Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries

Boing boing ^ | 2 April 2019 | CORY DOCTOROW

[marajade]

There is only one DVD replicating plant left in the US.

Streaming is the future.

[goodnesswins]

That’s what I’ve always believed...I’m even doing my own backup drives.

[goodnesswins]

Wonder what Venezuelan’s are doing

[mumblypeg]

gutenberg.org is a fantastic site!
On my to-do list: browse their selection and copy many of the classics onto CD-ROM.

[YogicCowboy]

I’ve been telling people that for years. That is why I buy real books and DVDs when possible.

[Travis McGee]

It's possible. Amazon Kindle has mass-deleted customers' books when they deemed the title was plagiarized, or constituted child porn etc. Nothing technical prevents Amazon for mass-deleting "alt-right nationalist hate books" in the future. That's why I encourage folks to buy dead-tree versions.

I just got off my last Facebook 30-day suspension, so I'm not posting there anymore. I just posted this and left it up.

[mewzilla]

If folks bothered to read the boilerplate that comes with anything ebook related, they’d already know this.

[zeugma]

This is why you should never by DRM books through one of these silos. Same goes with music. I only use sellers that will, in the case of an ebook, allow me to download a non-DRM encumbered book in whatever format I prefer. If you like science fiction, I strongly recommend Baen Publishing for exactly that reason. Jim Baen came right out and said that this was his business model because he didn't believe his customers were thieves. So far that belief has worked out for the company.

It has been obvious for quite some time with the license keys, the phone-home crap and other similar stuff that they most emphatically do believe their customers are thieves, and they treat you accordingly every chance they get. I do not understand why anyone does business with them who doesn't have a gun to their heads.

[GingisK]

Yeah, if is isn’t paper it isn’t a book.

[zeugma]

I downloaded it from Gutenberg.org, they are a large org, that specializes in old, out of copyright works.

Gutenberg has been around for quite some time. They are excellent. There is also a PG-Canada and PG-Austrailia that have some books that you can't have on the main PG site, because the U.S. Copyright sucks so bad. For instance, if you're interested in the works of C.S. Lewis, you'll find a bunch of them on the PG-CA site, because the copyright has expired there, and won't for many years in the U.S..

Also, if anyone is interested in helping to proofread public domain books for Project Gutenberg, you can go to the Distributed Proofing site and lend a hand. Each book is proofread at least 3 times, which is why PG books are pretty high quality compared to other sources of public domain books. Just proofing 3 pages a day, which will take just a few minutes makes a big difference. So far Distributed Proofreading has produced over 37,000 books that are available for free download in multiple formats.

[zeugma]

See post 70 for additional PG references

[RikaStrom]

Download and convert - then you have your own copy - been saying that for years.

SD - for your perusal.

[DUMBGRUNT]

I remember the request for proofreaders, back when I used CP/M !

They had a BBS to DIAL into with your acoustic modem and download it onto the new 5 1/4 inch floppy.

[RikaStrom]

Ping

[RinaseaofDs]

It’s long past time to take Amazon down. Period.

[SeaDragon]

Well that explains the disappearance of my copy of Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail.

Thanks for the ping.