EU Court of Justice on DRM circumvention

[crossi]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

That is why I only read a book ONCE and never look back. Its possible I may have even read some books twice since I may have forgotten when I read it first.
That is why I only buy an eBook to READ IT and would not dream of "collecting" thousands of old eBooks. They are JUNK after I've read it.

Well that is where we differ. I read about a book/day and can read 3 if I binge on a weekend. I shudder to think what my book expenses would be if they all were new. It's high enough already. I have books like "A Little Princess" by Burnett that I've been rereading since childhood.

This is not uncommon. A lot of people have a large paper library. Sometimes an entire room dedicated to well loved books. Many more wished for one. Before ebooks I had 4 crammed full bookcases and 29 boxes of books jammed into my apartment and I dreamed of a house with a room just for my books. Many times I gave away a book because there wasn't room for it and it wasn't quite good enough to displace one of my keepers then later wanted to reread it and couldn't find a copy again. Now I have my dream library and can keep all my books.

[ReadTillYouBleed]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

By the way, all this DRM removal going on now to store eBooks for future use may be for naught. New eReaders may be introduced at some time which will make all the old eBook files OBSOLETE since the structure of the new eBooks may be totally different.

An unencrypted file can be converted from the format that has fallen out of favor into whatever format is currently in vogue. An encrypted file is lost to you once the ebook format it uses falls out of favor and your old device dies or is no longer appealing to use. This has happened enough times over the last 10 years to make it clear that this is not just a long-term concern, but may have rather short-term implications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital...t#Obsolescence.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Old things get lost all the time. My favorite print bible in German from 1930 has decomposing pages. Every time I open it, pieces of pages decompose.

I had great games for my Radio Shack TRS 80 from 1978 but they are now gone forever.

I had even greater games for DOS and they are now gone.

I used to play Mankind, a game for thousands at one time, for several years and it is now gone forever.

My old Microsoft eBooks are gone forever as are my old Sony eBooks now. My old Adobe eBooks are also gone.

All my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts are also gone.

That is why I only read a book ONCE and never look back. Its possible I may have even read some books twice since I may have forgotten when I read it first.

I never remove DRM because the license for my purchase of that eBook REQUIRED that I leave it in place. I tend to honor licenses on games and eBooks I buy.

Preserving software by some means is also a waste of time. Why would I still want to have a copy of MS DOS 2.2 still available?

My old cars and TV's are also gone forever. Would I really want my old Modal A Ford back to replace my new self driving car?

That is why I only buy an eBook to READ IT and would not dream of "collecting" thousands of old eBooks. They are JUNK after I've read it. Thus, Calibre and Apprentice Alf for me are no better than a defective time machine which never can really function.

Its best to just forget the past and MOVE ON.

By the way, all this DRM removal going on now to store eBooks for future use may be for naught. New eReaders may be introduced at some time which will make all the old eBook files OBSOLETE since the structure of the new eBooks may be totally different.

If someone had made illegal Xerox copies of print books back in 1961, they still could not be read on our eReaders of today.

Removing DRM now for eBooks may be going down the same hopeless road as was taken by those who sought to make illegal hand copies of papyrus books which are all OBSOLETE today.

Good for you, you don't care about your books. But it is pretty clear that some of us do and will do what it takes to keep them.

Now if I have all of my ebooks stripped of drm and they decided that new ereaders won't read it, then I will simply take all of my ebooks reconvert them to RTF or text files and read them on my pc. BUT I WILL STILL HAVE MY BOOKS!

I don't think pc's or ereaders/tablets are going to go away anytime soon. But then again, neither are cd's/vinyl records, cassette tapes etc. Time marches on but so long as we can buy these products or at least the machines that interface with them (and we can!) we are still in business.

[hardcastle]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

Good for you, you don't care about your books. But it is pretty clear that some of us do and will do what it takes to keep them.

Now if I have all of my ebooks stripped of drm and they decided that new ereaders won't read it, then I will simply take all of my ebooks reconvert them to RTF or text files and read them on my pc. BUT I WILL STILL HAVE MY BOOKS!

I don't think pc's or ereaders/tablets are going to go away anytime soon. But then again, neither are cd's/vinyl records, cassette tapes etc. Time marches on but so long as we can buy these products or at least the machines that interface with them (and we can!) we are still in business.

It has become abundantly clear that Sirmaru has no interest in reading what anyone else has to say. The concept of other people having a different use-case for eBooks is too foreign for him to even bother responding to, across this entire forum.

The constant bleating of "OBSOLETE" is an odd one. It sounds rather like media companies trying to get people to shift to a new format on a faster time-table when the market couldn't give a dang. I don't see what eReader features could be invented to make all past eBooks obsolete. They're just text. Any device incompatible with simple text (TXT or HTML) is useless.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by hardcastle

The constant bleating of "OBSOLETE" is an odd one. It sounds rather like media companies trying to get people to shift to a new format on a faster time-table when the market couldn't give a dang. I don't see what eReader features could be invented to make all past eBooks obsolete. They're just text. Any device incompatible with simple text (TXT or HTML) is useless.

Some said those VHS tapes would last forever. Where are they today?

How about those old 16 MM movie cameras, the best of the best?

Silent films were the "wave of the future" when I was a kid. Does anyone watch them today?

HTML did NOT exist in 1960 and will not exist in 2060 either.

How are your papyrus books doing today? There was once a Great Library at Alexandria in Egypt preserving thousands of them since folks said they would be invaluable forever.

Does anyone even read Egyptian hieroglyphics anymore?

Our present eBook technology is merely a waystation to the future. I am sure new technologies are right around the corner and even plain text may be gone sooner than we think.

Preserving eBooks today by stripping DRM would be like making lots of backups of those old VHS tapes which lots of folks used to do and that was illegal at the time as well. Today I can stream those movies from Netflix and saved all that labor of backing up the VHS tapes.

[hardcastle]

VHS tapes cannot be compared to DRM-infected eBooks. They may not make VHS anymore, but I can watch the ones I own. I don't have to subscribe to Netflix just to use movies I bought and have the player for.

With DRM-infected eBooks, I lose access to my content the minute a company decides I do, on their agenda. And that's wrong. Disgusting. Indefensible.

Just because something better comes along, that doesn't give ANYONE the right to take away what I have. Even if I had the reading habits you do, I am capable of empathizing with people who use eBooks for different purposes.

The only examples you can come up with for books are Papyrus and the Library of Alexandria, which haven't been relevant since 1000AD at the latest. And unless you're claiming somebody will take away my ability to read English, I doubt your examples of thousand-year language changes will bother my archived books any.

EDIT: Lest anyone think I'm not entirely aware, I know that I'm screaming into a black hole and that Sirmaru will either ignore this post or swap to some other nonsensical, fallacy-laden defense.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Some said those VHS tapes would last forever. Where are they today?

On DVD. I've assisted many people in teaching them how to digitize their old movie collection; often very expensive Disney VHS tapes.

You know what? They were protected! You couldn't copy them from one recorder to another: the recorders wouldn't allow it. VHS-VHS, or VHS-DVD-recorder, both didn't work with many of those tapes. The Analog Loophole fixed that: just play the movie, and connect the VCR to a capture card on the computer. Record it, convert to DVD, burn.

Timeconsuming? Yes.
Does it work? Yes.

It's akin to scanning a paper book and then OCR-ing it.

How about those old 16 MM movie cameras, the best of the best?

Same. That stuff is now on DVD

Silent films were the "wave of the future" when I was a kid. Does anyone watch them today?

I don't know... but I sometimes watch Laurel & Hardy, and I regularly watch B/W movies from the 50's.

HTML did NOT exist in 1960 and will not exist in 2060 either.

I wouldn't be too sure about that.

Maybe you've seen my mention of the Alan Turing paper chess machine in another thread. You know what? The algorithm was designed in 1951; before any practical computers were around... and it still exists today, and it can be played against.

Want proof? Check the attached screenshot, and see the Turing algorithm from 1951 running in Fritz 11 from 2007, now, in 2014, analysing the chess starting position. There are other implementations of the same algorithm around to run in other chess interfaces, by the way.

OK, the engine is very weak, obviously, but it's still strong enough to allow it to beat beginners. No, it's not just a weak engine called Turing; it IS the old Turing algorithm.

The point: Sometimes, code (and other computer stuff) either sticks around a VERY long time, or it is ported from system to system, for whatever reason.

Our present eBook technology is merely a waystation to the future. I am sure new technologies are right around the corner...

Of course. However, stuff tends to stick around and only goes away if nobody ever uses it anymore. I expect EPUB to be readable for at least another 25 years, and if not, it can be converted to the in-vogue format of that time. EPUB will only go away after:

- nobody buys new EPUBs anymore
- nobody living HAS any EPUBs anymore

See the old Microsoft LIT format. It's dead. Not sold anymore. However, there are a lot of people who still own books in LIT format. If they don't have DRM on them, Calibre converts them perfectly to EPUB, AZW3 or MOBI. If you have DRM on them (and lost the account data that has the key), you're SOL.

There are old (1998-2006) BAEN CD's floating around, with hundreds of free books... in LIT FORMAT! As long as stuff like that is around, the format is STILL not completely dead.

Preserving eBooks today by stripping DRM would be like making lots of backups of those old VHS tapes...

Stripping DRM allows the backups to be usable. If you leave the DRM in place, you could as well NOT create a backup.

Without the DRM, I could export the EPUB book to a plain TXT file and read it that way, should I ever want to. And plain text will NEVER go away. If it does, the entire IT industry will probably fail.

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Without the DRM, I could export the EPUB book to a plain TXT file and read it that way, should I ever want to. And plain text will NEVER go away. If it does, the entire IT industry will probably fail.

Probably? I don't know about probably!

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Old things get lost all the time. My favorite print bible in German from 1930 has decomposing pages. Every time I open it, pieces of pages decompose.

Fortunately, you can get a new copy, because someone backed it up.

I had great games for my Radio Shack TRS 80 from 1978 but they are now gone forever.

I had even greater games for DOS and they are now gone.

I used to play Mankind, a game for thousands at one time, for several years and it is now gone forever.

False. They are only gone because you got rid of them. Many people play old games on emulators. If you wanted them, they are still available.

My old Microsoft eBooks are gone forever as are my old Sony eBooks now. My old Adobe eBooks are also gone.

Again, only because you CHOSE to get rid of them.

All my parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts are also gone.

No one ever claimed you could back up people.

That is why I only read a book ONCE and never look back. Its possible I may have even read some books twice since I may have forgotten when I read it first.

That sounds like a conclusion, but it doesn't follow from anything. You've merely stated that you get rid of things, but that you get rid of things isn't a reason to get rid of things.

I never remove DRM because the license for my purchase of that eBook REQUIRED that I leave it in place. I tend to honor licenses on games and eBooks I buy.

I paid money for the book, I will continue to read it. I will not distribute that book, but I am not going to be bound by anything that gets in the way of my ability to read the books that I paid for.

Preserving software by some means is also a waste of time. Why would I still want to have a copy of MS DOS 2.2 still available?

Don't tell me how to use my time. Maybe you wouldn't, but that's not relevant. No one is claiming that you ought to have a copy of MS DOS 2.0, but just because you don't want it doesn't mean that others should not.

My old cars and TV's are also gone forever. Would I really want my old Modal A Ford back to replace my new self driving car?

If you have a Model A Ford that you don't want, plenty of people would line up at your door to purchase it from you.

That is why I only buy an eBook to READ IT and would not dream of "collecting" thousands of old eBooks. They are JUNK after I've read it. Thus, Calibre and Apprentice Alf for me are no better than a defective time machine which never can really function.

False. Just because YOU don't want them doesn't mean they are junk. And Apprentice Alf, do in fact function. That's a fact, not an opinion.

Its best to just forget the past and MOVE ON.

That's a rather bad idea, actually.

By the way, all this DRM removal going on now to store eBooks for future use may be for naught. New eReaders may be introduced at some time which will make all the old eBook files OBSOLETE since the structure of the new eBooks may be totally different.

So what if the file structure is different? That is trivial. It's easy to change a file from one format to another.

If someone had made illegal Xerox copies of print books back in 1961, they still could not be read on our eReaders of today.

False. You could scan the Xeroxed copies.

Removing DRM now for eBooks may be going down the same hopeless road as was taken by those who sought to make illegal hand copies of papyrus books which are all OBSOLETE today.

You realize we can still read many of these books which were written on papyrus? The only reason we can read them today is because people copied them by hand, generation after generation. We don't have all of them, not everything was preserved. But that's argue against backing up books, it's a strong argument in favor of backing up books. Earlier you mentioned the Bible: the only reason you have that is because it was hand-copied for many centuries.

Some said those VHS tapes would last forever. Where are they today?

Actually, no one said they would last forever. Estimates of how long videotapes will last are around 10-20 years, but it depends on the care it gets. A cartoon that is watched over and over again may not last long, on the other hand, my parents have videotapes from 30 years ago that haven't been played much and still play quite well.

If you continue to copy videotapes onto videotapes, the quality will degrade, however, it is very easy to make a digital recording of a videotape, and that digital copy can be copied forever without degrading.

How about those old 16 MM movie cameras, the best of the best?

It is trivial to make digital copies of them.

Silent films were the "wave of the future" when I was a kid. Does anyone watch them today?

Highly unlikely. We've had talking movies since 1927. It's possible that you are old enough for talking movies to be the wave of the future, but not for silent movies to be the wave of the future. And yes, people do still watch silent movies.

HTML did NOT exist in 1960 and will not exist in 2060 either.

But in 2060, it will be possible to read HTML, or at least convert it to whatever is used.

How are your papyrus books doing today? There was once a Great Library at Alexandria in Egypt preserving thousands of them since folks said they would be invaluable forever.

We can still read them, only because they were preserved. It's a shame that more weren't preserved, because they were invaluable.

Does anyone even read Egyptian hieroglyphics anymore?

Some people do. Are you suggesting we should dispose of Egyptian hieroglyphics as trash?

Our present eBook technology is merely a waystation to the future. I am sure new technologies are right around the corner and even plain text may be gone sooner than we think.

It is unlikely that plain text is going away. You can add sound and animation to a book, but that's called a movie. But even if plain text does go away, it still doesn't mean that the plain text files of the past have no use.

Preserving eBooks today by stripping DRM would be like making lots of backups of those old VHS tapes which lots of folks used to do and that was illegal at the time as well. Today I can stream those movies from Netflix and saved all that labor of backing up the VHS tapes.

There are many movies that are not available on Netflix, thus it is false that you can get all of those movies on Netflix. You do realize you can watch those movies on Netflix only because they are backed up?

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Some said those VHS tapes would last forever. Where are they today?

I now have them on DVD with no intention of upgrading to Blu Ray.

How about those old 16 MM movie cameras, the best of the best?

Silent films were the "wave of the future" when I was a kid. Does anyone watch them today?

I Wasn't born then and probably wouldn't like the films.

HTML did NOT exist in 1960 and will not exist in 2060 either.

I'll be dead by then so I won't care.

How are your papyrus books doing today? There was once a Great Library at Alexandria in Egypt preserving thousands of them since folks said they would be invaluable forever.

Wasn't born don't care

Does anyone even read Egyptian hieroglyphics anymore?

See statement directly above.

Our present eBook technology is merely a waystation to the future. I am sure new technologies are right around the corner and even plain text may be gone sooner than we think.

Preserving eBooks today by stripping DRM would be like making lots of backups of those old VHS tapes which lots of folks used to do and that was illegal at the time as well. Today I can stream those movies from Netflix and saved all that labor of backing up the VHS tapes.

So long as ebooks and pc's exist during my lifetime and I'm sure they will, that is all I care about!

[ReadTillYouBleed]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Our present eBook technology is merely a waystation to the future.

In some sense, both the traditional books, including the papyrus ones, and the ebooks are but a way to present a text on a limited two-dimensional surface and a means to advance to the next portion of the text, so the really big picture here is not technology, but books and reading.

However, while the basic concept of a book is ancient history and practically immutable, technological changes have always enabled more books and more reading by making it cheaper and easier to create and duplicate texts, with digital storage, duplication, and format conversion being the pinnacle of this long technological evolution.

So, the emergence of digital technologies is actually a "pro-traditional-text" development, whose benefits have not been fully realizable, because the current ebook DRM technologies, created to counter the very ease of digital copying and format conversion, have been designed without much thought for making them viable in the environment of rapid technological change. Until these issues are properly addressed, customers will complain, with good reason.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

...Silent films were the "wave of the future" when I was a kid. Does anyone watch them today?...

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ostcount=37072

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Does anyone even read Egyptian hieroglyphics anymore?

Interesting that you brought this up. Egyptian hieroglyphics weren't read for many years, until nobody alive was able to read them, but texts were kept. Luckily the Rosetta stone was found and used to convert hieroglyphics to more modern script. And the ancient texts could be read again.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Luckily the Rosetta stone was found and used to convert hieroglyphics to more modern script. And the ancient texts could be read again.

Making certain religions look rather foolish! But that's a topic for a different place.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

Interesting that you brought this up. Egyptian hieroglyphics weren't read for many years, until nobody alive was able to read them, but texts were kept. Luckily the Rosetta stone was found and used to convert hieroglyphics to more modern script. And the ancient texts could be read again.

I'm studying part-time for a degree in Egyptology, so yes, I can read Middle Egyptian (the language that the hieroglyphic script is used for). By no means well yet, but certainly the basics. Note, by the way, that "hieroglyphic" is the adjective - the noun is "hieroglyph". So, it is a "hieroglyphic script", but the symbols themselves are simply "hieroglyphs".

Should anyone have a desire to learn the language, the standard book to learn from is James P. Allen's "Middle Egyptian". It's even available as an (expensive) ebook .