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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#61

Post by marvindanig »

sp332 wrote: post #25
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…

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

Exactly, dead tree books aren't a solution. I mean if a tiny library at my home or town burns up, there would be serious loss of a unique collection with that too!

IMO, a more robust and resilient solution would be to bring native experience of books on the web. And tie it up with open source and paid model both in two separate states: of a manuscript and that of a book. If a processor of books dies (like in this case Microsoft), there'd still be a manuscript to fork and re-process into book again through an alternate channel. That's my 2 cents.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#62

Post by rhinoceraptor »

docker_up wrote: post #13

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.

Perhaps if text books didn't cost $200 each, broke college kids would actually be able to afford them.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#63

Post by noonespecial »

docker_up wrote: post #13

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.

At this point we've seen this play out so many times that using DRM to "stop piracy" is like tossing the virgin into the volcano to stop the eruption.

Yes losing all of those pretty girls sucks but so do volcanoes destroying the village...

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#64

Post by tomxor »

docker_up wrote: post #13

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.

Most authors of anything other than best selling trash don't make anything worth caring about. Almost all the money goes to publishing, including ebooks. Does piracy still suck?

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#65

Post by asark »

fooblitzky wrote: post #28
docker_up wrote: post #13

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.

DRM has a long history of failing to stop piracy.

Further, pirated works have a long history of not getting shut off or otherwise made inaccessible, unlike "legitimate" DRM'd copies. :-/

[EDIT] what I'm getting at is that DRM doesn't just fail to stop piracy, it also makes the pirated version much better than the original.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#66

Post by adtac »

rbreve wrote: post #20

In a way paper books "stop working" after 10 years or so when the paper turns yellow and dusty

Even ignoring the fact that physical books last for much longer than a decade, the alternative to DRM'd books isn't physical books. It's digital, non-DRM'd books. And the lifetime of a DRM-free digital copy of a book is practically infinite.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#67

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#68

Post by headcanon »

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…

Principle of the thing aside, is the annotated version worth reading? I read the book and it was quite good, curious what the annotations add to it.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#69

Post by zamadatix »

docker_up wrote: post #13

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.

It being "unfair" seems to hinge on the assumption piracy = lost sale. Unless your friend simply laments people learn when they otherwise wouldn't have paid anyways in which case I'm not particularly sympathetic but at least understand the reasoning.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#70

Post by inscionent »

sp332 wrote: post #25
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…

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.
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