
Stallman's Dystopia - gandalfgeek
http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/5667398073/stallmans-dystopia
======
kwantam
Freedom is almost always lost in small steps.

Sure, discontinuities happen in extreme cases (e.g., the WTC's destruction ->
the PATRIOT Act), and when they do a lot of people notice. The more subtle
losses in freedom that occur gradually (the DMCA and its progeny, for example)
are harder to notice until one day you look back and say "huh, how did we get
here?"

The concept of the Overton Window [1] is interesting and germane here. 20
years ago the idea that you couldn't lend a book you own to your friend or
loan them the new album you just bought would have seemed insane. Over time, a
gradual shift in the concept of ownership has changed the scope of the issue
to the point where many people would now accept that it seems reasonable that
you can't lend your books to someone else.

People at the edge of the Overton window are like our canaries in the coal
mine. Gradual shifts in the window are hard to notice from the middle, but
easy to notice as the "edge" passes over you. In that respect, to me RMS seems
most valuable to us for precisely the reasons others call him a crackpot.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window>

~~~
jonnathanson
Are people actually more accepting of not being able to share, or is it simply
the case that they can't or don't know how?

It's a pretty easy and painless gesture to lend someone a physical book for
the weekend. It's a much harder gesture to lend someone your entire Kindle or
iPad in order for them to access the book. Until/unless sharing features
become more available, better known, and more widely used, I think we're
really just seeing the effects of "I don't know how" rather than "I wouldn't."

~~~
ajross
People had no trouble "sharing" media on floppy disks (or email, etc...). The
fact that it's been made (deliberately, IMHO) difficult might be part of the
proximate cause for the lack of sharing, but I don't see how that refutes the
original point about the Overton window: people's perception of what is
"sharable" has shifted over the past 20 years.

And that's sad.

~~~
jonnathanson
I don't dispute that sharing has been made deliberately more difficult in the
digital media age, and by parties interested in maintaining -- or at least
prolonging -- that difficulty. I'm not fully convinced, however, that this
difficulty has actually changed consumer notions of what is, and is not,
ethically sharable. I haven't seen enough data on consumer perceptions or
beliefs; all the data presented so far can just as easily be explained by the
difficulty of sharing in and of itself. (Note that I'm not saying perception
changes _won't_ ever happen; I'm merely saying that I don't know if they've
actually happened just yet).

For the record, I am pro-sharing, and I believe that IP holders and media
companies who would do their darndest to prevent sharing are incredibly short-
sighted. They wring their hands about the need for (evidently magical) "viral
marketing" of their material, while at the same time inherently limiting the
ability of their consumers to do a lot of the peer-to-peer marketing that they
used to do.

------
ataggart
There are a few fundamental differences the author doesn't take into account:

1\. There is nothing stopping you from lending out your _kindle_.

2\. The notion of "lending" doesn't really apply to electronic books. Absent
copy protection, you can just give someone else a copy. With copy protection,
to mimic "lending" some infrastructure needs to be in place to give someone
else access rights to a copy of a book while simultaneously depriving you of
your copy. And _of course_ this is controlled by the seller, since they're the
one putting the copy protection in place.

3\. I can't copy/paste from my paper books either, at least not in any way
that's not also available to kindle owners.

4\. Every choice involves trade-offs. There is no morality involved here, much
less the sound of jackboots. There is only what people value. Many seem to
value the convenience of having their whole library in a small device over the
ability to "lend" individual electronic copies. Those who feel differently can
stick to paper books, or electronic books unencumbered by copy protection.

~~~
bdhe
> 2\. The notion of "lending" doesn't really apply to electronic books. Absent
> copy protection, you can just give someone else a copy. With copy
> protection, to mimic "lending" some infrastructure needs to be in place to
> give someone else access rights to a copy of a book while simultaneously
> depriving you of your copy. And of course this is controlled by the seller,
> since they're the one putting the copy protection in place.

Sometimes comments like this makes me wonder whether or not it is not in our
best interests not to let technology get hijacked by corporate interests. I
understand Amazon has to make a profit somehow to continue providing the
infrastructure, but if computers and technology have gotten us, humanity, to a
point where one can "lend" books while simultaneously keeping our copy
ourselves, why do we encumber ourselves? I can't imagine what people even 100
yrs ago would have wondered at such technology.

I am quite uneducated about history, but I can imagine a similar revolution
with the printing press. How much of the clergy / priests opposed printing
presses because they allowed the common masses to access information on a
scale unprecedented at that time?

Edit: I realize upon a second reading the phrase "... technology get hijacked
..." might be hyperbole, but the point stands.

~~~
Apocryphon
'Lending' someone an ebook that they can keep indefinitely is like xeroxing
them a paper book, is it not?

~~~
bdhe
Yes, that is an excellent point. Although, in a lot of cases, photocopying a
book requires significant labor, with much lower guarantee of quality and I've
rarely seen people making a business out of photocopying novels. For technical
books, on the other hand, things get much more complicated. I understand
prices are higher because circulation is typically much lower.

However, that leads me to another question: Must we always look at analogies
from the past and work with them? The beauty of new technologies is that
they're _better_ than the old ones we had. It might take a lot more work, but
it is much better to look at things afresh rather than falling back on old
structures and status quo. The reason IP is so contentious is precisely
because of this. We _do not_ have anything to fall back on and must device
probably completely new and arbitrary rules. Clearly it is in the publishers
best interest to stick to status quo as much as possible and try to find
analogies to old models so that it might be easier to justify a system in
place that guarantees a revenue stream. But for the consumer, it is not
obvious why this must be the case. In fact, the whole notion of publisher
itself was a solution to a problem that technology has now (seemingly) solved.

~~~
Apocryphon
But if you lend someone a copy that they could keep indefinitely, the creator
doesn't get paid for that copy. Isn't that simple enough?

~~~
bdhe
What if you price it in such a way that lending someone a copy allows them to
still pay the creator?

You do realize that you as a creator are taking advantage of the medium to
distribute your creation in much more efficient ways, yet, you don't want to
give the privilege of the abilities of the medium to the consumer. It is this
asymmetry that fundamentally perplexes me (to which I have no satisfactory
answer).

~~~
esrauch
I don't see any reason for this to perplex you. The dead tree model is well
established; enough people are willing to pay for their own copy so that they
don't have to go through the annoyance of lending.

One of the abilities of ebooks is that there is essentially zero duplication
cost. That means that (outside of legal and DRM) there would be absolutely no
reason for anyone to ever pay for a book instead of getting it for free.

I would actually say that there is very little advantage of ebooks to an
author; piracy is suddenly an actual problem instead of something that would
be laughable (how many pirate paper backs do people own?), people suddenly
can't lose your book meaning they will only purchase it once, and most
importantly you lose the entirety of the extra profits from hardcover editions
(the price of hardcover versus paperbacks is not really from the cost to
produce). Publishers are clearly going to be decimated by self publishing
becoming more viable for up and coming authors.

The efficiency of not having to print actual books, ship them, etc is nothing
compared to these other factors. The real reason why they have to sell ebooks
is because customers are demanding them, and would buy their competitors books
if they didn't offer digital editions.

Almost nothing about ebooks is actually positive to publishers or established
authors. They are the horseshoe manufacturers and the model T has just been
invented; just because they start making tires doesn't mean that they wouldn't
be much happier if cars had never become invented.

------
sambeau
Here in the UK you break the law when you lend a book without the author's
permission.

[http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright...](http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law)

    
    
      Restricted acts
      It is an offence to perform any of the following acts
      without the consent of the owner:
        Copy the work.
        Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
        Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
        Adapt the work.
    

The UK govenment have to _pay_ for the right to lend books in public
libraries:

<http://www.la-sofia.org/sofia/droit-de-pret-anglais.jsp>

    
    
      The payment per loan is 5.98 p

~~~
SwellJoe
I just had a moment of confusion and bafflement. I didn't know how to process
this information. I've always thought of the US and UK as sorta, kinda,
similar...and imagined that the UK would have libraries like the US. But given
this fundamental difference, it seems obvious that our libraries would be
vastly different (and vastly better) than those in the UK, all other things
being equal. Of course, all other things are not equal, but I do recall a
couple of visitors from other countries being amazed at my local
library...perhaps this is part of the reason why. At some point in US history,
public good was deemed more important than the ability of rights holders to
receive recurring revenue from books in libraries; or maybe the question never
came up because the majority of rights holders were overseas in the beginning
when our libraries were being created and had no feasible way to fight for
more rights. Whatever the reason, as a published author, I wouldn't take that
trade...I'd rather have an amazing library, where resources go to acquiring
new books rather than maintaining payments on old ones.

I often think RMS is a bit of an extremist...but, when I really think things
through, I often end up agreeing with him, at least on the core issues.

~~~
sambeau
I wouldn't read too much into what the UK law says - it's mostly totally
ignored in this respect:everybody passes books on and we still have a thriving
second-hand book market (albeit one mostly funded by the sale of coffee).

I've seen no evidence that the US has vastly superior public libraries to the
UK: all UK cities have a large, comprehensive (non-lending) public library
often built by Carnegie. Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling
here due to cuts in government funding - nothing to do with these copyright
laws as far as I can tell.

~~~
SwellJoe
_Our local lending Libraries, however, are struggling here due to cuts in
government funding - nothing to do with these copyright laws as far as I can
tell._

5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable
chunk of change. Funding wouldn't need to be as large without those fees
(which is why I suggested "all other things being equal. Of course all other
things are not equal"). I'm just saying that without those fees, UK libraries
would almost certainly be better. How much better? I dunno. Depends on how
much the culture values libraries. US culture, despite having an anti-
intellectualism bias in many areas, takes its libraries pretty darned
seriously and tends to fund them reasonably well (though I'm sure more would
be welcome, and many small towns don't have sufficient library resources), and
most rights holders don't get to view libraries as a recurring revenue stream.

~~~
sambeau
_5.9p per loan aggregated over millions of loaned books a year is a sizable
chunk of change_

£7.6 million according to the article.

(interesting to note that as the U.S. is not a member of the PLR club,
American authors will get none of it)

By comparison the British Library (the UK's biggest public library)'s budget
is £142million.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library>

------
lukifer
The underlying issue here is not one of legality or technology, but rather
economics. Market transactions are based on scarcity, and the ability to
cheaply copy information which is expensive to make eliminates that scarcity,
resulting in a market ecosystem that is unsustainable without legal and/or
technological measures.

Call me a commie if you wish, but I don't think this problem can be eliminated
without rethinking capitalism as we know it, at least regarding "intellectual
property". (This is arguably a self-healing problem, in that struggling
entities will be forced to innovate new business models, as has been happening
in the music space for the past 10 years.)

In the meantime, those who care deeply about these issues can {a} stick to
real books, {b} pirate (note that you can pay _and_ pirate if you like), and
{c} keep yammering on about the issue with the hope of swaying more people to
value their freedoms, thereby influencing the market.

------
yesimahuman
Consuming locked down content is a choice, and we live in an age of an immense
amount of choices. Should content producers have to do everything we say just
because we choose to consume their content? Lady Gaga is not a public servant.
You are not entitled to copy her work, or even put her songs on your own
youtube videos.

Lady Gaga never had to exist in the first place. The fact that she does
enriches some of our lives, but we must understand that content is a
production of someone else's and it should be treated as such (just as we wish
our users to respect the hard work we put into our web apps).

~~~
hxa7241
> Mrs Gaga is not a public servant

We are _all_ public servants. To cooperate with each other we are, to that
extent, serving each other. And we _want_ to cooperate because when we do we
_gain_.

We can cooperate enormously by sharing information/data. There is nothing in
that that means we cannot pay people to produce it. Just that what has been
produced is then best shared.

And the marvelous thing about information is that sharing it is _free_. It
costs nothing to share it because copyability of info is infinite and
abundant. We can all cooperate, and gain from it, yet no-one needs to give up
anything at all.

Some people say we need to restrict information copying in order to make a
market to pay for production. But that is nothing more than a pragmatic
suggestion. It only makes sense to do that if we cannot devise some better
arrangement that _would_ fully realise the benefits of sharing data.

(Or in short, please wake up from all that Randroid casuistry and start seeing
reality.)

~~~
yesimahuman
I disagree with your reality.

The reality I prescribe to is that we all have the freedom to create content
and share it under the terms we dictate. We do not have the freedom to dictate
terms to someone else.

Where it does not violate essential freedoms (such as me letting someone use
my Kindle, or listen to my iPod), having an ability to trust the terms you've
set helps business prosper.

Like I said before, the public "culture" feature of this content seems to give
us additional rights and ownership over it. Just because we really, really
like Tron or Inception does not mean we have the rights to copy it and
distribute it through bittorrent.

------
joe_the_user
Many of the details Stallman describes in The Right To Read were taken from
existing proposals for the "National Information Infrastructure" (proposed by
among others, Al Gore).

The basic approach of using "cyberspace" to impose this approach predates the
popularity of the Internet. In fact, the popularity of the Internet postponed
a lot of plans that were already on the agenda of various powerful forces.

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

------
jxcole
This article complains specifically about not being able to copy from a book
in public domain to somewhere else. If you are seriously having this problem,
I recommend checking out

<http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page>

They have a lot of good materials there if you are interested in older books.

~~~
rbanffy
You may also try feedbooks. Lots of interesting stuff there (lots ported from
Project Gutenberg).

------
gallerytungsten
The combination of e-book adoption and an efficient market for used books (eg,
abebooks.com) mean that finding and purchasing real books is easier and lower-
cost than ever. While some may consider real books inconvenient, I find the
fact that no batteries are required rather refreshing. So I keep buying them
and don't worry about DRM restrictions.

~~~
cmkrnl
We still need light to read :) I don't use a kindle or any tablet, but have
read hundreds of ebooks on my phones (Nokia + Mobipocket, Android + FBReader
or the Kindle app). The books are always with me, and it's more convenient for
reading in bed.

------
brandall10
Before the advent of the printing press books cost as much as a small home.
Only the wealthy could afford them, and libraries were created to others could
use them. Arguably you could say an actual book was more valuable than the
material it contained, on average.

Before the advent of the personal computer, computers cost as least as much as
a small home. Arguably you could say the computers time was more valuable than
the people using them, and people shared them in research and industrial labs.

Both items have become many orders of magnitude cheaper and plentiful to the
point of commoditization. eBooks are still competing with hard copy works so
the price differential isn't quite there. But once that industry capitulates
look for them to drop significantly.

Personally I like the scenario where a friend recommends me a book for $2 that
I can purchase for $2 myself vs. him paying $10 and letting me borrow. I like
to pay for things that bring value to my life, and in a way he's subsidizing
my usage.

------
bcaulf
The breakthrough portable audio player, iPod, does lead users toward DRM
content. But it is also perfectly compatible with copied content, user
authored content, downloaded content, whatever.

The breakthrough e-book, Kindle, is similar. If you follow the brightly lit
path, you'll start buying books. But there is a balance and users who want to
avoid DRM content altogether are free to do so. Most of my news subscriptions
are free of charge RSS and scrapes via the open source e-book manager Calibre.

The Kindle DRM, like all the e-book DRM out there, is weak and can be removed
easily by readily available scripts. The current stream of commercially
available e-books is being stripped of DRM and made available continuously.

So, the available readers are open for sharing.

E-books are tiny, mostly less than 2 MB uncompressed. It will always be easy
to transfer lots of books quickly over any decent network link. Because the
content is text, it is never going to become out of date and need to be re-
ripped at a higher sampling rate. The analog hole, which is very real and
relevant for all forms of media, is massive for books since the content can be
OCR'ed or even retyped with relative ease.

So, current and future e-books are not protected effectively against copying.

I don't think the no-book-lending scenario has any chance of happening.

------
EGreg
The free market will ultimately decide. They can't lock us down when someone
else will make a reader where you CAN copy things.

But first, the free market will have to dismantle the government protections
that enforce monopoly rights for authors. That will only happen when we find a
better system. Subscriptions may be that system.

------
sambeau
US law on lending copyrighted things:

<http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/109.html>

Kindle rules on lending things:

[https://kdp.amazon.com/self-
publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4...](https://kdp.amazon.com/self-
publishing/help?topicId=A2JGI9S4FDM39Q)

------
cwp
Nah. In the future people won't think that lending books is "nasty and wrong."
They'll think it's silly. They'll ask "why would I do that, when I can just
give him a copy?"

------
darklajid
One of the key points that come up all the time with these 'physical goods vs.
digital goods' discussions is that the latter can be distributed endlessly.

Why is there no way for me to give something I bought to my friend, digital or
not? We have a digital currency now that claims that I cannot both send you
money and keep it at the same time. Why isn't this possible with my mp3s,
ebooks and movies?

------
codex
Emacs Shrugged? Stallman has more in common with Ayn Rand than people realize!

------
aneth
Major flaws in both points here:

1) You can lend your Kindle out all you want and let people read your books,
just as you could before. You just can't duplicate the book onto someone
else's Kindle or in any other way, just as you couldn't before. This is a
reasonable restriction and not any worse than it was with a physical book,
which you are also prohibited from scanning, photocopying and distributing
outside of fair use.

2) You can not copy/paste a physical book either. I agree that this should be
allowed, but it's not a dystopian future - there is no loss over physical
books here, only gain.

Perhaps Amazon should allow some sort of way to help with "fair use"
citations, and maybe they should remove restrictions on public domain
material. On the latter though, those are generally available for free from
many sources, so the fact that you can't copy/paste on your Kindle is an
inconvenience, not a dystopia.

~~~
hubb
1) except that lending someone your kindle isn't like lending them a book --
it's lending them your entire library at once

2) you are comparing "copying" text from a sheet of paper to an electronic
device. that doesn't make any sense at all. people who view text on an
electronic screen are used to being able to select and copy it. that was never
possible, nor will it ever be with a physical paper book.

~~~
delinka
It's not anyone's fault but your own that your entire readable library lives
in one physical device. Asking to change copyright to allow you to "photocopy"
someone else's work and give it to a friend is unacceptable.

Now that I've played devil's advocate, I'm not a big fan of the technological
measures that attempt to prevent piracy. I believe that the solution is
pricing digital media so that it's more 'disposable' - that is, price it so
cheaply that pirating and even lending is too much trouble.

~~~
rick888
Music is already 99 cents. It can't get more disposable than that. Apps in the
iphone and Android stores are also very cheap (most are under $10).

Piracy hasn't slowed down.

------
0ffw0rlder
The kindle DRM is pointless and an idiot tax ;). All it takes is one visit to
library.nu or similar sight and all books are free, and pdfs.

------
chrisjsmith
Just a reminder - you can always stick your Kindle in a photocopier. Works
quite well!

~~~
cmkrnl
The good old analog hole.

~~~
rbanffy
In a couple decades it will be plugged by neural implants. ;-)

~~~
chrisjsmith
No one will give a screwey - we'll all be fucked up on eLSD then...

------
Typhon
Note that a software that doesn't let you copy and paste doesn't prevent you
from copying text. You can copy it manually to a computer, or write it by
hand. This is poorly designed software.

If there were a law preventing you from copying the text, now that would be a
problem. But there is no such law as far as I know. In fact, I live in a
country where, so far, such copying of any book is expressly authorised as
long as it is for private use.

As for the kindle, I don't understand which of its function couldn't be
performed just as well by a small laptop, but I barely know what it looks
like, so I may be wrong.

~~~
cryptoz
> As for the kindle, I don't understand which of its function couldn't be
> performed just as well by a small laptop

The principle selling point of the Kindle is that you can read for days on end
without hurting your eyes. Laptop screens tend to hurt people's eyes a lot
when used for reading many hours at a time. It's also smaller, lighter, more
convenient and far cheaper than any laptop.

> but I barely know what it looks like, so I may be wrong.

You're being downvoted because you're talking about things you know nothing
about - things that take < 5 seconds to find out. Please do some research
before taking time to bash products or complain on HN.

~~~
Typhon
I read entire novels on my laptop. I know what I'm talking about when it comes
to reading. What you're saying is not obvious. You can't use an Internet
research to know how something _feels_. I wasn't bashing anything. Please take
the time to actually read what I write and don't assume I mean anything else
than what I actually write.

~~~
Dylan16807
All you need to do is throw 'why kindle' into a search engine. Or look for a
bit into what it _is_ ; the main feature is the e-ink screen, and that is not
by coincidence.

