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“The books will stop working.”

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Re: “The books will stop working.”

#271

Post by dredmorbius »

marvindanig wrote: post #268
dredmorbius wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the interface and interaction of physical books which is lost. I can keep my hand between two sections and flip between them, insert colored post-its, or bokmarks or index cards. Dog-ear pages, make marginal notes, star, underline, or (shudder)highlight. The one thing missing is full-text search, though a good index is a 90% solution (and so: not optional). Text and other element placement is static, so spatial…

> Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Exactly! This results in _referential accessibility_ [1]. You might want to look up for the Superbook format [2] perhaps? Though not everything physics is required to be solved with it. [1] https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility Disclosure: I'm its creator.

No, spatial.

I remember roughly how far into a book, or chapter, passages are. Where on a page, or with relstion to other elements, how or where a line breaks (especially if that's awkward). Where the book itself lives within my collection. Where I was when first reading (or later re-reading) it. Etc., etc.

Spatial associations.

Consistent pagination is useful, but it's a small subset of the whole.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#272

Post by flukus »

la_barba wrote: post #225
jforberg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that DRM is a solution to piracy? If anything, DRM is a big driver for piracy, and its success rate is near zero. Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release. The "better solution" is to treat your customers with respect and let them own their bought goods. Gog.com is a good example here, in my opinion. What definitely doesn'…

Its fine to have an opinion on how things should be, but some of your assertions are not based on facts. >Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release. "Virtually all Server OSs get hacked/have had security bugs. Nobody should use them to host or store anything." All you're saying is that DRM isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect, and it isn't exa…

> If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all the pirates switch to Linux or another Free OS? If the answer is No, then a non-zero number of people will go out and purchase Windows. From a sales standpoint, preventing piracy is definitely going to drive sales.

What your not counting is the number of people who would be happy to purchase it because it's more convenient but get the pirated version because it's superior, being unencumbered by DRM.

As a firefox or chrome user for instance I could pay for netflix, but the will only deliver the 720p version, why would I pay for a worse product?

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#273

Post by mark-r »

dageshi wrote: post #155
NoodleIncident wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's because these sob stories were already accounted for by the _original_ copyright length of 28 years? The vast majority of DRM is protecting some corporation's right to profit off of the work of content creators almost indefinitely.

Most DRM is there to protect it during the initial sales window when demand and awareness of the product are at their highest.

Citation needed. It seems very clear from the history of copyright law that the whole thing is just a money grab.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#274

Post by asdff »

filoleg wrote: post #163
harimau777 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I find that I just don't get as much out of digital books. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but the closest I can describe is that it feels like I'm looking through a window at a book rather than actually viewing it directly.

I found that for certain types of books, digital works fine, while for others it is a disaster. For novels, poems, and other non-textbook books without tons of graphics, ebooks are great. For textbooks or other materials where you are expected to flip back and forth through pages trying to digest the material, as well as for books with tons of graphs and diagrams, ebooks are indeed suboptimal. My personal rule is tha…

For me textbooks are best consumed as a pdf. I don't kill my back, I don't kill my wallet, and I can ctrl-f through the entire book and annotate as needed. I throw it on a flashdrive on my keys and I can pass it around to classmates.

Any other kind of book and I'm reaching for print. It's much more satisfying to bang out 50 pages in a novel and see the bookmark move deeper into the book than to scroll scroll scroll through an ebook.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#275

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #271
marvindanig wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Text and other element placement is static, so spatial memory works. Exactly! This results in _referential accessibility_ [1]. You might want to look up for the Superbook format [2] perhaps? Though not everything physics is required to be solved with it. [1] https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility Disclosure: I'm its creator.

No, spatial. I remember roughly how far into a book, or chapter, passages are. Where on a page, or with relstion to other elements, how or where a line breaks (especially if that's awkward). Where the book itself lives within my collection. Where I was when first reading (or later re-reading) it. Etc., etc. Spatial associations. Consistent pagination is useful, but it's a small subset of the whole.

[deleted]

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#276

Post by la_barba »

Retra wrote: post #254
la_barba wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is rather bizarre to see some people feel entitled to content which isn't distributed as per their own personal wishes. A principled person would chose to take his/her business elsewhere and purchase a book on a platform whose ethics they agree with. Not saying I'm some Mother Teresa type.. but I'm against online ads, and I don't run an ad-blocker. I simply don't visit sites which feature blaring in-your-face ads.…

You can't dismiss it all as entitlement. Imagine that you have a gym membership and someone is offering a service to life your weights for you for a fee. Do you have a right not not lift weights without paying this fee? Of course you do. Some of these things that people want to charge fees for are things that you can participate in for free naturally, so long as nobody is gate-keeping you. So it's very hard to justif…

It is the freedom of the creator to pick a license and method they wish to use to distribute their work. I'm talking about DRM for things which are mostly entertainment - things like movies, games, music, etc. We all have equal freedoms to not support such platforms. I don't follow what point you're trying to make with your gym example. If the gym has some policies which you dislike, you can simply chose to not go there. (I know people love to take things to extremes, so I'm obviously obviously not talking about racist policies or other illegal exclusionary practices)

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#277

Post by asdff »

dredmorbius wrote: post #256
marvindanig wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any kind of book is possible on web. Here's a photobook (only graphics) by Satyendra Sharma, for example: https://bubblin.io/cover/ladakh-by-satie-sharma#frontmatter Disclosure: I'm the developer behind the project.

It's the interface and interaction of physical books which is lost. I can keep my hand between two sections and flip between them, insert colored post-its, or bokmarks or index cards. Dog-ear pages, make marginal notes, star, underline, or (shudder)highlight. The one thing missing is full-text search, though a good index is a 90% solution (and so: not optional). Text and other element placement is static, so spatial…

I generally print out research articles because I can write all over the figures and take it with me to lunch and not be bothered when I spill on it, or fold it up into my back pocket. I feel like I get better comprehension too. For textbooks that's a no go for me and probably most students, because this thing is getting resold once I'm through.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#278

Post by ineedasername »

la_barba wrote: post #232
nabla9 wrote: post #156

This is why when I buy a DRM ebook, I also get the pirated copy and put it into my Calibre. Buying a ebook is just for the payment.

You just signaled that you find value in the DRM'd product, even if that wasn't your intent. Why not reward creators who choose to distribute their works without DRM? I'm neither pro nor anti-DRM, but I find that people who love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you), never seem to be willing to take a hit when it comes to living without popular content that doesn't exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.

> Why not reward creators who choose to distribute their works without DRM?

Your average author doesn't have a choice in this, they have no clout to dictate terms to their publishers over the inclusion of DRM

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#279

Post by dredmorbius »

la_barba wrote: post #225
jforberg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you implying that DRM is a solution to piracy? If anything, DRM is a big driver for piracy, and its success rate is near zero. Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release. The "better solution" is to treat your customers with respect and let them own their bought goods. Gog.com is a good example here, in my opinion. What definitely doesn'…

Its fine to have an opinion on how things should be, but some of your assertions are not based on facts. >Virtually all major DRM-"protected" works are available on thepiratebay shortly after release. Sometimes before release. "Virtually all Server OSs get hacked/have had security bugs. Nobody should use them to host or store anything." All you're saying is that DRM isn't perfect. Nothing is perfect, and it isn't exa…

FYI, Bill Gates has explicitly stated he prefers pirated MS Windows use to unencumbered Linux converts:

"[A]s long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

https://web.archive.org/web/20060411095315/https://www.latim...

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#280

Post by asdff »

zouhair wrote: post #239
blakesterz wrote: post #15

Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance. Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never s…

The thing you can find a book that is hundreds of years old that is still readable, how long would data in a hard drive last in the wild?

And who is to say you can even open the file? Not many ebooks are being written in plain text or pdf after all. Usually it's something clunky and proprietary with DRM.
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