DRM for Public Domain works at B&N

[djgreedo]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

1: From a legal standpoint B&N are not doing anything illegal.

Precisely

As has been pointed out(and mostly ignored for some reason) the PD work itself remains free to distribute and free to obtain elsewhere if one so chooses.

100% correct

3: As for the DRM itself, is a lock a lock if it does not lock?

No. The content is still available without DRM, therefore the DRM is not hindering anybody.

I think it also needs to be pointed out that this DRM is probably not the result of B&N deciding to lock public domain content. It is most likely just the way they do things with all their books and nobody there has the interest or the sense to make an exception to their processess for PD books.

Also, if the books do have additional content, such as notes or an introduction, then they are copyrightable additions and B&N has every right to use their DRM.

I think it's kind of stupid to use DRM on public domain works, but it's by no means infringing on the public's ability to access free versions.

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

there is such a huge anti DRM bias on this forum that there isn't even room for moderate viewpoints.

It's true, but it's because so far DRM has been implemented only as a restriction on the reader's rights instead of a protection of the author's rights.

As I wrote it before, it's not that DRM is such a bad idea: I see good reasons for it and it's perfectly legal and right. And by "right" I mean that it is right to do it!

But ever since DRM has been out, and it goes waaaay back to when DRM was first applied to digital music, people has only seen their rights hindered, not the authors' rights protected: you couldn't have your mp3 on more than one device, you couldn't make "safety copies" of your music (in case your hard disk failed), you couldn't listen them on a different device than your iPod (in case your iPod broke or you lost it)...
And note that all these things were possible when we listened to music on old cassettes and discs: suddenly, without an explanation, it became not only impossible (or better, hard to do if you weren't a little tech savvy) but also illegal.

After years of this, I can see why people grows angry against DRM, and does not differentiate between the good idea behind and good reasons for DRM and the bad implementations that we had so far.

It's sort of like monarchy: to have a king instead of a president and a parliament is not a bad thing per se; but it takes just a few bad kings, one after the other, to make people hate monarchy as a system and make a revolution, setting up a different government.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by djgreedo

I think it also needs to be pointed out that this DRM is probably not the result of B&N deciding to lock public domain content. It is most likely just the way they do things with all their books and nobody there has the interest or the sense to make an exception to their processess for PD books.

That was something else that occurred to me and I think you have probably hit the nail on the head.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

It's sort of like monarchy: to have a king instead of a president and a parliament is not a bad thing per se; but it takes just a few bad kings, one after the other, to make people hate monarchy as a system and make a revolution, setting up a different government.

Hmmm......giving one person total and abolute control over society, with the power to do whatever they please including enslaving and killing anyone they want for whatever reason they want, with no checks and balances, and vesting this power in this person based on nothing more than the fact they happen to be the child of the previous ruler is not a bad thing?

I'd have to disagree.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[doreenjoy]

Post deleted. I'm not comfortable giving identifying information on a public forum, and someone suggested in PM that I should provide enough info so that my comments could be verified.

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

Hmmm......giving one person total and abolute control over society, with the power to do whatever they please including enslaving and killing anyone they want for whatever reason they want, with no checks and balances, and vesting this power in this person based on nothing more than the fact they happen to be the child of the previous ruler is not a bad thing?

I'd have to disagree.

Cheers,
PKFFW

That's not monarchy: that's dictatorship :P
You've described "a governement where the ruler has absolute control over his people and is above and beyond the law"

A monarchy is a government where "the highest ruling body is a single person, whose right to govern is inherited by birth and not decided by election or other means of selection".
Europe is FULL of monarchies, and none of the kings or queens has the powers that you describe

Beside, speaking in PURE THEORY (mind you, it's PURE THEORY) you *could* have a dictatorship where people is happy and rich: all it takes is an enlightened dictator.
Obviously, it doesn't happen often (or rather, it doesn't happen AT ALL) because it's all too obvious that people change when they have power in their hand, and tend to abuse it. It's more frequent to have a BAD dictator than a GOOD dictator.
But any chosen system is not good or bad per se: for any system, you CAN have good rulers or BAD rulers, all you can say is that it is easier to have BAD rulers or that it is easier to have BAD rulers.
History tells us that even republics and democratic governments can turn bad. VERY bad. It just happens less often than with monarchies, and it takes less effort and less blood to turn down a president than a monarch or a dictator, so having to choose the least among the possible evils, one chooses democratic governments.

[rogue_ronin]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

there is such a huge anti DRM bias on this forum that there isn't even room for moderate viewpoints.

What, someone stopped you from posting your passive-aggressive whinge?

Plenty of room for that, don't see anyone stopping you. Maybe you don't like it when people address it, but you can keep doing it.

What you're really complaining about is that no one with any passion on the topic respects your moderation -- largely because moderates usually a) don't pay enough attention to have a valid insight, or b) constantly want to split the difference out of some misguided belief that we should all just get along. While one side uses force, lies and money to cheat the other. And so they keep splitting the difference, and splitting it again, moving closer and closer to the side that lies.

The fact that moderates don't recognize, or don't admit, that the play being made by DRM forces is one that is designed to vacuum up culture, in a political bid for dominance over the means of distribution of information and art makes their positions untenable in argument, and inadequate in discussion. They are "useful idiots".

There are very few people who argue against DRM, that argue for "stealing from artists." But that is what we hear over and over again -- straw man arguments that are put forward to instill fear and righteousness.

Really, it gets my knickers in a twist when artists (and you are one, I believe) don't recognize when they're being used as a figleaf. Few artists retain their copyrights, they are sold for access to distribution, usually, or sold by their inheritors, or sold in financial straits. You have companies that do nothing but buy rights to artists creations.

DRM is an attempt to control access to distribution, access to audience. It has nothing to do with protecting copyright. Copyright isn't lost when someone makes a copy, but control is.

When someone locks a PD text under DRM, we here might know that it is available for free somewhere else, but most people won't. Because of this, they will be limited to the licensing and permission of a large corporation for access to their culture. And "most people" is where the power and money is. If/when Amazon is the source for 90% of the books available, who is going to have to please who to get access? Poor ol' Amazon, bowing to the will of the peepul? Please. After the latest Orwellian disaster, Bezos didn't promise to remove their control over the content of anyone's Kindle, they just said that they handled it "stupidly." Next time they decide to remove something, they'll be "smarter" about it. Yay us?

This model of corporate control has worked so well for journalism in the US -- it's been awesome to watch. It's been great for the automobile industry, music, manufacturing, financial services, etc, etc. It'll be great for the book industry, too! Let's just keep trusting them to do the right thing.

We are the first generation of artists that do not have the right to access our predecessors work to create new work. And it is because of greed, arrogance, shortsightedness and ignorance.

So, keep being useful. It's a big help.

m a r

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

A monarchy is a government where "the highest ruling body is a single person, whose right to govern is inherited by birth and not decided by election or other means of selection".

If "the highest ruling body" is a single person, that single person has total authority do they not?

What is to stop them simply claiming the power that I describe? As many, if not all, Monarchs in the past have done. Whether they used the power or not isn't the issue.

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

Europe is FULL of monarchies, and none of the kings or queens has the powers that you describe

I may be incorrect but I think Europe is full of Constitutional Monarchies, which is a whole different kettle of fish to a straight "Monarchy".

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by PKFFW

If "the highest ruling body" is a single person, that single person has total authority do they not?

Not
The president of the USA is a single person and is the highest ruling body in his country, but he has not total authority. Has he?
What you call "monarchy" is actually absolute monarchy, which is hardly distinguishable from dictatorship (absolute power in both cases), but there are a whole bunch of different monarchies (constitutional, parliamentar, counseled, restricted, religious, feudal...).

"Monarchy" means just that there highest ruling body has inherited his/her right to govern by right of birth, what is under him and what other ruling bodies are there to limit his/her powers is not defined by that word. It's a broad definition, not limited to absolute monarchies.
As you said, you can have a Constitutional monarchy, and that is actually a monarchy. There's the Constitution (and a parliament, usually) there to limit the monarch's power. It's not the only way, of course, if I think of feudal monarchies the power of the monarch is limited by his/her feudal vassals (or rather, limited by the fear of how his feudal vassals could react and could do if they joined armies together and marched against him).

I'm getting waaaay out of topic now, though, so if you think it's worth continuing we're better switch to Private Messages.

[PKFFW]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

Not
The president of the USA is a single person and is the highest ruling body in his country, but he has not total authority. Has he?
What you call "monarchy" is actually absolute monarchy, which is hardly distinguishable from dictatorship (absolute power in both cases), but there are a whole bunch of different monarchies (constitutional, parliamentar, counseled, restricted, religious, feudal...).

"Monarchy" means just that there highest ruling body has inherited his/her right to govern by right of birth, what is under him and what other ruling bodies are there to limit his/her powers is not defined by that word. It's a broad definition, not limited to absolute monarchies.
As you said, you can have a Constitutional monarchy, and that is actually a monarchy. There's the Constitution (and a parliament, usually) there to limit the monarch's power. It's not the only way, of course, if I think of feudal monarchies the power of the monarch is limited by his/her feudal vassals (or rather, limited by the fear of how his feudal vassals could react and could do if they joined armies together and marched against him).

I'm getting waaaay out of topic now, though, so if you think it's worth continuing we're better switch to Private Messages.

My apologies then for jumping to the assumption you meant Absolute Monarchy, I see the distinction you are making now.

Cheers,
PKFFW

[Kali Yuga]

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

you couldn't have your mp3 on more than one device

MP3's don't have DRM. I'll assume you just mean "music file." And unless you're referring to a specific DRM that I'm not aware of, this is incorrect.

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

you couldn't make "safety copies" of your music (in case your hard disk failed)

Also incorrect

Originally Posted by Lo Zeno

And note that all these things were possible when we listened to music on old cassettes and discs: suddenly, without an explanation, it became not only impossible (or better, hard to do if you weren't a little tech savvy) but also illegal.

You also couldn't share a cassette tape with hundreds of millions of your closest buddies. Nor could you make a copy (backup or otherwise) that had 100% fidelity, or could be transmitted in a matter of seconds to any location in the world. The game completely changed; what more explanation is required?

Also, some analog formats did come with anti-copy protection, notably VCR tapes.

[Lo Zeno]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

MP3's don't have DRM. I'll assume you just mean "music file." And unless you're referring to a specific DRM that I'm not aware of, this is incorrect.

My bad. I have the bad habit of calling "mp3" any digital music format.
(I also call any ebok reading device "e-reader", but don't tell JSWolf!)

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Also incorrect

Speaking of mp3s, yes, it's incorrect; but the first times I bought music online from a website (ibazar), I could listen to that copy on my PC but could not copy it anywhere.

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

You also couldn't share a cassette tape with hundreds of millions of your closest buddies. Nor could you make a copy (backup or otherwise) that had 100% fidelity, or could be transmitted in a matter of seconds to any location in the world. The game completely changed; what more explanation is required?

A reason?

End users, any end users, didn't perceive the coming of DRM as protection for the author, but as a reductions of their rights (or what they thought of as their rights). As in "Yesterday I could lend my book to a friend, now I can't lend him the book I bought via my Kindle unless I lend him the whole Kindle, but then I can't read ANY of my books until he gives it back".

Rules changed? Sure. But nobody took the time to explain that to anyone, so people feel they are being abused since they do not have the same (perceived) rights as before.

Also, something worth considering: copyright laws do not work the same all around the world. Here in Italy we do not have the Kindle, and there is a very specific reason: there is no DMCA here.

Our courts, more than once, ruled that everyone here is allowed to strip his files (music, books, videogames) of DRM if the purpose is to enjoy its content in a device that he owns. What is not allowed, here, is only illegal distribution.
For example: let's say that I buy Spore (the videogame from EA). To install it, I need to be connected to internet to "activate my copy". Unfortunately, there are still places in Italy where internet is not available, so I use a "crack" to strip it of this protection: I am doing it legally, because Spore's End User License doesn't forbid it explicitly and because I am doing it with the sole purpose of enjoying what I paid for. Legal, in Italy. Not in the USA, according to what I read on ign.com forums.
Another example: I buy a book with a Kindle. My kindle breaks, but I was able to make a backup copy of its content. Let's say that I am a genius and I find a way to strip my books of their DRM and convert them to be readable with a Sony device. This is legal, in Italy. What would be not legal is if I were to share these books via emule or torrent or other way, since I do not have the rights to do it.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

there is such a huge anti DRM bias on this forum that there isn't even room for moderate viewpoints.

Anti-DRM is the moderate viewpoint. It is DRM which is extreme, just as anti-copyright would be extreme.

DRM gives rights to publishers and resellers that effectively eliminate the objectives of copyright law to balance the public good while encouraging and protecting private enterprise.

Copyright law is, when done right, a balancing act between the public good and private benefit. But DRM has thrown things out of balance. It is being used to prevent artistic creations from entering the public domain in whole or in part, now or ever.

And it is not a good objection to say that public domain works are otherwise available, because in the future, they won't be. The economics of the situation will prevent it - and so will DRM, because when copyright has expired, it will still be illegal for anyone to provide the tools to strip the DRM off of the now noncopyright book.

DRM is not a copyright protection scheme. It is a copyright law elimination device, because its effect, in the real world, is (1) to prevent material from ever going into the public domain in a practical, usable way and (2) to, in practice, prevent fair use of material during the copyright period.

Not to mention elimination of the right of first sale, or any sale at all.

[Requiem]

Just a point I want to make here, a large amount of PD books are translations of even older texts. (Think Beowulf) The translator gets his copyright on the work he did, when theoretically he didn't change a single word. (emphasis on theoretically) Is that not copyrighting of work done on a title without adding any new material?

I am really indifferent to most of this, 99 cents for a well formatted book is more than reasonable to me. I have a soy reader and am happy to swap between mine and my wife's readers. I don't have a large group of avid readers around me on a day to day basis to do that swapping. I would consider myself a typical run of the mill e-book consumer and as such the system works OK for me. (mind you I didn't say great) It is difficult to design things for the minority of users who have the loudest voice. i.e. MR people versus the average book a week reader. I am not the average reader as I read around a book every one to three days.

What I would really like to see is a more buffett style reader experience where I pay X amount of dollars a month for unlimited books and as long as I keep paying that X amount I will keep the ability to read those same books. It works well for me for music and I think it would be very advantageous to me for books. The ones I re-read I have hard copies of so it isn't a big deal.

One other thing I have noticed are that people that scream about DRM are the ones that enable the bootlegging of whatever it is the DRM is protecting. (I didn't say perpetuate, I said enable)

If you would remember back in the day when cable first came around the only way for the cable companies to protect their interests were to scramble channels not paid for. i.e. HBO. Now that is the same conceptual idea of DRM. Limit the use of the product to the people paying for it. Yes you could still hook up a vcr and record those programs and hand them out to friends, but you can also retype the DRM protected files and hand those out if you want. (Not legal I know, but neither was handing around those vcr or cassette tapes in the 80's and 90's)

NO ONE has the right to take and freely distribute a copyrighted item, NO ONE. Which includes B&N's version of the PD files, Those specific copies contain newly copyrighted material and those copies ARE protected therefore the file is protected. I have never heard of 10 pages being DRM'ed while the rest is left without. I am not even sure if they have that ability. There are copies of PD that are NOT copyrighted and those are free to distribute. This is not a complicated issue in the context of the article.

Really, it gets my knickers in a twist when artists (and you are one, I believe) don't recognize when they're being used as a figleaf. Few artists retain their copyrights, they are sold for access to distribution, usually, or sold by their inheritors, or sold in financial straits. You have companies that do nothing but buy rights to artists creations.

Hey guess what? That's the artists RIGHT to do what he pleases with his/her work.

What you're really complaining about is that no one with any passion on the topic respects your moderation -- largely because moderates usually a) don't pay enough attention to have a valid insight, or b) constantly want to split the difference out of some misguided belief that we should all just get along. While one side uses force, lies and money to cheat the other. And so they keep splitting the difference, and splitting it again, moving closer and closer to the side that lies.

If you keep splitting the difference wouldn't you still be in the middle? Moving to one side or the other is not "splitting the difference".

I'm sorry but the view you are taking about moderates is not actually moderates. More of the uneducated, would you consider an independent to be moderate? And any side or view can trample the rights of another if people are not careful to accept other viewpoints and listen rather than spouting off absurd generalizations about people they have never met or known. Think about the other side of the problem constructively and without bias before you come to the self-centered conclusion that your view is the only RIGHT one.

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

there is such a huge anti DRM bias on this forum that there isn't even room for moderate viewpoints.

It's not just in this forum, and the amount of anti-DRM feeling should tell you something. If you want someone with a pro-DRM viewpoint, you pretty much have to go to the content industry to find it.