
“The books will stop working.” - _Microft
https://twitter.com/rdonoghue/status/1144011630197522432
======
blakesterz
Can you imagine someone trying to start public libraries if they didn't
already exist now? I think it's safe to say it would never ever happen, at
least in the US. Between lobbying and the general disdain for most things run
by any type of government here, they'd never have a chance.

Luckily we still have places that still purchase printed books (along with
ebooks) and you can go borrow them any time and they never stop working....
just ignore the damage from fire, water, rips, loss, bed bugs... maybe they do
actually stop working for other reasons now that I think about it :-)

~~~
sp332
It took the richest guy in the world funding them like crazy to start them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_l...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie#3,000_public_libraries)
The one in Philadelphia cost the equivalent of $15,000,000 - and that didn't
include the land, operation, or maintenance.

~~~
inscionent
The one in Washington DC is now an Apple store.

~~~
djsumdog
Wow ... that's .. is that irony? I don't even know.

~~~
tomxor
It's straight up dystopian that's what it is.

------
EdwardCoffin
This isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, either. Amazon,
before they introduced the Kindle, used Adobe DRM for ebooks. I lost a book
I'd bought through them when they switched to Kindle.

The thing that really gets me is I had to _register_ my book to buy it, with
my _email address_. They _had_ my address, and couldn't even be bothered to
send me an alert, telling me that the DRM servers were being decommissioned,
so if I wanted to license any new computers to use the book I should do so
then.

I've not been able to replace that book either, so it's not like the refund
they finally begrudgingly gave me could be put towards a replacement - that
book has never been republished in any form that I have been able to find
(Vinge's annotated version of his book _A Fire Upon the Deep_ ).

~~~
Herrin
You have my sympathy. I have been searching for the annotated version for
years now. Any readable versions seem to have disappeared.

This is a good reminder for me to make backups of the ebooks I do have.

~~~
squaresmile
Is this the version you have been searching for? It is "A Fire Upon the Deep"
and it looks annotated.

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/260sH2V.png](https://i.imgur.com/260sH2V.png)

~~~
EdwardCoffin
That might be it. The annotations look like the kind of thing I remember.

~~~
squaresmile
I got it from a private tracker but it looks like you can find it on libgen
fiction too [0]. The 1.7Mb epub one is the one I got.

[0]
[http://gen.lib.rus.ec/fiction/?q=A+Fire+Upon+the+Deep](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/fiction/?q=A+Fire+Upon+the+Deep)

~~~
simias
>O site a que pretende aceder encontra-se bloqueado na sequência do
cumprimento de ordem judicial ou administrativa.

(The website you want to reach is blocked due to the execution of a judicial
or administrative order).

Ah the World Wide Web, less world-wide every day. I guess now if you don't use
a VPN you're a second class netizen in many places.

~~~
icebraining
No need for a VPN yet, thankfully it's just a DNS block.

~~~
simias
I didn't even consider that, I'll just switch my DNS then, thanks.

------
logifail
My grandmother is in her late 90s, has dementia, and is in a care home. My
mother sent me this update last week:

> Went to see Granny yesterday, was quite cheerful, read though the poems in
> "When we were very young"[0], her original copy[1], given to her in 1928,
> how about that. She knows them off by heart and joins in when you read them
> to her

Q: When we're in our late 90s, how many of us will be able to consume 90-year-
old-content that way?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Very_Young](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_We_Were_Very_Young)
[1] It was first published in 1924

~~~
linuxftw
I've been hoping this nostalgia trend will end. It's time to move forward.
Instead of teaching kids about Shakespeare, we should be teaching about Super
Mario for cultural history. Why should anyone care about poems or poetry? It
was the entertainment of the early-print society, it has comparably little
value today.

~~~
asdff
Because our collective western culture is still the direct product of Greek
philosophy no matter how many mario kart games are released.

The books in the western canon are important because they are good and went on
to influence everything you consume today, even the narrative in super mario.
Take some time to read a good chunk of these books and you will be wiser than
most people you know on all sorts of topics.

~~~
linuxftw
My view is quite different. They're just stories that anyone could have told
and don't contain any unobtainable wisdom. The people that told those stories
simply existed before us. In many ways the stories are inferior to their
modern counterparts.

~~~
rocqua
The argument here is not about quality. It is about relevance. Specifically,
these old works have largely determined our current culture. If you want to
understand the current culture, it pays to have some knowledge of what it was
based on.

~~~
linuxftw
I know it's about relevance. I'm making the unpopular argument that these
ancient works aren't really all that relevant, and definitely aren't profound.
Simply because something is old and was the first to do something, doesn't
make it important.

We have our own culture now, we spend far too much time worrying about what
the dead did with their limited free time.

------
ajuc
This is why DRM isn't just anti-consumer, it's also morally evil using the
same logic that says libraries are a good thing.

This is also why I buy games on gog.com instead of steam if they both have
them.

~~~
la_barba
Have you found a solution to piracy that doesn't involve DRM? What was its
success rate? I'm sure the publishers would love to switch to a better system
if it exists.

~~~
DenisM
Apple, Inc. did - they sell all of their music without DRM for the last, like,
10 years. Meanwhile the music industry is alive and well.

The key is convenience. When it's convenient to buy, people buy.

~~~
la_barba
Oh? I thought Apple Music was encumbered with DRM in their M4P format. I'm not
super familiar with their service though. Maybe I'm wrong..

Edit: Looks like the M4P format was mainly on older songs pre2009. Though I
see forum threads with people saying that they have to re-pay Apple w/ itunes
match to get the drm-free version.

~~~
DenisM
[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201616](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT201616)

No DRM for iTunes Store where you can _buy_ music.

Apple Music a streaming service, and that is DRMed (I believe).

------
mikenew
Every piece of DRM'd content will end up like this. Every book, movie, show,
album, and game will be dead in a few decades (or sooner) if it relies on some
company maintaining it's servers.

It's good that there's alternatives, but it seems like the alternatives are
slowly diminishing.

~~~
judge2020
Take this with a grain of salt, but Steam support says there are "measures in
place" to ensure users have access to DRM'd games when steam dies [0]. (Not to
mention that it's trivially easy to remove Steam DRM with existing tools)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/18mzcn/i_asked_steam_support_what_happens_to_my_games_if/)

~~~
wishinghand
Unfortunately we'll have to see it to truly believe it. I don't doubt Valve
would do that, but it's easy to say that now.

Luckily, we still have torrents to help backup old games.

~~~
dwighttk
right... like what if Valve actually even intends to do it, but it requires
someone to throw a switch and the last guy that knows how to (or even just to)
do that dies suddenly just before Valve suddenly goes bankrupt.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
Not even that - what if they're bought out by another company who doesn't
share their philosophy? (EA?)

------
hyperman1
I wonder how this can even be legal in Europe. If someone sold you something,
its yours. AFAIK, There is enough consumer protection to stop most EULA
bullshit. So it seems it only needs someone to sue and some proof microsoft
used the word 'sold' when you bought it.

~~~
rhino369
"and you will receive a full refund of the original purchase price."

Seems fair enough to me.

~~~
hyperman1
That's like saying the car factory is allowed to take an old timer from you if
they refund its original price.

Can I use the money to buy the same book? Is my time lost searching for this
replacement worth nothing? If I added annotations, do they end up in the new
book? If you answer any of these questions with 'no', its not fair enough.

~~~
rhino369
That analogy is loaded because classic cars appreciate. Ebooks don’t. Toyota
can feel to take back my 03 4Runner for the original purchase price.

~~~
modsiw
Ebooks can appreciate.

You could have originally bought it on sell and that sell is no longer
available.

You could have added value to the ebook by way of adding annotations.

The ebook could have had better display than its competitors, if it and all
other equal quality displays vanished, they are now very rare. Someone would
be willing to pay more than your original purchase price if they could now get
that display experience.

------
nknealk
A similar thing happened with Ultraviolet's movies service:
[https://www.myuv.com/](https://www.myuv.com/)

There's also a great story regarding "right of first purchase" in the USA
where Redbox literally purchases DVDs at retail so that they can rent them out
to customers because Disney would not sell directly to them:
[https://gizmodo.com/redboxs-crafty-workaround-for-
stocking-d...](https://gizmodo.com/redboxs-crafty-workaround-for-stocking-
disney-movies-ba-1820925295)

~~~
B-Con
Yep. This is why I don't have a cloud-based digital library. UV offered a way
to migrate to other providers, but will the next one? I don't know that
they're legally allowed to. What if the other provider doesn't have the
content, am I SOL?

I so badly wish I could buy a license to get a specific piece of content, get
a copy to play on my own computer, then also have the ability to "upload"
(aka, unlock) that content on a cloud streaming service of my choice.

------
otakucode
There will be a time, I'm not sure when, that the whole "its a license!"
nonsense will die a hard death. It would be unwise for any company to rely too
heavily upon it. This is not a new tactic at all. It works only temporarily,
but has been used in a multitude of different industries through history - and
the end is always the same. Eventually some company will push it too far. They
will rip the wrong people off, and there will be a court case. The court is a
very sensible place, usually. They will ask "when the consumer gave you money,
what did you provide to them?" And if the answer boils down to "nothing. We
assumed no obligation to them, and they gained no rights to anything" then the
court is going to see it for the fraud it is.

Personally I'd just like to see some 'false advertising' lawsuits. It should
be illegal to say "Buy the book!" if you literally are not being offered a
sale. If you're being offered a licensing opportunity, it should have to be
marketed as such. Yes, this would confuse consumers. I want it to. I want them
to actually ask what they're getting, since up to this point the entire
marketplace is founded upon tricking people into thinking they are buying a
copy (like they would in a store), but in reality they are only getting a
license (which grants no rights, places no obligations on the licensor, and
can be cancelled at any time for any or no reason... in other words, you're
throwing money at a company and hoping they don't screw you too bad).

~~~
uryga
> If you're being offered a licensing opportunity, it should have to be
> marketed as such. Yes, this would confuse consumers.

idk, spotify et al seem to be doing alright...

------
nabla9
This is why when I buy a DRM ebook, I also get the pirated copy and put it
into my Calibre.

Buying a ebook is just for the payment.

~~~
la_barba
You just signaled that you find value in the DRM'd product, even if that
wasn't your intent. Why not reward creators who choose to distribute their
works without DRM? I'm neither pro nor anti-DRM, but I find that people who
love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you), never seem to be willing
to take a hit when it comes to living without popular content that doesn't
exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.

~~~
cyphar
> I find that people who love to hate on DRM (nothing personal towards you),
> never seem to be willing to take a hit when it comes to living without
> popular content that doesn't exist on non-DRM channels/platforms.

I pay for DRM-free versions of anything if it's available -- even if it's more
expensive (I've downloaded many hundreds of dollars of DRM-free audiobooks). I
eben refuse to buy physical books from authors like JK Rowling (who tried to
force book-owners to return copies of the Half-Blood Prince that were
accidentally sold early).

Here in Australia you sometimes can't even buy the DRM-up-the-wazoo version.
Game of Thrones wasn't available through any legal channels for years. And
that's ignoring the Australia Tax we get for not being from the US or Europe
(the shipping costs of bytes is very high it seems).

Then again, I also don't watch too many films or shows these days. Mainly
because I can't get many DRM-free versions.

~~~
JauntyHatAngle
Game of thrones was such a good example of how out of date DRM can get.

It was quite literally getting released months after it's release in the US in
the early seasons, and only on pay TV.

With the way everyone is connected online, it was ludicrous to think people
were going to wait months to watch each episode and not get it spoiled for
them and/or not be able to discuss it on worldwide forums.

------
docker_up
I have a close friend who published an engineering text book. He worked a
couple of years on it and it was well received in his particular field. The
book was pirated within months and is freely available on PDF. It's unfair
that his hard work is being used globally for free.

So yes, having books shut off sucks but so does piracy.

~~~
docker_up
The lack of empathy in the responses is staggering to me. It's as if the idea
that a content creator should be financially rewarded for his or her hard work
is some sort of moral crime. Yes, DRM sucks, but what other way can content
providers ensure that they get rewarded for the hard work and good content
that they provide?

~~~
la_barba
It is rather bizarre to see some people feel entitled to content which isn't
distributed as per their own personal wishes. A principled person would chose
to take his/her business elsewhere and purchase a book on a platform whose
ethics they agree with.

Not saying I'm some Mother Teresa type.. but I'm against online ads, and I
don't run an ad-blocker. I simply don't visit sites which feature blaring in-
your-face ads. I filter Google results to exclude domains which I will never
visit because of their ad policy.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _It is rather bizarre to see some people feel entitled to content which isn
> 't distributed as per their own personal wishes. A principled person would
> chose to take his/her business elsewhere and purchase a book on a platform
> whose ethics they agree with._

Couple counter-points:

1) It's reasonable that I'm expected to compensate the creator for the
content. It's not reasonable for the publisher to dictate _how_ I get to
consume that content, especially not by forcing me to use particular format,
software or hardware. DRM is enforcing the latter, not the former.

2) Having personal wishes wrt. content distribution is part of the market
game. There is huge demand for bullshit-free content distribution, which is
evidenced by the success of Steam and Netflix (especially relative to
Torrents!), who cut out most of the crap and left the "you're now renting the
content, not buying it".

3) Most content is non-substitutable. You can't just "take your business
elsewhere", because there's nowhere else to take the business to! If Disney
decides that the newest Star Wars is DRMed, there's shit all I can do - it's
going to be DRMed everywhere, I can only choose from providers that enforce
that DRM, and I can't exactly go and watch some cat videos on PeerTube instead
- I wanted Star Wars, not smelly cats. This applies to books, movies, TV
shows, video games, and to a large extent, to music.

~~~
la_barba
1) If I'm selling lemonade and my terms and conditions are that you have to
jump 10 times before paying me, and I only accept payment in rocks with 10%
ferrous oxide, you are free to laugh and ignore me. Please also remember that
we're talking about games, movies, music... not exactly life-critical
products.

2) I agree. I avoid DRM and other BS as much as possible. I went out and
purchased affinity photo when photoshop went to a subscription model. I'm
going to cling on to my CS6 for as many years as I can. Yes, I'm going to lose
out eventually when plugins stop working or when I buy a new camera whose RAW
files cannot be opened by CS6, but thems the breaks.

3) Yes, that sucks! I don't know what else to say. You can either be
principled and avoid DRM, or be a realist and accept DRM in as few places as
possible. I'm objecting to the "I'm entitled to pirate it because they didn't
sell it or stream it without DRM" mindset.

~~~
TeMPOraL
1) Sure, but while you can set conditions on my purchasing lemonade from you,
you're not entitled to tell me what I can do with the lemonade after I buy it
and walk away from the stand. Unfortunately, DRM does exactly that - it limits
the ways I can consume products after I already paid all relevant parties for
it.

3) I can be principled realist and accept DRM whenever it's convenient, and
find ways to break it or alternate sources whenever I prefer it.

------
_Microft
Because of the volatile nature of all things web, I frequently screenshot
(yes, screenshot, because printing to PDFs makes them look awful, imo) Twitter
conversations, print blog posts to PDF or download articles that I want to
make sure that I don't loose.

It's so sad that this is necessary.

~~~
gdulli
I have a collection of over 1000 faved tweets that's one of my favorite
possessions. I noticed that one would occasionally get deleted by the author
so I wrote a script to screenshot them all with a Python package called
Splinter.

~~~
porker
Would you mind publishing it? I'm in the same situation

~~~
gdulli
Sure, here you go:
[https://pastebin.com/iXzscHW6](https://pastebin.com/iXzscHW6)

------
HarryHirsch
I can still hear my professor of Classics say that "with the introduction of
the printing press the loss of books ceased". With all that electronic junk
that no one knows how to archive properly that statement needs to be
revisited.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> I can still hear my professor of Classics say that "with the introduction of
> the printing press the loss of books ceased".

...what? Loss of books has pretty much nothing to do with the technology used
to produce them. If you stop producing them and lose the existing ones,
they're gone.

You can lose printing plates just as easily as you can lose a printed book.
Actually, losing the plates is _much easier_ \-- the point of movable type is
that you can cannibalize old plates to print new works.

Think about the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yongle_Encyclopedia)
\-- not printed for budgetary reasons, but produced several hundred years
after the introduction of the printing press. Almost all of it is gone.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
The loss of books and other written works was almost total prior to the
printing press. A small number of durable tablets and some funeral documents
were preserved simply by lasting a long time. Others, like many religious
documents, were preserved in some form or another by expensive, tedious,
completely manual copying. Some information (both fiction and nonfiction) was
only ever verbally communicated, as it wasn't deemed worth the expense and
difficulty of putting it onto paper.

Your link says "A manuscript copy was commissioned by Jiajing Emperor in 1562
and completed in 1567.[8] The original copy was lost afterwards. " That
doesn't often happen when you can produce 10,000 copies.

It's not about the loss of the printing plates. It's about the extraordinary
difficulty of preserving a document of which a single copy exists, and the
much higher probability that one of thousands will survive.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> The loss of books and other written works was almost total prior to the
> printing press. A small number of durable tablets

Mesopotamian clay tablets are incredibly robust. We have many times more than
we have the manpower to translate, not to speak of the ones still buried in
more or less unknown locations.

Funnily enough, they survived much better in cities that were destroyed -- and
burned, firing the tablets -- than in cities that weren't, where the tablets
might eventually fall below the water table and dissolve.

But anyway, we don't have "a small number" of durable tablets; we have an
extremely large number, including some entire royal libraries.

> Your link says "A manuscript copy was commissioned by Jiajing Emperor in
> 1562 and completed in 1567.[8] The original copy was lost afterwards. " That
> doesn't often happen when you can produce 10,000 copies.

This is not the case; China had extensive markets in printed popular works for
centuries beforehand. Most of that work doesn't survive because of lack of
interest. The fate of almost all printed material is total disappearance,
because we can only maintain so much material, and printed material is a
subset of all material.

From the introduction to _Record of the Listener_ (
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666841/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1624666841/)
):

> At the time of Hong Mai's death in 1202, the _Record_ [夷坚志] had grown to a
> massive collection of 420 chapters, totaling over four thousand entries.
> Although it was not clear whether any complete editions were ever published
> by any Song publisher, we do know that multiple editions of varying sizes
> and qualities were made available by commercial publishing houses in
> different parts of the country. Much of the _Record_ was nonetheless lost as
> early as the Yuan Dynasty [less than 100 years later], an indication of the
> traumatic effects of the Song-Yuan transition. The current 207-chapter
> editions are based on post-Song redactions and later manuscripts by
> traditional and modern scholars.

Note that this is a famous work considered relevant today. Contrast the
countless printed popular works that nobody thought were worth preserving in
the first place.

The ability to make copies is not relevant in the slightest. The number of
copies made is relevant, but only weakly. Information is preserved when people
devote effort to preserving it, and lost otherwise.

------
javchz
I have a Kindle for a few years now, and I love it... but the weird thing it's
that most of the books I have read on the platform, haven't been acquired
through Amazon. All of this it's thanks to me being afraid of this kind of
practices, plus the weird pricing doesn't help (like some hard covers being
cheaper than digital books).

I kinda like the humble bundle approach to this, where I can buy bulks of
books DRM free in my PC, that are easy to use thanks to software like Calibre.
I hope soon the e-book industry have an equivalent to gog in games, or
bandcamp to music.

Yeah the subscription model it's cool, comfy and all, but what happen when the
company behind decides to shutdown the product because didn't reach the
desired metrics? I mean I can see Google having their own Stadia for books,
and a few years go by and then they GoogleReaderIt/PlusIt, and that's it, my
library of started books with their literally bookmarks and notes are gone.

------
hokus
I've always considered the internet (in its current form) to be histories
biggest book burning event. Hoarding rss feeds I often reached a point around
35 000 subs where the number of new ones I find is roughly equal to the
deleted websites. I'm sort of stuck in a mental loop thinking of book burning.

~~~
logifail
> histories biggest book burning event

If you've not been to Bebelplatz in Berlin to see Micha Ullman's sunken
library installation[0], do try and get there.

It's one of the most upsetting art installations I've ever seen, but it
absolutely should be on everyone's list.

[0] [https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial-
bebelpla...](https://www.visitberlin.de/en/book-burning-memorial-bebelplatz)

------
paul
I’m more disturbed by the fact that they can also edit or remove books that
I’ve already purchased. How long until Amazon is forced to “deplatform”
something offensive? Those old books contain a lot of words and ideas that
have no place in 2019.

It’s one of several reasons why I mostly only buy paper books.

------
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
Much of this discourse would make more sense if we use the term ebook, instead
of book. When we say book, it conjures the notion of atoms. When we use the
term ebook, we understand there's a technical dependency. Surely nobody
expects any technical service to run forever funded by a once off payment.

The much bigger problem with DRM content is that I cannot give them to my
children. My kids can browse my many bookcases, and might be curious to read
one of hundreds of book they may not choose to buy. That cannot happen with
DRM ebooks.

------
dangus
I'm astonished that Microsoft is apparently just refunding the original
purchase price of (everybody's?) books.

What's most mind boggling is the realization that apparently nobody sat down
and planned this situation out - because if they did, the idea that someone
could get an okay from their boss on the idea that even a mildly unsuccessful
result and end of life of the product would end in full refunds for everybody.

What's the point of even doing business?

Am I misunderstanding this outcome? That means anyone who used this product
got free book rentals for whatever they wanted to read?

...

Let's talk about DRM now.

DRM in itself as a concept is not bad (IMO), and it's probably necessary for a
lot of products that obviously would not have been created had 100% of the
customers decided not to pay.

However, I think what we fail to talk about is how there's no agreed upon
standard regulating the end of life and transferral procedures involved with
works sold under DRM.

I suspect that book publishers would not agree to allow Microsoft to say "the
store is closed, your books can be unlocked once you follow this procedure."
Even if they're okay with that, Microsoft probably didn't even have the
foresight to implement that sort of thing on a technical level.

So, what we need in the digital goods industry is some kind of statement to
the customer that's set in stone regarding what will happen with your content
if the business ceases to exist and the platform is canceled.

There's some semblance of this concept around. For example, Ultraviolet is
shutting down in July - so, you have the option to transfer movies to other
services for most movies on that platform (it should be _all_ movies).

MoviesAnywhere is also a DRM service making an attempt at avoiding platform
lock-in for digitally purchased movies.

But beyond that, there needs to be some sort of guarantee that you'll get
perpetual access or a refund. The fact that Microsoft is dishing out refunds
since that's cheaper than getting sued by every customer they've ever sold a
book to is not a given - imagine if Valve were to go bankrupt and simply shut
down their servers one day. That's where DRM should have a sort of mandatory
living will.

~~~
sjy
DRM caused this problem, and if you want to convince me that the solution is
more advanced DRM that somehow fails open when the company that built it goes
out of business, you'll need a stronger argument than "it's probably necessary
for a lot of products that obviously would not have been created had 100% of
the customers decided not to pay."

Abolishing copyright wouldn't eliminate all creative works. It would eliminate
a lot of the funding, but there would still be plenty of people willing to
create things for free and other creators working on a patronage or cross-
subsidisation model. It's not obvious to me that the world would be a worse
place under these conditions. I'm prepared to give up the certainty of the
next Marvel movie being produced if it means giving everyone free access to
all the other creative works that have already been published.

------
kevin_b_er
GNU's The Right to Read sounded utterly and totally laughable to me in circa
2000 when I first read it. A fanciable dystopia. It has come too close to
reality in more recent years since.

~~~
cyphar
Despite having some fairly questionable social views, Stallman has been living
40 years in the future for the past 40 years. Every time I read him, I'm
saddened that nobody listened.

------
ojagodzinski
All ebook sold in Poland are without DRM, You just pay and download
epub+mobi+pdf versions and thats all. It's the only one working system...

------
reeves23423
RMS has been warning this for a long time
[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-
read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

------
3xblah
If you look up the word "browse" in a dictionary, you will see that it now has
an entry relating to computer networks.

When we browse items in a library, we can see context, we can see neighbouring
items. Even some of the library database software today allows you to do this
on the computer, simulating the physical experience.

Maybe some of you can remember searching an item then going to retrieve it
from the stacks and ending up just browsing the neighbouring items and
discoevring even better items. I often discovered the best items through just
browsing in a section, in the stacks.

This is one element that is missing from today's web. It is probably one
reason why a search engine can become the most popular site on the web. The
search engine controls the user's view of the web. The user cannot see the
"stacks". Nor can she browse them as she would in a library to discover what
is there.

Libraries impose an order that is missing from the web. Something like a Dewey
Decimal classification system where a number reveals something about what is
found in that location. IP addresses reveal almost nothing to us about the
item(s) that may be found there; and whatever they reveal is not intentional.
These numbers are in turn "hidden" behind potentially ambiguous names that
sidestep the trademark system, another proven classification system, that
serves to eliminate ambiguity and deception of consumers.

In the past I have seen some sites that listed the entire IP address space in
numerical order where it was possible to browse at least some minimal
information on each network number. These always seem to go offline
eventually, as if they are breaking some rule.

Imagine going into a library where you were not allowed to visit the stacks or
see neighbouring items, where the ordering of the items was a secret and all
you could do is perform "keyword" searches. Imagine the results would not be
ordered alphabetically, chronologically, or even by a known method of
determining relevance (that too is secret). Imagine you could not sort the
results or get a quick copy of all of them for reference. Imagine the library
set the order of the results according to some "secret" methodology and
preferred that you only view the first 5-10 items.

------
smsm42
That's why you should never buy DRM-ed anything if you intend to keep it long
term. Companies change, businesses get bought & sold, collapse, disappear -
thinking that your particular DRM scheme would be supported for 20 years is
insane. For a movie that you'll forget in the next 2 days it's ok, for a book
that you intend on re-reading years late - no reason to "buy" DRM-ed version
of anything. Or, at least, if you have no other options, strip DRM from it
immediately and export into a common format.

------
Causality1
I forget which store it was, but back in the day when I bought e-books to read
on my PDAs they came encrypted, with the credit card number I used to buy them
being the decryption key, so I was completely independent of the store to read
them and could share them with anyone I trusted with my card number. It seems
like a quaint solution to modern sensibilities but thoroughly satisfying on a
moral level.

These days I buy the digital version on Amazon but don't download it. I pirate
the copy I'm actually going to read and archive.

~~~
jmiserez
Some (few) stores offer DRM-free PDF versions, usually with a personalized
watermark.

I feel like that's a good compromise, I get a DRM-free PDF and I can only
share it with people I trust not to put it online. And the watermark is a non-
issue because it doesn't bother/impact me.

------
sergiotapia
It's why I only buy games from Gog now. I just install the .exe and it works.
I no longer tolerate DRM.

~~~
lone_haxx0r
But you tolerate Windows?

------
swalladge
People need to be made aware that "purchasing" something with DRM means that
you aren't purchasing the item, you're only purchasing a revokable license to
access the item though software controlled by the vendor.

In a way, it's good that we're actually seeing the predicted issues with DRM
(losing books, etc.). Hopefully it will help raise awareness.

~~~
marvin
In the case of Kindle, you're usually paying more for the revokable license
than you'd pay by moving your mouse 2 centimeters to the right and selecting a
physical copy instead.

------
jdonaldson
The books still work if you drink a verification can. Just make sure nobody
else is in the room and trips the antipiracy measures.

------
teekert
All my ebooks get their DRM removed instantly and I back up my kindle every
now and then. This shit is not ever happening to me.

~~~
Johnny555
How do you strip Kindle DRM? asking for a friend.

~~~
amaccuish
Search for DeDRM plugin for calibre. There's several ways to do it. If you
have a physical kindle, you can download the books from your amazon account,
and plug the serial number of your kindle into DeDRM. If you have the Kindle
for PC or Mac app, DeDRM can pick up the relevent keys. I recommend getting
the books in the AWZ3 format rather than KFX.

~~~
Sirened
I couldn't make the desktop application ripping mechanic work. Apparently you
need to download an ancient version which still uses AWZ3 since KFX wasn't
support. I got lucky since I had an old gen one kindle on my account so I was
able to download the files from my account portal but I think I would've been
out of luck otherwise.

~~~
teekert
Ah yes,I have kindle keyboard (it won't die!) so maybe one will have problems
with the newer versions? After installing Calibre plugins, simply double
clicking to download books to my local library automatically strips the DRM.

------
ForHackernews
Another case of "Stallman was right": [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-
to-read.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html)

~~~
bitL
What's RMS up to these days? Haven't heard from him for a while...

~~~
fooblitzky
He seems to travel a lot giving speeches about Free Software. If you get the
FSF bulletin, you get updates each quarter, e.g.
[https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2018/fall/on-the-road-with-
rms](https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2018/fall/on-the-road-with-rms)

------
shmerl
How many times does this need to happen, for people stop paying for DRMed
junk? Buy digital goods DRM-free only. Vote with your wallet, otherwise it's
pointless to complain.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I don't suppose anyone ever cracked the DRM on Microsoft books such that the
De-DRM utilities for Calibre would work to scrub them before they're rendered
inaccessible?

------
rchaud
Back in 2005, my undergrad school gave students access to the then newly legit
Napster. Everything was DRM-d WMA files, but there was a third party tool that
stripped it out and let you play it on any device that played WMAs natively.

I'm reminded of that occasionally when I see files with "noDRM-$Artist-$Title"
pop up in the File Manager. Does Napster even exist anymore?

------
user17843
I'm so shocked about this, my Iphone almost slipped out of my hands while I
googled the Microsoft ebook store, but then I asked Alexa and she said
everything will be ok. My Tesla is now driving me to an analogue bookshop to
show my full support against dependence on digital platforms over my daily
life, I might even upload a protest video to Youtube.

~~~
hyperman1
Tesla's software in the car is probably phoning home on a regular base. What
happens if they pull the plug on those servers? You didn't buy that softare,
you're only licensing it, after all.

~~~
cyphar
That was the joke.

------
ar_lan
> Remember: Free with DRM is not the same thing as free.

I agree with him the whole way that this is weird, but this particular tweet
made no sense to me.

It seems akin to "Hey, we'll allow you to rent something for some duration for
free", and it sounds like he's saying that that situation is _also not free_.

~~~
ekingr
I understand it as two slightly different meanings for the word 'free'.

In French we have separate words for (a) 'free' as something we don't pay for
(gratuit) and (b) 'free' as your have the freedom to use it as you wish
(libre).

------
jacobwilliamroy
This book DRM thing also means that the online courses at my local college are
more expensive than the normal ones. Because they use copy protected materials
that self destruct at the end of the semester, there is no way to avoid paying
full price by borrowing, buying used, reselling or stealing.

------
nikofeyn
while i understand the general sentiment, this type of outcry and little quip
is kind of silly, because it's too late. everyone knew what they were signing
up for, and people still know what they're signing up for with kindle, itunes,
netflix, and every other "you're just buying a temporary license" service.
meanwhile, libraries in the u.s. are struggling despite being one of our
greatest ongoing services. libraries are awesome, but they are having to
redefine themselves (not necessarily a bad thing along some vectors) because
people aren't using the books that are there. so in effect, the books already
stopped working, but that doesn't make for good twitter hype.

and as far as killing off services go, giving full refunds is pretty rare and
should be applauded.

------
pcvarmint
Apprentice Alf's DeDRM tool may come to the rescue. [1]

I don't condone piracy, but if you buy an ebook, you should be able to read,
store and personally transport it freely.

[1]
[https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/](https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com/)

------
aaron695
OUYA stopped working this week.

Games lost (hacks available to get around it do exist though, like you could
hack the Microsoft books) even 100% free apps stopped working correctly.

For all OUYAs extreme self-righteous about open source they became the worst.

Perhaps a middle ground is needed

------
JamesBarney
I think that if something is DRMed like this the seller should be legally
required to use the word rent instead of buy. And place the length of
rental(licensing), which will require them to operate the server until that
point.

------
anotherevan
Anything with DRM is not sold, it is leased. My bugbear is that they still
have "Buy Now!" buttons and such, which to my mind is fraud.

I wonder what the reaction would be if it said, "Lease Now!" instead?

------
gtirloni
They could have offered non-DRM copies of the books to people who purchased
them and then closed shop. Giving refunds seems to be much more expensive than
the alternative?

------
AnssiH
They will fully refund all purchases, seems reasonable to me.

~~~
the_af
Imagine if one day you went to find your well-thumbed, most loved book in your
bookshelf, maybe to re-read your favorite chapter, and the physical book was
missing, replaced by a note from the publisher: "this book no longer works,
but worry not: we've refunded you!"

~~~
AnssiH
But this is not a physical book, so it is not a "unique" copy.

All of my e-books are entirely replaceable by buying them again from a
different store (or as a physical book).

~~~
cyphar
Deleting books is a form of virtual book-burning. Yes, you can always buy
another copy of the book (assuming that it's still being "printed"). But, that
isn't the point.

I do find it interesting that Amazon decided to name their book reader
"Kindle", of all things.

------
Nomentatus
When Amazon switched Canadian kindle customers to a Canadian site, all the
magazines they had purchased, and not yet read "stopped working." No refund.

------
0815test
"The books will stop working"? They were never "working" properly in the first
place! There's a reason why DRM systems are said to be "defective by design";
DRM is inherently anti-consumer (in denying entirely lawful rights, such as
format shifting and copying for the purpose of fair use under copyright law)
and DRM-encumbered media of any sort should always be regarded as _fake_
media.

------
cheez
What I do when I want a book or movie is I buy it somewhere, then pirate my
preferred format.

------
Simon_says
I have Twitter blocked. Is there another source?

------
ptah
paper books are better and you can get them cheaper than ebooks most of the
time

------
CrankyBear
DRM is censorship.

------
rbreve
In a way paper books "stop working" after 10 years or so when the paper turns
yellow and dusty

~~~
SCdF
"or so" is doing a heavy lifting in this sentence. 10 years is an absurdly
short time for a book to last.

~~~
Raphmedia
In fact, the majority of books you will find in most libraries are at the very
least 10 years old.

