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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#311

Post by gordaco »

saagarjha wrote: post #305
patmcc wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>>a subset of works would be onerous and somewhat annoying for 28 years, after which you could literally do whatever you want with them. Unfortunately, what would probably happen is more like what is happening to video games now; they are no longer profitable to publish, don't exist in an easy-to-backup, easy-to-share format (like an epub file with no DRM, for example), and so are essentially lost to time. If an ebo…

I thought all the console games get dumped so they can be emulated?

If/when Stadia and the like take off, and streaming-only games appear, we can forget about that too.

By the way, this is just one of the many reasons why I think that streamed games are very much an anti-consumer move and should not be paid for in any circumstance, to prevent normalization.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#312

Post by la_barba »

dredmorbius wrote: post #279
la_barba wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its fine to have an opinion on how things should be, but some of your assertions are not based on facts. >Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release. "Virtually all Server OSs get hacked/have had security bugs. Nobody should use them to host or store anything." All you're saying is that DRM isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect, and it isn't exa…

FYI, Bill Gates has explicitly stated he prefers pirated MS Windows use to unencumbered Linux converts: "[A]s long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." https://web.archive.org/web/20060411095315/https://www.latim...

I don't see what point you're trying to make? Microsoft continues to protect all their commercial products with DRM. They clearly see value in doing that.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#313

Post by ggm »

sjy wrote: post #188
ggm wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on your economy. Specifically what he does is of course illegal but the general principle of removing drm from your own purchase isn't That the bitstream of semantically meaningful content is identical appears to be the key issue. Why does it matter how you get there?

The general principle of removing DRM is forbidden, at least in the US, which is presumably why DRM removal tools are distributed through the same shady web sources as pirated content. "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

https://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/20-contracting-out/tech...

I assumed it passed. Looks like it didn't pass, because of the US laws.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#314

Post by goatsi »

madcow2011 wrote: post #135
carom wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer Library Genesis.

THANK YOU! I lost the name of the web site and was having trouble Google-ing the right phrase to find it again. Much appreciated.

I recommend bookmarking the Wikipedia page, people keep it updated with working domains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#315

Post by harshreality »

docker_up wrote: post #136
satysin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is the mechanism they put in place to prevent your friends book from being pirated failed within months? Yet all those who purchased it legally could one day be left with having their purchase shut off? They might be lucky and get refunds but they still lose access to the book. To me that seems like an utter failure for everyone.

There was no DRM put on the book, it was book-form only. Someone copied it, made a PDF of it, and distributed it for free. His royalties plummeted to almost nothing.

Can you disclose which textbook it was? I'm curious. Was it a good textbook?

The textbook market is a predatory scheme to fleece money out of students who are usually pretty close to broke, by making the books more important even than healthy food.

Not releasing a new edition every few years would have the same effect as "piracy", once the used market is large enough to supply each new class.

Professors and professionals who write textbooks should treat them as a marketing and career advancement exercise. Write a good book, get noticed by tenure committees or potential consulting clients. Most people who write books like that already have relatively secure jobs, and the book, if it's not awful, improves their career trajectory even more. It builds their reputation or brand.

It's tough to side with them over broke college students slavishly scanning thousand-page textbooks while eating ramen.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#316

Post by coffeefirst »

lukewrites wrote: post #154
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 love reading. I resisted ebooks until we had a baby at which point my reading time shrank to situations (bed w/the lights out, on the bus) where my Kindle is more convenient than a paper book. I buy/acquire ebooks that are the sort of thing I'd probably purchase, read, and then sell. For books I think (or know) I want to keep, I buy a paper copy, even if I've gotten an e-copy. I want my kids to have lots of book ar…

Yes. The one feature I want from Kindle is the ability to buy a digital book and "upgrade" to a print version if I want to own a physical copy.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#317

Post by nitwit005 »

la_barba wrote: post #312
dredmorbius wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Bill Gates has explicitly stated he prefers pirated MS Windows use to unencumbered Linux converts: "[A]s long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." https://web.archive.org/web/20060411095315/https://www.latim...

I don't see what point you're trying to make? Microsoft continues to protect all their commercial products with DRM. They clearly see value in doing that.

Not exactly. They've basically accepted that a huge portion of the world will never pay for Windows: https://time.com/3749434/microsoft-windows-10-pirates-free/

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#318

Post by lukewrites »

linuxftw wrote: post #147
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've been hoping this nostalgia trend will end. It's time to move forward. Instead of teaching kids about Shakespeare, we should be teaching about Super Mario for cultural history. Why should anyone care about poems or poetry? It was the entertainment of the early-print society, it has comparably little value today.

We should treasure poetry and literature because it's about the experience of reading, just like video games are about the experience of playing. Describing Super Mario Bros (You jump on, over, and around things, sometimes throwing fireballs, until you rescue the princess) doesn't do the experience of playing the game justice. Describing "i carry your heart with me" (I love you so much that all I do is by and for you) doesn't do the poem justice.

And here is the poem:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                    i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

-ee cummings

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#319

Post by Avshalom »

RickJWagner wrote: post #296
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.

Nice shout-out. Truly, the world owes railroad magnate Andrew Carnegie a huge debt. My own hometown (only 15,000 people) had a Carnegie library.

Andrew Carnegie owed the world a huge debt.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#320

Post by saagarjha »

asdff wrote: post #287
dredmorbius wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, Bill Gates has explicitly stated he prefers pirated MS Windows use to unencumbered Linux converts: "[A]s long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." https://web.archive.org/web/20060411095315/https://www.latim...

That's probably why they don't put up much fuss anymore if you never register windows 10.

That and it has ads.
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