5 ms·

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centralizing many books to one physical object, you risk losing much more content as you lose that physical object No, you got it wrong. The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen. And making this whole thing defective by disallowing people to backup their books however they want is the most evil and stupid thing I've ever seen. DRM is defective by design and no matter how much you try painting this crow, it's still a crow.

dllthomas 14y ago
> The only real danger for thhe preservation of books in physical form is fire. Also water.
- bad_user 14y ago
  If we are talking about valuable books, then content can be recovered at least partially from a wet book, depending on how good the printing ink and paper were and how long that book stayed under water. Fire is more dangerous than floods and historically we've lost more books by fire than from anything else, although I'm pretty sure there are effective methods to recover content partially from books that are only partially burned. The durability of physical books is amazing and the only thing going for digital content is that the cost of copies is zero, which means you can easily make backups in multiple places of this world instantly and retrieve those backups with whatever device you happen to have in front of you. Unfortunately that's exactly what DRM is trying to prevent.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Also bugs.
  - nmcfarl 14y ago
    Also rodents.
    - jcfiala 14y ago
      My 15 month old daughter has started being a little destructive to books as well.
      - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
        So aside from fire, water, rodents, bugs and children, what could possibly happen to a physical book? Other than loss and theft of course.
        DanBC 14y ago
        Dust, and dust removal, and dust prevention, present risks to old books. (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/collections/view-page/item378001/ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/c...) (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item378012/version1/w-conservation-dust-dust_on_books.pdf http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item3780...) Some oppressive regimes will confiscate some books. I don't know what happens to that book afterwards.
boboblong 14y ago
"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen." But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling them as DRM-free, that would be fraud. But (AFAIK) they're not.
- Retric 14y ago
  I don't know about B&N but you can easily go though the Amazon checkout process without any mention of DRM. Most people only learn about it when DRM prevents them from doing something they would otherwise assume they could do like read there book on a nook.
  - clarky07 14y ago
    Who is buying a kindle book and expecting to read it on nook?
    - rprasad 14y ago
      I do. I use Calibre to remove DRM and convert. The Nook is a superior device for reading (though haven't compared it to the Paperwhite yet.)
      - clarky07 14y ago
        so why don't you just buy from b&n?
- chc 14y ago
  Not so. AFAIK none of the major ebook retailers go out of their way to mention this, and they target their marketing towards consumers who are not savvy enough to know to ask. They will only inform you of the DRM when you run into one of the limitations it imposes. EDIT: Actually, I should clarify. One ebook retailer does make this explicit — Google. But I wasn't counting them because they don't "own" a market segment and you'd probably be pretty savvy to be buying from them anyway.

dllthomas 14y ago

> The only real danger for thhe preservation of books in physical form is fire. Also water.

bad_user 14y ago
If we are talking about valuable books, then content can be recovered at least partially from a wet book, depending on how good the printing ink and paper were and how long that book stayed under water. Fire is more dangerous than floods and historically we've lost more books by fire than from anything else, although I'm pretty sure there are effective methods to recover content partially from books that are only partially burned. The durability of physical books is amazing and the only thing going for digital content is that the cost of copies is zero, which means you can easily make backups in multiple places of this world instantly and retrieve those backups with whatever device you happen to have in front of you. Unfortunately that's exactly what DRM is trying to prevent.
DanBC 14y ago
Also bugs.
- nmcfarl 14y ago
  Also rodents.
  - jcfiala 14y ago
    My 15 month old daughter has started being a little destructive to books as well.
    - Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
      So aside from fire, water, rodents, bugs and children, what could possibly happen to a physical book? Other than loss and theft of course.
      - DanBC 14y ago
        Dust, and dust removal, and dust prevention, present risks to old books. (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/collections/view-page/item378001/ http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/what-we-do/what-we-protect/c...) (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item378012/version1/w-conservation-dust-dust_on_books.pdf http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/servlet/file/store5/item3780...) Some oppressive regimes will confiscate some books. I don't know what happens to that book afterwards.

boboblong 14y ago

"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen." But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling them as DRM-free, that would be fraud. But (AFAIK) they're not.

Retric 14y ago
I don't know about B&N but you can easily go though the Amazon checkout process without any mention of DRM. Most people only learn about it when DRM prevents them from doing something they would otherwise assume they could do like read there book on a nook.
- clarky07 14y ago
  Who is buying a kindle book and expecting to read it on nook?
  - rprasad 14y ago
    I do. I use Calibre to remove DRM and convert. The Nook is a superior device for reading (though haven't compared it to the Paperwhite yet.)
    - clarky07 14y ago
      so why don't you just buy from b&n?
chc 14y ago
Not so. AFAIK none of the major ebook retailers go out of their way to mention this, and they target their marketing towards consumers who are not savvy enough to know to ask. They will only inform you of the DRM when you run into one of the limitations it imposes. EDIT: Actually, I should clarify. One ebook retailer does make this explicit — Google. But I wasn't counting them because they don't "own" a market segment and you'd probably be pretty savvy to be buying from them anyway.