Book People Archive

!!!Re: [ebook-community] Mixed message

I heard Roger on PBS/NPR radio just now. . .my comments are below.

Cross Posted to Book People and Ebook Lost.
             
On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Roger Sperberg <rsperberg@[redacted]> wrote:

> I posted this message earlier today while logged into the Yahoo 
> group, but it apparently died before arriving. So here it is again:
> 
> What the EFF says about the Sklyarov/Adobe imbroglio says a lot about 
> why people find this particular case detestable, even if they don't 
> really like "cracking."Here's the part that caught me:
> 
> "...The Advanced eBook Processor appears to remove ... usage 
> restrictions, permitting an eBook consumer to enjoy the ability to 
> move the electronic book between computers, make backup copies, and 
> print. Many of these personal, non-commercial activities may 
> constitute fair use under U.S. copyright law. ...
> 
> "Robin Gross, attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 
> explained, 'The U.S. government for the first time is prosecuting a 
> programmer for building a tool that may be used for many purposes, 
> including those that legitimate purchasers need in order to exercise 
> their fair use rights.' 
> 
> "Jennifer Granick, Clinical Director at the Stanford Law School 
> Center for Internet and Society, commented that 'the DMCA says that 
> companies can use technology to take away fair use, but programmers 
> can't use technology to take fair use back. Now the government is 
> spending taxpayer money putting people from other countries in jail 
> to protect multinational corporate profits at the expense of free 
> speech.' "
> 
> The full statement is at 
> http://www.eff.org/IP/DMCA/US_v_Sklyarov/20010717_eff_sklyarov_pr.html
> 
> Of course, there are many new reports and statements out today. 
> Planetebook has a full list of links; eBookWeb and Elcomsoft have 
> long link lists too.
> 

I would ask that people also consider "planned obsolescence" in its
various ramifications as part of these topics.

As long time computer users, most of us are aware that computers are
generally replaced after skipping only one generation. . .i.e. P2's
are now being replace en masse by P4's, and I have even bought two
P3's for under $200 as they were being tossed. . .then end results
will be that the new computers will "fail" the CPU ID test, as NOT
being the "computer of original download" and will refuse to display
the Etexts you rightfully own. . .in fact, after only a few years,
a majority of computers would fail such tests, for various reasons,
including just replacing the CPU with a faster one.

Those of us who have been around since before the .com revolution,
remember this same kind of copy protection hassle with Lotus, and
other programs. . .a hassle so great that Lotus eventually killed
off its own copy protection programs. . .and replaced them, free
of charge, with non-protected versions. . .simply because it was
not financially feasible for them to deal with the amazing hassles
caused by this for their consumers, only a fraction of which were
actually passed on to customer support.  Even though you could do
a "replacement" of the program back onto the original disks, this
failed much too often, and you ended up with nothing. . .I, myself,
spent an hour on phone with Lotus one day as a computer consultant,
while they painstakingly, but VERY politely, taught me how to HACK
their own copy protection, and encouraged me to pass it on, so they
wouldn't have to tell everyone directly at their own expense.

I would like to add that Adobe tried to do the same thing with our
Project Gutenberg Etexts of Alice In Wonderland. . .in very direct
disregard for our Project Gutenberg trademark and the instructions
in our header for how to legally reproduce Project Gutenberg Etexts
free of charge. . . .

Adobe refused to fix their asinine approach to using Gutenberg Etexts
and we finally had to settle for just making them delete them all
from their sites, along with any mention of Project Gutenberg.

If anyone would care to use any of this for ammunition in this case,
please let me know.


Thanks!

So nice to hear from you!


Michael S. Hart
<hart@[redacted]>
Project Gutenberg
"Ask Dr. Internet"
Executive Director
Internet User ~#100