6 ms·

well, maybe they could just setup a website, let me drop a coin and download a freely convertible, virus-free copy of the book. Setup cost around ~10k, all prof

by fock 6y ago

well, maybe they could just setup a website, let me drop a coin and download a freely convertible, virus-free copy of the book. Setup cost around ~10k, all profits go to them. (and I would actually buy books there)

momokoko 6y ago
This is a joke I’m hoping so my apologies if I missed it. Apple intentionally cripples the web experience and if you put it in an app, you still have to pay the Apple commission. I sincerely hope this is a joke or that you work for Apple and you livelihood depends on you not understanding this.
- xvector 6y ago
  That’s not what OP’s saying, they’re talking about a website that lets you download books (ie .ePub files) that you would open in the Books app. The reading experience is no different.
- beering 6y ago
  Parent comment is not a joke - I would also like to purchase ebooks without DRM - just a file that I can convert/load onto my Kindle, iPhone, etc. They can sell the ebooks on the web and have you download it onto your iPhone. It doesn’t have to be all in one app.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  You can download files in safari...
BostonEnginerd 6y ago
Now that’s just crazy talk!
Xelbair 6y ago
maybe in the first place they would allow me to buy an ebook i want. Often i want to buy some ebooks in English, but i legally cannot. UK based publisher has rights to the series, but doesn't sell ebooks, while US based one has an ebook but cannot legally sell it to me. The whole ebook industry is absolutely atrocious from consumer PoV. DRM, locked down systems, the problems outlined above.. and for some reason ebooks usually cost more than physical books over here! I mean one has draconian DRM and license attached, can be purged from your device and account for no reason.. while other is a physical good without such restrictions, that i can legally lend to my friends.
hairofadog 6y ago
Super agree with the sentiment of this comment. Just this morning I read a recent Kottke post and noticed he's got a shop set up on bookshop.org, and so decided to check it out – it's a site that says they help small local bookstores. Great! But I prefer e-books, and the only way I can consume ebooks through this service (or through kobo’s similar “support local bookstores” marketplace) is to use their terrible apps (I know, I know, you who are reading this find Kobo’s app to be just fine, but I’m picky and don't like it) so Apple Books or Kindle it is, all because of DRM. I know from their perspective it's a calculus – they'll lose some money to piracy, and maybe that adds up to a lot more from what they'd gain from selling to persnickety people like me, so maybe they're making the right call. But what I want as a consumer is to sometimes buy hardbacks, mostly buy ebooks, read them in the reader of my choice, and to support my local bookshop and the authors and editors, which I guess is an impossible dream.
b34r 6y ago
10k? Like $100 lol
seqastian 6y ago
book market things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price They prevented what happened to music so nothing will change ever.
beefield 6y ago
I just can't get my head around that the publishers have been looking at music industry going from napster to torrent to spotify. Now they are looking at libgen and seem to be completely unable to connect the dots and come up with a coop that sells all their books with a monthly fee so that they could keep the profits instead of amazon or whatever startup that manages to circumvent all the legal hassles and make a spotify for books. How hard can it be for a couple of larger publishers to start a common book streaming service with a note that all other publisherss welcome, you become a member in the coop and get to say how the coop works, coop takes a fee from sales just to cover operating costs and rest goes to publisher/author?
- GiorgioG 6y ago
  Having worked for a very large publisher - they don’t get tech at all.
- dlgeek 6y ago
  Amazon did this - it's called Kindle Unlimited.
  - fock 6y ago
    both of you miss the point. I want to have a diskful of books, I can pass on to my kin and also share with friends (which is like normal books worked for years...). I don't want to have a streamingservice which can censor and restrict my rights to read a book at will.
    - peternicky 6y ago
      100%...
    - hk__2 6y ago
      > both of you miss the point. They don’t "miss the point", they just disagree with you.
    - Nbox9 6y ago
      You’re missing the point. Some people still buy CDs and Records. Some people fill up disks with .flac or .acc files. The industry still serves those customers, but the real business is happening on the streaming services. What _you_ want and what the market demands are two different things.
6510 6y ago
Lets mature web standards so that one can write and publish a book - with just html. Then also do distributed search so that one can find things. Something with supper nodes for those of us who want faster and more complex queries. html, with some minor upgrades, again seems good enough. DRM is a silly idea, we should forget about it. Just write free works until the audience is impressed enough to donate to current effort. And finally some simple to use aggregation formula so that authors can learn what we want to read about. No more middle men.
- hk__2 6y ago
  > Just write free works until the audience is impressed enough to donate to current effort. I get the rest of the comment, but I don’t understand that part: unless you already have too much money, there’s absolutely no reason you should work for free.
  - 6510 6y ago
    You don't need to much money to do what you like. I want to see a basic income which makes DRM one of the many "old world" formulas that cant work perfectly even if you throw infinite money at it. To pay people to write is as simple as it sounds. While some components might be legitimate there is really no end to greed in rent seeking formulas. We can look at the TV license in the UK to see what the future might look like. They didn't even have the modern tools to monitor everyone. The system involves a database of houses where the license was not purchased. Agents will make unannounced visits to search your house. In stead of impossible some would argue it was simply a hard problem to write into law. From that perspective we failed to create a carefully balanced set of rules. As long as the demands are small steps the copyright industry gets what they want every time while the consumer, the party argued to so greatly benefit from these laws (what a joke),..... well.... the consumer gets to play and sing songs from before 1923! When Swartz downloaded a pile of ancient garbage articles he was going to get 35 years in prison for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer. This is complete nonsense and everyone knows it. If the industry wants to go full retard it should be treated as such. Therefore we should burn it to the ground and keep the authors and keep the artists. Pay them for what they do. The only thing that matters is that the unwashed masses who already cant find work get access to educational materials. Everything else is either not important or simply entertainment. You cant use tax money for entertainment as long as you are taking it from people who can barely pay their bills. You can use it to sponsor crowd funding so that they can learn useful things and ponder the many intelligent thoughts others wrote down. To me this sounds a lot better than [say] sponsoring scientific journals with public funds so that they can paywall the stuff we've paid for. There are tons of old books. People can go read those first before demanding more free work from authors for the benefit of publishers. It is also easy to remove % fees from app stores by writing some laws. Or are we to think it will bankrupt google and apple? I cant recall paying Microsoft any fees. It is my country. The legal system is there to serve me.
pmalynin 6y ago
Isn’t this what No Starch Press is doing?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

by fock 6y ago

momokoko 6y ago

This is a joke I’m hoping so my apologies if I missed it. Apple intentionally cripples the web experience and if you put it in an app, you still have to pay the Apple commission. I sincerely hope this is a joke or that you work for Apple and you livelihood depends on you not understanding this.

xvector 6y ago
That’s not what OP’s saying, they’re talking about a website that lets you download books (ie .ePub files) that you would open in the Books app. The reading experience is no different.
beering 6y ago
Parent comment is not a joke - I would also like to purchase ebooks without DRM - just a file that I can convert/load onto my Kindle, iPhone, etc. They can sell the ebooks on the web and have you download it onto your iPhone. It doesn’t have to be all in one app.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
You can download files in safari...

BostonEnginerd 6y ago

Now that’s just crazy talk!

Xelbair 6y ago

maybe in the first place they would allow me to buy an ebook i want. Often i want to buy some ebooks in English, but i legally cannot. UK based publisher has rights to the series, but doesn't sell ebooks, while US based one has an ebook but cannot legally sell it to me. The whole ebook industry is absolutely atrocious from consumer PoV. DRM, locked down systems, the problems outlined above.. and for some reason ebooks usually cost more than physical books over here! I mean one has draconian DRM and license attached, can be purged from your device and account for no reason.. while other is a physical good without such restrictions, that i can legally lend to my friends.

hairofadog 6y ago

Super agree with the sentiment of this comment. Just this morning I read a recent Kottke post and noticed he's got a shop set up on bookshop.org, and so decided to check it out – it's a site that says they help small local bookstores. Great! But I prefer e-books, and the only way I can consume ebooks through this service (or through kobo’s similar “support local bookstores” marketplace) is to use their terrible apps (I know, I know, you who are reading this find Kobo’s app to be just fine, but I’m picky and don't like it) so Apple Books or Kindle it is, all because of DRM. I know from their perspective it's a calculus – they'll lose some money to piracy, and maybe that adds up to a lot more from what they'd gain from selling to persnickety people like me, so maybe they're making the right call. But what I want as a consumer is to sometimes buy hardbacks, mostly buy ebooks, read them in the reader of my choice, and to support my local bookshop and the authors and editors, which I guess is an impossible dream.

b34r 6y ago

10k? Like $100 lol

seqastian 6y ago

book market things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price They prevented what happened to music so nothing will change ever.

beefield 6y ago

I just can't get my head around that the publishers have been looking at music industry going from napster to torrent to spotify. Now they are looking at libgen and seem to be completely unable to connect the dots and come up with a coop that sells all their books with a monthly fee so that they could keep the profits instead of amazon or whatever startup that manages to circumvent all the legal hassles and make a spotify for books. How hard can it be for a couple of larger publishers to start a common book streaming service with a note that all other publisherss welcome, you become a member in the coop and get to say how the coop works, coop takes a fee from sales just to cover operating costs and rest goes to publisher/author?

GiorgioG 6y ago
Having worked for a very large publisher - they don’t get tech at all.
dlgeek 6y ago
Amazon did this - it's called Kindle Unlimited.
- fock 6y ago
  both of you miss the point. I want to have a diskful of books, I can pass on to my kin and also share with friends (which is like normal books worked for years...). I don't want to have a streamingservice which can censor and restrict my rights to read a book at will.
  - peternicky 6y ago
    100%...
  - hk__2 6y ago
    > both of you miss the point. They don’t "miss the point", they just disagree with you.
  - Nbox9 6y ago
    You’re missing the point. Some people still buy CDs and Records. Some people fill up disks with .flac or .acc files. The industry still serves those customers, but the real business is happening on the streaming services. What _you_ want and what the market demands are two different things.

6510 6y ago

Lets mature web standards so that one can write and publish a book - with just html. Then also do distributed search so that one can find things. Something with supper nodes for those of us who want faster and more complex queries. html, with some minor upgrades, again seems good enough. DRM is a silly idea, we should forget about it. Just write free works until the audience is impressed enough to donate to current effort. And finally some simple to use aggregation formula so that authors can learn what we want to read about. No more middle men.

hk__2 6y ago
> Just write free works until the audience is impressed enough to donate to current effort. I get the rest of the comment, but I don’t understand that part: unless you already have too much money, there’s absolutely no reason you should work for free.
- 6510 6y ago
  You don't need to much money to do what you like. I want to see a basic income which makes DRM one of the many "old world" formulas that cant work perfectly even if you throw infinite money at it. To pay people to write is as simple as it sounds. While some components might be legitimate there is really no end to greed in rent seeking formulas. We can look at the TV license in the UK to see what the future might look like. They didn't even have the modern tools to monitor everyone. The system involves a database of houses where the license was not purchased. Agents will make unannounced visits to search your house. In stead of impossible some would argue it was simply a hard problem to write into law. From that perspective we failed to create a carefully balanced set of rules. As long as the demands are small steps the copyright industry gets what they want every time while the consumer, the party argued to so greatly benefit from these laws (what a joke),..... well.... the consumer gets to play and sing songs from before 1923! When Swartz downloaded a pile of ancient garbage articles he was going to get 35 years in prison for wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer. This is complete nonsense and everyone knows it. If the industry wants to go full retard it should be treated as such. Therefore we should burn it to the ground and keep the authors and keep the artists. Pay them for what they do. The only thing that matters is that the unwashed masses who already cant find work get access to educational materials. Everything else is either not important or simply entertainment. You cant use tax money for entertainment as long as you are taking it from people who can barely pay their bills. You can use it to sponsor crowd funding so that they can learn useful things and ponder the many intelligent thoughts others wrote down. To me this sounds a lot better than [say] sponsoring scientific journals with public funds so that they can paywall the stuff we've paid for. There are tons of old books. People can go read those first before demanding more free work from authors for the benefit of publishers. It is also easy to remove % fees from app stores by writing some laws. Or are we to think it will bankrupt google and apple? I cant recall paying Microsoft any fees. It is my country. The legal system is there to serve me.

pmalynin 6y ago

Isn’t this what No Starch Press is doing?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]