https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-books-and-your-rights
EFF has released a wonderful checklist that sheds some very important light on the topic of digital books, and your rights.
You may be asking yourself, who gives a hoot? Well, lots of people do. More importantly you should care, and you should know and understand what is happening when it comes to this subject. We’re not exactly entering the age of Star Trek datapads being fully pervasive in our daily routines, but sure as sin we’re there with computers. Same concept, only wrapped in a different physical device. Even if you may not appreciate the value of such hardware/technology, it’s safe to say these devices are coming, and will be common place before you know it.
There’s much to be excited about when it comes to eReaders. These little devices are fantastic. The thought of being able to walk around with every book you want is overwhelming. Think of all those miserable days lugging around kilograms of textbooks! The tactile relationship between reading, and physical books will remain. Let’s be honest, if I could get all my textbooks, or O’Reilly books in a single device I could read easily — I’d be pretty happy! I appreciate books, I have close to a thousand in the basement, so it’s not like I want to replace the book. I just see eReaders as a natural movement of technology for storing and displaying information.
Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Nobles Nook, Sony’s Reader series, and the upcoming iPad from Apple are opening up a huge can of worms on the subject of Intellectual Property and who owns what. That’s really the big issue here. Are you borrowing a book? Or do you actually *own* it? What happens if the publishers change the rules?
It’s happened before. Amazon removed Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles all around the world last year. As the software/OS allows personal annotations (a common feature of eReaders), all of that stuff was deleted too. Nice eh? Each Kindle owner had zero say in the matter — people just woke up, and no more 1984, all their notes and comments lost. Irony aside, this is representative of the problems we’re going to have to address — and soon.
My point is we’re dealing with yet-another Elephant-In-The-Room scenario, one of many that exist in today’s technology that need to be resolved. You need only query “eReader rights” on Google and you’ll see just how crazy this topic is. We’re a long way from figuring this out, but at the very least the average consumer should know their rights. The EFF’s checklist is definitely worth your time to read — perhaps if you are lucky enough, on your eReader.
eff offers checklist of ereader rights, what you should know
https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-books-and-your-rights
EFF has released a wonderful checklist that sheds some very important light on the topic of digital books, and your rights.
You may be asking yourself, who gives a hoot? Well, lots of people do. More importantly you should care, and you should know and understand what is happening when it comes to this subject. We’re not exactly entering the age of Star Trek datapads being fully pervasive in our daily routines, but sure as sin we’re there with computers. Same concept, only wrapped in a different physical device. Even if you may not appreciate the value of such hardware/technology, it’s safe to say these devices are coming, and will be common place before you know it.
There’s much to be excited about when it comes to eReaders. These little devices are fantastic. The thought of being able to walk around with every book you want is overwhelming. Think of all those miserable days lugging around kilograms of textbooks! The tactile relationship between reading, and physical books will remain. Let’s be honest, if I could get all my textbooks, or O’Reilly books in a single device I could read easily — I’d be pretty happy! I appreciate books, I have close to a thousand in the basement, so it’s not like I want to replace the book. I just see eReaders as a natural movement of technology for storing and displaying information.
Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Nobles Nook, Sony’s Reader series, and the upcoming iPad from Apple are opening up a huge can of worms on the subject of Intellectual Property and who owns what. That’s really the big issue here. Are you borrowing a book? Or do you actually *own* it? What happens if the publishers change the rules?
It’s happened before. Amazon removed Orwell’s 1984 from Kindles all around the world last year. As the software/OS allows personal annotations (a common feature of eReaders), all of that stuff was deleted too. Nice eh? Each Kindle owner had zero say in the matter — people just woke up, and no more 1984, all their notes and comments lost. Irony aside, this is representative of the problems we’re going to have to address — and soon.
My point is we’re dealing with yet-another Elephant-In-The-Room scenario, one of many that exist in today’s technology that need to be resolved. You need only query “eReader rights” on Google and you’ll see just how crazy this topic is. We’re a long way from figuring this out, but at the very least the average consumer should know their rights. The EFF’s checklist is definitely worth your time to read — perhaps if you are lucky enough, on your eReader.