

Stallman: EBooks are "attacking our freedom" - noarchy
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/367894/ebooks-are-attacking-our-freedom

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StavrosK
"ebooks" aren't "attacking our freedom". DRM and proprietary formats are.

I'm publishing my Python tutorial on leanpub (a great idea which I plug
whenever I can) and it's DRM free and available on many formats:

<http://leanpub.com/learn-python/>

You just buy the book once and you can download as many of the formats as you
want, whenever you want, and if I update the book you get all subsequent
versions for free. You can back it up and share it with your friends (maybe
that's illegal, but you have my permission to do it with my book), etc.

~~~
dfxm12
Can you resell it to a friend when you have no more use for it and they need
it?

~~~
orofino
If you want to resell it, then forgo the benefit of being able to carry
hundred or thousands of books around in a tiny device and buy the dead trees.
Large industries won't just change overnight, we saw that Apple needed to gain
a foothold before they could remove the DRM form their music.

These changes need to be evolutionary, publishers need to be persuaded (or
forced) to make this change, no one has the leverage for that today. I hate
DRM as much as the next guy, but this is a stepping stone, it isn't "attackin"
anything.

If your issue is with all digital distribution, I'm not sure I can help you.

edit: typo

~~~
RexRollman
In my opinion, if you can't resell an ebook when you no longer want it, then
you never really owned it; you licensed it. I don't have a problem with that
but normal people rarely seem to understand this before spending their money.

(Personally, I don't think ebook companies should even be allowed to use the
term "buy" with their books since that is not what you are actually doing;
instead of "buy this book" it should say "license this book".)

~~~
hugh3
Normal people don't understand that because normal people don't care. I've
never sold a book, most other people don't sell books either.

I mean, if it bothers you then don't buy ebooks (I don't, personally, because
I like having the physical copies on my walls... I collect 'em in the same way
that hunters used to collect animal heads, as trophies... I also don't shelve
'em until I've read 'em). But I really can't see what the big fuss is about re
not being able to sell them, and one might _almost_ think that all this anti-
DRM stuff is about frustrated pirates rather than folks who want to do legit
things.

~~~
vacri
The heavy readers in my life will look aghast if you mention that they might
want to sell or archive some of their groaning bookshelves

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rmc
I was pleasantly suprised to find that, for the Kindle Direct Publishing
platform, DRM is _optional_. That's right. You don't need DRM to sell ebooks
on the Kindle Shop.

~~~
mvalle
I suspect this might be the work of Cory Docterow, I believe I heard him
mentioning that the did a deal with Amazon where they would publish his books
without DRM. But I might be wrong.

~~~
rmc
I suspect another reason is that many self published authors want to use
Creative Commons licenced works for book covers, and (depending on the
licence) you would not be able to use DRM on a CC book.

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nextparadigms
I heard Amazon might be allowing epub books from authors/publishers starting
this fall, but I doubt they'll be converting all their existing ebooks to
ePub, which is a shame.

And Stallman is right. You have fewer rights with ebooks than you do with real
books.

~~~
noarchy
I agree with him on those points. Where I disagree is when he suggests that
taxes should be used to pay authors. It is difficult to justify that in the
name of "freedom", imo.

~~~
esrauch
It seems like this identical argument was made when the first tax-paid public
libraries were opened, and yet very few people seem to be anti-public library
today.

~~~
hnal943
Actually, I have a harder time finding people that still see libraries as
necessary. The internet has pretty much met everyone's need for the
information and entertainment the library provided, and then some.

~~~
scraplab
I completely disagree. Libraries, in the UK at least, are a fantastic resource
for the poor and marginalised. To see our current government's attempts to
shut them down is saddening.

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jeffreymcmanus
The potential for ebooks to increase the distribution and reduce the cost of
books, thereby increasing our freedom, never seems to be factored into this
discussion. I wonder why?

~~~
jackowayed
How does more utility == more freedom?

I can lend physical books to friends, I can sell them when I'm done with them,
I can buy them cheap from others who are done with them. That's freedom. And
that's what the books I have the opportunity to buy on my Kindle lack (ability
to lend some Kindle books in a lame way aside).

No matter how many more books I have on the Kindle because ebooks are cheaper,
the only freedom I have with them are to read them on devices that Amazon
decides to support and to lend my whole Kindle to someone to let them read
something.

~~~
tzs
Buy a physical book. Read it. Sell it. Net result is you had the book for a
short while, effectively got a discount on it (because you sold it), and if
you change your mind and want to read it again you'll have to go buy it again.

Compare to buying that book on Kindle. If the savings are more than what your
net cost is in the physical case, you come out ahead, because on the Kindle
side you don't actually get rid of the book. At most you stop syncing it to
the device. If you later decide you want to read it again, you don't have to
go out and buy another copy.

Even for books that you would not sell, Kindle can be a win on freedom simply
by being cheaper. I'm free to read more books if I'm spending less per book.
It then becomes a matter of weighing the options. Go with physical books, and
I don't have to worry that maybe some legal snafu will result in my books
ceasing to function. Go with Kindle, and read more books for the same money.

What Stallman overlooks in most of his arguments is that many of us are
adults. We are capable of considering the alternatives and deciding which of
the competing freedoms are most important to us.

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thisrod
Here is Stallman's proposal, in his own words:

[http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-
license.en.htm...](http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-
license.en.html)

Australia, Canada, the US and the UK spend lots of public money on books,
paintings, plays, concerts and broadcasts. Stallman wants to abstract over
media, and pay according to law instead of ministerial taste. That makes sense
to me.

Remember that copying is only an issue if you publish. You can charge whatever
you want for the privilege of seeing your unpublished work. If you'd lose
money by publishing it, don't.

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siphr
I have to disagree with RMS here. As an example of ebooks attacking our
freedom, I agree with someone else that the problem is DRM and not the ebooks.
Amazon, for example, lets the publisher choose whether they would like DRM in
their ebooks or not. More so, the publishing platform lets the publisher to
allow lending. The issue of Amazon wiping out 1984 is one of those things that
has been done to death as a news article on the internet. Sure it was wrong,
but from the copyright holder's point of view, it may be justified.

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Steko
Ironically one of our best bets for efreedoms is from the efforts of
authoritarian countries looking to protect local industries from US content
behemoths.

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teyc
I'd love to see Stallman and Andrea Dworkin on stage together.

