No one reads the fine print in all these "user agreements" (written in legalese and often dozens of pages long), but their legal right to do this is enshrined in there somewhere. It is annoying that despite not legally owning an eBook, it can often be priced at (or even above!) the price of a printed copy. If for no other reason, this seems wrong, given that the cost of producing an eBook is significantly lower.
In addition for the reasons you offer, I also personally prefer the experience of reading a hard copy to reading an eBook, and will generally go that route unless the price of the eBook is WAY lower. But on those few occasions when I do purchase an eBook, it is easy enough to immediately strip off the DRM and store a copy in a separate file using something like Calibre eBook management software. That way you can protect it from being yanked or edited, and can read it on any device you choose without registering the device with companies who want to "reach out" and fiddle with the content.
Of course, the absence of DRM puts users on the "honor system" with respect to sharing it with others who have not purchased it. And yet many authors trust their readers to do this--I have bought a few that explicitly state they are being provided without DRM. I always appreciate and respect that trust.
And war can get even more drastic. Unbelievably the Israeli army seems to have blown up the entire Palestinian village famous for its history of Benjamin son of Jacob. I don't know what has happened to Jacob's Well - talk about re-writing history!
I won't go on ... am still bookish myself ... lose the catalogue though and as Ugo says its a bit like Alzheimers ... but there is worse than cyber crime out there ... There is a video of course, caught it by accident yesterday.
am i really such a bad person if i ask a club of rome member/scientist do we still have a few years before we collapse dr nafeez ahmed blocked my for this when i stated that gaya herrington stated on her linkedin page on a podcast that we still have 5 years left i am starting to think that i can only trust sandrine dixson decleve and her earth4all team on this point ?
First, technically speaking, the solution is really simple: set up ebooks repositories with the very same version control systems used by decades to manage software releases.
repositories work fine, but you would need to use an open source VCS(eg. gitlab) AND self-host (otherwise corp/government interests will overrule your hosting preferences), and conform to censorship...
of course. I didn't want to get technical, because I understand that's not the real audience/context of the original post. My main point is, all these issues are nothing new as it may seem from there. They have been "becoming reality" for 15 years at least, as it's visible in my own post, and in these I wrote in 2010/2011:
Well, yes, I am sure it is possible to find ways to maintain information that's becoming unreadable. The problem is political. Erasing information is a game that governments love to play, and entropy is their ally.
In this case, the ally is ignorance, much more than entropy. I have been teaching this stuff for ~15 years now. You can find a good overview in the slides of this seminar, your feedback (and help to circulate it) would be VERY welcome:
Strange that of that novel I remember only when the protagonist says that he can still drive a manual transmission car, and so he can do better than automatic transmission cars on dirt roads. At that time, all cars in Italy had manual transmission.
Publishers of eBooks can (and do) reach out and change the copies of books already in users' possession, or even unilaterally "take them back." I knew I had read about this being done by Amazon, and a search uncovered the following interesting article describing the legal basis for this at https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-amazon-is-within-its-rights-to-remove-access-to-your-kindle-books/
No one reads the fine print in all these "user agreements" (written in legalese and often dozens of pages long), but their legal right to do this is enshrined in there somewhere. It is annoying that despite not legally owning an eBook, it can often be priced at (or even above!) the price of a printed copy. If for no other reason, this seems wrong, given that the cost of producing an eBook is significantly lower.
In addition for the reasons you offer, I also personally prefer the experience of reading a hard copy to reading an eBook, and will generally go that route unless the price of the eBook is WAY lower. But on those few occasions when I do purchase an eBook, it is easy enough to immediately strip off the DRM and store a copy in a separate file using something like Calibre eBook management software. That way you can protect it from being yanked or edited, and can read it on any device you choose without registering the device with companies who want to "reach out" and fiddle with the content.
Of course, the absence of DRM puts users on the "honor system" with respect to sharing it with others who have not purchased it. And yet many authors trust their readers to do this--I have bought a few that explicitly state they are being provided without DRM. I always appreciate and respect that trust.
Great insight, very concerning though and I wish I hadn’t read this!
Have you read the one about the cyber attack on the British Library? https://blogs.bl.uk/living-knowledge/2024/08/restoring-our-services-30-august-update.html
And war can get even more drastic. Unbelievably the Israeli army seems to have blown up the entire Palestinian village famous for its history of Benjamin son of Jacob. I don't know what has happened to Jacob's Well - talk about re-writing history!
Not familiar with the second part of your comment, buts it’s unfortunate that the ransom group is targeting critical public infrastructure.
Looks like are not even politically motivated, but just doing it for money. But come on… not the libraries man.
I won't go on ... am still bookish myself ... lose the catalogue though and as Ugo says its a bit like Alzheimers ... but there is worse than cyber crime out there ... There is a video of course, caught it by accident yesterday.
am i really such a bad person if i ask a club of rome member/scientist do we still have a few years before we collapse dr nafeez ahmed blocked my for this when i stated that gaya herrington stated on her linkedin page on a podcast that we still have 5 years left i am starting to think that i can only trust sandrine dixson decleve and her earth4all team on this point ?
Two things:
First, technically speaking, the solution is really simple: set up ebooks repositories with the very same version control systems used by decades to manage software releases.
Second: this should really be read side by side with my post on the WRONG perception of "ephemerality" of digital archives and documents: https://mfioretti.substack.com/p/ever-wondered-why-we-are-in-a-digital
repositories work fine, but you would need to use an open source VCS(eg. gitlab) AND self-host (otherwise corp/government interests will overrule your hosting preferences), and conform to censorship...
of course. I didn't want to get technical, because I understand that's not the real audience/context of the original post. My main point is, all these issues are nothing new as it may seem from there. They have been "becoming reality" for 15 years at least, as it's visible in my own post, and in these I wrote in 2010/2011:
https://stop.zona-m.net/2010/12/when-drm-on-ebooks-works-like-a-bewitched-terribly-broken-bookshelf/
https://stop.zona-m.net/2011/02/are-ebooks-better-or-worse-than-paper-books-do-not-ask-the-experts/
Well, yes, I am sure it is possible to find ways to maintain information that's becoming unreadable. The problem is political. Erasing information is a game that governments love to play, and entropy is their ally.
In this case, the ally is ignorance, much more than entropy. I have been teaching this stuff for ~15 years now. You can find a good overview in the slides of this seminar, your feedback (and help to circulate it) would be VERY welcome:
https://mfioretti.com/how-file-formats-can-be-used-favor-or-hamper-innovation-active-citizenship-and-really-free-markets/
Farnham's Freehold valued books highly, but it was difficult for the world to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnham%27s_Freehold
Strange that of that novel I remember only when the protagonist says that he can still drive a manual transmission car, and so he can do better than automatic transmission cars on dirt roads. At that time, all cars in Italy had manual transmission.
I greatly prefer manual transmissions, though they have gone away since people need hands for smartphones.
;-(
(But I have a little old truck and a Toyota Matrix with manuals)