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Originally Posted by eschwartz
The app includes an integrated bookstore, thus lending a veneer of authority to the modifications.
Authors are pissed as hell.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Agreed. One problem, though ... we can talk semantics all we want but when it boils down to legalities, it's at least arguable that the users of Clean Reader didn't buy a book.
But as eschwartz mentioned: with the integrated, alterable ebook store gone... so go my complaints (the legal ones). The users of the Clean Reader app have my blessing to do whatever they want with their purchases (now that the onus to actually alter someone else's work has been properly shifted back to the end-user where it always belonged).
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Fair enough. I concede this point.
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Originally Posted by DiapDealer
That you believe literature and telling a story are the same thing tells me everything I need to know. Don't misunderstand; I'm not getting snooty about Litra-chur. I like getting told a story as much as the next person. I quite often read for story alone. But sometimes, I want a story told by someone whose word-choices and prose (and yes sometimes profanity) actually contributes something to the experience other than story comprehension alone.
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I'm not just talking about story. The same idea could be applied to literary themes, to beautiful writing and prose, characterization and anything else we enjoy about books.
Even literary meaning, communicated through prose, is not always something that can't be touched. The ways in which those themes can be communicated, the themes themselves, and where they're taken mentally - these are all things that can be changed, in ways that some people might gel to better and others may not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer
Never said (or thought) they were. I simply believe that their works are their works--including the words used.
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From a legal standpoint, sure, but past that? I don't agree. I think endless modification, remixing and interpretation of our culture is the only way we can truly connect to it. Can you take apart the prose of a classic work and reassemble it into something that speaks to you? The classic never left. It's not an act of destruction, it's an act of creation. There are infinite possibilities, and it's hubris to think that any single idea - no matter how complex - belongs to us in any sense.