On the other end of the Microsoft spectrum...

[elfs]

I would like to congratulate Microsoft on acheiving what it has tried to achieve for years, and only today succeeded. It succeeded in making me me feel as if my computer was not mine. It made me feel as if trying to assert my ownership of my own computer and my properties on it was an act of rebellion. It made me feel like a criminal for performing a perfectly legal act.

No wonder people loathe MS. It's getting worse, not better. It was an utter relief to reboot back into Linux.

Y'know what really sucks? Most of the eBook sellers out there require that you have memberships. I don't want my reading habits tracked, thankyouverymuch. And fuckyouverymuch, Microsoft and Ebooks.com.

Now that many companies are pressuring the labels to ditch DRM for music, can we ditch it for books too, please?

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

Damn, I missed something - what's happening?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Nothing much. I've long wanted to read Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love, and the only thing I had was a large-format trade paperback. I don't really care for hauling around TPB, so I figured I'd buy the e-book edition.

The only one I could find, however, was the Microsoft .LIT edition. In order to download (never mind read) this volume, you need (a) a membership with Microsoft Live!, (b) a membership with EBooks.com, (c) a copy of MS Reader, (d) an Active-X control that "securely" lets IE pass the DRM'd file to MS Reader, and (e) A copy of Windows that passes WGA.

Once you've got that, you've got your book-- on one machine. You can't move it. You can't put it on another machine. You can't resell it. Oh, and MS Reader will only let you have two books open at one time.

I won't explain how I exerted my First Sale and Fair Use rights to undo all that bullshit and re-render the godsdamned book into an HTML format suitable to plucker and the Palm. Suffice it to say that I felt like a circus poodle after that many hoops.

[mouser.livejournal.com]

You can move it to a PDA - as long as it was authenticated with the same code as your other WinBox. (Yea, not buying it either.)

I'm far enough to say "You could get a Kindle" and not risk actual physical harm.

I'm not arguing with you. While I respect author's rights, I will also admit I've not going to re-purchase things OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

Things like this are why I occasionally look at bit torrent.

Remember, you're not purchasing software - you're purchasing a software LICENSE. You're not purchasing music, you're purchasing a LICENSE for that music. You're not buying a copy of a book anymore...

[(Anonymous)]

Things are bad enough with just PDFs without microshaft getting involved like that, at least when you use a screen reader for the visually impaired like me. I regularly have to make use of certain copyright exemptions and reformat PDF files to make them readable.