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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#111

Post by hyperman1 »

user17843 wrote: post #47

I'm so shocked about this, my Iphone almost slipped out of my hands while I googled the Microsoft ebook store, but then I asked Alexa and she said everything will be ok. My Tesla is now driving me to an analogue bookshop to show my full support against dependence on digital platforms over my daily life, I might even upload a protest video to Youtube.

Tesla's software in the car is probably phoning home on a regular base. What happens if they pull the plug on those servers? You didn't buy that softare, you're only licensing it, after all.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#113

Post by jmiserez »

swebs wrote: post #86
sambe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the small sharing libraries also be at risk under a system with more power held by copyright owners?

No copies are being made, so no. Keep in mind we're talking about physical books, not filesharing.

Of course there are no physical restrictions with books, but legal restrictions can be created at any time.

Just imagine physical books suddenly having EULA-like first pages that would forbid you from loaning them out. In fact, this has been tried before: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/2059/why-were-books-...

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#114

Post by 40acres »

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…

Today libraries would be decried as socialist, when in fact they are a public good. The idea of a public good is malleable, so perhaps the way for left leaning policy makers to advance certain types of legislation is through re-branding as a public good.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#115

Post by LeifCarrotson »

nvusuvu wrote: post #82
SkyBelow wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>$200 each Sadly, you are dating yourself with that comment.

Has the price changed recently?

Yes, it's inflated. Looking up a selection of my engineering textbooks from junior and senior year at my alma mater, where I remember new list prices of $150-200 and used prices of $100-150 per course in books they now add up to a typical $250 list new.

However, there are a lot of ebook options now for $50-100 per course. Books that can stop working, as crazy as the linked tweet thread acknowledges. Books that will not be available on my bookshelf if I want to keep them for reference in the future.

And there's still piracy. I expect the ebooks will make this more and not less popular; a lot of pirated textbooks were...allegedly....low-quality scans when I was in college.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#116

Post by JudgeWapner »

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…

the only reason they exist now is because they're grandfathered in. We could have the exact same thing, just digitally, but due to copyright that will never happen.

The state I'm from has its libraries funded by the county (not sure if that's true elsewhere in the US). the more people in a county, the greater property tax base, and thus the greater (potential) for public library funding. So theoretically there's no reason they can't cut or reduce their physical presence and publish their entire library online. Except instead of knowledge, it's now "content", and instead of readers, its now "consumers". Everything is a "market" that needs to be "captured" and libraries are a threat to this corporate model. From a purely informational standpoint, pages-bound-with-glue are just low-tech forms of hardware dongles.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#117

Post by logifail »

hokus wrote: post #6

I've always considered the internet (in its current form) to be histories biggest book burning event. Hoarding rss feeds I often reached a point around 35 000 subs where the number of new ones I find is roughly equal to the deleted websites. I'm sort of stuck in a mental loop thinking of book burning.

> histories biggest book burning event

If you've not been to Bebelplatz in Berlin to see Micha Ullman's sunken library installation[0], do try and get there.

It's one of the most upsetting art installations I've ever seen, but it absolutely should be on everyone's list.

[0] https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial-bebelpla...

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#118

Post by porker »

gdulli wrote: post #41
_Microft wrote: post #3

Because of the volatile nature of all things web, I frequently screenshot (yes, screenshot, because printing to PDFs makes them look awful, imo) Twitter conversations, print blog posts to PDF or download articles that I want to make sure that I don't loose. It's so sad that this is necessary.

I have a collection of over 1000 faved tweets that's one of my favorite possessions. I noticed that one would occasionally get deleted by the author so I wrote a script to screenshot them all with a Python package called Splinter.

Would you mind publishing it? I'm in the same situation

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#119

Post by rchaud »

Back in 2005, my undergrad school gave students access to the then newly legit Napster. Everything was DRM-d WMA files, but there was a third party tool that stripped it out and let you play it on any device that played WMAs natively.

I'm reminded of that occasionally when I see files with "noDRM-$Artist-$Title" pop up in the File Manager. Does Napster even exist anymore?

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#120

Post by [deleted] »

sdegutis wrote: post #103
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.

I've found this website very useful: https://archive.org/details/texts My favorite part: It has actual scans of centuries-old books taken from many major libraries (NYPL etc). I can read something printed and published in the 18th/19th centuries, on my iPhone. And I often do.

[deleted]
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