www/server/staging drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-l...

[Dora Scilipoti]

CVSROOT:        /web/www
Module name:    www
Changes by:     Dora Scilipoti <dora>   21/09/29 10:57:31

Removed files:
        server/staging : 
                         
drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-literature.html 

Log message:
        Remove file no longer needed.

CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/server/staging/drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-literature.html?cvsroot=www&r1=1.13&r2=0

Patches:
Index: drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-literature.html
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RCS file: drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-literature.html
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2021 10:18:26 -0000      1.13
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-<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
-<!-- Parent-Version: 1.96 -->
-<!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html -->
-<!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" -->
-<title>DRM In School eBooks: When Life Imitates Dystopian Stories
-- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
-<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/side-menu.css" media="screen" />
-<!--#include virtual="/server/gnun/initial-translations-list.html" -->
-<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
-
-<div class="nav">
-<a id="side-menu-button" class="switch" href="#navlinks">
- <img id="side-menu-icon" height="25" width="31"
-      src="/graphics/icons/side-menu.png"
-      title="Education Contents"
-      alt="&nbsp;[Education Contents]&nbsp;" />
-</a>
-
-<p class="breadcrumb">
- <a href="/"><img src="/graphics/icons/home.png" height="26" width="26"
-    alt="GNU Home" title="GNU Home" /></a>&nbsp;/
- <a href="/education/education.html">Education</a>&nbsp;/
- <a href="/education/education.html#indepth">In&nbsp;Depth</a>&nbsp;/</p>
-</div>
-
-<!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE-->
-<!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" -->
-
-<div style="clear: both"></div>
-<div id="last-div" class="article reduced-width">
-
-<h2>DRM In School eBooks: When Life Imitates Dystopian Stories</h2>
-
-<address class="byline">by Barra O'Cathain <a href="#barra" 
id="barra-rev"><sup>[*]</sup></a></address>
-
-<div class="article">
-<p>It always feels surreal to come across situations that are just a little 
-too close to something you've read. It's even worse when you realize that 
-something you've read is a dystopian story warning about the dangers of 
-corporate greed and abuse of students.</p>
-
-<p>In February 1997, the magazine <cite>Communications of the
-<abbr title="Association for Computing Machinery">ACM</abbr></cite> 
-published Richard M. Stallman's <a href="/philosophy/right-to-read.html">
-<cite>The Right to Read</cite></a>, a cautionary tale of a future where 
-publishers and the government crack down on so-called 
&ldquo;piracy&rdquo;&nbsp;<a 
-href="#piracy" id="piracy-rev">[1]</a> to a massive extent.</p>
-
-<p>In <cite>The Right to Read</cite>, a college student named Lissa Lenz has 
-an issue. Her computer, which contains all her textbooks and is the only 
-tool for writing her midterm project, breaks down. She asks her friend Dan 
-Halbert to borrow his computer. This is a big problem for Dan. If Lissa were 
-to read his books, the SPA&mdash;a government agency created to combat 
-sharing&mdash;would arrest him for copyright infringement and brand him 
-a criminal. In the end, out of concern for his friend, he does the 
-unthinkable: he gives Lissa his password in an attempt to hide the copyright 
-infringement from the SPA, breaking the law with that simple act.</p>
-
-<p>Stallman predicted a lot of bad things in that piece of fiction. Sadly, 
-they have already come true. <cite>The Right to Read</cite> is no longer 
-a hypothetical, no longer just a story warning about a possible future.</p>
-
-<p>It is our <em>present</em>.</p>
-
-<h3>What is DRM?</h3>
-
-<p>DRM is an initialism which is supposed to stand for 
-&ldquo;Digital Rights Management,&rdquo; but in practice it's more accurate 
-to say it stands for &ldquo;Digital <em>Restrictions</em> Management.&rdquo; 
-It refers to any means used to control copyrighted and proprietary digital 
-works and hardware. Its purpose is to restrict what users can do. DRM is an 
-umbrella term for various tools aimed at achieving that goal, such as legal 
-agreements (which is the technique the dis-service in question is using), 
-or malware that seeks to prevent specific actions. For example, to prevent 
-users from connecting to a website through the TOR network or from outside 
-of a certain geographical area (Ireland, in my case). For some examples of 
-Digital Restrictions Management, take a look at the page on &ldquo;<a 
-href="/proprietary/proprietary-drm.html">proprietary DRM</a>.&rdquo;</p>
-
-<h3>A Real-Life Encounter With Becoming Illegal</h3>
-
-<p>During the course of my secondary school education, I was contacted by a
-friend who was finding it difficult to study because he had managed to mess
-things up by leaving his textbooks in his locker over a mid-term break. 
-Silly mistake aside, I thought nothing of lending him a modified version of 
-my password so that he could access my copies of the ebooks, hosted at the 
-publisher's platform (the &ldquo;service&rdquo;). He'd be able to 
-study and pass the upcoming exams, no harm done. Little did I know that, 
-according to the terms and conditions of the dis-service, I had just 
-committed the most vile, despicable act a human being could commit: 
-help my friend&mdash;or, in the eyes of the publisher, 
-&ldquo;piracy.&rdquo;</p>
- 
-<p>The terms and conditions&nbsp;<a href="#terms" id="terms-rev">[2]</a> 
-of the dis-service are somewhat hard to find, which makes one feel the 
-publisher is untrustworthy. They are not readily available on the login page 
-or on the main library page; instead, they are hidden in the help section. 
-I won't quote them exactly, but they do expressly forbid the sharing of 
-passwords. They also contain several other things worth noting, which I will 
-discuss later.</p>
-
-<p>The terms and conditions are very, very clear about one thing: you're not
-allowed to share the ebook in any way, with any means, under any  
-circumstances.</p>
-
-<p>Let me clear up one thing. I don't actually own the ebook. The physical 
-version of the book proudly displays a notice on the cover saying you'll get 
-a free ebook version along with your purchase. That's misleading, at best. 
-What I get is a time-limited license to access its contents, exclusively on 
-the publisher's proprietary platform. I can't download it to get a local 
-copy to read offline because the publisher claims it's &ldquo;too big&rdquo; 
-to fit in removable media, ignoring the fact that I may just want it on my 
-hard drive. I decided to see if the claim was true and found that the grand 
-total size of the ebook came in orders of magnitude lower than even the 
-capacity of a CD-R disc. Are we really to believe the reason we can't 
-download a copy of a digital book is that it can't fit in removable media? 
-In my opinion, the real reason they don't want people to download copies is 
-to prevent sharing.</p>
-
-<h3>Common Restrictions</h3>
-
-<p>Some new schools where I live in Ireland are using iPads (which have a
-whole host of <a href="/proprietary/malware-apple.html">privacy and ethical 
-concerns</a> in and of themselves) with the goal of moving all their student's 
-books to these online &ldquo;services.&rdquo; Benefits cited often include
-reduced weight in student's bags, ease of organization, and multimedia 
-capabilities. All of which are true, but what is often neglected is that the 
-move to digital devices requires students to agree to terms of service 
-imposed by companies. These terms restrict the student's ability to explore, 
-research, and <em>learn</em>.</p>
-
-<p>There are also a lot of practical downsides to ebooks on these platforms. 
-They have to be used with a constant connection to the Internet, which will 
-be difficult for many schools to maintain. They can't be downloaded, so 
-students who don't have easy access to the Internet will be essentially 
-stuck with no books. They may not be supported on all devices, or may be 
-restricted to a single operating system or browser. Probably the biggest 
-downside is that they can be obtained only from one centralized location, 
-with authorized access granted only to the person who paid for it, and taken 
-away after a limited time. Could you imagine a company coming to your 
-graduation and wordlessly snatching your physical books back? A silly, 
-ridiculous image, but it's what happens with ebooks.</p>
-
-<p>When schools use physical books, students at least have the option of 
-buying them second-hand, or getting them handed down from a friend or a 
-sibling. If the practice of getting an ebook access code from a single 
-centralized publisher continues, we may see a publisher's monopoly  
-where textbooks needed for our free education are held away from us with a 
-massive price tag. We may end up with a situation like Texas Instruments, 
-where a company with a stranglehold on education can charge astronomical 
-prices without the need to innovate or upgrade. Such a position was gained  
-by pushing themselves as the educational standard in the National Council of 
-Teachers of Mathematics. Once established as such, the company began to 
-abuse its position by refusing to reduce the price of their calculators as 
-they become cheaper to manufacture year after year. This leaves the company 
-with gross profit margins of up to 90 percent, all the while making it very 
-difficult for lower income families to educate their children.</p>
-
-<p>Students don't have much of a say about which platforms they'll be 
-required to use. The school may give them an email address, provided by 
-Microsoft Office&nbsp;365, and require them to agree to the terms imposed 
-by the publisher. Students may need books from different publishers, and may 
-have to agree to multiple contracts. And even if they do agree to a given 
-version of a contract, most publishers reserve the right to change it. 
-Perhaps the publisher might&mdash;as I discovered in the terms of the 
-dis-service I mentioned earlier&mdash;reserve the right to later charge fees 
-to access the books. Do the students really have a choice? Not at the moment. 
-Unless something changes, they don't have a choice. They're forced to accept 
-the terms, no matter what they think of them, otherwise they lose their 
-chances for education by losing their books.</p>
-
-<h3>Challenging the Assumptions</h3>
-
-<p>Some may say that these terms are reasonable, that students aren't 
-entitled to learn how the tools they use during their education work, or 
-to share information with their peers.</p>
-
-<p>Would you object to a student reading her schoolbook while on holidays in 
-France? If she reads it while traveling to Northern Ireland? On a bus? In a 
-public library?</p>
-
-<p>Of course not.</p>
-
-<p>Would you also object to, say, a student lending a copy of his book to a 
-friend? Allowing someone sitting next to him to look at his book? If a 
-student copies a sentence from a book into his notes, is he a thief or a 
-pirate? Should the teacher report him for illegal activity?</p>
-
-<p>Of course not.</p>
-
-<p>And what if the student were to ask how the book was bound? How the paper 
-was made? What the ink was made up of? How the process of writing works? How 
-they are delivered to bookstores to be sold? Should this student be punished 
-for attempting to learn about the publisher's techniques?</p>
-
-<p>Of course not.</p>
-
-<p>And finally, would you object to students selling their textbooks when 
-they no longer have a need for them? To giving away their notes, made using 
-information from the book, to other students? Would you say students 
-shouldn't be allowed to give away their book if it has a line crossed out 
-and rewritten?</p>
-
-<p>Of course not.</p>
-
-<p>My friend made quite an apt summary: <q>It's like [school systems] put 
-the rights of companies over the rights of the students.</q></p>
-
-<p>With the current landscape of educational institutions planning to 
-introduce new technologies, we need to be careful. Without proper 
-consideration and action, we may find ourselves in a reality even closer to 
-the one described in <cite>The Right to Read</cite>. School boards have 
-already made mistakes in the past, like with Texas Instruments. I would urge 
-everyone to start pushing against this sort of terms. Here are some 
-suggestions:</p>
-
-<ul>
-<li>During the decision process about which textbooks to use, you could 
-petition your school to consider the terms and conditions of ebook 
-services and make it a requirement that ebooks be DRM-free and 
-downloadable.</li> 
-
-<li>You could start the preparation of a textbook for your local 
-cirriculum and publish it under a free license such as the <a 
-href="/licenses/licenses.html#FDL">GNU Free Documentation License</a>, 
-<a 
-href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/";>CC BY-SA</a>, or
-similar.</li>
-
-<li>Support the FSF's <a 
-href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/ebooks.html";>campaign</a> to 
-abolish eBook DRM.</li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>Let's make sure schools don't punish learning. </p>
-
-<p>Let's make sure <a href="/philosophy/ebooks-must-increase-freedom.html">
-ebooks increase our freedom, not decrease it</a>.</p>
-<div class="column-limit"></div>
-</div>
-
-<h3 class="footnote">Author's Notes</h3>
-<ol >
-<li><a href="#piracy-rev" id="piracy">&#8593;</a> &ldquo;Piracy&rdquo; is a 
-<a href="/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy">smear word</a>.</li>
-
-<li><a href="#terms-rev" id="terms">&#8593;</a> Some notes from the Terms and 
-Conditions of dis-services:
-
-<ul>
- <li>Passwords must not be shared. </li>
- <li>The publisher reserves the right to later charge for access to the 
-     dis-service.</li>
- <li>The reader can't distribute any information from the dis-service unless 
-     in ways explicitly allowed.</li>
- <li>It is forbidden to attempt to learn how the dis-service works by
-     reverse-engineering, attempting to derive source code, or any other 
-     means.</li>
- <li>The books are region-locked (only accessible in a certain area) to the
-     Republic of Ireland. </li>
- <li>No warranties are provided. The dis-service shall not be liable for any
-     damages, yet expects you to be liable for damages to them.</li>
-</ul></li>
-</ol>
-
-<h3 class="footnote">Thanks</h3>
-
-<p style="font-size:1rem">
-Thanks to Richard Stallman, Andy Oram, and the GNU Education Team for 
-the idea and the help.</p>
-
-
-<div class="infobox extra" role="complementary">
-<hr />
-<p><a href="#barra-rev" id="barra">[*]</a> Barra O'Cathain is a young hacker 
-from Ireland. He is currently persuing a bachelor's degree in Computer 
-Science. His fascination with free software and programming began when he 
-came across the Quake III Arena source code, which was made available under 
-the GNU GPL in 2005.</p>
-
-</div>
-
-</div>
-
-<!--#include virtual="/education/education-menu.html" -->
-<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
-<div id="footer" role="contentinfo">
-<div class="unprintable">
-
-<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
-<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org";>&lt;gnu@gnu.org&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:webmasters@gnu.org";>&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
-
-<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
-        replace it with the translation of these two:
-
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-        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
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-Please see the <a
-href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
-README</a> for information on coordinating and contributing translations
-of this article.</p>
-</div>
-
-<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
-     files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
-     be under CC BY-ND 4.0.  Please do NOT change or remove this
-     without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
-     Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
-     document.  For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
-     document was modified, or published.
-     
-     If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
-     Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
-     years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
-     year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
-     being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
-     
-     There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
-     Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
-
-<p>Copyright &copy; 2021 Barra O'Cathain</p>
-
-<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
-href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/";>Creative
-Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
-
-<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
-
-<p class="unprintable">Updated:
-<!-- timestamp start -->
-$Date: 2021/09/29 10:18:26 $
-<!-- timestamp end -->
-</p>
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-</body>
-</html>