11 ms·

Stallman's Dystopia

347 points by gandalfgeek 15y ago

codex 15y ago
Emacs Shrugged? Stallman has more in common with Ayn Rand than people realize!
Typhon 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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.
  - Typhon 15y 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.
    - Dylan16807 15y ago
      All you need to do is throw 'why kindle' into a search engine. Or look for a bit into what it is; the main feature is the e-ink screen, and that is not by coincidence.
kwantam 15y 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
- lukejduncan 15y ago
  And on that note, the Patriot Act is in the process of being extended
- urbanjunkie 15y 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.
  - kwantam 15y 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.
aneth 15y 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.
- fr0sty 15y 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.
  - Travis 15y 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.
    - fr0sty 15y ago
      I'll point to the music industry for prior art: Originally, the CD you purchased was your to enjoy in perpetuity unless you chose to resell it. Current 'state of the art' is either: A. Purchase a streaming 'membership' where you only have the right to personally stream music from a remote server B. Purchase encrypted, non-transferrable 'tracks' which will become unplayable when the company supplying them stops running their servers. There are still avenues (Amazon mp3) which do not take this approach (DRM), but you still cannot legally resell the goods you purchased.
ataggart 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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.
    - Tiomaidh 15y ago
      There are machines that accept a stack of (unbound) paper and OCR it all. There's no "batch mode" for Kindle (apart from cracking the DRM, but that's a separate issue).
jxcole 15y 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 http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page They have a lot of good materials there if you are interested in older books.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  You may also try feedbooks. Lots of interesting stuff there (lots ported from Project Gutenberg).
gallerytungsten 15y 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.
- cmkrnl 15y 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.
- brandall10 15y ago
  I haven't recharged the batteries on my Kindle 3 in over a month.
- bcaulf 15y 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.
chrisjsmith 15y ago
Just a reminder - you can always stick your Kindle in a photocopier. Works quite well!
- cmkrnl 15y ago
  The good old analog hole.
  - rbanffy 15y ago
    In a couple decades it will be plugged by neural implants. ;-)
    - chrisjsmith 15y ago
      No one will give a screwey - we'll all be fucked up on eLSD then...
  - Splines 15y ago
    I wonder if the Kindle will ever add something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
- mambodog 15y ago
  Then scan that photocopy in and OCR it. We've come full circle.
  - orborde 15y ago
    Skip a step and scan the Kindle.
    - chrisjsmith 15y ago
      I was actually thinking about skipping that and reading straight off the screen bus using a logic analyer :)
sambeau 15y 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_law 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 http://www.la-sofia.org/sofia/droit-de-pret-anglais.jsp The payment per loan is 5.98 p
- SwellJoe 15y 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.
  - sambeau 15y 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.
sambeau 15y ago
US law on lending copyrighted things: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html Kindle rules on lending things: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4FDM39Q https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...
yesimahuman 15y 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).
- hxa7241 15y 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.)
  - yesimahuman 15y 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.
brandall10 15y 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 15y 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 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
lukifer 15y 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 15y 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.
EGreg 15y 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 15y 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?"
bcaulf 15y 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.
darklajid 15y 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?

347 points by gandalfgeek 15y ago

codex 15y ago

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

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 15y 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 15y 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.
- Typhon 15y 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.
  - Dylan16807 15y ago
    All you need to do is throw 'why kindle' into a search engine. Or look for a bit into what it is; the main feature is the e-ink screen, and that is not by coincidence.

kwantam 15y 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

lukejduncan 15y ago
And on that note, the Patriot Act is in the process of being extended
urbanjunkie 15y 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.
- kwantam 15y 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.

aneth 15y 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.

fr0sty 15y 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.
- Travis 15y 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.
  - fr0sty 15y ago
    I'll point to the music industry for prior art: Originally, the CD you purchased was your to enjoy in perpetuity unless you chose to resell it. Current 'state of the art' is either: A. Purchase a streaming 'membership' where you only have the right to personally stream music from a remote server B. Purchase encrypted, non-transferrable 'tracks' which will become unplayable when the company supplying them stops running their servers. There are still avenues (Amazon mp3) which do not take this approach (DRM), but you still cannot legally resell the goods you purchased.

ataggart 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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 15y 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.
  - Tiomaidh 15y ago
    There are machines that accept a stack of (unbound) paper and OCR it all. There's no "batch mode" for Kindle (apart from cracking the DRM, but that's a separate issue).

jxcole 15y 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 http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page They have a lot of good materials there if you are interested in older books.

rbanffy 15y ago
You may also try feedbooks. Lots of interesting stuff there (lots ported from Project Gutenberg).

gallerytungsten 15y 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.

cmkrnl 15y 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.
brandall10 15y ago
I haven't recharged the batteries on my Kindle 3 in over a month.
bcaulf 15y 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.

chrisjsmith 15y ago

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

cmkrnl 15y ago
The good old analog hole.
- rbanffy 15y ago
  In a couple decades it will be plugged by neural implants. ;-)
  - chrisjsmith 15y ago
    No one will give a screwey - we'll all be fucked up on eLSD then...
- Splines 15y ago
  I wonder if the Kindle will ever add something like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
mambodog 15y ago
Then scan that photocopy in and OCR it. We've come full circle.
- orborde 15y ago
  Skip a step and scan the Kindle.
  - chrisjsmith 15y ago
    I was actually thinking about skipping that and reading straight off the screen bus using a logic analyer :)

sambeau 15y 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_law 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 http://www.la-sofia.org/sofia/droit-de-pret-anglais.jsp The payment per loan is 5.98 p

SwellJoe 15y 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.
- sambeau 15y 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.

sambeau 15y ago

US law on lending copyrighted things: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html Kindle rules on lending things: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4FDM39Q https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...

yesimahuman 15y 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).

hxa7241 15y 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.)
- yesimahuman 15y 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.

brandall10 15y 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 15y 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 http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

lukifer 15y 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 15y 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.

EGreg 15y 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 15y 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?"

bcaulf 15y 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.

darklajid 15y 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?