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Originally Posted by bmfrosty
Had a reading assignment in middle school where the book was either too expensive or out of print, so the teacher photocopied off 29 copies. This was in a rather affluent community too.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
Students did it all the time at least at University level. Now I think they just scan the book (if it is very expensive) and distribute the pdf.
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It's a time, cost and benefit trade-off. For an item that costs, say $5 to $10, but physically copying will take maybe a hour of your time (and the time increases with the number of copies), and printing costs of a couple of dollars, the benefits are not really worth it. However, as a student people (or at least I) was time (relatively) rich and cash poor (books costing the same as a couple of weeks rent are tricky to fund), the trade-off is different. That doesn't make it right, but might mean that if it is very limited a blind-eye may be turned.
Electronically, it takes maybe a few seconds and costs nothing to make it available to others. So I think there is a difference, and the photocopying analogy is fair. But that is just my opinion.
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Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel
this guy makes some interesting points, but at heart he seems still to be clinging to the same old flawed premise, that drm is the only way to prevent people copying massively. arg !! drm-free != automatic copyright infringement. and moreover, drm != protection from copying ! on the contrary ! sheesh !
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For the technically literate, most drm schemes can probably be circumvented. Often the point is not whether or not you *can* circumvent them, but that you *have* to do something to circumvent them. I've had discussions with some people that go something along the lines of "well, I could do it so it must be legal." For many people, if the device says, no, you can't create an instant, zero-cost, globally usable copy of the book, that is fine.
However, as mentioned, the issue with DRM is that the "honest" use should be no problem. Unfortunately, many of today's DRM-schemes are, shall we say, draconian? And I take that as one of the points of the article. A wish that the world would sort out a more reasonable DRM scheme.
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Originally Posted by Jaime_Astorga
I know in Peru buying cheaply bound photocopies of books was the cheaper way to get school textbooks, and I hear making your own copies is a widespread practice in South American colleges. Also, don't people who ORC books so that they may be digitally distributed perform a similar physical labor? Or people who sold pirated editions of books before the internet; did they not also photocopy the entire book?
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I agree that people who ORC books are engage in effort, and have a right to be paid for their effort (if they so desire), or to give freely to the world of their effort. However, I don't believe that one person has the right to use their labour as a means to remove the rights of another to remuneration (or conversely, for that matter -- e.g. I don't think I should be able to print out Doctrow's books and make money from them without allowing him the chance for a say). As an example, a person who chooses to harvest a field of corn to give away free, can only give away freely the added value of the time they have invested in harvesting, and not that of the farmer who grew the crop.