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Old 12-26-2009, 02:49 PM   #85
rhadin
Literacy = Understanding
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Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: The World of Books
Device: Nook, Nook Tablet
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward View Post
May I respectfully disagree, Rhadin?
Of course, Ralph, you can disagree . I think where we are parting ways is the form when the original, initial work was/is created. Video games were not originally created in a form readily capable of copying to another form; that is, a game was, for example, originally coded to be played on the Atari and then perhaps on the TI64, etc. They were never originally created as nonDRMed open source. Consequently, when the hardware disappeared the games became unusable without cracking and perhaps recoding.

Books, however, for the most part start life differently -- at least so far in the ebook evolution. Books begin life in a form that is not DRMed, usually print or nonDRM e. So they exist "free" and available for use on any device without "cracking" and thus archivable. It is only when the book is converted from its original "free" form to some other form that it becomes tied to a specific piece of hardware.

For example, Stephen King's newest novel Under the Dome exists first as a pbook and an efile. The efile is then converted to another format, Topaz, which is locked and tied to the Kindle. Should the Kindle disappear tomorrow, the Topaz form will be unusable without cracking, but the p form and the Nook and Sony versions will still be usable and archivable. Should the Nook and Sony hardware disappear, there will still be the underlying ebook layer available without cracking as well as the p version.

And just as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ultimately fell out of copyright and was digitized, so the same will happen to Under the Dome. Consequently, I do not see the same problem with books as exists with computer games.

Also think of it this way: A computer game relies on the fact that there is already hardware available on which it can run, no computer game is created in the hopes that in 2 years hardware will come into existence that will be capable of running it. In contrast, a book comes into existence without regard to whether or not in 2 years there will be a new hardware system on which it can be displayed because the life of the book isn't tied to hardware.
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