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How to Destroy the Book, by Cory Doctorow
,----[ Quote ]
| People keep showing me ebook readers that
| try to recreate the book experience with
| cute animations showing the turning of
| pages. But if you want to recreate the
| important part of the book experience, the
| part that keeps people buying books for
| their whole lives, filling their homes with
| treasured friends that they would not part
| with for love nor money, then we need to
| restore and safeguard ownership of books.
| When I buy a book, itâs mine. Thereâs no
| mechanism, not even in the face of a court
| order, whereby a retailer can take a book
| away from me, and yet Amazonâthereâs the
| most extraordinary thing that they had to do
| in the United Statesâyouâve heard of course
| that someone put a copy of Orwellâs 1984 in
| the Kindle Store, and it wasnât licensed for
| distribution in the U.S.âof course, Orwell
| is in the public domain outside the U.S., in
| copyright in the U.S.âand Amazon responded
| to this intelligence by revoking the book
| 1984 from its customersâ ebook readers.
| After theyâd bought it, they woke up one
| morning to discover their book had gone.
`----
http://thevarsity.ca/articles/23855
Tomorrow Is National Book Burning Day; Thank Your Friendly Entertainment Industry Lobbyists
,----[ Quote ]
| January 1st of each year should be National
| Public Domain Day, when many different
| creative works enter the public domain,
| where they can be made useful. In years
| past, it was a regular occurrence as tons of
| creative works went into the public domain
| each year. Often this was by choice on the
| part of the copyright holder. That's because
| copyright used to have a renewal
| requirement, and the vast majority of
| copyright holders found little reason to
| renew their copyright. In 1958-59, only 7%
| of book copyright holders chose to renew
| their copyrights, meaning that 93% of books
| that could have been covered by copyright
| were allowed to enter the public domain. The
| small number that did have their copyrights
| renewed were (not surprisingly) the books
| that were still huge commercial successes,
| whose authors and publishers wished to
| retain their monopoly rights.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20091231/1105257562.shtml
Recent:
Despite Awful Customer Service, Woman Felt Forced To Buy Another Sony
eBook Reader... Thanks To DRM
,----[ Quote ]
| After all of this, she went out and bought
| another Sony ebook reader. She noted that she
| would have gladly purchased a competing
| product "but would have lost access to the
| library she's spent hundreds of dollars
| building up." And there it is. The DRM tax at
| work creating serious lock-in and consumer
| problems. At least in this case, due to the
| publicity from Consumerist, Sony agreed to
| reimburse the woman, but you shouldn't have
| to get a major publication to tell your story
| first to get that kind of resolution.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20091230/0956377548.shtml
Fifth Period Is Facebook
,----[ Quote ]
| Why schools should stop blocking social
| network sites.
`----
http://www.slate.com/id/2239560/pagenum/all/
Kindle Total Cost of Ownership: Calculating the DRM Tax
,----[ Quote ]
| There is one other problem with DRM protected
| books. When the reading device reaches its end
| of life, you have to assume all the content you
| purchased will be lost. If, for instance, I
| went with a Kindle, all of the content I
| purchase can be used only on devices supported
| by Amazon.
|
| When, several years later, it comes time to
| replace that Kindle I may get a new Kindle --
| but I can't assume that. Maybe somebody else
| will have a better device at that time. Or,
| maybe Amazon went bankrupt or evil or stupid
| and I need to switch to another vendor. There
| are any number of reasons I might like to
| switch my e-reader. If I do, I have to assume I
| won't be able to use any of the content I
| purchased for the Kindle.
|
| Thanks to DRM, when my e-reader reaches its end
| of life, I will have to pay to acquire
| replacement books for the material that's
| locked out of the new e-reader. I call the
| amount of that purchase the "DRM tax" -- an
| added cost imposed by DRM restrictions.
`----
http://www.unicom.com/blog/entry/622
Hackers break Amazon's Kindle DRM
,----[ Quote ]
| The hack began as an open challenge in this
| (translated) forum for participants to come up
| with a way to make ebooks published in Amazon's
| proprietary format display on competing
| readers. Eight days later, a user going by the
| handle Labba had a working program that did
| just that.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/23/amazon_kindle_hacked/
The secret behind the Kindle's best-selling e-books: They're not for sale
,----[ Quote ]
| One big reason readers choose e-books over ink
| and paper versions: The digital ones are
| cheaper.
|
| That wasn't the case when e-books first
| appeared a decade ago. But Amazon has made a
| point of selling its Kindle titles at a
| discount to physical editions, even if it
| means losing money.
`----
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10422538-93.html
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