Kaufman links e-book trend to bookburning, Nazis

[rmclachlan]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

More likely the disks will be demagnetized by now, though.

I rest my case.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by rmclachlan

I rest my case.

*shrug*. those disks were never meant for long-term storage. That's what they sold tape drives for. Anyway, can we stay with mr. Kaufman's opinions?

[Jack Tingle]

Well, I read it.

My take:
A) It's a point of view. This is America, and the Internet. Meh.
B) Never Godwinize.
C) I think he hasn't thought this through. This reads like an emotional reaction. You should always take several deep breaths before typing on the Internet.
D) He also didn't do his homework.
E) He has a serious cellulosic, non-woven, composite-material data-transmission fetish. I wonder if he gets upset at those baby books with the thick, washable plastic pages?
F) If this is typical of his writing, I don't doubt that his books came hard to him. He's not very good, IMO.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[recycledelectron]

Almost everyone here is offended by a suggestion that ebooks are equivalent to book burning.

Alan Kaufman seems to have only looked at large, commercial, DRMed offerings. He's right that DRMed ebooks can be burned. If Amazon can delete 1984 & Animal Farm, they can burn books. Google censors YouTube videos that show police brutality.

My dream is a self-contained, solid state ebook that is as rugged as a paper book, has the same life expectancy, and has every book(over a certain age) ever published on it.

DRM advocates want to throw me in jail for trying to preseve the content of books. I am not going to preach to the NAZIs who claim it is wrong to keep an ebook longer than 180 days. They are lost.

Andy

[eGeezer]

Well, first of all:

“There's a statistical theory that if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and set them to work, they'd eventually come up with the complete works of Shakespeare. Thanks to the Internet, we now know this isn't true.” -- Ian Hart quotes

Mr. Kaufman is just another monkey like the rest of us.

But of even more concern to me is that this means poor Mr. Bradbury is going to have to rewrite "Fahrenheit 451" to the shortest novel in history, reading one word -- "Delete".

And so what if all reading material becomes electronic and civilization fails because the electricity goes off so we all have to start over. Didn't anyone else watch that historical docu-drama, "Battlestar Galactica"? You think they made all that stuff up?

My apologies if this makes no sense, but neither does Kaufman.

[fugazied]

What a terrible analogy!
A book is just a vessel for knowledge. Knowledge can be spoken, transmitted via the web, read via an ebook. I have no particular attachment to paper books but I am not a librarian and am younger than 50. DRM is a minor threat but in the early days of paper books the power of the printing press was held in the hands of the few. Over time those threats will dissapate, just a quick look at the new technologies like the web and thing like wikipedia remove any doubt that new technologies can increase the distribution of knowledge.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by recycledelectron

Almost everyone here is offended by a suggestion that ebooks are equivalent to book burning.

But what he said was much, much worse than that-- he said that ebooks are equivalent to Jew-burning. Comparing the growing popularity of a new medium for transmitting information to the systematic slaughter of millions in an attempt at genocide is a bit-- I would venture-- hyperbolic.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by eGeezer

And so what if all reading material becomes electronic and civilization fails because the electricity goes off so we all have to start over.

Then the print books will be used for kindling and toilet paper.

Here, download this for your kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Road-.../dp/0061054275

Or Reader:

http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/jac...00000000074077

[eGeezer]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Then the print books will be used for kindling and toilet paper.

I really don't appreciate your response, Ardeegee, because I really REALLY wish I had thought of it first, darn it.

I've put the book on my list, being a real fan of "What Follows End of Civilization" books (all the while hoping I never find out which author had it right.)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by rmclachlan

One of the dangers of e-books is their ephemeral nature compared to the real world equivalent...

Originally Posted by acidzebra

Yes, porting digital data to a different format is completely impossible now and forever. All the data of 2 years ago is all gone. And all paper books still exist.

It's called backing up, people (as AZ so sarcastically points out). I have readable data from a decade ago on my PC, because I back up and archive. It ain't hard. And plenty of information committed to paper has been lost to the ages. It's a poor reason to criticize the e-book.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by fugazied

What a terrible analogy!
A book is just a vessel for knowledge.

I totally disagree. A fiction book have very little to do with knowledge (in the sense of true justified belief).

And a book is more than the sequence of characters. It has a title for example and can be referred. It was written at a specific time period and you often need to know when it was written to appreciate it fully. And so on.

[Patricia]

But if you set a book free on the internet, people download it, back it up, convert it into different formats. It's not ephemeral at all.

Larger sites, like Project Gutenberg and the Internet Archive have mirrors, and larger book sites sell CD/DVDs of their libraries.

Conversely, modern paper simply does not last as well as the paper made in earlier centuries.

[rmclachlan]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

It's called backing up, people (as AZ so sarcastically points out). I have readable data from a decade ago on my PC, because I back up and archive. It ain't hard. And plenty of information committed to paper has been lost to the ages. It's a poor reason to criticize the e-book.

wrong - it is exactly the reason to criticize the e-book as a single format in the absence of all others. You may back up and archive religiously, but most people do not. Your argument regarding paper is having been lost to the ages is weak. I can pretty well guarantee that I can put a book in a sealed container and when dug up in a hundred or a thousand years it will still be readable, you could not say that about an ebook on a reader. Paper has a marvellous utility (light, durable, requires no technology to use), ebooks just have a different utility.

I think my point is there is a certain rabid thread of anti paper books in this forum. A more measured approach is to treat these formats as being useful in their correct context.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by rmclachlan

I think my point is there is a certain rabid thread of anti paper books in this forum. A more measured approach is to treat these formats as being useful in their correct context.

I'd be careful who you call "rabid." (Refraining from applying unthinking labels to people is sort of the point of this thread.)

Besides, there is a reason e-books are a developing format, whereas paper has run its course, and is now more of an environmental danger than a useful format. Sure, paper has uses... but for sheer use-flexibility, storability, ease of replication and archiving (and if people don't properly store their paper books, they can rot very quickly), smaller carbon footprint and less damage to the environment in its production, e-books are just plain better than paper for literature.

[HansTWN]

Horses have many advantages over cars, too. Still cars have replaced them, but horses remain in small numbers because people love them. Ages ago people will have complained that books have replaced verbal story telling and that a great art was lost. Printed books have replaced the much more beautiful handwritten books. A new technology replaces an old one and nobody can stop it. The author has taken his rant to ridiculous heights, though. He is a real book Nazi who defames anyone who dares to disagree (and isn't even educated enough to realize that for book you should use "das", not "der").