“The books will stop working.” • Hacker News Board

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#291

Post by asdff » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:12 AM UTC

gdulli wrote: post #41

_Microft wrote: post #3

Because 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.

I have a collection of over 1000 faved tweets that's one of my favorite possessions. I noticed that one would occasionally get deleted by the author so I wrote a script to screenshot them all with a Python package called Splinter.

I get so frusterated when anonymous reddit users overwrite their posts with some script in the name of privacy. Just leave out personal details from the public internet, it's not hard. Plus, if I really wanted to, there are at least a half dozen different ways to look at a cached copy of your overwritten reddit comment.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#292

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

dgudkov wrote: post #91

INTPenis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DRM is a ludicrous solution to preventing ebook piracy. One of the first things I learned as a teenager online was that anything that can be read, seen or heard can also be copied. It's only with interactive things like games and programs that pirates have a real challenge.

There is a big difference between copying physical objects and digital ones. Books can be copied for sure, but the cost of copying a digital book is negligible compared to the cost of copying a real book. Zero cost of copying makes it possible to give it away for free (e.g. to drive traffic) and monetize otherwise (most digital piracy is business, not charity). In the physical world, copied books are not given away f…

A physical book can readily be hand-scanned in an hour. There are numerous guides to processing the scans from that point. Two of the besst I've found:

https://natecraun.net/articles/linux-guide-to-book-scanning....

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Creating_a_DjVu_file

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#293

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:17 AM UTC

zamadatix wrote: post #243

la_barba wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an hypothetical.. If it were impossible to pirate Windows, would all of those users switch to BSD or some other free OSs? If even a single person goes out and buys Windows, then there is a definite argument that piracy resulted in the loss of at-least one sale.

As another hypothetical... if it were impossible to pirate Windows, would it be nearly as popular around the world? If even one person/business would have used something else that was free as a result of having never used Windows before then there is a definite argument piracy drives sales. Of course the world is more complicated than ideological arguments about individual sales. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawool…

Gates has said as much: no.

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

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#294

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #136

satysin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is the mechanism they put in place to prevent your friends book from being pirated failed within months? Yet all those who purchased it legally could one day be left with having their purchase shut off? They might be lucky and get refunds but they still lose access to the book. To me that seems like an utter failure for everyone.

There was no DRM put on the book, it was book-form only. Someone copied it, made a PDF of it, and distributed it for free. His royalties plummeted to almost nothing.

What was the price of this. book? Numerous engineering texts run $100s, some north of $1,000. Pure rent-seeking.

Reasonable pricing has proved the best piracy.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#295

Post by iNate2000 » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

la_barba wrote: post #201

ajuc wrote: post #7

This 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.

Have you found a solution to piracy that doesn't involve DRM? What was its success rate? I'm sure the publishers would love to switch to a better system if it exists.

Yes. Make good content, sell it at a fair price, and trust your users. iTunes music store has been DRM-free for years.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#296

Post by RickJWagner » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #25

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…

It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l... The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't include the land, operation, or maintenance.

Nice shout-out. Truly, the world owes railroad magnate Andrew Carnegie a huge debt.

My own hometown (only 15,000 people) had a Carnegie library.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#297

Post by asdff » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

docker_up wrote: post #13

I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair that his hard work is being used globally for free. So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

Who do you think pirates textbooks?

Chances are, your friend would have made dimes per book while the publisher pulled $180 a pop from broke indebted students trapped in a captive market. Textbooks have gotten so costly because students are just the publisher's delivery device for the huge amounts of federal loan money awarded every year.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#298

Post by JauntyHatAngle » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:33 AM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #252

la_barba wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I pay for DRM-free versions of anything if it's available -- even if it's more expensive (I've downloaded many hundreds of dollars of DRM-free audiobooks). I eben refuse to buy physical books from authors l…

Game of thrones was such a good example of how out of date DRM can get.

It was quite literally getting released months after it's release in the US in the early seasons, and only on pay TV.

With the way everyone is connected online, it was ludicrous to think people were going to wait months to watch each episode and not get it spoiled for them and/or not be able to discuss it on worldwide forums.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#299

Post by asdff » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:36 AM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #115

nvusuvu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has the price changed recently?

Yes, it's inflated. Looking up a selection of my engineering textbooks from junior and senior year at my alma mater, where I remember new list prices of $150-200 and used prices of $100-150 per course in books they now add up to a typical $250 list new. However, there are a lot of ebook options now for $50-100 per course. Books that can stop working, as crazy as the linked tweet thread acknowledges. Books that will n…

Pirated textbooks are better than the ebook even. I wonder how they are sourced, because they are clean proofs even with markings where the binding obscures the pages when printed as a textbook. Must be from someone with access to those raw files. Plus, they are PDFs, and not clunky slow ebook files of varying proprietary format and offline availability.

Textbook prices correlate with federal loan amounts. Publishers probably take the same % of that loan limit to price their books, so ironically the tools designed to help make education affordable are being exploited to make education unaffordable.

Re: “The books will stop working.”

#300

Post by linuxftw » Fri, Jun 28, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

asdff wrote: post #283

linuxftw wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hoping this nostalgia trend will end. It's time to move forward. Instead of teaching kids about Shakespeare, we should be teaching about Super Mario for cultural history. Why should anyone care about poems or poetry? It was the entertainment of the early-print society, it has comparably little value today.

Because our collective western culture is still the direct product of Greek philosophy no matter how many mario kart games are released. The books in the western canon are important because they are good and went on to influence everything you consume today, even the narrative in super mario. Take some time to read a good chunk of these books and you will be wiser than most people you know on all sorts of topics.

My view is quite different. They're just stories that anyone could have told and don't contain any unobtainable wisdom. The people that told those stories simply existed before us. In many ways the stories are inferior to their modern counterparts.