A Whip to Beat Us With
publishersweekly.comOf course, it’s illegal, because that conversion involves removing DRM. It is not only illegal to convert lawfully purchased e-books, it’s illegal to make a tool that does so; illegal to tell someone how to make such a tool; and illegal to distribute that tool. Even if you wrote the book and own the copyright, it’s illegal for you to remove DRM to convert your own book.
Estimated reading time: 8 min
Doubling Down on DRM
publishersweekly.comAnd Hachette’s authors should pay attention because, in the end, it is they who will suffer from the effects of DRM. Readers probably won’t remember who published the book that nuked itself due to a DRM misfire or was lost due to a platform switch. But they’ll remember the writer whose book they paid for and to which they lost access.
Estimated reading time: 6 min
mela recommended this story.
Books in Browsers 2012: A Publishing Industry Rushing into the Future
publishersweekly.comit was the goosebump and chills moment you get when you realized that you were watching insanely smart, thoughtful and creative people reinventing publishing right in front of your eyes, hacking together fledgling applications of great beauty and breathtaking promise.
Estimated reading time: 4 min
André Spiegel recommended this story.
Cory Doctorow: Copyrights vs. Human Rights
publishersweekly.comWith SOPA, the entertainment industry has codified a doctrine that holds that the level of control given to copyright owners should grow in inverse proportion to the difficulty of copying in the digital age.
Estimated reading time: 3 min
Simon Hurtz recommended this story.
I Can't Let You Do That, Dave
publishersweekly.comImagine a world where you tell your computer to copy a file, or to play it, or display it, and it says no, where it looks at you out of the webcam’s unblinking eye and says, “I can’t let you do that, Dave.”
Estimated reading time: 6 min
Christian Kokott recommended this story.
