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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#261

Post by ahakki »

DenisM wrote: post #244
cydonian_monk wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when it comes to an engineering textbook. While my university's selected electrical engineering books were all sub-$500 (usually in the $300 range), most of the "core" civil engineering books were at or over $1,000. Just insane for anyone who was not on scholarship. (And this was 20 years ago!)

Surely with prices going that high the students could pool their resources to buy one copy and have it professionally scanned? It's only $1 per 100 pages.

There could not be a more literal copyright violation than what you described.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#262

Post by dredmorbius »

brewdad wrote: post #112
carom wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer Library Genesis.

PG has the advantage of being legal.

Much of the material on LibGen would be legally accessible under the copyright terms in which it was originally published, but that their exclusivity has been retroactively extended.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#263

Post by nwallin »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #146
fooblitzky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM has a long history of failing to stop piracy.

Works pretty well for Steam. I bet most people here don't even know that they can't play their Steam games if they don't connect it to the internet every 30(?) days. Yet people boast about their massive Steam libraries. :)

Steam gets around by having an amazing UX. Press button get game. It's easier than pirating, while most other drm solutions are generally more difficult than pirating.

Steam doesn't even have particularly good drm. The media isn't encrypted, only the executables, so you can generally just get a nocd crack and overwrite the encrypted binary in the install folder.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#265

Post by cyphar »

AnssiH wrote: post #142
the_af wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if one day you went to find your well-thumbed, most loved book in your bookshelf, maybe to re-read your favorite chapter, and the physical book was missing, replaced by a note from the publisher: "this book no longer works, but worry not: we've refunded you!"

But this is not a physical book, so it is not a "unique" copy. All of my e-books are entirely replaceable by buying them again from a different store (or as a physical book).

Deleting books is a form of virtual book-burning. Yes, you can always buy another copy of the book (assuming that it's still being "printed"). But, that isn't the point.

I do find it interesting that Amazon decided to name their book reader "Kindle", of all things.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#266

Post by cyphar »

hyperman1 wrote: post #111
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.

That was the joke.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#267

Post by whenchamenia »

tolmasky wrote: post #83
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…

If we merely had the same copyright we had when the country first formed, this entire "your books turn off thing" would possibly be completely acceptable: a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them. Key here is that this means that within your lifetime this would quite possibly be the case. This also means that a very large var…

You can thank Disneys lawyers and lobbyists.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#268

Post by marvindanig »

dredmorbius wrote: post #256
marvindanig wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any kind of book is possible on web. Here's a photobook (only graphics) by Satyendra Sharma, for example: https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter Disclosure: I'm the developer behind the project.

It's the interface and interaction of physical books which is lost. I can keep my hand between two sections and flip between them, insert colored post-its, or bokmarks or index cards. Dog-ear pages, make marginal notes, star, underline, or (shudder)highlight. The one thing missing is full-text search, though a good index is a 90% solution (and so: not optional). Text and other element placement is static, so spatial…

> Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works.

Exactly! This results in _referential accessibility_ [1].

You might want to look up for the Superbook format [2] perhaps? Though not everything physics is required to be solved with it.

[1] https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility

Disclosure: I'm its creator.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#269

Post by dredmorbius »

la_barba wrote: post #201
ajuc wrote: post #7

This is why DRM isn't just anti-consumer, it's also morally evil using the same logic that says libraries are a good thing. This is also why I buy games on gog.com instead of steam if they both have them.

Have you found a solution to piracy that doesn't involve DRM? What was its success rate? I'm sure the publishers would love to switch to a better system if it exists.

Isn't the underlying problem sufficient and predictable pay to authors, artists, and other creators?

Seems to me DRM addresses this exceedingly poorly.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#270

Post by la_barba »

zamadatix wrote: post #243
la_barba wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an hypothetical.. If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all of those users switch to BSD or some other free OSs? If even a single person goes out and buys Windows, then there is a definite argument that piracy resulted in the loss of at-least one sale.

As another hypothetical... if it were impossible to pirate Windows, would it be nearly as popular around the world? If even one person/business would have used something else that was free as a result of having never used Windows before then there is a definite argument piracy drives sales. Of course the world is more complicated than ideological arguments about individual sales. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawool…

>As another hypothetical... if it were impossible to pirate Windows, would it be nearly as popular around the world?

Why Windows became popular will never have a single unarguable objective answer. It was probably a combination of factors, like anything else. The only fact we know is that Microsoft became one the most successful and richest companies, and it was because hundreds of millions of people paid Microsoft for their software, when credible alternatives existed and continue to exist.

>If even one person/business would have used something else that was free as a result of having never used Windows before then there is a definite argument piracy drives sales.

I'm not sure I follow your line of thought here. Piracy made windows popular, and so people bought Windows because... they didn't want to pirate it? That is a pretty convoluted argument.. ! :)

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