In praise of dead trees

[sabotabby]

You know what's great?

Books that are printed on paper.

You know why?

Because I can open up a 100-year-old paper book and it will still work the way it's supposed to. Unlike, say, my three-year-old Sony Reader, which now does not work because it's incompatible with Adobe Digital Editions and the Sony Reader software is incompatible with the new Mac OS, and Calibre, which is open source, can't manage library e-books. The device can't download from the library directly because it's full of garbage that Sony put on there and slow as shit to boot.

So now I can only read e-books that I steal or buy. Which is not something I'm in the habit of doing.

Thanks, capitalism!

Comments

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[sabotabby]

DRM is a fucking plague on humanity. It doesn't actually deter piracy or protect creators; it just makes things difficult for honest people.

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Yup. And in fact, I think it largely screws creators.

I actually used Peter Watts tip-jar last year (no wait, that was 2014! Jeezuz ... And I owe him a god damned email! *guilt, guilt, guilt*) to recompense him directly for my pirated ecopy of Echopraxia, since I wasn't able to get it without DRM (which is weird, because I thought Tor was one of the publishers that had decided not to use it. But I digress).

In fact this whole comment is a digression. What the hell was my point?

Oh yeah. I think DRM is used primarily to try to keep paper economically viable. My impression is that the publishers who really like it are the ones who price ebooks more or less the same as (and sometimes more than) paper copies.

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[sabotabby]

Say hi for me. :)

I'm surprised TOR uses DRM. I thought all of his stuff was for free off his website anyway.

I don't know if the point of DRM is paper; ebooks are ultimately not economically viable, since they can be copied infinitely. It's to keep the artificial pricing system functional.

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised TOR uses DRM.

I'm almost certain they don't. My best guess is that it was a new book and the merchant I tried added it by default (and by mistake). Or else, I managed to screw up somehow. In any case, I couldn't make it open and got a refund before I "stole" it, then gave the money directly to the writer.

I don't know if the point of DRM is paper; ebooks are ultimately not economically viable, since they can be copied infinitely.

I'm not so sure about that. Outfits like Tor or even Kristine Kathryn Rusch's WMG (or even Baen) claim to be doing good business in reasonably-priced, DRM-free books. Personally, I've found myself impulse-buying again, in part because some of these folks make it so easy for me to give them my money.

Re: Smashwords or smash the corporations?

[sabotabby]

Yeah, they're also banking on goodwill, as opposed to the less fandom-y based publishers.