Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Note that the stuff about being able to scan and OCR a book is, I think, I bit of a furphy (or at least misleading). The ability to do this has existed for a long time, since well before ebooks became commonplace. (And, even before that, there were plenty of fast typists that could quickly reproduce the content of a book.) Indeed Project Gutenberg has operated on essentially this basis since 1971. It may be getting easier and easier, but there still remains considerable work involved in getting a good end-result, enough that most people are not going to do this just so they can pass a copy on to their friends and neighbours (professional pirates are a separate issue). For this reason I earlier suggested that print-only publication was still one of the more effective (and acceptable) forms of DRM.
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The difference between OCRing a printed book and an ebook is that with an ebook the page image capture can be done automatically on computer, and the letter shapes are perfect. OCR from such images is very nearly perfect, IMO one in 10,000 error at worst, while OCR from scanned images is going to be 1 in 1,000 error at best.