www/philosophy essays-and-articles.html ebooks-...

[Jason Self]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Jason Self <jxself>     12/05/08 22:22:41

Modified files:
        philosophy     : essays-and-articles.html 
Added files:
        philosophy     : ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html 

Log message:
        New RMS article, RT # 751555

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.25&r2=1.26
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/philosophy/ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1

Patches:
Index: essays-and-articles.html
===================================================================
RCS file: /web/www/www/philosophy/essays-and-articles.html,v
retrieving revision 1.25
retrieving revision 1.26
diff -u -b -r1.25 -r1.26
--- essays-and-articles.html    27 Apr 2012 20:46:30 -0000      1.25
+++ essays-and-articles.html    8 May 2012 22:22:25 -0000       1.26
@@ -216,6 +216,9 @@
   published in Technology Review in 2000,
   by <a href="http://www.stallman.org";> Richard Stallman</a></li>
 
+  <li><a href="/philosophy/ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html">
+Ebooks must increase our freedom, not decrease it</a></li>
+
   <li><a href="/philosophy/can-you-trust.html">Can you trust your
   computer?</a>, a work by <a href="http://www.stallman.org";>Richard
   Stallman</a> about the so-called &ldquo;trusted computing&rdquo;
@@ -470,7 +473,7 @@
 <p>
 Updated:
 <!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2012/04/27 20:46:30 $
+$Date: 2012/05/08 22:22:25 $
 <!-- timestamp end -->
 </p>
 </div>

Index: ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html
===================================================================
RCS file: ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html
diff -N ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html
--- /dev/null   1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html   8 May 2012 22:22:25 -0000       1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,155 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- $Revision: 1.1 $ -->
+<title>E-books must increase our freedom, not decrease it
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<!--#set var="article_name" value="/server/standards/boilerplate" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/gnun/initial-translations-list.html" -->
+<h2>E-books must increase our freedom, not decrease it</h2>
+<p>by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/";><strong>Richard
+Stallman</strong></a></p>
+
+<p>This article was originally published by the Guardian with changes.
+This version restores the original version of some of the changes.</p>
+
+<p>I love The Jehovah Contract, and I'd like everyone else to love it
+too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed
+books let us do that.</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't do that with most commercial e-books. It's "not allowed".
+And if I tried to disobey, the software in e-readers has malicious
+features called Digital Restrictions Management or DRM to restrict reading,
+so it simply won't work. The e-books are encrypted so only that
+malicious software can display them.</p>
+
+<p>Many other habits that we readers are accustomed to are "not
+allowed" for e-books. With the Amazon "Kindle", to take one example,
+users can't buy a book anonymously with cash. "Kindle" books are
+typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon makes users identify
+themselves. Thus, Amazon knows exactly which books each user has
+read. In a country such as the UK, where you can be <a
+href="http://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-mar-jun.html#07_April_2012_%28Wrong_book%29";>prosecuted
 for
+possessing a forbidden book</a>, this is more than hypothetically
+Orwellian.</a></p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, you can't sell the e-book after you read it (if Amazon has its 
way,
+the used book stores where I have passed many an afternoon will be
+history). You can't give it to a friend either, because according to
+Amazon you never really owned it. Amazon requires users to sign an
+End User License Agreement which says so.</p>
+
+<p>You can't even be sure it will still be in your machine tomorrow.
+People reading 1984 in the "Kindle" had an Orwellian experience: their
+e-books vanished right before their eyes, as Amazon used a malicious
+software feature called a "back door" to remotely delete them
+(virtual book-burning; is that what "Kindle" means?). But don't worry,
+Amazon promised never to do this again, except by order of the state.</p>
+
+<p>With software, either the users control the program (making such software <a
+href="/philosophy/free-sw.html"> Libre or Free</a>)
+or the program controls its users (non-Libre). Amazon's e-book
+policies imitate the distribution policies of non-Libre software, but
+that's not the only relationship between the two. The malicious
+software features described above are imposed on users via software
+that's not Libre. If a Libre program had malicious features like
+those, some users skilled at programming would remove them, then
+provide the corrected version to all the other users. Users can't
+change non-Libre software, which makes it <a
+href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR33.2/stallman.php";> an ideal
+instrument for exercising power over the public</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Any one of these encroachments on our freedom is reason aplenty to say
+no. If these policies were limited to Amazon, we'd bypass them, but
+the other e-book dealers' policies are roughly similar.</p>
+
+<p>What worries me most is the prospect of losing the option of printed
+books. The Guardian has announced "digital-only reads": in other
+words, books available only at the price of freedom. I will not read
+any book at that price. Five years from now, will unauthorized copies
+be the only ethically acceptable copies for most books?</p>
+
+<p>It doesn't have to be that way. With anonymous payment on the
+Internet, paying for downloads of non-DRM non-EULA e-books would
+respect our freedom. Physical stores could sell such e-books for
+cash, like digital music on CDs -- still available even though the
+music industry is aggressively pushing DRM-restrictive services such
+as Spotify. Physical CD stores face the burden of an expensive
+inventory, but physical e-book stores could write copies onto your USB
+memory stick, the only inventory being memory sticks to sell if you
+need.</p>
+
+<p>The reason publishers give for their restrictive e-books practices is to 
stop
+people from sharing copies. They say this is for the sake of the
+authors; but even if it did serve the authors' interests (which for
+quite famous authors it may), it could not justify DRM, EULAs or the Digital
+Economy Act which persecutes readers for sharing.
+In practice, the copyright system does a bad job of supporting authors
+aside from the most popular ones. Other authors' principal interest is to be 
better
+known, so sharing their work benefits them as well as readers. Why not switch 
to a
+system that does the job better and is compatible with sharing?</p>
+
+<p>A tax on memories and Internet connectivity, along the general lines
+of what most EU countries do, could do the job well if three points
+are got right. The money should be collected by the state and
+distributed according to law, not given to a private collecting
+society; it should be divided among all authors, and we mustn’t let
+companies take any of it from them; and the distribution of money
+should be based on a sliding scale, not in linear proportion to
+popularity. I suggest using the cube root of each author's
+popularity: if A is eight times as popular as B, A gets twice B's
+amount (not eight times B's amount). This would support many fairly
+popular writers adequately instead of making a few stars richer.<p>
+
+<p>Another system is to give each e-reader a button to send some small
+sum (perhaps 25p in the UK) to the author.</p>
+
+<p>Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy. (I
+mean non-commercial redistribution of exact copies.) So sharing ought
+to be legal, and preventing sharing is no excuse to make e-books into
+handcuffs for readers. If e-books mean that readers' freedom must
+either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.</p>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF.  Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:address@hidden";>&lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+        replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+        Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+        to <a href="mailto:address@hidden";>
+        &lt;address@hidden&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+        <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+        our web pages, see <a
+        href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+        README</a>. -->
+
+For information on coordinating and submitting translations of this
+article, see <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations README</a>.
+</p>
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2012 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/";>Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2012/05/08 22:22:25 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>