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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

#371

Post by cainxinth »

I have almost a thousand epubs mirrored on my NAS (and backed up elsewhere). The device I read them on changes periodically, but the actual ebooks don’t wear out, are easy to transport, and get much more use than my physical library. I still love paper books and would never part with mine, but they are more like mementos or even artwork to me now.

My paper books are heavy, get dusty, almost died in a flood once, can tear or be stained, are a fire risk, and would be very difficult to replace if anything happened to them.

Digital preservation has its challenges, too, but acting as steward for epubs has been much easier than for paper books (for me, anyway).

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#372

Post by remram »

robinsonb5 wrote: post #279
ivanhoe wrote: post #277

The huge difference is that digital data doesn't ever "wear out" - it might get lost or it might be in format that you don't know how to open on your current device - but it will never become partially unreadable or fragile like the physical media. Both of these problem are relatively easy to solve. It does cost money to make backups and do the format upgrades (or backup the old tools), but it generally costs a lot l…

Digital data doesn't wear out, but it also doesn't degrade gracefully. Usually if a printed page starts to degrade there is at least the opportunity for someone to notice and take corrective action before the content is lost completely (scanning, processing and re-printing, perhaps). Digital data tends to go from "fine" to "gone" with no middle ground.

This completely ignores https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_correction_code Those have been known for a long time and they are used in practice for both transmission and long-term storage.

Big storage arrays come with health metrics and auto-rebalancing around broken drives.

The idea that digital storage media degrades without "opportunity for someone to notice" is outright false.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#373

Post by remram »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #291
ivanhoe wrote: post #277

The huge difference is that digital data doesn't ever "wear out" - it might get lost or it might be in format that you don't know how to open on your current device - but it will never become partially unreadable or fragile like the physical media. Both of these problem are relatively easy to solve. It does cost money to make backups and do the format upgrades (or backup the old tools), but it generally costs a lot l…

> The huge difference is that digital data doesn't ever "wear out" it depends. once a broken copy is out for whatever reason, you have a broken copy. also most of the formats used today to archive digital media are lossy (mpeg4, h264, jpeg etc) > but it generally costs a lot less than storing physical books if we discount the electric bill. > Both of these problem are relatively easy to solve not really. I used to ow…

> also most of the formats used today to archive digital media are lossy (mpeg4, h264, jpeg etc)

"Lossy" doesn't mean it wears out. If you are a digital media librarian, you will use MPEG and put it in a container with error-correction codes and store multiple copies.

"Lossy" refers to the encoding between the full data you got from your scanner/digital encoder and the final file. It doesn't mean that meaningful information is lost from the original analog artifact and it doesn't mean it's not great for long-term preservation.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#374

Post by remram »

zarzavat wrote: post #275
Retric wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is insanely prone to losing stuff. What percentage of the first 10,000 YouTube videos from 2005 do you think are still accessible? With copyright and account issues etc issues I would be surprised if it broke 20% and that’s for a website that’s still around. You can find old stuff due to internet archive and that’s about it. Making the internet basically a giant single point of failure in practice.

Okay but the internet’s library of books specifically is libgen, and that is mirrored to a high degree of redundancy.

"Lib" in "LibGen" stands for "library" so "Libraries are how humanity at large preserves documents" holds.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#375

Post by ekianjo »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #355
andrepd wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those user hostile features are what drive me to piracy. No way I'll pay money to have the privilege of installing spyware just so I can stream low-quality video to whatever device the provider deems worthy at that particular moment. I'll just go on 1337x and in 2 minutes I have an high quality mkv that I can play anywhere I want. I'd happily pay 5-10$ a pop for this, and for indie movies I do make the effort of seei…

What a way to justify a crime. "I don't like how they act, so I don't comply with their rules". You pirate because you have no respect for law, because you are a entitled child or because you don't have enough money. Piracy isn't plain theft, but it's consuming a service without paying for it to its legimate owners. It's close, isn't it? Would you sneak into a amusement park? Not pay for dinner if you found it not to…

> The reason you think piracy is ok is because you don't associate the crime with the victim.

piracy is a victimless crime. you were not going to buy the license anyway, so its not a lost digital sale for the creator. additionally digital copies cost exactly nothing to make so nobody lost anything in the pirated transaction.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#376

Post by Ajedi32 »

HeavyStorm wrote: post #349
adalacelove wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they put reasonable barriers to piracy. They are of course possible to circumvent, as every other barrier in existence, but you can also scan or make photocopies of a physical book. And this is actually a good thing. Mildly related: the other they I was watching something on Netflix on my phone and found something funny so I tried to take an screenshot to share with my friends, which quite frankly I think is…

It is your phone. As such, it has drm capable hardware, which let's you stream Netflix. Think of the alternative: you don't have protection. Who would license their media to Netflix?

Who wouldn't license their media to Netflix in a world without DRM? What are they going to do? Make a $100 million dollar movie and then only release it in theaters, just out of spite? That'd be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#377

Post by aruggirello »

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #314
yywwbbn wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rooting the device voids the warranty. I’m pretty sure it would depend on the country you’re in . Even if that’s actually the case in the US

Even if it doesn’t void the warranty, it voids SafetyNet, so now Netflix and other apps might refuse to work. And even if it didn’t, it increases the attack surface. Random apps can ask for root, and the average user won’t know what it means. And even if you know the risks, now it’s much more of a hassle keeping your device up-to-date. So yes, rooting is theoretically a solution, but it’s not practical in the least.

It doesn't if you're using Magisk - which is the case 99% of the time. Magisk has been updated and passes SafetyNet under Android 12 too - no other means of rooting a modern phone is safe anyway.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#378

Post by hunter-gatherer »

cbrogrammer wrote: post #353
gkbrk wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are absolutely, 100% responsible for his death. A young person near the beginning of their career got sentenced to 13 federal crimes, 50 years of imprisonment and one million dollars in fines, for downloading some PDFs of scientific articles. It's not like someone asked him to delete the PDFs and he killed himself in protest. His life was ruined to make an example out of him.

Well that is just objectively false. The man was never "sentenced to 13 federal crimes, 50 years of imprisonment and one million dollars in fines". It is blatantly false.

It is objectively false, but the spirit of your comment is grossly incorrect as well. He wasn't sentenced, but the "13 federal crimes" was a plea bargain offered by the prosecution. He killed himself beforehand.

FWIW, I actually have a close friend who ended up in North Kern for a couple years because of a plea deal fiasco. For most of us who never directly interact with the criminal courts, navigating such curcumstances is complelty bonkers and stressful, as I'm sure it was for Swartz.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#379

Post by blue039 »

adalacelove wrote: post #250
jstummbillig wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I cherish the sentiment I very much doubt it's shared by all content right holders and copyright lawyers. And it takes only a handful to disagree.

I think they put reasonable barriers to piracy. They are of course possible to circumvent, as every other barrier in existence, but you can also scan or make photocopies of a physical book. And this is actually a good thing. Mildly related: the other they I was watching something on Netflix on my phone and found something funny so I tried to take an screenshot to share with my friends, which quite frankly I think is…

Scanning and making copies of portions of a book used to be encouraged. In fact, it's how you collected information for book reports and research. It wasn't uncommon, for example, for me to print out entire journal articles or scan entire chapters at the University library. Now, they'd probably shoot my dog.

I tried prime video once and the way it locked down my computer to guarantee so-called "rights" was stupid. I tried Netflix, same thing. I'm slowly but surely trending back to unabashed piracy because it's the only way I can own anything anymore - and that's sad. I will happily spend hard earned money as long as I can own something. At the very least I'd happily donate to my local library if they didn't spend time enforcing the will of some faceless multinational publisher.

Shockingly, as I've gotten older I seem to own less and every year the apes we elect take more of my rights away.

Re: Digital books wear out faster than physical books

#380

Post by anthk »

anonporridge wrote: post #112
abracadaniel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Physically? Maybe. But another factor is that human languages will naturally evolve to the point where future generations won't be able to read the words we're writing now without some kind of translation service. Even if it hasn't evolved enough to be classified as an entirely new language, it can change enough to be extremely difficult…

Spaniard here. Save from lots of medieval jargon and lots of footnotes, Don Quixote is not rocket science.

Also, you know, we have dictionaries.

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