Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I think it can be done digitally a lot more easily than it could be done with physical copies. Amazon can tell you that the publisher is fixing formatting errors, for example, and maybe that new copy you happily download has revised text as well. What's in the cloud can be altered. Do you really think every reader religiously makes myriad backup copies of every book?
If even one physical copy of a book survives with the original text, it's pretty much absolute proof of what the original text was. If I claim to have a digital copy with the original text, and the publisher or the government tells me no, that's not the real text, our version is the real text, how can I really prove it, when I myself could have changed the file, or someone I got it from could have changed it?
Unlikely? Maybe. But unlikely things sometimes do happen.
Again, this is why you need a physical copy to check against, because it is a tangible, actual thing. It's far too risky to rely on digital files. Alterations can be innocent errors, attempts at "improvement," or the result of malicious intent. Regardless, they corrupt the original work.
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Agreed. But if you went against a powerful entity intent on their version of the book being the real one with the only physical copy of the real original clutched in your hot little hands, what chance do you realistically think it has of surviving the encounter? Or yourself for that matter. 50,000 people with a copy of an original ebook, and various internet archives to back it up, would not be any more or less correct, but possibly more of them would survive.
Helen