[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
www/server/staging drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-l...
|
From: |
Dora Scilipoti |
|
Subject: |
www/server/staging drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-l... |
|
Date: |
Wed, 23 Jun 2021 13:24:42 -0400 (EDT) |
CVSROOT: /web/www
Module name: www
Changes by: Dora Scilipoti <dora> 21/06/23 13:24:42
Added files:
server/staging :
drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html
Log message:
Draft article.
CVSWeb URLs:
http://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewcvs/www/server/staging/drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html?cvsroot=www&rev=1.1
Patches:
Index: drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html
===================================================================
RCS file: drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html
diff -N drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html
--- /dev/null 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 -0000
+++ drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-life-imitates-dystopian-art.html 23 Jun 2021
17:24:42 -0000 1.1
@@ -0,0 +1,293 @@
+<!--#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>When Life Imitates Dystopian Art
+- 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=" [Education Contents] " />
+</a>
+
+<p class="breadcrumb">
+ <a href="/"><img src="/graphics/icons/home.png" height="26" width="26"
+ alt="GNU Home" title="GNU Home" /></a> /
+ <a href="/education/education.html">Education</a> /
+ <a href="/education/education.html#indepth">In Depth</a> /</p>
+</div>
+
+<!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE-->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" -->
+
+<div style="clear: both"></div>
+<div id="last-div" class="reduced-width">
+
+<h2>DRM in Schools' eBooks: When Life Imitates Dystopian Art</h2>
+
+<address class="byline">by Barra O'Caithain
+<a href="#thanks" id="thanks-rev"><sup>[1]</sup></a></address>
+<hr class="thin" />
+
+<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 “piracy”<a
+href="#piracy" id="piracy-rev"><sup>[2]</sup></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 books for studying and is
+the only tool for writing her midterm project, brakes 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, a government agency created
+to combat sharing, 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, thus breaking the law for that simple act.</p>
+
+<p>Stallman predicted a lot of things correctly in that article, and sadly
+they have already come true. <cite>The Right to Read</cite> is no longer
+just a hypothetical, no longer just a story warning about a possible
future.</p>
+
+<p>It is our <em>present</em>.</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. He was finding it difficult to study, because he had managed to leave
+his books in his locker over a mid-term break. Silly mistake aside, I thought
+nothing of lending him a password (changed, of course) to access my copies of
+the online ebook version. He'd be able to study, pass the upcoming exams, no
+harm done. Right? Little did I know, according to the terms and conditions of
+the service, I had just committed the most vile, despicable act a human being
+could commit. “Piracy.”</p>
+
+<p>The terms and conditions <a href="#terms" id="terms-rev"><sup>[3]</sup></a>
+of the dis-service are a little hard to find, which already makes them seem
+untrustworthy, not being available on the login page, or the main
+“library” page, but instead being 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 of note, which I will
+discuss later.</p>
+
+<p>The terms and conditions are very, very clear about one thing. You're not
+allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to share your ebook.</p>
+
+<p>Allow me to clear up a few things: I don't own this ebook, toted on the
+covers of the physical book as a free digital copy. But that's misleading,
+at best. I actually got a time-limited license to access the content,
+exclusively on the publisher's proprietary service. I can't download it, or
+get a local copy to use offline, because the publisher claims it's
+“too big” to fit on removable media. <em>Yeah, right.</em>
+Already, the publisher appears to be stretching the truth.</p>
+
+<h3>Common Restrictions</h3>
+
+<p>You may be asking now: “If you don't like it, why don't you refuse
+to use it?” See, the issue here is I have a choice. I have a choice
+between agreeing to use this service, and all terms they give me, with no
+room for negotiation, or simply failing, being unable to study. And with the
+current direction of education, it's looking as if physical books aren't
+going to be much of an option, either.</p>
+
+<p>Some new schools where I live in Ireland are using iPads (which has a
+whole host of <a href="/proprietary/malware-apple.html">privacy and ethical
+concerns</a> in and of itself, with the goal of moving all their student's
+books to these online services. 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 commonly
+available digital devices requires students to agree to terms of service
+required by outside companies. These terms restrict the learner's ability to
+explore, to research, to <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. And 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 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 second-hand books, or getting them handed down from a friend or a
+sibling. There are more options than getting an ebook code from a single
+centralized publisher. If this continues, we may see a publisher 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 afford to charge
+astronomical prices and have no need to innovate or upgrade, a position
+gained through billing themselves as the educational standard to the
+National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, and then once established as
+such, it began to abuse their position by refusing to reduce the price of
+their calculators as they become cheaper to manufacture, year after year,
+leaving them 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 365, and require the student to agree to the terms imposed
+by the publisher. Students may need books from different publishers, and may
+have to agree to multiple services' contracts. And even if they do agree
+now, that they find these terms acceptable and fair, most of these contracts
+reserve the right to change the terms of that contract. Perhaps the
+publisher might—as I discovered in the terms of the dis-service I
+mentioned earlier—reserve the right to later charge fees to access
+your books. Do the students really have a choice? Not at the moment, and
+unless something changes, they don't get to consent. They're forced to
+accept the terms, no matter what they think of them, or they lose their
+chances for education by losing their books. No one can consent when the
+ultimatum is losing their right to an education.</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 that they use during their education work or
+to sharebinformation with their peers.</p>
+
+<p>Would you object to a student reading their schoolbooks while on holidays
+in France? If they were to read 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 a book for a
+few minutes? Allowing someone sitting beside them to look at their book? Is
+it theft if a student copies down a sentence from their textbook? Piracy?
+Should the teacher report them 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 shops to be sold? Should this student be punished for
+attempting to steal the publisher's techniques?</p>
+
+<p>And finally, would you object to a student selling their textbook to
+another student when they no longer have need of it? Giving their notes,
+made using information from the book, to another student? That they
+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 education looking to the benefits of
+technology, we need to be careful. Without proper consideration and action,
+we may find ourselves in a reality even more like <cite>The Right to
+Read</cite>. Education boards have already made mistakes like this in the
+past, like with Texas Instruments. I would urge everyone to start pushing
+against terms like these. You could petition your schools to consider the
+terms and conditions of an ebook service in the decision process of which
+textbook to use and make it a requirement that the ebook be DRM-free and
+downloadable, for example. You could start a libre-licensed textbook for
+your local cirriculum. Let's make sure schools don't punish learning.</p>
+
+<div class="infobox">
+<hr />
+<p><a href="#thanks-rev" id="thanks">[1]</a> Thanks to RMS and Andy Oram for
+both the idea and the help.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#piracy-rev" id="piracy">[2]</a> “Piracy” is a
+<a href="/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Piracy">smear word</a>.</p>
+
+<p>
+<a href="#terms-rev" id="terms">[3]</a> Some notes from the Terms and
+Conditions of dis-services: <br /> <br />
+* Passwords must not be shared. <br />
+* They reserve the right to later charge for access to the dis-service.<br />
+* The reader can't distribute any information from the dis-service unless in
+ways explicitly allowed.<br />
+* It is forbidden to attempt to learn how the dis-service works by
+reverse-engineering, attempting to derive source code, or otherwise.<br />
+* The books are region-locked (only accessible in a certain area) to the
+Republic of Ireland. <br />
+* No warranties are provided. The dis-service shall not be liable for any
+damages, yet expects you to be liable for damages to them.
+</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 & GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org";><gnu@gnu.org></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";><webmasters@gnu.org></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:web-translators@gnu.org";>
+ <web-translators@gnu.org></a>.</p>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and contributing translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+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 © 2021 Barra O'Caithain</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: 2021/06/23 17:24:42 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div><!-- for class="inner", starts in the banner include -->
+</body>
+</html>
- www/server/staging drm-in-schools-ebooks-when-l...,
Dora Scilipoti <=