How to Destroy The Book - Cory Doctorow

[Barcey]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Re-read my posts. DRM issues != losing access to content due to system obsolescence.

The core of the protest was that EA only allowed them to install the game three times so as they upgrade machines they would no longer be able to play the game.

So now EA has a consumer backlash on its hands, and not because consumers don't like the game, but because they don't like EA telling them what they can do with the game after they've paid for it.

protest != acceptance

[dadioflex]

Edit.

[Greg Anos]

Before you talk about obsolescence, look at the world of emulators. You can get an Apple II, Atari 400/800, Atari St, and Amiga emulators. Not to mention C/PM emulators and there was the old Virtual PC 2004 emulator (y'all may remember my problems getting it to work on my new machine.) that will let you run any non-DRM'ed Microsoft OS based software that dates back all the way to DOS 1.0... Oops, and I forgot MAME, which emulates arcade games, and Atari 2600 emulators...

With A full set of emulators, you can run just about anything that wasn't DRM'ed. (Leaving the modern Mac world out of it, of course...)

And fully backed up...of course!

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Marcy

The answer to this is simple. Those other formats always had the obsolescence factor built in, being relatively new technologies, especially video games. People know when they buy these things that they might not work 3 or 5 years down the line.

I guess, but wouldn't the precedent for video games be non-video games, e.g. Monopoly, decks of cards etc., which one could play for a lifetime or two?

Or: Any content that you access using an intermediary device (game console, turntable, VCR) runs the risk of becoming inaccessible due to obsolescence of that device. So which paradigm should we apply: "books are forever" or "we need a device to access ebooks" ?

Plus, lots of money is getting poured into games with a limited shelf life. In 2008, Americans spent about $23 billion on console games (just the games, not the hardware), and iirc around $32 billion on books. Normally I'd assume that if you're spending that much money on a product, you'd expect it to be useable more than a few years. (Then again, that presumes that humans act in a rational fashion... )

Originally Posted by Marcy

Once I own a pbook I can do anything I want with it. I can read it a bazillion times or just once. I can even *gasp* lend it to a friend who then gets to read it for free. If the author changes publishers or the book goes out of print, my copy is still mine. Forever. In a non-DRM'ed and non-proprietary format. That's what I want and expect from my ebooks.

Sure, but another way to think of it is that books, as a physical medium, have a sort of "rights management" by virtue of the nature of the object itself.

When I purchase a book, I get one copy and that's it. I can't make an unlimited number of duplicates at no cost; in fact, if I want to duplicate a book, its "analog" nature means I'm going expend a lot of resources (time, effort, money) for what is likely an inferior copy (photocopy, OCR'd copy). I can loan the book out indefinitely, but the physical nature of the book ensures I can't read it when I do so, nor can I share it instantaneously and at no cost to millions of my best new Internet pals. I can sell the book, but selling that physical object guarantees I can't access it after it's sold (assuming I haven't made a low-fi or exceptionally arduous digital copy first). And while paper book piracy is possible, it's more difficult and less common than the digital varieties (both with and without profit motives), as a pirated paper book is going to take resources to make, and will be hard to distribute (whereas digital is cheap and easy).

In other words, the physical book has plenty of restrictions. The sets of "physical restrictions" and "digital restrictions" are not identical, so we are profoundly jarred by what we lose, and in typical human fashion notice the losses far more than (even with DRM) the gains. And we are just so used to a paper book's restrictions that we don't even think of the situation that way.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Before you talk about obsolescence, look at the world of emulators....

OK, but I still have yet to see a "turntable emulator" or a "vcr emulator."

Plus a lot of content was provided via mediums that are no longer available. E.g. you can get an Atari 2600 software emulator, but good luck getting your 2600 cartridges connected to your computer. Technically you could use MAME and pirate a ROM (or, if truly desperate and/or skilled, make your own ROM), and maybe you can justify your actions, but the ROM distributor is still engaged in piracy.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Billjr13

Are you forgetting about the protests from parents and politicians over Doom and Grand Theft Auto? Games like these were blamed for all of societies ills, from the Columbine High School murders to gang violence.

Yes, they were blamed and they were protested -- but they were not banned nor were they gathered into large piles and burned. I wouldn't suggest that games can't be revolutionary but books seem to be held and viewed differently than most anything else. (Although I do remember several antiwar songs being banned in Boston in the 1960s .)

Books are different because they stimulate thought (and I'll grant that there are many mind-numbing books written as well as many books that stimulate no thought whatsoever), which sometimes leads to action and change. Reading requires pausing to parse meaning, video games do not. No video game yet, as far as I know, has had the same effect on society as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It was Patrick Moynihan's writings on poverty that brought about the War on Poverty (and I'm not interested in arguing whether this was good or bad, successful or unsuccessful), and Stephen Covey's management books that brought about a revolution in corporate management styles (whether for good or bad).

As for being blamed for all of societies ills, video games are in good company -- television has been accused of that as well.

[kennyc]

And there was the Beatle record burning after John said The Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

OK, but I still have yet to see a "turntable emulator" or a "vcr emulator."

Those are analog devices, not digital. you have gen loss with trying to backup analog items.... (And check out some of those digital DJ software programs...)

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Plus a lot of content was provided via mediums that are no longer available. E.g. you can get an Atari 2600 software emulator, but good luck getting your 2600 cartridges connected to your computer. Technically you could use MAME and pirate a ROM (or, if truly desperate and/or skilled, make your own ROM), and maybe you can justify your actions, but the ROM distributor is still engaged in piracy.

Kali, everything is piracy to you. First, I said non-DRMed. I can legally make back-ups of non-DRM'ed programs. If I'm running them on only one machine, does it matter which machine it is? If it is commercial software that I bought, and I still have the original copy of the software, is upgrading and installing on my new machine really evil? Example, I have a legal copy of Word 97 I install every time I get new machine. Since I scrap the old one, I'm only keeping one functioning copy. Or a PD shoot 'em for the Atari ST. Or a copy of Castle Wolfenstein, from the Win 3.1 days. Or...

Now, all of those emulators can use pirated material, and I daresay some of them can only use pirated material (MAME, for example. I don't keep MAME on any of my machines, nor the 2600 emulator), but most of those machines had both PD and unDRMed programs. (I still have a mousepad from START, the Atari ST magazine, which came with a PD disk every issue. So did several Atari 800 magazines. I never use the Apple II, so I don't know much about its PD world, but I know it had one. (By the by, Activision released a bunch of 2600 ports for Win 95. Is that piracy?)

One final thing. The US copyright office has said that software from bankrupt companies for hardware platforms that are no longer being manufactured fall in the "fair use" terms, even under DCMA. Of course, that's still subject to litigation. But remember all of those "retro" Atari 2600 all-in-one game players? If you look closely, you may find they were using that "fair use" loophole for the software.

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Kali, everything is piracy to you.

Incorrect.

There are plenty of legitimate actions, including making a digital version of analog content for your own private use, or distributing freeware, shareware, or open source software. That's why I said that if you have the means, you can make your own ROM.

In that post, I am first and foremost pointing out that emulators are purely software, and do not provide you with the capability to access data on an outdated media such as a game cartridge -- i.e. focusing on the format obsolescence. I am absolutely NOT saying that using an emulator stops you from using software that you purchased on another platform. But if that software is on a 5 1/4" floppy and you don't have a floppy drive around, you may be SOL.

As to the "you can pirate a ROM," if you download a copyrighted ROM from the Internets, then yes that's piracy. Making your own ROM using your own hardware is afaik legit, just as is using a USB turntable. But the situation is no different than saying that "I bought the vinyl album, therefore I can go onto Bittorent and download the MP3's." Even if you have a legal and ethical right to convert your analog recording into a digital format, the person who is sharing out that MP3 does not have the right to do so. Thus it is still piracy.

Abandonware or orphaned works are NOT yet in the public domain, even if no one is bothering to enforce the rights -- whether by accident (rights-holder is out of business) or by oversight (someone has the rights but doesn't know about ROMs) or by design (rights-holder knows and allows the otherwise infringing behavior). So let's say I make a Flash version of Super Bomberman; Hudson Soft initially ignores it, but does not explicitly change the licensing or declare it in public domain; then they get bought out. The new owner has the ability to enforce the copyright and demand that I take my Flash version offline, even though previously the company tacitly allowed it.

In fact, as recently as 2007, Atari got into a legal scuffle with RIM over Brick Breaker. Atari holds copyrights on certain games, including one that is arguably similar and gets shipped with the Blackberry handhelds. RIM's response was not that Atari's copyrights were invalid, but rather that the game on the Blackberry handhelds is not a derivative of the Atari game. Ownership of Atari has changed hands many times, by the way, but they never declared bankruptcy, and are still in business and making new games today, including a Star Trek MMORPG and the NeverWinter Nights series. (And those "12 Atari Games in One Controller" things - those games are licensed.) Nor does bankruptcy automatically invalidate copyright; rather, copyrights are an asset that can be sold, and the funds distributed to the creditors, or held by the company in anticipation of the company ending bankruptcy and resuming normal business.

AFAIK the US Copyright office has never officially recognized abandonware; nor is your suggestion consistent with copyright law. It's no different than "orphaned" books in the Google Settlement. In both cases, no matter what the works do not officially go into public domain until their copyright terms end. I.e. if the rights-holder was doing research in the Amazon for 20 years, and returns to the US, there is no doubt they can assert their copyright and demand payment from any publisher than happened to infringe that copyright.

[calvin-c]

Originally Posted by desertgrandma

With all due respect........if my house burns down, my paper books are gone forever.

IMO the issue isn't 'losing my books' but having someone 'take them away from me'. (And I consider denying me access to them the same as taking them away.)

Closest analogy I can think of is buying a swimming pool or something-once you buy it, it becomes part of your house & if you move then you've got to buy another one. Somehow it just doesn't work for me to equate a book with a swimming pool...

Actually, more in line with someone 'taking them away' would be a renter being evicted because his landlord failed to make his mortgage payments. Like I said, it's difficult to analogize-I can't think of anything, in the 'real' world, that's treated this way.

[Marcy]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

When I purchase a book, I get one copy and that's it. I can't make an unlimited number of duplicates at no cost; in fact, if I want to duplicate a book, its "analog" nature means I'm going expend a lot of resources (time, effort, money) for what is likely an inferior copy (photocopy, OCR'd copy). I can loan the book out indefinitely, but the physical nature of the book ensures I can't read it when I do so, nor can I share it instantaneously and at no cost to millions of my best new Internet pals. I can sell the book, but selling that physical object guarantees I can't access it after it's sold (assuming I haven't made a low-fi or exceptionally arduous digital copy first). And while paper book piracy is possible, it's more difficult and less common than the digital varieties (both with and without profit motives), as a pirated paper book is going to take resources to make, and will be hard to distribute (whereas digital is cheap and easy).

In other words, the physical book has plenty of restrictions. The sets of "physical restrictions" and "digital restrictions" are not identical, so we are profoundly jarred by what we lose, and in typical human fashion notice the losses far more than (even with DRM) the gains. And we are just so used to a paper book's restrictions that we don't even think of the situation that way.

I would fine with restrictions that would let me read it on even any one device of my choosing, assuming I could change the device as long as I only had one copy of the ebook. The problem is the restrictions also restrict my choice of devices and could in future keep me from accessing my book. I feel a book is a book -- once I buy a pbook it's mine forever, so once I buy an ebook it should be mine forever too.

This is why I only ever bought 4 kindle books from amazon.com. Once I figured out they couldn't be read on any other reader and if amazon ever went belly-up I would be SOL with them, I stopped buying. Now that I've learned to de-DRM I've bought a couple more books from amazon to read on my Sony reader, but I try to avoid them unless they are the only choice.

If Baen can make money simultaneously releasing drm-free ebooks at more than cheap prices concomitantly with the pbook releases, other publishers should be able to do it too.

Granted I won't ever post my de-drm'ed ebooks on Pirate Bay or any other site and only download books from such places if they aren't offered for sale as ebooks, while others seem to have no problems with it. However I don't think most pirated books take away from sales. The people who pirate things often weren't going to buy them anyway. And if you make your product available at a reasonable price in a reasonable format most people will happily pay for it. Just look at Baen -- Eric Flint wrote a series of interesting essays about DRM and how his stuff is never pirated.

-Marcy

[Greg Anos]

Originally Posted by Marcy

I would fine with restrictions that would let me read it on even any one device of my choosing, assuming I could change the device as long as I only had one copy of the ebook. The problem is the restrictions also restrict my choice of devices and could in future keep me from accessing my book. I feel a book is a book -- once I buy a pbook it's mine forever, so once I buy an ebook it should be mine forever too.

This is why I only ever bought 4 kindle books from amazon.com. Once I figured out they couldn't be read on any other reader and if amazon ever went belly-up I would be SOL with them, I stopped buying. Now that I've learned to de-DRM I've bought a couple more books from amazon to read on my Sony reader, but I try to avoid them unless they are the only choice.

If Baen can make money simultaneously releasing drm-free ebooks at more than cheap prices concomitantly with the pbook releases, other publishers should be able to do it too.

Granted I won't ever post my de-drm'ed ebooks on Pirate Bay or any other site and only download books from such places if they aren't offered for sale as ebooks, while others seem to have no problems with it. However I don't think most pirated books take away from sales. The people who pirate things often weren't going to buy them anyway. And if you make your product available at a reasonable price in a reasonable format most people will happily pay for it. Just look at Baen -- Eric Flint wrote a series of interesting essays about DRM and how his stuff is never pirated.

-Marcy

Not quite true. Eric Flint is not pirated because he makes all his books available for free as e-books over time. He found that that led to more P-book sales over time, than not releasing his e-books for free. He tried that with one book as an experiment for Jim Baen back in the '90s. Economically, that model works. (at least currently). Some people (like me) still pitch in the 4 bucks anyway.... NYT's David Pouge is just figuring this out 10 years later. (Of course, he wouldn't be caught dead reading popular trash....)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Not quite true. Eric Flint is not pirated because he makes all his books available for free as e-books over time. He found that that led to more P-book sales over time, than not releasing his e-books for free. He tried that with one book as an experiment for Jim Baen back in the '90s. Economically, that model works. (at least currently). Some people (like me) still pitch in the 4 bucks anyway.... NYT's David Pouge is just figuring this out 10 years later. (Of course, he wouldn't be caught dead reading popular trash....)

Yeah, but wth is Eric Flint? Certainly no John Irving or Dan Brown?

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yeah, but wth is Eric Flint? Certainly no John Irving or Dan Brown?

That's right, he's not. He's the next tier down, in terms of sales -- reliably hits the NYT best-sellers list, over and over, but hasn't ever (to my knowledge) had a #1 best-seller. So he's in the top 1/10 of 1% of published authors by sales, but not in the category of the authors you mention. He's a "star," but not a "super-star" or "super-duper-hyper-star" (can you say "Stephen King"?).

Xenophon

[jaxx6166]

The price point of books and other physical media always goes back to the collection aspect.

There was a time when physical media was a treasure. Your friends would come over and browse your library. They'd borrow a CD, a book,a game. You'd borrow one of theirs.

I have more DVDs and books than I know what to do with. Sometimes when I'm bored or home alone with nothing to do I'll open a drawer or browse a shelf. I'll discover things I'd long forgotten I had.

And then I'll spend a rainy afternoon catching up with my old friends. And when I'm done, put it back on the shelf and smile.

I'm one of those weird people that will have a library and a digital library. Unfortunately, I ran out of storage and had to digitalize the CD collection.

But now with the new generation of iPods, I can still retain some of that old treasured collection. I can browse coverflow and do the same thing I would do on my shelf.

There are mainstays in everyone's collection. I'm sure if we were to poll the peanut gallery everyone on MR would have an item, a book, movie, dvd - whatever...that they would never part with. Something they'd treasure and pass down to friends and family for years to come.

Actually - that's a fun idea. I'm heading over to the lounge.