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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#11

Post by anchpop »

Herrin wrote: post #8
EdwardCoffin wrote: post #5

This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. Amazon, before they introduced the Kindle, used Adobe DRM for ebooks. I lost a book I'd bought through them when they switched to Kindle. The thing that really gets me is I had to register my book to buy it, with my email address . They had my address, and couldn't even be bothered to send me an alert, telling me that the DRM servers were being decomm…

You have my sympathy. I have been searching for the annotated version for years now. Any readable versions seem to have disappeared. This is a good reminder for me to make backups of the ebooks I do have.

And for rare, out of print books, you can put them on libgen if you want to save someone else the time

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#12

Post by [deleted] »

hyperman1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.

[deleted]

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#13

Post by docker_up »

I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair that his hard work is being used globally for free.

So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#14

Post by pbhjpbhj »

hyperman1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.

The UK Consumer Rights Act (CRA) appears to anticipate this as it has no absolute date beyond which goods should remain suitable for purpose.

Digital goods should last infinitely, so a digital good that 'expires' should be fixed or the cost fully refunded (fully as there are still an infinite number of years of use left available; and that should be accounting for inflation too).

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#15

Post by blakesterz »

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance.

Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never stop working.... just ignore the damage from fire, water, rips, loss, bed bugs... maybe they do actually stop working for other reasons now that I think about it :-)

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#16

Post by afandian »

hyperman1 wrote: post #4

I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.

I feel the legality should surround the description. This isn't "selling" it's "lending".

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#18

Post by ultrarunner »

blakesterz wrote: post #15

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never s…

On the flip side, people all over my neighborhood have put considerable effort into building awesome tiny sharing libraries. Perhaps without the issue being "solved" we'd see even more and varied institutions formulate organically.

So yes, I can imagine, but who knows whose imagination is closer to "alternative reality"?

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#19

Post by 0815test »

"The books will stop working"? They were never "working" properly in the first place! There's a reason why DRM systems are said to be "defective by design"; DRM is inherently anti-consumer (in denying entirely lawful rights, such as format shifting and copying for the purpose of fair use under copyright law) and DRM-encumbered media of any sort should always be regarded as fake media.
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