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Digital books wear out faster than physical books

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Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#61

Post by falcolas »

munk-a wrote: post #46
falcolas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usable without a huge amount of intervention. I have trade paperbacks which are under 20 years old whose paper are downright brittle. > but libraries canno Which is, I hate to say, irrelevant to the discussion of preserving digital documents. Libraries are getting…

Well, I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted. We've gone so far into monetization and privatization that academic knowledge is now gate kept, bartered and sold - I know that a century ago there would be other gate keeping issues around gender and skin color but while we've made good progress on those fronts we've also allowed both research and literature to become much more commoditize…

> I think libraries getting shafted is humanity at large getting shafted.

I agree, mostly. But humanity is, thankfully, routing around that damage while the librarians and politicians fight that battle.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#62

Post by arsome »

abracadaniel wrote: post #28
falcolas wrote: post #10

This is a really weird article for me. Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside. That's about it. These three technologies are some of the oldest and most robust we have when it comes to digital media at large. Being concerned about reading and displaying HTML pages in a zip file in a decade is absurd. They're both already over 30 years old themselves. DRM, yes. DRM is a complete a…

The point is that the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable. An ebook takes a migration plan to remain readable. Yes you can remove DRM, but libraries cannot, they have to keep paying, and they're being sued to prevent them from preserving and migrating their data.

> but libraries cannot

Why don't they try it and find out? Seems like if anyone should have the legal right to do so from purchased books it should be them.

Internet Archive is trying something similar in court right now with their "controlled digital lending" concept. The ReDigi case was a true shame, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be willing to propose other concepts and try to legalize some case here.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#63

Post by debesyla »

falcolas wrote: post #10

This is a really weird article for me. Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside. That's about it. These three technologies are some of the oldest and most robust we have when it comes to digital media at large. Being concerned about reading and displaying HTML pages in a zip file in a decade is absurd. They're both already over 30 years old themselves. DRM, yes. DRM is a complete a…

> trade-bound paperbacks which tend to fall apart after (sometimes during, grrr) a single read

I'm sorry for probabbly a stupid question, but what is "trade-bound paperbacks"? I have tried to google it but I can't figure out which binding method is meant here..? Cheap glued paperback books? Sewn books? Something else? :/

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#64

Post by falcolas »

schiffern wrote: post #54
falcolas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable Not really. The paper's acidic, which means that the paper degrades to the point of not being usable without a huge amount of intervention. I have trade paperbacks which are under 20 years old whose paper are downright brittle. > but libraries canno Which is, I hate to say, irrelevant to the discussion of preserving digital documents. Libraries are getting…

> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. I'm picturing someone in the crowd saying this while the Library of Alexandria burns.

And that's why it's great that the internet exists. A very large number of libraries can burn and no knowledge will be lost. Just copies of that knowledge.

Those Alexandrians' should have focused more on their tech game. :)

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#65

Post by sbf501 »

Not if they are stored in the cloud, where the bits are constantly being shuffled around various media. It is never the case that a bit stays on the same sector of the same media indefinitely.

A personal library is effed, tho, because some flash fails if the blocks are not cycled. E.g., multi-level cell flash requires at least a refresh, of I think, 36 months (don't quote me)? Basically: the blocks need to be copied and erased periodically (this isn't wear leveling it is something else and I'm now out of my depth). Probably not an issue with lower density, thicker oxide single-bit-cell flash.

I still keep my favorite books in paper format. All of my digital books are loans from my library. If I really like it, I buy a physical copy.

As for libraries and DRM, well, that's a horse of a different color.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#66

Post by marosgrego »

systemicdanna wrote: post #27
vel0city wrote: post #18

DRM-laden digital books should be seen like the extra cheap paperbacks which fall apart sitting untouched on the shelf after a couple of years. Extremely different than the well-bound books one might think of when handling a 100 year old book. Non-DRM'd ebooks in formats which are open, easily parseable, and that people care to archive should be fine for a long time. Some people here are talking about a decade as if…

Is there a non-DRM format + an e-reader combo that allows for bookmarks, text selection, dictionary search? Ideally I would prefer to keep my Kindle but would really love to buy and own non-DRM books.

Kobo reader with Plato installed

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#67

Post by falcolas »

debesyla wrote: post #63
falcolas wrote: post #10

This is a really weird article for me. Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside. That's about it. These three technologies are some of the oldest and most robust we have when it comes to digital media at large. Being concerned about reading and displaying HTML pages in a zip file in a decade is absurd. They're both already over 30 years old themselves. DRM, yes. DRM is a complete a…

> trade-bound paperbacks which tend to fall apart after (sometimes during, grrr) a single read I'm sorry for probabbly a stupid question, but what is "trade-bound paperbacks"? I have tried to google it but I can't figure out which binding method is meant here..? Cheap glued paperback books? Sewn books? Something else? :/

Effectively hot glue bound paperbacks filled with low quality, poorly printed pages.

EDIT: I have probably confused Mass Market paperbacks with Trade paperbacks. The former is the main target of my ire, the latter is purportedly of higher quality in general.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#68

Post by wizzwizz4 »

falcolas wrote: post #55
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Libraries are getting shafted - humanity at large is not. Libraries are how humanity at large preserves documents! Sure, I might have a wonderful collection of books on my hard drive, but other than me (and whoever knows about my torrents), nobody's benefiting from that; whereas everyone with a local library knows (at least, in theory) that they can find information there. When I kick the bucket, what happens to my…

Historically, yes. Today? No. The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it. And where Libraries are hobbled by following the laws, the internet community has found ways around this particular damage. And that's cool. Now then, should Libraries be getting shafted like this? Fuck no. Can any actions I take - short of running for office and making my way up to the federal government in charge of interstate commerce - e…

> The internet has, in many ways, supplanted it.

The internet is big and sprawling. It's easy to prune, by accident or malice. Think of how much of the web goes through Cloudflare! Think of how much we rely on the Internet Archive; if that went down, where would we be? Libraries, on the other hand, are decentralised, redundant, curated, indexed, and maintained against both bitrot and link rot.

We could make the internet like this. In fact, there are organisations that do so! But there's a reason so many of those organisations call themselves libraries.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#69

Post by sammalloy »

abracadaniel wrote: post #28
falcolas wrote: post #10

This is a really weird article for me. Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside. That's about it. These three technologies are some of the oldest and most robust we have when it comes to digital media at large. Being concerned about reading and displaying HTML pages in a zip file in a decade is absurd. They're both already over 30 years old themselves. DRM, yes. DRM is a complete a…

The point is that the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable. An ebook takes a migration plan to remain readable. Yes you can remove DRM, but libraries cannot, they have to keep paying, and they're being sued to prevent them from preserving and migrating their data.

> The point is that the paperback can sit on a shelf for 100 years be readable.

Some can, most can’t. I’ve got a Bantam paperback copy of Moby Dick from 1985. It’s pretty much on its last legs. The pages are disintegrating and turning golden yellow, but the binding is still intact. Not sure if it will last another 63 years or so.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#70

Post by ncallaway »

falcolas wrote: post #10

This is a really weird article for me. Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside. That's about it. These three technologies are some of the oldest and most robust we have when it comes to digital media at large. Being concerned about reading and displaying HTML pages in a zip file in a decade is absurd. They're both already over 30 years old themselves. DRM, yes. DRM is a complete a…

> Ebooks are zip files with HTML pages (that is, text files) and images inside

There is almost no consumer storage medium that will last as long as a printed book. The files that will (probably) be easy to read in 50 years won't be readable on the hard-drive/CD-ROM/etc where they are stored. A printed book likely would be able to still be read

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