
Paper Books Can’t Be Shut Off from Afar - ingve
https://popula.com/2019/06/30/own-paper-books/
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crispinb
The whole article is based on a paper vs ebook dichotomy, whereas the relevant
distinction is between DRM-bound (some ebooks) and DRM-free (some ebooks & all
paper) books. What a waste of words. Oh well, at least they're not on paper.

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k_sze
One could argue that even paper is not completely safe, especially if you
bought a book from Banksy (but that's starting to get absurd).

If we eliminate the Banksy absurdity, I believe that there _is_ some value to
the argument: it's simply physically impossible to shut down a paper book
because it's a piece of "technology" that's easy to understand and inspect. In
contrast, an e-book is always just thousands or millions of bits that you
usually don't physically inspect. HN readers may generally be tech-savvy
enough to confidently tell which books or platforms are immune to remote-
shutdown, but you may be giving too much credit to the proverbial grandma (or
even mother, as my own mom definitely wouldn't have any idea).

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crispinb
I hadn't come across Popula before, but a glance at it doesn't lead me to
think the proverbial grandma is its assumed audience.

FWIW, I much prefer paper books for many reasons (aesthetics, tactility, lack
of temptations towards distraction, etc). But longevity isn't amongst those
reasons - with backups etc I'm much more confident of hanging on to my epubs
than I am my physical books.

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Jedi72
One of my favourite subreddits is r/aboringdystopia (about how we live in a
boring dystopian world) and one recent trending post was about Microsoft
shutting down their ebooks business, which means booka bought there will all
stop working due to DRM. That was the phrase in the meme - "Due to corporate
budget cuts, on April 2 the books will stop working". Very dystopic.

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aeternus
Paper books can however be "shut off" by a fire, by being misplaced, by a
flood, by theft, by a mischievous child or pet. In contrast, an e-book linked
to a user account is immune to all of those.

If the idea of losing access to some data is the "most grotesque and awful
thing" the author can imagine, I suggest the author read some more imaginative
books.

