“The books will stop working.”
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“The books will stop working.”
1–10 of 457 posts
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#2I can still hear my professor of Classics say that "with the introduction of the printing press the loss of books ceased". With all that electronic junk that no one knows how to archive properly that statement needs to be revisited.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#3Because of the volatile nature of all things web, I frequently screenshot (yes, screenshot, because printing to PDFs makes them look awful, imo) Twitter conversations, print blog posts to PDF or download articles that I want to make sure that I don't loose.
It's so sad that this is necessary.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#4I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#5This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. Amazon, before they introduced the Kindle, used Adobe DRM for ebooks. I lost a book I'd bought through them when they switched to Kindle.
The thing that really gets me is I had to register my book to buy it, with my email address. They had my address, and couldn't even be bothered to send me an alert, telling me that the DRM servers were being decommissioned, so if I wanted to license any new computers to use the book I should do so then.
I've not been able to replace that book either, so it's not like the refund they finally begrudgingly gave me could be put towards a replacement - that book has never been republished in any form that I have been able to find (Vinge's annotated version of his book A Fire Upon the Deep).
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#6I've always considered the internet (in its current form) to be histories biggest book burning event. Hoarding rss feeds I often reached a point around 35 000 subs where the number of new ones I find is roughly equal to the deleted websites. I'm sort of stuck in a mental loop thinking of book burning.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#7This is why DRM isn't just anti-consumer, it's also morally evil using the same logic that says libraries are a good thing.
This is also why I buy games on gog.com instead of steam if they both have them.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#8This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. Amazon, before they introduced the Kindle, used Adobe DRM for ebooks. I lost a book I'd bought through them when they switched to Kindle. The thing that really gets me is I had to register my book to buy it, with my email address . They had my address, and couldn't even be bothered to send me an alert, telling me that the DRM servers were being decomm…
You have my sympathy. I have been searching for the annotated version for years now. Any readable versions seem to have disappeared.
This is a good reminder for me to make backups of the ebooks I do have.
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#9There will be a time, I'm not sure when, that the whole "its a license!" nonsense will die a hard death. It would be unwise for any company to rely too heavily upon it. This is not a new tactic at all. It works only temporarily, but has been used in a multitude of different industries through history - and the end is always the same. Eventually some company will push it too far. They will rip the wrong people off, and there will be a court case. The court is a very sensible place, usually. They will ask "when the consumer gave you money, what did you provide to them?" And if the answer boils down to "nothing. We assumed no obligation to them, and they gained no rights to anything" then the court is going to see it for the fraud it is.
Personally I'd just like to see some 'false advertising' lawsuits. It should be illegal to say "Buy the book!" if you literally are not being offered a sale. If you're being offered a licensing opportunity, it should have to be marketed as such. Yes, this would confuse consumers. I want it to. I want them to actually ask what they're getting, since up to this point the entire marketplace is founded upon tricking people into thinking they are buying a copy (like they would in a store), but in reality they are only getting a license (which grants no rights, places no obligations on the licensor, and can be cancelled at any time for any or no reason... in other words, you're throwing money at a company and hoping they don't screw you too bad).
Re: “The books will stop working.”
#10I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something, its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft used the word 'sold' when you bought it.
Let's just wait for who's it gonna be! And how will it look when "books stop working".