Tamper-proof ePub Ebooks?!

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by clarknova

How? By hijacking the distribution site of the eBook? A counterfeited book can be spread to people who are infringing on copyrights. I don't see why an author or publisher should really care whether or not people who didn't buy the book get the real one or not?

Even if the ebook is freely redistributable, why would someone bother downloading it from anywhere besides the original source?

You're inventing problems that don't exist.

These too are perfectly valid points.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by fargo

ePub has made it very easy for end users to reach ebooks' source code and change as they like. Contents and copyright information are wide open for anyone to change!

So, the question is: how can I ensure end users would not tamper with ebooks published in DRM-free ePub format?

Don't write the books! Don't *think* about writing the books! Don't even *FANTASIZE* about writing the books!

In fact, take any book ideas you have by the neck, strangle them until they're dead, stuff them, along with a couple of bricks, into a burlap sack, tie it shut and toss the sack into the nearest ocean, preferrably a few miles from shore.

Other than that, you have to do what anyone else would do. Copyright the book, and keep an eye out for anyone who's taken it and tried to pass it off as their own work and sue the hell out of them.

Of course, this presumes that someone actually wants to steal your work and pass it off as their own. Most people won't do that. Pirate copies for their own reading pleasure, sure. But as it's so easy to spot a plagarized work, there's just not that much reward for the risk involved.

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by rhadin

If I was an author, I would want to prevent tampering because it is the only way I can assure consumers that they are getting the authentic product.

On another forum there was a discussion about ebooks vs. pbooks, and I was one of the few, if perhaps the only one, who believed that ebooks will come to dominate fiction but not scholarly work, at least for the foreseeable future, precisely because of the problems of vetting of authors and authenticity/accuracy of the text. Although I don't rely on fiction for anything more than entertainment, I do rely on scholarly works to expand my knowledge. It is in this ara that there is a need for the vetting process that scholarly publishers provide and for the pbook's (at least in today's world) assurance that I am getting what the author wrote and not what some unknown file manipulator wrote.

I suspect that fiction authors also take pride in their authorship and would be distressed to learn that their labor has been thwarted by some viral reader who manipulated their text and changed the story.

But I don't understand why anyone would feel the need to protect an entire story, or even non-fiction work, from being ripped off. There are too many tools out there now that can spot plagarism in the text files to make it worthwhile to do so.

Okay, I just thought of one way to do so. Run the original work through a language translator and then back through to the target language. Chances are that the dual translation would make sufficient changes to fool a plagarism detector. But it would also probably destroy any informational or (for fiction) plot/storyline value.

IOW, why bother?

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by fargo

Nothing would stop someone to do that to a pbook. I'm sure, though, that the tamperer would not find a publisher to publish 'hiz' new book. He and his grandson may be the only ones reading the counterfeit book

It is totally different with ebooks. A counterfeited book can spread as the authentic one, if not even wider.

You're not aware that there are several fine tools for detecting plagarism?

And further, unless the publisher is a very small company, chances are that no publisher is going to take on the risk of publishing a work that is so similar to one already out there. After all, you're talking about an essentially *exact* word-for-word copy. That's already protected by copyright laws and any publisher who knowingly goes along with such an attempt is going to find itself in deep cow-dung, legally. And even if the publisher doesn't notice the plagarism, it will certainly act on it as soon as the original author detects it and brings suit.

Ebooks are covered the same way as pbooks.

Further, if you have an idea that a particular person is going to attempt to do this, I must ask, why are you associating with that person. And if you don't have current contact with such a person, why worry about it?

Stories follow certain general plot groups. It is not unlikely that a fiction work you create will have similarities to other works. But consumers are usually smart enough to tell when a given work is simply another work with the names changed to protect the guilty.

Derek