Stallman's Dystopia

http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/5667398073/stallmans-dystopia

by gandalfgeek • 15 years ago

347 135 15 years ago

blog.vivekhaldar.com

Typhon2• 15 years ago

Note that a software that doesn't let you copy and paste doesn't prevent you from copying text. You can copy it manually to a computer, or write it by hand. This is poorly designed software.

If there were a law preventing you from copying the text, now that would be a problem. But there is no such law as far as I know. In fact, I live in a country where, so far, such copying of any book is expressly authorised as long as it is for private use.

As for the kindle, I don't understand which of its function couldn't be performed just as well by a small laptop, but I barely know what it looks like, so I may be wrong.

pnathan• 15 years ago

The function of the Kindle system (as opposed to the hardware), is that one can obtain current books easily for a fee and read them on your computer.

At least that's what it does for me. I am careful to only buy books that I am okay with not reading multiple times (ie, if Amazon yanks them or Amazon itself dies), though.

cryptoz• 15 years ago

> As for the kindle, I don't understand which of its function couldn't be performed just as well by a small laptop

The principle selling point of the Kindle is that you can read for days on end without hurting your eyes. Laptop screens tend to hurt people's eyes a lot when used for reading many hours at a time. It's also smaller, lighter, more convenient and far cheaper than any laptop.

> but I barely know what it looks like, so I may be wrong.

You're being downvoted because you're talking about things you know nothing about - things that take < 5 seconds to find out. Please do some research before taking time to bash products or complain on HN.

Typhon2• 15 years ago

I read entire novels on my laptop. I know what I'm talking about when it comes to reading. What you're saying is not obvious. You can't use an Internet research to know how something feels. I wasn't bashing anything. Please take the time to actually read what I write and don't assume I mean anything else than what I actually write.

kwantam2• 15 years ago

Freedom is almost always lost in small steps.

Sure, discontinuities happen in extreme cases (e.g., the WTC's destruction -> the PATRIOT Act), and when they do a lot of people notice. The more subtle losses in freedom that occur gradually (the DMCA and its progeny, for example) are harder to notice until one day you look back and say "huh, how did we get here?"

The concept of the Overton Window [1] is interesting and germane here. 20 years ago the idea that you couldn't lend a book you own to your friend or loan them the new album you just bought would have seemed insane. Over time, a gradual shift in the concept of ownership has changed the scope of the issue to the point where many people would now accept that it seems reasonable that you can't lend your books to someone else.

People at the edge of the Overton window are like our canaries in the coal mine. Gradual shifts in the window are hard to notice from the middle, but easy to notice as the "edge" passes over you. In that respect, to me RMS seems most valuable to us for precisely the reasons others call him a crackpot.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

lukejduncan• 15 years ago

And on that note, the Patriot Act is in the process of being extended

urbanjunkie4• 15 years ago

> many people would now accept that it seems reasonable that you can't lend your books to someone else.

Really? Some evidence for this claim would be very useful.

My (personal and anecdotal) experience is just the opposite - people seem more willing to lend out physical possessions - where they still have them. So, books, XBox games, clothes, etc - I see these things being shared all the time.

kwantam2• 15 years ago

Really? Some evidence for this claim would be very useful.

How many people are boycotting the Kindle because the lending feature is broken?

How fast would I get sued if I made a magical piece of software that allowed people to lend digital music purchases to their friends in some hypothetical way exactly analogous to lending them a physical CD (i.e., only one copy ever exists)?

How fast is the RIAA lawyering up over Amazon et al offering services where I can store my music in their cloud and stream it to myself?

Really, I don't think I'm making a hugely strong claim here.

Splines3• 15 years ago

Even bits on physical media are slowly being made un-lendable.

EA's "Project Ten Dollar" is an attack at the used games market, and a side affect of this is that you can't lend the whole game to a friend.

All Steam games require you to have steam installed, and the physical CD is just a convenience. Once you've installed the game, you might as well throw the CD away.

people seem more willing to lend out physical possessions - where they still have them

Doesn't that bolster the original claim "many people would now accept that it seems reasonable that you can't lend your books to someone else."? As more and more media moves to digital distribution, the concept of lending is entirely foreign.

jonnathanson2• 15 years ago

Are people actually more accepting of not being able to share, or is it simply the case that they can't or don't know how?

It's a pretty easy and painless gesture to lend someone a physical book for the weekend. It's a much harder gesture to lend someone your entire Kindle or iPad in order for them to access the book. Until/unless sharing features become more available, better known, and more widely used, I think we're really just seeing the effects of "I don't know how" rather than "I wouldn't."

rwl• 15 years ago

I think you're right that people simply don't know how to share, and that they probably would share if they did know how. But isn't it troubling that sharing requires some kind of special knowledge? that sharing is a "feature" to be added (or not) at the producer's whim? And isn't it troubling that people don't seem to be upset about that?

ajross• 15 years ago

People had no trouble "sharing" media on floppy disks (or email, etc...). The fact that it's been made (deliberately, IMHO) difficult might be part of the proximate cause for the lack of sharing, but I don't see how that refutes the original point about the Overton window: people's perception of what is "sharable" has shifted over the past 20 years.

And that's sad.

zaphar• 15 years ago

There is a very big difference between lending a paper book and sharing an electronic copy and conflating the two damages the debate. Please stop making the analogy.

Lending a paper book meant you couldn't read the book until you retrieved it from the other party. Sharing an electronic copy has no such restriction.

Pretending that the rights you had with a paper book should be the same as the rights you have with electronic copy is silly because the only similarity is the content and nothing else. The real debate is what should your rights with regard to the content actually be? And how do you protect those rights when the content goes digital?

endgame2• 15 years ago

You articulated my opinion of rms much better than I've ever been able to. I've always called him a counterweight for the discussion.

In letting these DRM schemes take hold and become commercially acceptable, I feel that as a profession, we have failed the general populace. (I am certainly not innocent here. Although I've not developed anything, I've bought quite a few DRM'd games.)

Only a few groups (such as the FSF) have stood up and tried to raise awareness of what's going on, but it's not been enough.

Observation: I don't think the FSF's tactic of renaming everything helped (iBad, iGroan, Treacherous Computing, Digital Restrictions Management, ...), as it adds another barrier to explaining things to Joe Public. I can see what they're trying to do (make these things sound less friendly), but for the nontechnical end user it just muddies the water.

technomancy2• 15 years ago

> iBad, iGroan, Treacherous Computing, Digital Restrictions Management

iBad is tacky and groan-worthy, but I think Digital Restrictions Management is quite apropos.

aneth4• 15 years ago

First, this is not a loss of freedom. You are free not to buy products, and people are free to write and distribute their work without compensation. Thanks to technology, publishers and distributers are now only relevant for works where the author wants to be paid. Otherwise they would just push a PDF onto their website and you can share it all you want.

Second, if consumers could buy books at 10% of the price on the condition that they not loan them to others, this is not a loss of freedom. It's a good deal.

Third, when you purchase a book, electronic or not, you are not purchasing the global distribution rights for the book. If that's what you want, it's available for a price I'm sure.

Fourth, I feel far more free to access books and information than I did before ebooks. My mother can loan me a book across the country without Fedex. For $10 (less than the price of Fedex'ing that book) I can permanently own a copy of that or nearly any book instantly, anywhere, anytime. I can carry all my books around with me all of the time. I call that freedom.

Fifth, let's not forget Amazon's library program! (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/...)

This paranoia is completely unfounded and melodramatic. Take off your tin hats!

mvalle2• 15 years ago

You don't permanently own it.

rapala• 15 years ago

Technology is supposed to push humanity forward, make possible the things that once were impossible. The developments in printing made it possible for us, the common people, to own books in the first place. But now technology is also used to limit our use of the books that we own, and I wouldn't call that "a good deal".

I recognise the problems in free distribution of digital goods, author compensations beeing the top one in my mind. But as someone already said, we tend to fix the problems with kludges rather than trying to come up with more long lasting solutions.

aneth4• 15 years ago

Major flaws in both points here:

1) You can lend your Kindle out all you want and let people read your books, just as you could before. You just can't duplicate the book onto someone else's Kindle or in any other way, just as you couldn't before. This is a reasonable restriction and not any worse than it was with a physical book, which you are also prohibited from scanning, photocopying and distributing outside of fair use.

2) You can not copy/paste a physical book either. I agree that this should be allowed, but it's not a dystopian future - there is no loss over physical books here, only gain.

Perhaps Amazon should allow some sort of way to help with "fair use" citations, and maybe they should remove restrictions on public domain material. On the latter though, those are generally available for free from many sources, so the fact that you can't copy/paste on your Kindle is an inconvenience, not a dystopia.

fr0sty2• 15 years ago

> You can lend your Kindle out all you want and let people read your books, just as you could before.

Only until that becomes a violation of Amazon's TOS, or reading your books requires you be 'authenticated' with a rights server.

These things happen in steps and just because it works now does not imply that is will continue to work next week/month/year.

Travis7• 15 years ago

Have you actually read that this plan is in the works, or that someone at amazon intends to do it? Otherwise, it sounds an awful lot like a slippery slope fallacy.

Travis7• 15 years ago

I'm not sure why you were downvoted. I suppose the counterargument would be that you can't lend just one book at a time, or something similar. However, that is as much a consequence of packing all your books into one device as it is amazon's fault.

I don't see why people would expect a business to be run in a method that yields no tangible benefits (why does amazon or penguin want you to share books?), but could have consequences (reduced sales).

Sometimes it seems like people are shocked when companies act in their best interests. It's very strange.

kevindication• 15 years ago

The point of the article is in fact that because the companies have acted in their (perceived) best interests, we have lost freedom.

And that maybe we should care.

hubb• 15 years ago

1) except that lending someone your kindle isn't like lending them a book -- it's lending them your entire library at once

2) you are comparing "copying" text from a sheet of paper to an electronic device. that doesn't make any sense at all. people who view text on an electronic screen are used to being able to select and copy it. that was never possible, nor will it ever be with a physical paper book.

rfrey• 15 years ago

Copying an ebook is conceptually the same as photocopying a physical book, or duplicating a physical music album. It's just easier and faster to copy a computer file, or cut-and-paste a portion of it.

delinka• 15 years ago

It's not anyone's fault but your own that your entire readable library lives in one physical device. Asking to change copyright to allow you to "photocopy" someone else's work and give it to a friend is unacceptable.

Now that I've played devil's advocate, I'm not a big fan of the technological measures that attempt to prevent piracy. I believe that the solution is pricing digital media so that it's more 'disposable' - that is, price it so cheaply that pirating and even lending is too much trouble.

sambeau5• 15 years ago

Are you sure that you can legally lend your Kindle if it contains copyrighted work? I would be surprised if this wasn't also covered by the strict sense of the law (not that I am suggesting that anyone would ever prosecute for it).

aneth4• 15 years ago

Interesting question. I'm not lawerly enough to answer outright, but regardless of the current law I don't that a case against someone lending their Kindle would ever be upheld. It's analgous to saying letting someone use your computer is a violation of your OS license.

Like you say though, likely a moot point.

aneth4• 15 years ago

Ok, one good counter-point below: You can't loan an individual book (other than through the Amazon program) using a Kindle.

Folks, this is not an Orwellian conspiracy, but rather a limitation of matter and energy which is a consequence of the tradeoffs we make when we decide to use an ereader and put all our books in one device.

ataggart2• 15 years ago

There are a few fundamental differences the author doesn't take into account:

1. There is nothing stopping you from lending out your kindle.

2. The notion of "lending" doesn't really apply to electronic books. Absent copy protection, you can just give someone else a copy. With copy protection, to mimic "lending" some infrastructure needs to be in place to give someone else access rights to a copy of a book while simultaneously depriving you of your copy. And of course this is controlled by the seller, since they're the one putting the copy protection in place.

3. I can't copy/paste from my paper books either, at least not in any way that's not also available to kindle owners.

4. Every choice involves trade-offs. There is no morality involved here, much less the sound of jackboots. There is only what people value. Many seem to value the convenience of having their whole library in a small device over the ability to "lend" individual electronic copies. Those who feel differently can stick to paper books, or electronic books unencumbered by copy protection.

snippyhollow• 15 years ago

Lending your kindle is like lending ALL of your books. When I lend book A, I can still read book B. That's why I stick to dead trees for the time being.

bxr• 15 years ago

>3. I can't copy/paste from my paper books either, at least not in any way that's not also available to kindle owners.

You mean I can chop the spine off of my kindle and run it through that massive scanning/OCRing beast like I did with textbooks? Awesome!

lurker19• 15 years ago

The Kindle doesn't have a spine, and it turns pages by the press of a paddle rather than flip of a paper, so it is even easier to scan by machine than a hard book is.

stinkytaco2• 15 years ago

Talk about limiting access to technology. I think more people can afford Kindle's (and thus their access to the lending, DRM removal and other options) than have access to a "massive scanning/OCRing beast".

bdhe3• 15 years ago

> 2. The notion of "lending" doesn't really apply to electronic books. Absent copy protection, you can just give someone else a copy. With copy protection, to mimic "lending" some infrastructure needs to be in place to give someone else access rights to a copy of a book while simultaneously depriving you of your copy. And of course this is controlled by the seller, since they're the one putting the copy protection in place.

Sometimes comments like this makes me wonder whether or not it is not in our best interests not to let technology get hijacked by corporate interests. I understand Amazon has to make a profit somehow to continue providing the infrastructure, but if computers and technology have gotten us, humanity, to a point where one can "lend" books while simultaneously keeping our copy ourselves, why do we encumber ourselves? I can't imagine what people even 100 yrs ago would have wondered at such technology.

I am quite uneducated about history, but I can imagine a similar revolution with the printing press. How much of the clergy / priests opposed printing presses because they allowed the common masses to access information on a scale unprecedented at that time?

Edit: I realize upon a second reading the phrase "... technology get hijacked ..." might be hyperbole, but the point stands.

Apocryphon3• 15 years ago

'Lending' someone an ebook that they can keep indefinitely is like xeroxing them a paper book, is it not?

celoyd• 15 years ago

How much of the clergy / priests opposed printing presses because they allowed the common masses to access information on a scale unprecedented at that time?

Movable type was one of the causes and main tools of the Reformation and thus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion , so yes, there were huge consequences with lots of opposition.

It’s complicated, of course. The clergy was not always against the spread of books, and the wars had many causes. But comparing cheap digital copying with cheap printing is pretty safe from a historical perspective.

mvalle2• 15 years ago

I completely agree.

Every time I see a digital library service, where you can borrow a book or other media that then is deleted after certain lending period, I can't help but thinking that they are missing the point.

The time-limited lending period used by libraries is a bug. A bug that's solved by technology.

Libraries exist in order to spread knowledge and information. But they can't share their knowledge to everyone who wants it, they physically can't keep enough books or duplicate them in a timely manner. This bug has been fixed by digital technology, and we can duplicate them in a timely manner to anyone who wants it.

But some people insist on keeping the bug, and that they are doing society a favor.

hellrich• 15 years ago

Printing was welcome by the church, as it increased quality: less errors and a more uniform look. One of the first printed books was a latin bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutenberg_Bible

soamv• 15 years ago

Actually, amazon hasn't been very clear about whether or not physically lending a kindle is within their terms of service.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6649814.html?rssid=1...

rflrob• 15 years ago

Regardless of where it actually stands in their ToS, I suspect that even if they wanted to start enforcing it (which they seem not to want to do based on the article), some group like the EFF would be pretty quick to mount a court challenge. The iTunes ToS[1] says, "You agree not to modify, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute, or create derivative works based on the Service in any manner," but I think if there was ever a challenge on people loaning their iPod (with iTMS music on it) to a friend, it would get struck down pretty quickly.

[1]http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/terms.html#SERVICE Under Intellectual Property

adsr• 15 years ago

I agree, If you have a credit card, it comes with the same limitation for obvious reasons.

jxcole• 15 years ago

This article complains specifically about not being able to copy from a book in public domain to somewhere else. If you are seriously having this problem, I recommend checking out

http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

They have a lot of good materials there if you are interested in older books.

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

You may also try feedbooks. Lots of interesting stuff there (lots ported from Project Gutenberg).

gallerytungsten• 15 years ago

The combination of e-book adoption and an efficient market for used books (eg, abebooks.com) mean that finding and purchasing real books is easier and lower-cost than ever. While some may consider real books inconvenient, I find the fact that no batteries are required rather refreshing. So I keep buying them and don't worry about DRM restrictions.

cmkrnl4• 15 years ago

We still need light to read :) I don't use a kindle or any tablet, but have read hundreds of ebooks on my phones (Nokia + Mobipocket, Android + FBReader or the Kindle app). The books are always with me, and it's more convenient for reading in bed.

brandall102• 15 years ago

I haven't recharged the batteries on my Kindle 3 in over a month.

bcaulf2• 15 years ago

When I realized that a Kindle weighs less, is thinner and has identical readability to a book or newspaper, I switched. I can blow up the type size and read in less light than I need for a real book, without having a glowing backlight. They're only $140 which I made up in saved newspaper and magazine costs in about two months.

You do need to be more careful with moisture and dropping damage than with a book. (Buy the warranty.) But if you get non-DRM content or remove the DRM, you can give a copy away, which I love.

I do still buy used books when the book is unavailable but in a few years I expect that will not often be the case.

chrisjsmith3• 15 years ago

Just a reminder - you can always stick your Kindle in a photocopier. Works quite well!

cmkrnl4• 15 years ago

The good old analog hole.

rbanffy2• 15 years ago

In a couple decades it will be plugged by neural implants. ;-)

Splines3• 15 years ago

I wonder if the Kindle will ever add something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

mambodog• 15 years ago

Then scan that photocopy in and OCR it. We've come full circle.

orborde• 15 years ago

Skip a step and scan the Kindle.

sambeau5• 15 years ago

Here in the UK you break the law when you lend a book without the author's permission.

http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright...

  Restricted acts
  It is an offence to perform any of the following acts
  without the consent of the owner:
    Copy the work.
    Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
    Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
    Adapt the work.

The UK govenment have to pay for the right to lend books in public libraries:

http://www.la-sofia.org/sofia/droit-de-pret-anglais.jsp

  The payment per loan is 5.98 p

SwellJoe2• 15 years ago

I just had a moment of confusion and bafflement. I didn't know how to process this information. I've always thought of the US and UK as sorta, kinda, similar...and imagined that the UK would have libraries like the US. But given this fundamental difference, it seems obvious that our libraries would be vastly different (and vastly better) than those in the UK, all other things being equal. Of course, all other things are not equal, but I do recall a couple of visitors from other countries being amazed at my local library...perhaps this is part of the reason why. At some point in US history, public good was deemed more important than the ability of rights holders to receive recurring revenue from books in libraries; or maybe the question never came up because the majority of rights holders were overseas in the beginning when our libraries were being created and had no feasible way to fight for more rights. Whatever the reason, as a published author, I wouldn't take that trade...I'd rather have an amazing library, where resources go to acquiring new books rather than maintaining payments on old ones.

I often think RMS is a bit of an extremist...but, when I really think things through, I often end up agreeing with him, at least on the core issues.

sambeau5• 15 years ago

I wouldn't read too much into what the UK law says - it's mostly totally ignored in this respect:everybody passes books on and we still have a thriving second-hand book market (albeit one mostly funded by the sale of coffee).

I've seen no evidence that the US has vastly superior public libraries to the UK: all UK cities have a large, comprehensive (non-lending) public library often built by Carnegie. Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling here due to cuts in government funding - nothing to do with these copyright laws as far as I can tell.

tszyn• 15 years ago

The law says you break the law when you lend a book to the public. That phrasing could imply you can still lend it to people you know personally. (That's how it works in Poland.)

sambeau5• 15 years ago

US law on lending copyrighted things:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html

Kindle rules on lending things:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...

yesimahuman2• 15 years ago

Consuming locked down content is a choice, and we live in an age of an immense amount of choices. Should content producers have to do everything we say just because we choose to consume their content? Lady Gaga is not a public servant. You are not entitled to copy her work, or even put her songs on your own youtube videos.

Lady Gaga never had to exist in the first place. The fact that she does enriches some of our lives, but we must understand that content is a production of someone else's and it should be treated as such (just as we wish our users to respect the hard work we put into our web apps).

hxa72412• 15 years ago

> Mrs Gaga is not a public servant

We are all public servants. To cooperate with each other we are, to that extent, serving each other. And we want to cooperate because when we do we gain.

We can cooperate enormously by sharing information/data. There is nothing in that that means we cannot pay people to produce it. Just that what has been produced is then best shared.

And the marvelous thing about information is that sharing it is free. It costs nothing to share it because copyability of info is infinite and abundant. We can all cooperate, and gain from it, yet no-one needs to give up anything at all.

Some people say we need to restrict information copying in order to make a market to pay for production. But that is nothing more than a pragmatic suggestion. It only makes sense to do that if we cannot devise some better arrangement that would fully realise the benefits of sharing data.

(Or in short, please wake up from all that Randroid casuistry and start seeing reality.)

yesimahuman2• 15 years ago

I disagree with your reality.

The reality I prescribe to is that we all have the freedom to create content and share it under the terms we dictate. We do not have the freedom to dictate terms to someone else.

Where it does not violate essential freedoms (such as me letting someone use my Kindle, or listen to my iPod), having an ability to trust the terms you've set helps business prosper.

Like I said before, the public "culture" feature of this content seems to give us additional rights and ownership over it. Just because we really, really like Tron or Inception does not mean we have the rights to copy it and distribute it through bittorrent.

jbrechtel• 15 years ago

Great, so the incentive to create content is not intrinsically coupled to the need to control sharing of that content. That's a great point that we often miss, I think.

However, how do you propose content creators become incented to create content?

brandall102• 15 years ago

Before the advent of the printing press books cost as much as a small home. Only the wealthy could afford them, and libraries were created to others could use them. Arguably you could say an actual book was more valuable than the material it contained, on average.

Before the advent of the personal computer, computers cost as least as much as a small home. Arguably you could say the computers time was more valuable than the people using them, and people shared them in research and industrial labs.

Both items have become many orders of magnitude cheaper and plentiful to the point of commoditization. eBooks are still competing with hard copy works so the price differential isn't quite there. But once that industry capitulates look for them to drop significantly.

Personally I like the scenario where a friend recommends me a book for $2 that I can purchase for $2 myself vs. him paying $10 and letting me borrow. I like to pay for things that bring value to my life, and in a way he's subsidizing my usage.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

Many of the details Stallman describes in The Right To Read were taken from existing proposals for the "National Information Infrastructure" (proposed by among others, Al Gore).

The basic approach of using "cyberspace" to impose this approach predates the popularity of the Internet. In fact, the popularity of the Internet postponed a lot of plans that were already on the agenda of various powerful forces.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

lukifer• 15 years ago

The underlying issue here is not one of legality or technology, but rather economics. Market transactions are based on scarcity, and the ability to cheaply copy information which is expensive to make eliminates that scarcity, resulting in a market ecosystem that is unsustainable without legal and/or technological measures.

Call me a commie if you wish, but I don't think this problem can be eliminated without rethinking capitalism as we know it, at least regarding "intellectual property". (This is arguably a self-healing problem, in that struggling entities will be forced to innovate new business models, as has been happening in the music space for the past 10 years.)

In the meantime, those who care deeply about these issues can {a} stick to real books, {b} pirate (note that you can pay and pirate if you like), and {c} keep yammering on about the issue with the hope of swaying more people to value their freedoms, thereby influencing the market.

0ffw0rlder• 15 years ago

The kindle DRM is pointless and an idiot tax ;). All it takes is one visit to library.nu or similar sight and all books are free, and pdfs.

codex• 15 years ago

Emacs Shrugged? Stallman has more in common with Ayn Rand than people realize!

EGreg• 15 years ago

The free market will ultimately decide. They can't lock us down when someone else will make a reader where you CAN copy things.

But first, the free market will have to dismantle the government protections that enforce monopoly rights for authors. That will only happen when we find a better system. Subscriptions may be that system.

cwp• 15 years ago

Nah. In the future people won't think that lending books is "nasty and wrong." They'll think it's silly. They'll ask "why would I do that, when I can just give him a copy?"

bcaulf2• 15 years ago

The breakthrough portable audio player, iPod, does lead users toward DRM content. But it is also perfectly compatible with copied content, user authored content, downloaded content, whatever.

The breakthrough e-book, Kindle, is similar. If you follow the brightly lit path, you'll start buying books. But there is a balance and users who want to avoid DRM content altogether are free to do so. Most of my news subscriptions are free of charge RSS and scrapes via the open source e-book manager Calibre.

The Kindle DRM, like all the e-book DRM out there, is weak and can be removed easily by readily available scripts. The current stream of commercially available e-books is being stripped of DRM and made available continuously.

So, the available readers are open for sharing.

E-books are tiny, mostly less than 2 MB uncompressed. It will always be easy to transfer lots of books quickly over any decent network link. Because the content is text, it is never going to become out of date and need to be re-ripped at a higher sampling rate. The analog hole, which is very real and relevant for all forms of media, is massive for books since the content can be OCR'ed or even retyped with relative ease.

So, current and future e-books are not protected effectively against copying.

I don't think the no-book-lending scenario has any chance of happening.

darklajid2• 15 years ago

One of the key points that come up all the time with these 'physical goods vs. digital goods' discussions is that the latter can be distributed endlessly.

Why is there no way for me to give something I bought to my friend, digital or not? We have a digital currency now that claims that I cannot both send you money and keep it at the same time. Why isn't this possible with my mp3s, ebooks and movies?

Stallman's Dystopia

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