These Nazi Youth have found a less eeeeeevil no see-oh-too generating method than the older Nazi’s way of simply burning them...
Doctrow is a socialist idiot. Unless you can save the files yourself and read with a non-approved reader then you have no guarantee at all.
Same with the old divx dvd discs they tried to push for awhile.
Caveat Emptor.
That’s always been the problem with DRM locked stuff. And ebooks in general.
The same thing can happen with digital copies of movies. You sit down to watch Blazing Saddles (or some equally non-PC movie) one evening, only to find that PC police have removed it from your library.
Ping for Windows, Microsoft Ping list.
Digital media and digital rights is a very strange world. You really don’t own content any longer, you rent it (although that $9.99 for a book gets prorated over the rest of your remaining life).
I don’t think this has been tested yet in an estate situation yet.
As an author who’s published books through digital media, I don’t believe we’ve got a real handle on the implications of this long term.
This is a warning that could revive book sales.
I never liked, or bought, e-books. The convenience of being able to read them in low light also made my eyes hurt after a while.
Everyone will just have to memorize one book and hide in the forest.
Everything that is on the net can be erased by the stroke of one key.
See “1984” unperson.
Read the e-book - but if you find it valuable, buy a hardback version.
Amazon banned one of my books. It took me a few days to discover why. They said some content was freely available on the internet. It turns out the offending content was a few paragraphs from a published patent. The patent was one where I am the inventor. After I explained things to them they un-banned my book.
I back up all my digital books on a plug in hard drive which I then keep in a drawer. Good luck retrieving them.
Need to completely get rid of all DRM.
This type of thing is why you don’t want a cashless society, nor internet connected cars.
um.. they are getting their money back.. wth.. if you still want the book, go buy it again from Amazon!
people are so stupid sometimes.
This will only resonate with those who watch Asian dramas, but Warner Brothers acquired Asian Fever, which was the oldest and biggest of the 2 legal subscription services for watching K-Dramas and other Asian dramas in the United States (Viki is the other). It had 30 million subscribers worldwide. One day a couple of months ago, without notice, WB simply shut it down. In a press release it claimed it was not making money, which seemed patently false given how popular it was. Some of us suspect it was because they realized Asian programming was a competition threat to American media they didn’t want.
In any event, DramaFever had the exclusive license to a lot of the big hit K-Dramas. Americans’ access to those is gone forever.
What are the chances they would try this on YOUR books..?
Low-tech pulpy cellulose is good.
Expect lots more of this sort of thing with all these wonderful “cloud” based vaperware computing solutions. I miss the good old days when you get disk(s) of the software when you bought it.
Never, never put anything that you “own” on the “Cloud”.