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Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

pluralistic.net

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Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#31

Post by msla »

CharlesW wrote: post #8
taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

> But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. I'm curious about how old you are. Tech's obsession with DRM (then called "copy protection") started in 1975¹, and IIRC as of the late 70s/early 80s basically all software of note had DRM. ¹ https://archive.is/b8rK9

Non-shortened link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/18/business/technology-a-tal...

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#32

Post by leashless »

brookst wrote: post #23
squarefoot wrote: post #18

A better link: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-comput... Unfortunately BoingBoing has slowly become enshittified itself; they also deleted my account for no reason while I was hospitalized for nearly 2 months, then when I came back home noticed that the ad-rticles where they sell overpriced low quality products (seriously, get better suppliers!) don't permit user comments anymore, presumably bec…

BoingBoing is the worst of the worst enshittification. All of the problems that the theory predicts, plus a sanctimonious tone like they're somehow above all that. They've become the annoying religious proselytizers who show up unsolicited, and are drunk to boot.

Perhaps this Boing Boing situation is part of what inspired Doctorow to the enshittification insight!

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#33

Post by msla »

CharlesW wrote: post #19
golemotron wrote: post #14

It's like Richard Stallman passed his baton to Cory.

Only Cory seems 1,000 more pragmatic. And although he's often a hypocrite¹ and I'll roll my eyes very hard every time I read the word "enshittification", I admire that his goal was to create a "shovel-ready" book with actionable advice and look forward to reading it. ¹ https://imgur.com/a/TAltXUf

There's a difference between DRM and selling your stuff.

There's a difference between DRM and using copyright law to the fullest.

Thinking the line is between loading your stuff with user-hostile malware and giving it away is precisely the kind of thing the user-hostile malware camp would want people to believe: "We have to spy on users and destroy their machines because the alternative is not compensating artists! We stand with SAG-AFTRA so install Denuvo on every system you own!"

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#34

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

squarefoot wrote: post #18

A better link: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-comput... Unfortunately BoingBoing has slowly become enshittified itself; they also deleted my account for no reason while I was hospitalized for nearly 2 months, then when I came back home noticed that the ad-rticles where they sell overpriced low quality products (seriously, get better suppliers!) don't permit user comments anymore, presumably bec…

And you'll find some of it as audio read by the author on his podcast.

On various feeds:

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_447

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-con-how-t...

https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/podcast-cory-doctorows-cr...

https://play.pocketcasts.com/podcasts/88849f30-39ce-012e-11b...

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#36

Post by lesuorac »

mikewarot wrote: post #10
CharlesW wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. I'm curious about how old you are. Tech's obsession with DRM (then called "copy protection") started in 1975¹, and IIRC as of the late 70s/early 80s basically all software of note had DRM. ¹ https://archive.is/b8rK9

We tech people are only obsessed with routing around DRM... it's management that is obsessed with DRM .

Work at a place that made expensive physical objects. Customers calling in because they could use the objects because they plugged the hardware key into a different machine was all the time ...

Like the hardware had to be wired to the computer running the software. An extra hardware key that needs to be plugged into the computer as well doesn't do anything!

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#37

Post by danem »

hgomersall wrote: post #20
CharlesW wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only Cory seems 1,000 more pragmatic. And although he's often a hypocrite¹ and I'll roll my eyes very hard every time I read the word "enshittification", I admire that his goal was to create a "shovel-ready" book with actionable advice and look forward to reading it. ¹ https://imgur.com/a/TAltXUf

A paywall is not DRM.

How is it meaningfully different? Both exist to ensure that each person consuming the media has paid for it. Sure, in practice pay-walled articles can be easily copied to non-drmed formats, but no one does this and the motivation is the same.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#38

Post by taeric »

wlesieutre wrote: post #12
taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

Audible reportedly only pays 25% to authors, bumping it up to 40% if they agree to exclusivity on Audible. Which of course a lot of authors do because they need the money, and then no other audiobook marketplace can compete.

Right, but that was my point on the numbers. As a customer that has several hundred audio books due to Audible, yes, I know that the authors get a smaller cut of the sell than they do if I buy the audio book in a store. But their larger cut of my store purchases is effectively 0. Audible has grown the market to numbers that were basically pipe dreams of the past. To ignore that in the calculation is really dishonest.

I don't know if they are the best numbers, but https://wordsrated.com/audiobook-sales-statistics/ has some break downs. The digital market has clearly seen a shift in the last couple of decades. And it seems safe to say that it has driven a lot of the growth in publishing and other related metrics.

My assertion is that publishers used to give higher cuts to the authors because they didn't care about such a small portion of their sales. More, their long term investments in printing made it such that they couldn't scale out audio books nearly as effectively, so they had no incentive to build out that market.

Even dumber in this debate, the fact that Audible puts their files in DRM is almost certainly at the demands of the publishers. You can click through most publishers to see they still want to charge 25+ for audio books that you can get for 1 "credit" on Audible. Credits being about 11 bucks, and I get why publishers would want to keep those files restricted to try and discourage people from using Audible.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#39

Post by inhumantsar »

leashless wrote: post #32
brookst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BoingBoing is the worst of the worst enshittification. All of the problems that the theory predicts, plus a sanctimonious tone like they're somehow above all that. They've become the annoying religious proselytizers who show up unsolicited, and are drunk to boot.

Perhaps this Boing Boing situation is part of what inspired Doctorow to the enshittification insight!

Except he was one of the key people behind it until a couple of years ago

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#40

Post by aedocw »

taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

Depending on what you are looking for from an audio book, there are options. If you expect essentially a professionally made radio production of the book (multiple voice actors, effects, etc) then a real audio book is hard to beat.

On the other hand if you just want to listen to the book being read, check out https://github.com/aedocw/epub2tts ... It does not sound as good as a pro human, but it's not far off in my opinion. I've used that to listen to 30+ books that I owned the digital version of.

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