The Danger of E-books – By Richard Stallman

This is a work by Richard Stallman. I thought it was useful to reprint here because I think it’s interesting and his PDF is corrupting my browser.

In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead. With printed books,

• You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
• Then you own it.
• You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.
• The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the book.
• You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes lawful under copyright.
• Nobody has the power to destroy your book.

Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):

• Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
• In some countries, Amazon says the user does not own the ebook.
• Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
• The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
• To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
• Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Even one of these infringements makes ebooks a step backward from printed books. We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.

The ebook companies say denying our traditional freedoms is necessary to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system does a lousy job of that; it is much better suited to supporting those companies. We can support authors better in other ways that don’t require curtailing our freedom, and even legalize sharing. Two methods I’ve suggested are:

• To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each author’s popularity.
• (See http://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html.)
• To design players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.

Ebooks need not attack our freedom, but they will if companies get to decide. It’s up to us to stop them. The fight has already started.

Copyright 2011 Richard Stallman
Released under Creative Commons Attribution Noderivs 3.0.

Do the publishers have price drops planned?

Just something to think about. What if the publishers and the larger book sellers already know that the ebook tipping point won’t happen until their books cost $3.  But they also know that they are in a time that they can continue to milk ebook buyers for $10 an ebook as the novelty of e-readers remains fresh and there is still security through obscurity. The average e-book owner hasn’t really seen where books can be acquired outside the normal channels.

But they will. Because when all the college students start sporting tablets and readers, and when the little kids have them, they simply will not tolerate NOT being able to share and educate.  And when sharing is easier than buying, you will see a spike in sharing. Also if purchasing is too restrictive, then people will find alternatives.  The interesting part of the story are the people who aren’t buying the e-readers, not the people who are.  The potential for ebook sales is frightening.  The key is waiting to be turned.  And that key is $2.99.

Publishers are people too. Sure some of them are deluded, but most of them have mortgages and kids and are just average people that don’t like to pay for things. And they probably know they will have to decide when the golden days of $10 ebooks are over and volume is the new plan.

Books can be impulse buys, but only when they are cheap.  If I was giving an ebook reader to a family member as a gift, I’m paying quite a bit of money for that present.  To get the recipient of the ground so to speak, I may load some public domain classics on the reader, but that’s all. They are on their own after that. Now if ebooks were priced closer to their mainstream perceived worth then you’d have people buying five or ten popular ebooks along with the device. At $9.99, I might buy one ebook as a gift.  The question is, does the publisher want me spending $10 or $30 on the transaction that requires no extra leg work for them? (Nearly free digital distribution works this way.)  I’ll spend more to get a bundle of titles.  Because I know that my wife or daughter isn’t going to like some things, and you know maybe I’ll get a book for me or the rest of the family on there, it’s just a couple bucks. Aha!  A new value proposition emerges.

I know some people would read this and be shocked that I’d propose a best seller should be priced at $2.99.  I’ll go further. I think a best seller should be $1.79.  Why? Because it will be sold in massive quantities, downloaded faster than a music file and will contain ads to pay the author and publisher even more. Any author moving a lot of media is a target for sponsors ready to piggyback. Ads work in books where they wouldn’t work in music.  And trust me on this, you might hear people saying they won’t stand for ads in their books, but I assure you they will tolerate them just fine.

Here’s to hope that we see the new economy of ebooks get rational so we can see it take off into something interesting.  Or the publishers could try to hold their current pricing models for a few more years, and see where that leads.

Of course ebooks will have ads

I don’t know why I keep seeing these articles feigning shock, or those that question the new philosophy or acceptance of putting ads in books. Of course ebooks will have ads. It’s been done for over a hundred years in books and it might even bring prices down, or to zero. And it will also not be all that problematic for many of us. Some of us won’t mind and the rest of us know where there are ads, there are ad blockers. And the more sophisticated advertising gets, the easier it will be to block.

Let me state what I mean. In order to help pay me, a struggling author, more, I can get an ad contract from a company. I make the deal, get the sponsorship money, put the ads in as part of the book maybe in the margins, maybe as a footer message on ever chapter front page, and a few pages at the back (just like every high school sports tournament book you’ve ever seen). This set of ads comes as part of the text, doesn’t change, isn’t all that intrusive and has that home grown feeling.  Those who bought my book don’t get too bothered, and at some level connect with it.  I’m probably even thanking my advertisers in the preface. The ads are absorbed or ignores as advertising goes. In the end, it doesn’t effect public opinion of my book.

Then you have the latest massive best seller, the head of the long tail.  It is published under Big Pub, with ads from Big Pharma, Big Oil, etc. The ads are ever changing, they of course have to stand out, they deploy overlays, begging you to ‘touch’ them. You know, anything to catch your eye, because who gives a damn that you’re reading or what you’re reading.

Then something happens. It begins with some frustration a few blog posts, some bad press about a popular book. People expressing distaste. Then plugins start coming out designed to disable these ads, hosted at a snarky website that you can download instantly. Because the Big Pub ad code is  standardized by the partner of Big Pub it just takes a few strokes of code and the dynamic ever-changing ads are routed by the blocker plugins to fizzle out, to turn invisible or are auto-overlayed, display:none whatever technique needed.

How am I able to forecast this? Because I know of the existence of greed. Greed causes people to act irrationally, to force their desires on others.  And where one strong emotion like greed is born, on the other side of the universe, there is born the anti-matter of said emotion. The balancing force. Whitehat hackers, or just industrious people who have had enough. They have the distaste for greed.  And they will focus their weekend spare time on blocking the bigger annoying ad networks because THEY CHOOSE TO. Because where there are vampires, you need vampire hunters.

While this goes on, others will be distributing the open versions of those texts more readily. And where the ads get too ridiculous, the rational, freedom lovers, commonists, and people who just miss the good ole days, will rally against the greed.  And like DRM has in some parts of the spectrum has been beaten down, so will the wrong kinds of ads.

But ads are OK.  And they will be OK, until they are NOT OK. And you’ll all know when that happens if you are paying attention. So stop acting so surprised about it. Books are predominantly niche products and many are written by intelligent people who care about their outcome. Which means there’s a chance that you actually will read books with ads you kinda like. Because the author had some say about it. I wouldn’t bet my farm on it, but I’m optimistic.

14 day loan feature for ebooks are a joke

I remember when I was little I used to wonder what it would be like to have everything I ever wanted.  What would the world be like if I could have it all and so could my friends. Would it be boring? Or would we always have something interesting to do? After a lot of thought later in life, I’m certain that at least having access to everything is better than being left wanting.

In the digital content universe, we figured out a way that we could duplicate and share to our hearts content. Duplication is a requirement for our computers to work, during the transfer, memory and storage processes.  But THEN we began to suffer through a period in which people put locks and chains on information after they realized that now that we truly can have everything, that simply can’t be allowed to happen.

Even worse, for those of us who have enjoyed owning books all our lives, and being able to give them away, share them in our own right for as long as they’ve existed, the ebook industry movement, faced with a flexible product has gone and made it LESS flexible than the physical book.

With a lot of feigned fanfare, Amazon, the maker of Kindle has introduced a feature, previously only available through a competitor, the Nook. The Kindle software will now let you loan the ebooks you own to your friends, (as long as the publisher allows it).  Your friend can borrow the ebook from you for up to 14 days, one time only. After 14 days, the book vanishes somehow.

Only the conniving would spin this inherent and built-in weakness as some kind of benefit rather than the big negative embarrassment it actually is.  Sure on the one hand, we want to get those who made the book paid.  But on the other, why do we insist on pretending that these digital files are subject to the physical limitation of real property. Reality says digital files can be copied infinitely at no cost. Reality for ebooks is even better as their storage is so minimal in most cases.

If you agree with this direction and go through the system like the mindless consumer they hope you are, and you’ll buy the Amazon Kindle ebook, you’ll pay near the full price of the paper book despite getting nothing of its benefits. And you can’t REALLY share your book with people.  And you can’t really give it to somebody either.  Because if you could give it to somebody digitally, then they own it and could give it back to you. And that is where the current industry says “whoa whoa, that’s not the kind of behaviors we can really manage or support, so we’ll just not allow it.”

Because we can’t have pesky reality creeping into our ebook sales numbers can we?

The solution to this problem only works when you can in your mind, fully reorganize book publishing as you think you know it.  But even then it’s a messy mess.  Unfortunately, so is the current path we’re on. Readers  have to have the same rights with ebooks as we do with paper books. Anyone preventing this disrespects people and the reality of the world we live in. It disrespects rational thought and is greedy, malicious and unconcerned. Layers of this kind of ignorance that creates systems of digital product commerce are just weak legs holding up a flimsy table top. One that is unsustainable when faced with any kind of disruption. It’s especially sad being within the industry involved in the spreading of knowledge.

Why not purge your bookshelves and format shift to ebook shelves

Following a favorite author on Twitter, @DaveCullen, we saw this page at Oprah.com. When your book collection becomes unruly. It’s time to purge. They have a useful checklist of what might make a book worthy of keeping or tossing when you must regain some space. But they fail to mention a very clear solution to the problem of annoying book clutter. Ebooks barely take up any space. Your home library compressed properly probably fits on a 16GB Flash drive.

Organizing Ideas for Your Bookshelves – Tips for Clutter – Oprah.com.

Initially I wrote this discussing the possibilities and challenges with book scanning. But except for somebody willing to completely destroy a book by stripping the spine in order to feed into an affordable excellent home document scanner, it’s simply too annoying a process to recommend to most people. The books you are thinking of getting rid of are mostly the ones you don’t really want all that much. Otherwise you’d find a way to make space for them.

If you’ve been collecting hardcovers for years and have a beautiful library, you keep those and save space another way, downsize your bed or something. The problem of books for people are the ones they aren’t using, they’ve partially read and didn’t care enough to continue for the time being. Nothing wrong with that. In that case you simply don’t need that book. If you wanted to read it, you could pick it up at the library.

So the answer really is, to get our public libraries to the state where you can borrow books, all books on demand. This could be many years away though. Right now, borrowing ebooks from the library you need a specific device type and the books available are very small. A company called Overdrive powers many of these systems in place at libraries now.  I’m not even sure the rationale behind the available books actually. Maybe every library website is just showing the boring titles that aren’t checked out in an scroller. I do know this, the system is based on artificial scarcity. People will “return” a book and then you can check it out. This is ridiculous. Say what you want about government money systems and how it’s all artificial. But an artificial scarcity of information is just disgraceful. “The book is right there, why can’t I borrow it?”  Because somebody made an agreement somewhere and it was decided to give one group  the control over the information. I’m willing to entertain the thought that libraries should be able to transmit freely working for the public good outside of the control of copyright.

The situation is sad enough to make you want to create or contribute to a pirate culture for books.  At least until balance can be achieved again.  Until then, desperate times, desperate measures. Scanning looks like a better idea because at least I have the power and the control there. I’m not subjected to the whims of Overdrive and whatever legal limitations are being imposed in these library partnerships. (Note I’m not blaming Overdrive, but the system is a farce when you can get access to all the books whenever you want, at least for a temporary amount of time, that doesn’t amount to permanent download ownership.)

Let’s take a look at another favorite author, Lawrence Lessig and examine the copyright / credits page of his book Free Culture published by Penguin.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

Ok, nicely done. Now let’s look at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which Lessig is a contributing member and their Fair Use FAQ.

4. What’s been recognized as fair use?

Courts have previously found that a use was fair where the use of the copyrighted work was socially beneficial. In particular, U.S. courts have recognized the following fair uses: criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, research and parodies.

In addition, in 1984 the Supreme Court held that time-shifting (for example, private, non-commercial home taping of television programs with a VCR to permit later viewing) is fair use. (Sony Corporation of America v. Universal City Studios, 464 U.S. 417 (1984, S.C.)

Although the legal basis is not completely settled, many lawyers believe that the following (and many other uses) are also fair uses:

• Space-shifting or format-shifting – that is, taking content you own in one format and putting it into another format, for personal, non-commercial use. For instance, “ripping” an audio CD (that is, making an MP3-format version of an audio CD that you already own) is considered fair use by many lawyers, based on the 1984 Betamax decision and the 1999 Rio MP3 player decision (RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia, 180 F. 3d 1072, 1079, 9th Circ. 1999.)
• Making a personal back-up copy of content you own – for instance, burning a copy of an audio CD you own.

So the courts have ruled in favor of making personal backup copies.  “MAKING” backup copies, not trolling the internet for rogue PDFs and ePub files. There’s no ruling in favor of getting the ebook source from a torrent website or newsgroups just because you own the physical book. My opinion, it’s just a legal issue. My ethics tell me it’s perfectly fine to get the ebook file available somewhere and as long as I’m not sharing it, it’s a convenient backup for me. Not everyone sees it that way. But I wouldn’t feel at all guilty about it. For me to obtain it though, remember it means somebody else is infringing copyright. Unless there in one of those countries who doesn’t recognize it.

If you MAKE your own book scan as a backup. You could freely destroy the original and your digital backup becomes your main copy. And since the only way to store a digital backup is in within a personal “retrieval system” then keeping a small library of backup files on USB, SD cards or what have you, is the only choice.

I write this knowing that it’s within a very strange and sometimes incomprehensible framework known as copyright law. And of course I’m no lawyer and cannot be trusted.  Books shouldn’t be so troubling though. We were all fortunate that CDs were digital content widely distributed on a physical entity. Ripping them to a compressed digital file (mp3) to make portable became so easy, it is now most likely an included feature in your computer’s operating system.

The answer ultimately for the public’s future is within portable connected devices, with cameras, scanning and downloading books.  The other thing is to make these books more affordable and in more hands. Either we want to limit potential, or we don’t. If libraries get to where they can’t maintain their inventory due to funding, and books aren’t there, we have to supplant that with downloads. And these downloads need to be instant. Because people have projects, deadlines, interests. I’m not gonna wait for the 89th person to “return” one of the two available copies of the John Steinbeck book when my kid’s paper is due.  If somebody isn’t getting paid, we work that out without stifling the entire population by artificial means from getting to books to make said population richer and more capable.

JK Rowling says – let’s make ebooks

TheBookSeller.com reports that JK Rowling has seen the light and will allow selling of her Harry Potter series digitally.  Whew good thing, finally people might eventually get Harry Potter as an ebook.

Small problem. Fans have already typed out all the books and made PDFs, ePubs and text downloads long ago. Had this been available earlier from the publisher(s), there would have been sales to take advantage of at the time. But customers have been lost.

There was an interesting point made in the article. To create a book experience unique to the franchise, it’s gotta be more than text, wouldn’t you think?  There’s an entire theme park built around Harry Potter as well as the movies. It’s almost embarrassing if they didn’t dig a little deeper for the ebook version.  The question was, for this book to be successful, does one partner with a publisher, animation studio, app developer or what?

Good question.  If you try to make apps, you’ll be making more than one for the various devices, iPad, Android, Flash / Adobe AIR etc. If you want to reach the e-reader market, you won’t really be able to have anything but text.  If somebody buys one, will they get access to all? Will one be cheaper than another? Will there be a discount over the whole set? Will it be affordable, or is it better to just pick up a used copy somewhere, since there are thousands of those everywhere. Everytime I go to the thrift store, they have Harry Potter books. Plus if you have the DVDs, where does an enhanced book fit in? Might it be a lot of work just for something gimmicky? And when it comes to sales, does that matter?  Will e-books have anything to give to collectors? A gold CD or something? Or how about a dedicated Harry Potter tablet? That could actually work given the popularity of this franchise.

Will the internet conform to the device or vice versa?

Apple’s got a new page up highlighting “iPad Ready” websites.  With the existence of HTML5 video enabled in some browsers, and Apple’s lack of flash support, it appears that they want to tout the “correctness” of being iPad ready.

Has Apple previously had an “is your site iPhone ready” website?  I don’t remember one. It appears that their game plan is to get everyone to conform to their artificial limitation, rather than to partner up with Adobe, who has been working very hard to to optimize  Flash to support Apple devices.

We shall see, but let’s keep this in mind. HTML5 and Javascript can do things that Flash can do. But not everything as well, and NOT as easily. An interactive designer can use flash drawing tools and the timeline and create an experience with motion, sound and integrated media elements. Some programming required, but one doesn’t have to be a programmer  to accomplish this. Flash gives non-programmers this ability. And the swf file format is open for other vendors and free software to generate this too.

We have yet to see a visual editor or timeline for creating these experiences in Javascript.  So the web visitors using iPads will still miss things like interactive games and programs even if all of our video is delivered using HTML5.

I personally like many of the interactive possibilities with Flash and video, clickable regions, playlists. There are tools that do this well in Flash.  Why not let us choose if we want to put Flash or anything else in the browser Apple?

Some of us know the answer. It’s not because of memory issues. It’s because Flash can do a lot that can disrupt Apple  app sales. Entire graphic editors and word processors have been made in Flash, and too many other cool things to count or mention.  Having Flash makes the App store less interesting to buy from. That is the sad fact.  The iPad is great and will do well. But this limitation is kinda big and disappointing for many site owners who have been able to use flash to deliver special cross platform experiences.

Site owners and visitors will lose out some. And this might mean that another tablet becomes more popular.

Here’s the trouble. I REALLY like that smaller programming teams and individuals have been able to capitalize on their skill and sales of apps at the app store. Many of us appreciate that single use applications for mobile are important and have made our lives easier or more fun. I especially like the image of a lone programmer getting what s/he deserves from profits out of the app store.

However, that doesn’t mean we need to pretend technology doesn’t exist just to make them better. We’re still getting programs created in a closed system (iPhone code) with strict developer agreements. Adobe doesn’t care who gets what Flash program to run where and how. It’s open and it’s not subject to restricted app store approval.  Sure they sell their Flash developer tools and they cost money. But I can also generate a Flash slideshow from OpenOffice, or one out of many other programs and your iPad can’t see it or use it.  That’s too bad.

Thoughts on Flash and choice

There has been a lot of talk about Flash. People love it, need it and despise it. I wanted to add my most rational comment to the conversation:

There are a lot of websites with embedded videos that need to play. That means having Flash is a benefit to people looking at pages. Youtube embeds should work, there’s Vimeo, Veoh, Revver, ForaTV, Revision 3 and a lot more sites where you can play videos and from which you can embed them elsewhere. Both methods of playback should work. If these sites migrate to HTML5 eventually without losing functionality, that’sall well and good, but they exist now in their present form, and I’d like to watch them on a computer tablet, even if it uses my battery a little more.

I want Flash, others may not. The choice is important. People saying Flash sucks. OK great, not very helpful, but I can appreciate people having problems on their systems that I might not experience. I think parts of Google and Yahoo suck. But I might still want to see all of these sites for whatever reason. Therefore I welcome Flash 10.1 when it’s ready. There are a lot of developers of children’s games in Flash, sites like PBS Kids, as well as highschool and college curriculum that are successfully using Flash for many things right now. Why shouldn’t we have a choice to view it on our devices?  Sure, there could be security or battery issues, or slowness. It can happen. A lot can happen on a computer. That’s the downside of all the upsides. We as consumers and creators and manufacturers can prepare for the worst. Backup plans so we don’t have to suffer a dead brick because of a virus or mistake.

People who don’t want Flash, then don’t use it. It’s not that hard. Remove it from all your browsers. End of story. Just like we hear that Steve Jobs can choose what he wants on / off his platform, so can every website owner decide how to display content. They choose Flash, others don’t. If I want to use just text files for my website, I can do that. These choices are important.

When HTML5 and Javascript can do all the things Flash can do, and there are visual tools to make that happen, I’m thinking website designers will jump on board.  Some are even creating workarounds like Smokescreen. HTML5 is unfinished. Javascript requires coding knowledge, and the video embed for h.264 always that much better for the processor.  Nor is that video format open by any means, though it is prolific.  I’d like to have both, HTML5 and Flash video.

Again, if you don’t like Flash, don’t use it.  Don’t expect websites and webapps not to use it when for some things when it’s sometimes the best choice, being cross platform with all the features is has. Sadly, the part about Flash that works so well, also is overused in advertising. Flash allows ads to be embedded, overlayed and scheduled in to videos and banner ad networks. As annoying as those are, they keep many sites in operation.

That’s it.

OLPC – Was it a success?

Slashgear has a scathing commentary on how the One Laptop Per Child project was a tragedy. There are several parts I agree with, but I don’t think the project was a failure. I think it didn’t reach all it’s potential. However I don’t think it was all that simple either.  I’ll make no excuses for them. They were blessed with a lot of resources and a lot of media coverage, partnerships, some real ringers in their team and they had a good idea. And I think based on the number of laptops delivered and people informed, they made a huge dent in a lot of people’s lives.

Problems? In some ways they are major, in others minor. The hardware is pretty darn cool. Sure the keyboard is small. And the biggest complaint for me would be the battery life. But they also achieved a very interesting form factor, kept the device low power, totally cool to the touch, included an innovative wireless network system and did it in a way that it could be repaired a lot easier than most devices. The screen was / is magnificent.

The failure to live up to the potential would be in several aspects of the software. Say what you want about it being a different way of thinking to use the system, but it wasn’t all that good. The journal system was slow and hard to manage. It wasn’t clear how to do certain things, such as understanding the difference between a shortcut and an actual file. Initial releases were problematic for internet connection. The system wasn’t as fast is it could have been. Clearly it was a lean OS, but we should have seen more speed.

Some people complain about this project because so many countries need help meeting basic needs. But nearl all of these complaints make little sense when you see where the laptops were delivered. These towns may not have the best infrastructure, and they might be quite poor. But they have classrooms, they have an need for learning and this project was one that gave them something new. Was it the absolute best thing for everyone? Probably not, but it continues to be a great project and resource. It’s still happening!

There was a comment made on the fact that with the laptops, we didn’t provide a curriculum.  Well that’s just stupid. There are teachers and they are expected to make use of the tool in class. They already have lesson plans there. They just use this new tool, same as if they added a TV / VCR to the classroom.  Integrating it is not up to the OLPC. How could they dictate that to all these countries.  “Now  here’s where we provide you with the 9 Lessons of the North American perspective on WWII“  Not gonna work. Examples and device training are enough. The laptops are easy to use. Screw around a little bit and you can make sense of most of it. It’s not perfect, but neither were their lives (or our lives) before the laptop became part of it.

Feel free to jump in and make a difference yourself

That’s the answer to pretty much all project criticism. There are some things that are part of a timely plan, so you’re not going to disrupt the project plan as it is, but there’s room to make a difference yourself here. And anytime somebody wants to complain about the project, best they remember that just because OLPC exists, doesn’t mean suddenly these developing cities and towns AREN’T getting something else. And if they are lacking in another area. Feel free to pitch in and make that happen. Nobody told Nicholas Negroponte that he had to do something here. He saw the need, the opportunity and went in the direction right or wrong.  He’s been to these places, he’s made the plans, got the backing, the publicity, the team. And he’s delivered the laptops. The laptops work, they are engineered well. They don’t blow all similar technology out of the water, but they do serve a good purpose. They are useful and likeable. And people appreciate them.  In that I see success.