Hollyer Than Thou

In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are used to chain us instead.

With printed books,

• You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
• Then you own it.
• You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.
• The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the book.
• You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes lawful under copyright.
• Nobody has the power to destroy your book.

Contrast that with Amazon ebooks (fairly typical):

• Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an ebook.
• In some countries, Amazon says the user does not own the ebook.
• Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the ebook.
• The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can read it at all.
• To copy the ebook is impossible due to Digital Restrictions Management in the player, and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than copyright law.
• Amazon can remotely delete the ebook using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell’s 1984.

Even one of these infringements makes ebooks a step backward from printed books. We must reject ebooks until they respect our freedom.

Most of these arguments are a little silly.

• Cash only? That argument usually comes up when you’re talking to anti-government paranoids who think that people are, yes, reading (and thus caring about) your credit card statements.
• Amazon e-books are not all e-books. There are millions that are DRM-free, millions that have less-restrictive DRM, millions from the dozen or so other e-book stores. If you think Amazon e-books are the only e-books you are not only ignorant, you are unqualified to generalize “e-books”.
• Other e-books do not use a proprietary format. However, you can buy non-Amazon e-books and convert them with software to work on a Kindle.
• Scanning and copying a printed book is almost never lawful unless you’re writing a book review. The same rules apply for e-books. No, you cannot copy them as, no, you cannot legally copy a printed book.
• Amazon has the power to destroy only the e-books of people who were dumb enough to buy Kindles (i.e., who did not already realize how creepy Amazon is about this stuff because they didn’t do any research). 
• Amazon did screw up and delete books, but it was a huge business mistake for them that they took a lot of bad PR for. Don’t think that deleting books somehow fulfills an Amazon agenda—because it doesn’t. They only make money when you’re happy with the books you’ve bought.
• Lastly, try reading an e-book. It’s not all that bad. It doesn’t “enslave you”. It’s usually entertaining, and let me say that carrying around Infinite Jest on a Nook is a lot more convenient than carrying around the 4 lb. hard copy.

(Source: azspot)