The Danger of E-Books
9th July 2016
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 give, lend or sell the book to another.
- 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 e-books (fairly typical):
- Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an e-book.
- In some countries, including the US, Amazon says the user cannot own the e-book.
- Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the e-book.
- The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
- An ersatz “lending” is allowed for some books, for a limited time, but only by specifying by name another user of the same system. No giving or selling.
- To copy the e-book 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 e-book 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 e-books a step backward from printed books. We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom.
July 9th, 2016 at 11:54
The Pirate Bay.and 100’s of other sites. E books can be, and and are being copied and shared, often before they are released. Including every textbook and tech manual.
July 10th, 2016 at 07:07
What CraigAustin says is true, but even if you don’t go that route, the problem described is with Amazon’s proprietary Kindle format, not with ebooks in general. I’ve switched entirely to ebooks, but read only in epub format – if I do get Kindle books, I use Calibre (https://calibre-ebook.com/) to convert them to epub. If someone I know only has a Kindle, Calibre strips the DRM so I can send them that format.
Bottom line – the fact that one ebook system (Amazon’s) is screwed up isn’t particularly relevant.
July 10th, 2016 at 10:45
An excellent point. I use Calibre myself for the same reason, and to archive my Amazon book purchases so that they can’t arbitrarily decide to make them go away some day.
July 11th, 2016 at 08:50
Amazon’s Kindle accepts nearly every format available, including PDF.
While it’s true that you can buy a book anonymously and own a book forever, the reality is that there are few books that are worth collecting and fewer still that require anonymity.
The Kindle lets me carry a library anywhere I want to go. I can buy books without leaving home and read them within seconds. I’m a huge ebook fan.
The subject reminds me of something that happened when the book “Shades of Grey” came out. I think it was covered on this site, but I actually saw it happen at a book store. Women were buying the book (with it’s sex and bondage), but were embarrassed to admit the purchase. So they’d call and have the book put in a bag, then send one of their kids in to pick it up. I witnessed a woman in a minivan (so cliche) do that, and the clerk at the counter said it was going on every day. The market adjusts in whatever ways it must in order to keep profits coming in.