[deleted]
In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
11–20 of 51 posts
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#12I'm genuinely curious - can someone explain how Amazon has avoided litigation on this for so long?
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#13When Gnutella file sharing first became popular, I noticed that if I searched for .txt files I could find popular books of the day. Sometimes I would download them and do a find and replace operation to change the names of characters, sometimes to my own name or of other people, just to be silly. I think I did this with all the Harry Potter books. I also recall creating a heavily modified version of Fight Club which…
And about a decade ago there was a brief humor fad that consisted of modifying public domain classic literature to add fantasy or SF features -- "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" or "Android Karenina" and so on -- but obviously the people buying those knew that they weren't buying the original works.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#14Perhaps we should think about establishing a public listing of checksums for important texts?
Not sure exactly how it would work, you'd probably only want to run it against the main text so there would remain some flexibility for chapter headings, forewards, etc.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#15Perhaps we should think about establishing a public listing of checksums for important texts? Not sure exactly how it would work, you'd probably only want to run it against the main text so there would remain some flexibility for chapter headings, forewards, etc.
But what is the "main text" and who has the definitive copy?
At first glance, most people would think of chapter text and headings but even that can vary from edition to edition and printing to printing and country to country and translation to translation. How are typos/corrections handled and who has the right to make them?
Then we need the schema/structure for the content. And that schema has to preserve whitespace because while it's not important most of the time, other times it's vital like in poetry. Obviously, we need to be careful of character encodings too.
But most artists and writers consider their "work" to not just be the final product itself but the things that go around it like cover art, dedications, etc.
At first glance, this is an "easy" problem but gets ugly quickly. It's also fascinating though.
* I spent a few years at the Library of Congress working on their digital preservation project so lived and breathed these questions. When we worked with records (as in the musical kind), the album and cover art was just as important as the actual music most of the time.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#16I buy most of my books on ebay from the seller "thrift.books", and some other goodwill ebay/physical stores. They're used, and generally around $3.00/free shipping. Some Goodwill stores have every book priced at $1.00, and have nearly everything you'd want. I'd never buy a new book again, especially from Amazon.
I still buy some new books, but almost all books I have bought for ~10 years have been from Thrift Books (or some other similar seller). Great way to build a library. Many desirable books, often in like-new condition.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#17When Gnutella file sharing first became popular, I noticed that if I searched for .txt files I could find popular books of the day. Sometimes I would download them and do a find and replace operation to change the names of characters, sometimes to my own name or of other people, just to be silly. I think I did this with all the Harry Potter books. I also recall creating a heavily modified version of Fight Club which…
And about a decade ago there was a brief humor fad that consisted of modifying public domain classic literature to add fantasy or SF features -- "Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters" or "Android Karenina" and so on -- but obviously the people buying those knew that they weren't buying the original works.
Who could forget "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" ? They even made a movie of that one
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#18Perhaps we should think about establishing a public listing of checksums for important texts? Not sure exactly how it would work, you'd probably only want to run it against the main text so there would remain some flexibility for chapter headings, forewards, etc.
But what is the "main text" and who has the definitive copy? At first glance, most people would think of chapter text and headings but even that can vary from edition to edition and printing to printing and country to country and translation to translation. How are typos/corrections handled and who has the right to make them? Then we need the schema/structure for the content. And that schema has to preserve whitespac…
Ok - your points are all valid, but they are also huge. So if we try and address them we will get nowhere for a long time.
What would the MVP of this be? What if we had a register of signed checksums with reputation and community selection (I trust these folks, but not these folks, verified artist wins)?
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#191984 was published in 1949, 70 years ago. The author died in 1950. If it weren't for ridiculous US copyright laws, reputable public domain copies would be available at reasonable prices and there would be no black market for low-quality knock-offs.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#20The writer of this piece did not note that the pen-name of the editor of the "high school edition" of "Down and Out in Paris and London", Moira Propreat, is an obvious pun on the phrase "more appropriate". So obvious it didn't need to be mentioned?