Digital Vs. Physical Goods

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

The solution is to increase security to ensure availability of the products you want. It's not a "personal freedom" issue... stop overreacting.

Pfft. Canadians.

No, it wouldn't need to be that unnecessarily complicated. We're talking about document security for books, not plutonium pellets. Scan more than 1 finger, and chill.

Forget about it. NO WAY would I jump through extra hoops to read a book. I'd go right back to paper.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Forget about it. NO WAY would I jump through extra hoops to read a book. I'd go right back to paper.

A single swipe of a finger is too much?

Maybe you're better off with paper. And for God's sake, stay away from new cellphones.

[KevinH]

Hi,

Even if you can get enough people to agree to your new security device, exactly what is it buying for you? People jailbreak their mobile devices (and even locked down ones like iPads) quite easily. So unless you encrypt it somehow I can simply jailbreak it to get the file if I want to move it to another reader or archive it to prevent its loss. There simply really is no such thing as a perfectly locked down device.

To prevent me from copying it, you would have to encrypt the book data in some way and the software to do that will require a key to decrypt it so that I could read it. You can simply reverse engineer the encryption algorithm (and you can do that even with obfuscated code on a locked down machine - after jailbreaking by doing a memory dump to see the decrypted code, and then reverse the encryption algorithm since the key has to exist in some form on the reading machine.

This is being done currently, so I don't know how your additional security (proving who the reader is) can help unless you plan to never allow the reader to have the book on their system and just view pages remotely through some sort of website or service (but again, once jailbroken you have access to whatever is on the service and could simply capture the pages).

So you invent the perfect security and employ it. People who dislike it and value their privacy will simply stop buying those ebooks, and others will simply defeat whatever system that exists and we are back to square one.

And yes virtually any way to prevent anonymous transactions that records biometric or other data is an invasion of privacy and a security concern.
Luckily most of Europe has much stronger privacy laws, and hopefully Canada will follow that model and not that of the US.

Perhaps it is time to go play with your full body scanner some more! ;-)

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Anyone who writes specifically to make money will a: confine their writing to topics that they *think* will be popular and therefore make the most profit; and b: will almost certainly end up disappointed when they find out that even fairly well known established writers are barely above minimum wage level anyway.

There are lots of reasons for wanting to write, financial gain will be very low for most people. Just as it is for musicians, artists, etc.

It's certainly not something you should expect to become wealthy doing, but by the same token, if you actually get to the point where your book or books are being marketed, you should be able to expect your work isn't being stolen. Especially if you have to invest in the book (hiring your own editor, spending time doing your own marketing, etc). The whole "be your own publisher" thing means you've got to do a lot of that work yourself, doesn't it?

And I do think there's something to be said for the fame and fortune myth. The more writers you have, the more good writers you'll end up with, and one way to get more of anything is to dangle the idea of some kind of gain in front of people. Even if hardly anyone makes it to Stephen King heights, doesn't the idea that you can make a living doing writing encourage more people to produce work?

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

A single swipe of a finger is too much?

Maybe you're better off with paper. And for God's sake, stay away from new cellphones.

Yes, when I want to access something that belongs to me, it is too much. It's a restriction on my ability to use what I own.

You want a finger swipe for security reasons before letting me on a plane, I might reluctantly accept it. But to read a book? No.

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

A single swipe of a finger is too much?

I don't think the single swipe is the issue. In my experience, it's almost never taken just a single swipe to get in. That's a problem.

[elcreative]

Very good points... ah, I'm actually agreeing with you on something...

Originally Posted by bhartman36

It's certainly not something you should expect to become wealthy doing, but by the same token, if you actually get to the point where your book or books are being marketed, you should be able to expect your work isn't being stolen. Especially if you have to invest in the book (hiring your own editor, spending time doing your own marketing, etc). The whole "be your own publisher" thing means you've got to do a lot of that work yourself, doesn't it?

And I do think there's something to be said for the fame and fortune myth. The more writers you have, the more good writers you'll end up with, and one way to get more of anything is to dangle the idea of some kind of gain in front of people. Even if hardly anyone makes it to Stephen King heights, doesn't the idea that you can make a living doing writing encourage more people to produce work?

[bhartman36]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Very good points... ah, I'm actually agreeing with you on something...

It was bound to happen eventually.

[Anke Wehner]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

... if you actually get to the point where your book or books are being marketed, you should be able to expect your work isn't being stolen.

In this blog entry on book piracy, an author points out that booksellers expect about 5% of the print books in their shop to be stolen.
Theft of physical objects and illegal downloads are obviously (well, to me obviously) not really comparable, but I thought it was funny.

That blog entry is pretty interesting and pragmatic, and the writer concludes that piracy has probably a neutral effect.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

In this blog entry on book piracy, an author points out that booksellers expect about 5% of the print books in their shop to be stolen.
Theft of physical objects and illegal downloads are obviously (well, to me obviously) not really comparable, but I thought it was funny.

That blog entry is pretty interesting and pragmatic, and the writer concludes that piracy has probably a neutral effect.

Or a slighty positive one. That's actually pretty close to my thoughts on piracy. The file collectors were never going to buy it anyway so there's no point fretting over them. If they don't download your book they will download someone else's instead. Most of them will never read the books they download either.

But even if you want to cut their supply off out of spite you can't do that without also affecting the samplers, who will almost certainly read your book and might even go on to turn into fans directly responsible for extra income.

The best way to think of it is like all those books people are "stealing" from you by buying them second hand on Ebay. You don't get any money from them for that book, but you might for your next, or they might benefit you in other ways. Or they might not. The only certainty is that if they didn't "steal" it none of that could happen because they "stole" someone else's book instead and they are getting the benefits of that "theft" instead of you.

I know which I would rather have.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by bhartman36

I don't think the single swipe is the issue. In my experience, it's almost never taken just a single swipe to get in. That's a problem.

Are you speaking literally, regrading the swipe itself? Some scan systems are better than others, hardware and software alike. I'm sure either can stand some improvement. Even so, swiping my finger more than once isn't something I'd consider any more an issue than a tight key in a lock.

Or are you speaking of the process of setting up the system before you get to the swipe? That would also be a system that can probably be improved.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Mr Ploppy, my fingerprint reader already 'registers' all ten fingers. It is common to have a particular finger, say, in a bandaid for a minor injury. Now if I lose all ten fingertips I have bigger problems than accessing my biometric-locked stuff...

A fingerprint-scanner is a limited-accessibility filter. Even if it works for all 10 fingers (which means a creative person could have a group of friends all have access to the same ebooks), it's got problems.

It doesn't work if your hands are bandaged to recover from an injury. It doesn't work if your hands can't stop shaking long enough to slide over the scanner at the right speed. It doesn't work for people who don't have fingertips because their hands are misshapen or permanently damaged, which are indeed a tiny fraction of the population, but one that might be eager to read ebooks because paper might be a great frustration to them. Depending on the quality of the scanner, it may not work when your hands are swollen from exercise or illness. Might not work if you've spilled ink on your hands, or they're temporarily damaged by harsh chemicals. (I'm thinking scrub-the-sink chemicals, not dipped-in-acid-by-accident.)

And it hasn't been established how these fingerprints are tied to the purchase: does the seller keep a database of fingerprints? Can the government demand them? How will people be convinced to pay extra for ebook readers that only work with fingerprinted ebooks, and how will publishers deal with those who crack those ebooks to release a version that works on older computers & reading devices?

The answer to the piracy and payment problems isn't going to be "more expensive hardware, which everyone will be required to use to get access to content."

[AndrewH]

People are paranoid about using Google, there's no way fingerprint purchasing would ever become accepted.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by AndrewH

People are paranoid about using Google, there's no way fingerprint purchasing would ever become accepted.

With all due respect; History disagrees with you.

People may be paranoid about using Google... but they still use it.

People are paranoid about using credit cards over the web... but they still use 'em.

People are paranoid about stores collecting their data... yet they still sign up for store cards that guarantee discounted prices for daily use.

People are funny that way... they say one thing, then do another.

People may be paranoid about fingerprint scanners. But give 'em a good enough reason to use one (savings at the cash register, faster checkouts, discounts on other items, a free cup of coffee, etc), and they will without hesitation.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

A fingerprint-scanner is a limited-accessibility filter. Even if it works for all 10 fingers (which means a creative person could have a group of friends all have access to the same ebooks), it's got problems...

For everything you list, they are probably much less common than people who just plain can't remember passwords. At any rate, a single backup method could solve the physical problems you mention, like a code stored on a card or other device that can be input if physical fingers can't be used. Point is, it doesn't negate the usefulness and higher security of fingerprint scanners.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

And it hasn't been established how these fingerprints are tied to the purchase: does the seller keep a database of fingerprints?

No. The fingerprint data is combined with the file to create on-the-spot a hybrid data/encryption file that is sent directly to your device. The seller does not need to have a copy, nor would they be required to keep one... in fact, most likely they'd be forbidden by law to keep it. And why bother? It would mean storing an individual copy of every transacted product, instead of just the one original. Tons of extra storage... no business needs that. They already have your transaction data, they don't need to store more than that.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

The answer to the piracy and payment problems isn't going to be "more expensive hardware, which everyone will be required to use to get access to content."

So what is the answer?