But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
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Amazon’s ebook store front (as well as the internet in general) is flooded with AI slop. The internet is a place where the signal to noise ratio is dropping rapidly.
Physical media is necessary. Especially books. Especially the kinds of books regimes might want to ban. When it’s time to rebuild, we’ll need firm ground to stand on, and physical books work as long as you can hold them.
Or DRMless digital. But yeah, they need to coexist with paper ones.
DRMless digital is great - I have a calibre library of thousands - but still more vulnerable.
Canticle of Lebowitz is a great post apocalyptic novel. After the nukes, Catholic monasteries preserve the ancient tradition of copying down manuscripts. Text doesn’t require any form of infrastructure.
There are also many texts/other media that are not available in any digital format. Obscure or older. For as much of an Information Age we are in, a lot of knowledge is being lost through neglect.
The overwhelming majority of my library is actually not digital-native - rather, pdf or djvu scans. I should really contribute to Libgen by scanning some of my library.
I’d also point towards alternative reading apps and hardware and drop everything related to Amazon.
Is there a way to donate to the authors? Because I think pirating and then donating the money (directly) to the author is much more ethical than putting a megacorp or a publisher in between
Even better if you send it with something like Monero which doesn’t even put the bank between you and the author
Imagine: pirating ebooks but donating money to the author at the same time. Win win.
You mean the authors would actually earn money instead of the “publisher”? How unfair! /s
When mist books were made of paper, the publishers job was quite the deal including printing, delivering, stocks, pulp the rests etc. So they took the lions share of the price together with the bookstore and the author got maybe 10-15% from the final price.
Today it’s just theft.
Don’t use kindle? They aren’t the only ebook provider
13+ years ago when I’d say why I hate social media, cloud services, all this convenient dependence, everybody would act as if this was stupid.
My logic was that if there’s a mechanism allowing such influence, no matter how small, its power will grow almost until the death of such an ecosystem. Because the returns of abusing it will always be more than the expenses.
I don’t like this Cassandra feeling really.
Most people have an astounding lack of imagination. Its like they thing that things can’t get much worse because that would be too different to now…
Soon:
“Protestors who were planning to publish video evidence of police brutality find the videos mysteriously vanished from their phone”
If you’re into audiobooks, I strongly recommend libro.fm instead - it’s all DRM free downloads, so you never lose access.
And here’s a reminder that if you run a Plex server, there’s an app called Prologue which turns it into a fully fledged audiobook server.
Plex doesn’t natively support things like audiobook bookmarks in m4b files, and tries to just play them straight through like a gigantic 4 hour long music track. But Prologue does support bookmark data. Prologue simply uses Plex’s service to access the files, (because admittedly, Plex is good for letting newbies remotely access their content) and then it ignores Plex’s built-in “lol just play it like music” instructions, and actually parses the files for bookmark data.
As someone who couldn’t get Audiobookshelf to work properly, (something about not being able to access network drives via Docker), Prologue has saved my audiobook library by allowing me to just host it via Plex instead.
Anything similar for ebooks?
Calibre-ebook has a content server, simple setup
I meant for buying ebooks w/o DRM.
There’s not a lot of great options for buying eBooks outside of amazon imo. There are some options out there but so many people self-publish exclusively on amazon you very well could be better buying off physical copies (which are somehow often cheaper) and legally backing up your books by finding downloads.
Here is a link for some that you can but online though.
Here is a link for some that you can but online though.
Thanks!
When it comes to ebooks, I generally go for Kobo, which seems to be Amazon’s stiffest competition, but I definitely prefer to support DRM-free where I can.
Uh, title is a bit clickbaity, editorialized. Amazon isn’t changing books yet, they are planning to make it possible for publishers to do so, I think, and also recoking ownership. And the video is not great either.
The man who made that video is annoying. The story he read out was from the twits by Roald dahl, it was a few years back that those changes were made. Dahl was a great author but wasn’t a very pc person , his family have had to apologise for his anti semitism. So whoever is in charge of his works wanted to make them more modern and less insulting which misses the point of Dahl but anyway. They’ve done it with Enid blyton books too. In one of hers they have a dog called the n word so probably more necessary with her work lol.
All amazon have done is update the digital edition to the match the latest edition. There’s a million things to hate Amazon for you don’t have to make things up. And also if you want books that can’t be altered buy a paper book, you own them and they don’t run out of electricity.
Dahl was a great author but wasn’t a very pc person , his family have had to apologise for his anti semitism.
That is putting it very mildly.
"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”
He said that in *checks notes* 1971.
Worse, it was in response to criticism to an article he wrote that was justifiably criticizing Israel at a time when it wasn’t so popular to do so. And when he was accused of the old “you’re anti-Israel, so you’re anti-semitic” nonsense, he decided to go, “hell yeah I am!”
Oof
He’d probably like today’s politics, it seems fashionable to just lean into anything bad someone says about you.
That’s why I only read manuscripts. Don’t trust machines. F*cuk Gutenberg
This reminds me of a joke…
A new monk arrives at the monastery and is assiged to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. When he looks closer, however, he notices that they are copying copies, not the original books. The new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out to the head monk that should there be an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. “We have been copying from the copies for centuries,” says the head monk, “however, I must admit you make a very good point, my son.” The head monk then goes down to the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours pass and no one sees him, so one of the monks decides to go downstairs to look for him. When he arrives he hears loud sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old head monk leaning over one of the original books crying. “What’s wrong,” he asks the old monk. “The word is CELEBRATE!” sobs the old monk.
“The word is CELEBRATE!” sobs the old monk.
I don’t get the punchline.
Monks are celibate. But if someone were to transcribe that incorrectly…
Ahhhhh, now I get it. Thanks for the clarification.
Heh. Even funnier to me, as I’m currently reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is set in an abbey that has monks who copy manuscripts.
It’s time to de-Google, de-amazon, de-Microsoft, de-apple, etc.
Now? As if they were so ethical all those decades before.
It has been time for that, long ago. Why did you have to wait for everything to go south?
Self hosting your email server, are you? How many hours a month does that take?
I use Tutanota for my email
So, Google before the IPO.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Would you rather people switch to non google services or think that since they are all equally evil they might as well keep using the same service.
It’s kinda odd that all these years later, you’re still better off pirating than paying for anything digital. All these services solved piracy but we’ve now gone full circle.
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren’t available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
There’s a problem with this “give them what they want and they won’t pirate” when it comes to Spotify, yt music, etc: They can change the terms at any moment. AKA enshittification.
If you downloaded it or bought a CD? Ain’t no enshittification.
Interestingly, I am now going through some album series that are not on Youtube, but are on Spotify. It is frustrating because I can’t use Spotify on my phone (browser is incompatible), but I can Youtube, so music discovery is desktop-only. Good thing all of them are on Soulseek, though.
Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
Like… if the book is digital, why do you have to borrow and return? This makes no sense. They want to replicate a bad experience that doesn’t need to exist, what’s the point of that?
Pleasing the copyright holders. I don’t know how it is for the Dutch national library, but with a system used by many libraries in the US there’s a cost to the library based on the number of times it’s checked out, so more revenue for the copyright holder and the digital middle man. Allowing you to have the e-book indefinitely would be, at least in their minds, no different than giving it away. 🤷
This could be solved in other ways. For example, the software can simply track what % of the books are actually read without this extra step of borrowing and returning. Just like when you listen to music on streaming services.
Imagine if you had to select the specific album in a streaming service and choose to borrow it for x days, having to “return” it and borrow again if you wanted to keep listening, and being limited to 4 albums at a time.
Good point in pointing out the discrepancy between music streaming and book borrowing. Online libraries in the US are managed by some kind of digital rights software, which seems to essentially allow libraries to own a limited number of digital copies of a book. Streaming services like Tidal and Spotify seem to pay out a tiny amount of money to artists each time content is streamed. Is it something about library budgeting that doesn’t allow for this? Is it just historical baggage that hasn’t been rethought?
The music streaming model is honestly terrible for musical artists, so I’m not saying that’s necessarily the direction we should head. But you’re right that I’m not limited to listening to a song just because someone else is, and it would be extremely helpful if the same applied to library books.
As it is, when I have time to read I put in the request to borrow a book, and then it becomes available 1 to 10 weeks later (whether or not I’m ready to read it at that point). Then I only get 2-3 weeks to fit reading it into my schedule. It doesn’t work out half the time as I get busy with other things… So how is it not easier to pirate it or buy it? I love and support my library, but golly this digital system is dysfunctional.
There are other ways to buy books, I don’t understand why so many people have a boner for Amazon. It feels like Stockholm syndrome to me. I’ve never bought a single book from Amazon, not one.
Kindle just works
I can read a book in a series, finish it, buy the next one and it’s ready to read before I’ve gotten a new cup of tea.
That’s not unlike the experience on my Kobo Elipsa 2e.
How is that Elipsa e2? I wanted to get it, but I discovered that it had a low PPI 227 and held off. I have eagle eyes and I hate seeing pixels. lol… so I got the sage fantastic device, but I want the 10" screen so badly.
I have not been at all dissatisfied with its clarity. I bet on a LCD or OLED screen the DPI would be noticeable, but not on an e-ink display.
Thank you. Do you have another kobo with higher DPI that you can compare it to? I’m very weird when it comes to this. I can see pixels very easily and then would never be able to focus anymore. lol. I can’t even use anything but 4k screens on my laptops and PC, that’s how bad I am.
Sorry, no. No other e-ink devices at all.
No worries. Thank you
A hosting provider always has the ability to change what’s on their infrastructure. The Kindle store is no different.
As it happens, they’ve been doing this for years. For example, the price you set as an author is not fixed nor is how it turns up on the page or how and when it’s promoted.
The standard ebook format is essentially a zipped up series of text files.
Source: I sell my “Foundations of Amateur Radio” ebooks on the Kindle store
Does Amazon have permission to change what’s in your book though?
Copyright prevents them from making derivative works and if they change your text without your permission, that’s a clear copyright violation.
I don’t know how licensing deals work with Amazon but I’m guessing if they are doing this en mass, there is probably some provision in their contract.
The bigger question is do they care. At worst they get a slap on the wrist by the US government. At best they get to control the narrative and have books like having history books on their platform talk about how the the Allies first striked Nazi Germany because they were lifting the country out of economic crisis and making the world a better place.
I doubt they’ll care or listen if EU says stop since they’ll just find a way around whatever they have planned to try and stop revisionist ideology from taking hold.
Its just a bitter taste, thinking about how a few companies can lay words into the mouth of people they did not even say, years after they died
I would rather just have them Ban the books, because then you can see how they are manipulating the information you see.
Hell, I’m surprised the publishers aren’t up in arms about it.
Amazon is changing copyrighted works.
Increasingly more often Amazon is the publisher.
