3 ms·

Maybe. But these are all hypotheticals. The article presents it as I should be morally disgusted by this move. I don't really see it.

gnicholas 8y ago
Hypothetical? Every major ebook platform offers annotations (and I just checked — this platform did too). MS apparently recognizes the additional inconvenience to people who have annotated, as they are offering an extra $25 to anyone who has made annotations. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396 I agree that this closure is not world-ending, and I think the point of the article is that if MS can do this to your ebooks, then other big tech companies could do it to your other content too.
- nil-sec 8y ago
  What do people annotate generally that's worth 25$? I'm genuinely curious.
  - gnicholas 8y ago
    College students highlight and put notes in books.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Your thoughts? Deeply engaging with a book, particularly a non-fiction one, involves more than just bouncing words off your retinas. Personally, while I might not expend the effort on some random novel (though I do highlight quotes I find particularly insightful or funny), I do make a lot of in-line notes & highlights on non-fiction books, both paper and digital. I'd be really pissed off if a book I studied disappeared with all annotations. That's why I learned to procure PDFs of e-books I care about, and I recently started to maintain a separate folder with "reading notes", into which I retype my annotations and thoughts on them after I'm done with reading (this means essentially re-reading the book, albeit much faster, as I have annotations to guide me to important thoughts).
Alterlife 8y ago
You're getting down-voted, but I agree with you on this particular point. The vendor is providing a full refund to customers including an additional $25 credit for customers who used the annotation service. DRM is an annoying customer unfriendly solution to a problem that I'm not convinced exists... but people have been given full access to these books for a while. They've been able to read them from date of purchase until now. Some of them are probably finished reading the books and I'm sure "more than a few people" have exported their books to open formats. Microsoft has handled this as gracefully as it could, all things told.
- bubblewrap 8y ago
  If I had bought all my books on Microsoft, I'd be very happy right now. I would be getting hundreds or even thousands of dollars back, that I could use to buy new books.

gnicholas 8y ago

Hypothetical? Every major ebook platform offers annotations (and I just checked — this platform did too). MS apparently recognizes the additional inconvenience to people who have annotated, as they are offering an extra $25 to anyone who has made annotations. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396 I agree that this closure is not world-ending, and I think the point of the article is that if MS can do this to your ebooks, then other big tech companies could do it to your other content too.

nil-sec 8y ago
What do people annotate generally that's worth 25$? I'm genuinely curious.
- gnicholas 8y ago
  College students highlight and put notes in books.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Your thoughts? Deeply engaging with a book, particularly a non-fiction one, involves more than just bouncing words off your retinas. Personally, while I might not expend the effort on some random novel (though I do highlight quotes I find particularly insightful or funny), I do make a lot of in-line notes & highlights on non-fiction books, both paper and digital. I'd be really pissed off if a book I studied disappeared with all annotations. That's why I learned to procure PDFs of e-books I care about, and I recently started to maintain a separate folder with "reading notes", into which I retype my annotations and thoughts on them after I'm done with reading (this means essentially re-reading the book, albeit much faster, as I have annotations to guide me to important thoughts).

Alterlife 8y ago

You're getting down-voted, but I agree with you on this particular point. The vendor is providing a full refund to customers including an additional $25 credit for customers who used the annotation service. DRM is an annoying customer unfriendly solution to a problem that I'm not convinced exists... but people have been given full access to these books for a while. They've been able to read them from date of purchase until now. Some of them are probably finished reading the books and I'm sure "more than a few people" have exported their books to open formats. Microsoft has handled this as gracefully as it could, all things told.

bubblewrap 8y ago
If I had bought all my books on Microsoft, I'd be very happy right now. I would be getting hundreds or even thousands of dollars back, that I could use to buy new books.