what "copyright" (the right to copy) is all about. You don't have that right, even if you bought the book.
Unfortunately in their zeal to prevent you selling copies on the street, the people YOU ELECTED have made removal of DRM a criminal act.
Bah! No eBooks for me until I can stroll into my local public library, or better yet, download from the library site at home. I already carry a bag of some sort almost everywhere I go so a dead tree book can go along with me in place of some extra-cost/yet-another-electronic-device/theif magnet.
What rock have you been hiding under?
Most public libraries (of any size) have ebooks for loan, and you can download them to your computer, smartphone, ereader, or what ever. All for the price of a library card. (Free in most US locations).
Any library supporting Adobe Digital Editions ebooks, served up to you via their OverDrive service. You can also get music, Books on Tape the same way.
If your local library does not yet have this, check with regional libraries. Many of these will offer you a library card, or honor your local library card.
The Lend-Me system form Barnes and Noble, and Kindle's equivalent are designed to make an eBook more like a paper book, namely, you have a copy that is yours to keep, lend, trade, re-sell. When you lend your copy, you don't have it to read, just like a real book. If you sell your copy, it does not remain on your device, just like a real book.
It uses the Adobe Digital Editions DRM scheme, which attempts to objectify a digital file, (giving it properties as if it were a physical object).
Its a reasonable solution, which if done correctly would have served both user and publishers well, allowing unlimited serial lending, gifting, selling and book banking of ebooks.
Unfortunately, the restrictions imposed by the publishing industry prevent these systems from being used to their fullest potential, and actually work against their best interests. (To say nothing of the interests of the customers).
They limit lending to once per book. Even after the borrower returns it, you can never lend it again.
They limit lending to 14 days. I've got lots to read, 14 days is not enough.
They prohibit gifting or resale.
Had they used this as it was originally designed, unlimited serial lending, request return of lent books, permanent transfer to a new owner (sale/gift) it would have actually increased the value of ebooks, justifying higher prices.
Instead, the lock-down just encourages stripping of DRM, and once that is done, the book is in the wind.
Thieves will always be Thieves. There will always be traffic in stolen digital items, just as there are in stolen physical items. Black markets will always exist, just as illegal knock offs of physical items will always be sold.
But the restrictions imposed by publishers mean there can be no LEGITIMATE market in digital items. You can never legally trade or sell your possessions. Someday this will have to be decided in court. In the mean time publishers aren't trying too hard to punish DRM stripping because they know that the imposition of such rights-robbing DRM is probably illegal and they do not WANT this decided in court.
Amazon makes a market in used books. Why not make a market in used ebooks?
Calibre can not convert DRM epubs to other formats.
Calibre does not support stripping of DRM.
Stripping DRM is illegal under the DMCA in the US (there are exceptions, including for the blind OR when no version is available for your platform, none of which has been yet tested in the courts). Other countries may have different rules.
I assume I have misunderstood, as you appear to be suggesting that Google should introduce something like slashdot's moderation system as the cornerstone of their search operation.
Yup you read it right, that's exactly what he said. I spit my coffee.
In a story about how someone set up an elaborate way to Game google page rank, the suggested solution is to make
gaming the system drop dead simple and bot friendly. Unbelievable.
The sad part is someone is sure to jump to the defense of this in 3...2...1.
Knowing the love for all things crowd sourced and cloud stored, Wikipedia like solutions (WikiRankia?) will probably be suggested. That would be gamed before it launches.
Put it on the users.
What could possibly go wrong with that?!
How is this 'news' to a nerd? To a marketing droid somewhere, maybe but even that I doubt in this day and age.
Please do not insult us nerds by even the hint of parity with marketing droids.
Thanks.
To play devil's advocate, who says that JC Penny did this themselves?
They didn't do this them selves. They hired it done.
From TFA:
PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.
Hiring digital taggers to spray your graffiti all over the net and then insisting you are innocent is a transparently thin defense.
Exactly so.
In spite of their denials of persuing a link-spam scheme their first action upon getting their Google Spanking was:
PENNEY reacted to this instant reversal of fortune by, among other things, firing its search engine consulting firm, SearchDex. Executives there did not return e-mail or phone calls.
.
So they essentially said "We didn't do it" and promptly fired the bunch that they hired to do it for them. Plausible Deny-ability lives.
But Google already had started repairing page rank well before this story broke. It appeared in the Official Google Blog and was discussed here just last month.
I, (and I suspect Google) would sure like to hear your suggestions on how this sort of thing can be prevented. The best minds in the industry from at least two companies have been struggling with this for over a decade, and you could pretty much name your salary if you have a solution.
The simple fact is it is almost impossible to reliably detect cut and paste web sites who's only purpose for existing is to host google ads or which embed links directly in their text to game page rank. If you've figured this out, Google is hiring.
I'm sure there are competent people there. If nothing else, the companies hired to manage their networks would recruit them from anywhere. The government employees are more likely to be cronies of the powers that be than they are to be competent.
The point is, they are unlikely to have an excess of them hanging around against the day when the government decides to filter every facebook posting, and set up a man in the middle attack on each one. It takes a lot of people and a lot of coordination to start such a process across half a dozen of ISPs.
Its far easier to just force the ISPs to route facebook.com traffic to a honeypot, because all you really need is an entry in your in-country DNS servers. Since the honeypot does nothing but server fake pages, the users think their account is deleted.
My position isn't weak, yours is delusional, and the Amish have nothing to do with the topic under discussion. You can walk away from being Amish. You won't be hauled into court by the state and put on trial for your life simply because you changed your beliefs.
You don't want to discuss honor killings I see. Is that because your position is destroyed by their very existence?
These are all facets of the same problem. Egypt is far more advanced in the the area of women's rights than most countries in the region, but even there they have a long way to go.
Rely only on Client side?
Have you looked into TouchDown? http://www.nitrodesk.com/features.aspx
It has all the server side control you could want. And its just one of a dozen offerings by different companies.
And Push is no big deal, In fact it isn't even unique. IMAP IdleD is just as effective, and just as reliable and it is free and unencumbered with patents because its just TCP/IP.
With Secure Imap and secure smtp there is no third company involved to sell out your account to some foreign Arab state, because the only mail server is in your home office. You don't need Rim's servers building a nest in your network, and you don't need to hand your mail to them to deliver. Any random mail server (Windows or Linux) can handle it by itself over ssl, encrypted both directions. Add something like TouchDown, and its even encrypted on the phone.
The solution Rim is selling was needed back in the 90s. Once everyone got on board, they stopped looking around, so they didn't notice Apple and Android did the same things. When you sit down with a knowledgeable Android user, you will find there is nothing your blackberry can do that Android can't do cheaper.
The government is just as ruthless in holding down dissent as some Arab states. There hasn't been an open election there in decades, and the president is looking to hand the government over to his daughter and son-in-law. He's playing a 4 way power broker between major powers, but he can only keep that up till al qaeda moves in, as they have already started doing.
He dies, and that country spirals out of control. Its Egypt all over again.
People over and over again seem to fall for this mistake. Saudi Arabia is the only country that requires women to be escorted with a "mahram." No other Muslim country makes this claim that it's a requirement,
That's nonsense, and you know it.
While the Taliban ruled Afghanistan mahram was the norm.
In many tribal zones in Pakistan this is still the norm.
But that's just one part of the problem. Shall we talk about Honor Killings? That practice is actually spreading, even to Canada and the US.
No clue what they are talking about.
But I notice a lot of signs in English, and a lot of women in the streets. The mere fact that women are allowed to participate without a brother or husband present is refreshing.
I'm not sure this means they are less religious. Maybe just differently religious.
A pretty wide range of Algerian providers (Telecom Algeria, Wataniya Telecom Algeria, SPA Anwarnet, Smart Link, Orascom/Djezzy, etc.) have direct international connectivity, as seen in the BGP routing table. See here.
That makes it pretty hard for a tin-horn dictator to proxy all of these. (Algeria is not known as a great source of networking expertise).
I suspect it would be much easier to put up a dummy facebook server (honypot) and simply have it deny all log in attempts. A few dns entries at each ISP suckers in a lot of people.
Let's see -- you are in the government, facebook is outside your country, and it's _hard_ to ensure that all facebook connections get routed through your MitM box?
Well in some governments, that would be far more likely than anyone using firesheep. But other posters insist that you are still asked for your password over a SSL connection when deleting accounts.
I don't know about Algeria's internet structure, but something like this would be pretty hard to set up quickly if there were more than a few backbones. The traffic load would be enormous, you would have to filter every FB access and selectively delete the accounts, AFTER successfully pulling off your MitM.
I seriously doubt there is enough in-country expertise to do this on any grand scale. (I don't discount that France might be helping them).
In short, I suspect its far more likely they are simply blocking specific people, or routing certain internal IPs to a honeypot and some users are too dim witted to determine the difference, and obligingly key in their passwords.
I also don't discount the whole story is apocryphal.