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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#91

Post by dgudkov »

INTPenis wrote: post #33
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 is a ludicrous solution to preventing ebook piracy. One of the first things I learned as a teenager online was that anything that can be read, seen or heard can also be copied. It's only with interactive things like games and programs that pirates have a real challenge.

There is a big difference between copying physical objects and digital ones.

Books can be copied for sure, but the cost of copying a digital book is negligible compared to the cost of copying a real book. Zero cost of copying makes it possible to give it away for free (e.g. to drive traffic) and monetize otherwise (most digital piracy is business, not charity).

In the physical world, copied books are not given away for free typically because the cost of copying a book is relatively high.

Copyrighting digital items is a fundamental problem which has no good solution so far.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#92

Post by rmcrx »

rhino369 wrote: post #46
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.

"and you will receive a full refund of the original purchase price." Seems fair enough to me.

Only that I wanted the books, not the money.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#93

Post by jgtrosh »

logifail wrote: post #84

My grandmother is in her late 90s, has dementia, and is in a care home. My mother sent me this update last week: > Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928, how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them to her Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-…

I'm pretty sure I'll happily recite The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#94

Post by warp_factor »

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.

Paying for books is the old model.

I really believe that books should be mostly free and people should//would pay based on usefulness. I will gladly donate 200$ for a book that helped me. I would also never have bought that same book if it was 10$ to start with.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#96

Post by matwood »

inscionent wrote: post #70
sp332 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The yearly ALA (American Library Association) conference was in the conference center across the street from that library last weekend. I wonder how many noticed the metaphor to what is happening to libraries in general?

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#97

Post by ar_lan »

> Remember: Free with DRM is not the same thing as free.

I agree with him the whole way that this is weird, but this particular tweet made no sense to me.

It seems akin to "Hey, we'll allow you to rent something for some duration for free", and it sounds like he's saying that that situation is also not free.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#99

Post by uep »

derefr wrote: post #36
adrianhon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiny Libraries are cool but they aren’t even a pale shadow of traditional public libraries that come with commitments to levels of service and access to people of all backgrounds and locations and incomes.

Sure, but in a community where there wasn't an actual public library, I do believe one would inevitably come into existence as the effort of the community, in the same way those tiny libraries do. "People have spare books; community centres exist; so why not put the spare books in the community centre?"

In the alternate reality where public libraries didn't already exist, I suspect the law would make it illegal to loan books. It would be a direct response to these small informal libraries trying to share books and "violate the license."

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#100

Post by [deleted] »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #14
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).

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