3 ms·

I think it's more a comment on the general ecosystem and the vendors. You could have completely FOSS hardware and FOSS software, but if all of the books you wa

I think it's more a comment on the general ecosystem and the vendors. You could have completely FOSS hardware and FOSS software, but if all of the books you want to read are owned by publishers that refuse to sell them without DRM, what's the point? You'll basically be limited to self-published, DRM free stuff and Public Domain books.

Syonyk 5y ago
Nah, you keep a VM around to strip DRM from your legally purchased content and then toss it on the Kobo. I've got a Win10 VM that exists to strip DRM from Adobe Digital Editions or whatever the current name for that abomination is. Similar VMs exist to strip Amazon DRM.
- AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
  Dude, I know. But it's a pain in the ass. In fact I got so tired of trying to make the Kindle for PC app play nice under WINE after it inexplicably broke that I just bought an old Kindle off eBay for about 20 bucks, and am using the hardware key from that to both download the books from Amazon in .azw form, and decrypt them with DeDRM/Calibre. But it's still a pain in the ass. And you know what's even worse? Now that it's tied to a physical hardware key, Amazon knows that this particular Kindle is older than dirt, and so it won't even give me the option of downloading some of my newer books like graphic novels or cookbooks, because it detects that those wouldn't work on it. So I can't get those to break the DRM from them. Things are only marginally better in the Kobo world, insofar as nothing downloaded directly to my Kobo has yet posed a problem for DeDRM and OBOK. But lord help us if they ever update the ADE encryption used for the on-device books.
- throwaway705132 5y ago
  I used to have a means for stripping Digital Editions and B&N DRM, but they're now lost to time. Fortunately, the Kindle version can be simplified greatly and doesn't quite require the complexity of the other means.
zozbot234 5y ago
What's wrong with Public Domain books? The whole Western literary canon is in the public domain. You could spend as much time as you wanted purely on those books without ever needing to read anything proprietary or encumbered.
- webmaven 5y ago
  > What's wrong with Public Domain books? The whole Western literary canon is in the public domain. You could spend as much time as you wanted purely on those books without ever needing to read anything proprietary or encumbered. There is much to be said for that, but tastes differ, and books aren't entirely fungible. If you really prefer reading science fiction and fantasy for example, you're going to run out of public domain and Creative Commons licensed works that appeal to you pretty quickly.
- FrenchAmerican 5y ago
  Public Domain books are great... if you can read the original language. The way books are translated nowadays are much more respectful to the author. Two cases are well-known in France: Charles Baudelaire, who is considered as one of the best French poet ever, has translated some of Edgar Poe's short novels. Well... that's not even a translation, it's his own version. It's still a good reading, a remix of Pie by Baudelaire. More recently, it was discovered that Dostoyevsky had been translated in a very polished way, to meet the bourgeoisie good taste of 100 years ago. Very ancient books, from the Greek and Roman times (e.g. from 500 BC to 500 AD mostly, but Homer has composed his famous poems likely around 800 BC) have arrived to us from multiple sources. Philologists have made huge progress since the most recent translation available in the Public Domain. In the last 30 years, computers have also changed the field: through computation but also simply by making the various "originals" accessible through the internet. This is true as well for the Medieval Age of course. So any translation is always - if not biased - a reflect of its epoch. I majored in History and basically, most academic books are outdated every 30 years or so. That's good since it proves progress. The art of translation and the science of philology progress as well. We need to shorten the period before a book becomes Public Domain. In France, it's 70 years after the death of the author(s) AND the translator(s). That's too long.
Mezzie 5y ago
Libgen. If you mean legally obtaining the books you want to read, there's also the use case of home-made/unofficial copies; there are e-books floating around of books that are no longer in print (digital or dead tree versions). You'll pry my Animorphs ebooks from my cold, dead hands! There are also certain use cases where stripping DRM is allowed by law, and in those cases, yes, you would want FOSS hardware and software.

Syonyk 5y ago

Nah, you keep a VM around to strip DRM from your legally purchased content and then toss it on the Kobo. I've got a Win10 VM that exists to strip DRM from Adobe Digital Editions or whatever the current name for that abomination is. Similar VMs exist to strip Amazon DRM.

AdmiralAsshat 5y ago
Dude, I know. But it's a pain in the ass. In fact I got so tired of trying to make the Kindle for PC app play nice under WINE after it inexplicably broke that I just bought an old Kindle off eBay for about 20 bucks, and am using the hardware key from that to both download the books from Amazon in .azw form, and decrypt them with DeDRM/Calibre. But it's still a pain in the ass. And you know what's even worse? Now that it's tied to a physical hardware key, Amazon knows that this particular Kindle is older than dirt, and so it won't even give me the option of downloading some of my newer books like graphic novels or cookbooks, because it detects that those wouldn't work on it. So I can't get those to break the DRM from them. Things are only marginally better in the Kobo world, insofar as nothing downloaded directly to my Kobo has yet posed a problem for DeDRM and OBOK. But lord help us if they ever update the ADE encryption used for the on-device books.
throwaway705132 5y ago
I used to have a means for stripping Digital Editions and B&N DRM, but they're now lost to time. Fortunately, the Kindle version can be simplified greatly and doesn't quite require the complexity of the other means.

zozbot234 5y ago

What's wrong with Public Domain books? The whole Western literary canon is in the public domain. You could spend as much time as you wanted purely on those books without ever needing to read anything proprietary or encumbered.

webmaven 5y ago
> What's wrong with Public Domain books? The whole Western literary canon is in the public domain. You could spend as much time as you wanted purely on those books without ever needing to read anything proprietary or encumbered. There is much to be said for that, but tastes differ, and books aren't entirely fungible. If you really prefer reading science fiction and fantasy for example, you're going to run out of public domain and Creative Commons licensed works that appeal to you pretty quickly.
FrenchAmerican 5y ago
Public Domain books are great... if you can read the original language. The way books are translated nowadays are much more respectful to the author. Two cases are well-known in France: Charles Baudelaire, who is considered as one of the best French poet ever, has translated some of Edgar Poe's short novels. Well... that's not even a translation, it's his own version. It's still a good reading, a remix of Pie by Baudelaire. More recently, it was discovered that Dostoyevsky had been translated in a very polished way, to meet the bourgeoisie good taste of 100 years ago. Very ancient books, from the Greek and Roman times (e.g. from 500 BC to 500 AD mostly, but Homer has composed his famous poems likely around 800 BC) have arrived to us from multiple sources. Philologists have made huge progress since the most recent translation available in the Public Domain. In the last 30 years, computers have also changed the field: through computation but also simply by making the various "originals" accessible through the internet. This is true as well for the Medieval Age of course. So any translation is always - if not biased - a reflect of its epoch. I majored in History and basically, most academic books are outdated every 30 years or so. That's good since it proves progress. The art of translation and the science of philology progress as well. We need to shorten the period before a book becomes Public Domain. In France, it's 70 years after the death of the author(s) AND the translator(s). That's too long.

Mezzie 5y ago

Libgen. If you mean legally obtaining the books you want to read, there's also the use case of home-made/unofficial copies; there are e-books floating around of books that are no longer in print (digital or dead tree versions). You'll pry my Animorphs ebooks from my cold, dead hands! There are also certain use cases where stripping DRM is allowed by law, and in those cases, yes, you would want FOSS hardware and software.