Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

A few days ago Amazon deleted the entire e-book library of a kindle user without explanation and the internet was in an uproar with multiple people including prominent author’s protesting against the move by Amazon; then a few days later the account was mysteriously re-enabled without any explanation. This is the *one* reason I don’t own a kindle even though its a fantastic device. I almost bought it last month during my US trip but ultimately decided not to because I don’t want the usability of my device to be on the whim & fancy of Amazon. They have deleted stuff from accounts in the past without notification and even after promising not to do it again they went ahead and wiped out this user’s kindle. I anyways don’t support DRM so that is another reason I don’t buy ebooks from Amazon (They are awesome for other stuff but not ebooks/mp3’s/online movies etc).

If you own a kindle I seriously suggest you keep a local copy of all the books you buy ’cause you never know when the book might disappear. There was an article on Lifehacker.com on how to remove the DRM that makes interesting reading as this article was prompted by the same news story as what I am talking about. Check it out, but remember only use it to break the DRM from stuff you own, don’t use it to pirate stuff ’cause that is not cool.

Today while surfing the web I saw an article on the Reg that Amazon UK will lend e-books for free to it’s Prime subscribers. I guess it could be a planned move that just coincidentally came at a time when Amazon was getting a lot of heat for their bonehead move earlier but the timing is suspicious….

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

Additional articles on the Kindle Wipe: Gizmodo.

In a release that sounds like a bad April fools joke or a tip off for a spy movie, Argentinian publishing house Eterna Cadencia is now selling a book written in disappearing ink. Basically 60 days after you open the sealed package the print in the book will disappear. I have no idea what the publisher was thinking, (although it would make a great gag book to gift to someone who is a slow reader) I wouldn’t want to purchase a book that I couldn’t go back and read over and over again, I have books that are over eighty years old and some books that I bought in college that I still go back and read at times.

If you want a self destructing book, why waste the paper it was printed on? Why not go for a digital copy which would be far cheaper and use a decryption program that stopped working after a particular amount of time. (I remember reading about a concept encryption routine that used the text of a couple of sites as the decryption code and once the pages changed beyond a certain threshold the encrypted data could no longer be decrypted.)

Would you purchase a book that deleted its text after a fixed time?

Source: One of the Tech Blog sites… Can’t remember which one. Will update when I do remember.
News links:
* Publishing: The book that self-destructs in 60 days – News – Books – The Independent and
* LA Times

– Suramya

Another publisher (Tor) sees the light and from July 2012 will start selling DRM free books. Yay! I have long advocated DRM free books for no other reason than the fact that I would like to read my books on all my platforms (Linux PC, Tablet + Android Phone) without restrictions or compatibility issues.

Tor is mainly a SciFi and Fantasy publisher with some great authors in its line up so I am glad that they are removing DRM from their books. Plus its not like the DRM was stopping anyone from making a copy of a book in any case.

Check out the Smash Words blog for a really good writeup on why DRM doesn’t work.

Five Reasons to Say No to DRM:
Readers (who know about DRM) don’t like DRM
DRM adds expense to books
DRM makes books complex
DRM limits accessibility to books, especially for those with vision disabilities who require Text-to-Speech (TTS)
DRM doesn’t prevent piracy

In all this is a great step forward in the fight against DRM. Now we just have to convince the publishers to price the ebooks reasonably and I will be all set. 🙂 Ah well, one step at a time.

Source: Tor/Forge E-book Titles to Go DRM-Free | Tor.com.

“Say what??” Was pretty much my initial reaction when I first read this article on Techdirt. Then I thought that this must be some sort of misunderstanding as no one can be dumb enough to want to charge libraries extra for each time volunteers read their books (Not books they have written mind you, but books that they manage copywrite for… basically they are making money off other people’s work.) to kids. But unfortunately that was not the case. These idiots actually want to charge libraries extra because unpaid volunteers read books to kids.

Twice a month, the library in [the Belgian town of] Dilbeek welcomes about 10 children to introduce them to the magical world of books. A representative of the library in question is quoted in the De Morgen report as saying there’s no budget to compensate people who read to the kids, relying instead on volunteers (bless them).

SABAM got in touch with the library to let them know that it thinks this is unacceptable, however, and that they should start coughing up cash for reading stories from copyrighted books out loud. The library rep calculates that it could cost them roughly 250 euros (which is about $328) per year to pay SABAM for the right to — again — READ BOOKS TO KIDS.

Is it a requirement for people getting hired into such firms to be brain dead and lacking all common sense? How dumb can you get? Actually don’t answer that… I am sure they can stoop lower. These are the same upstanding folks who were Charged With Copyright Fraud, Embezzlement, Money Laundering and are waiting for the court date to be set for this.

All these organizations need to be banned and/or charged a heavy fine for every false complaint they make for copyright violation. At present it costs them almost nothing to send out these notices and if someone objects they can just withdraw the complaint without any downside/fines. If they had to pay every time they did stupid stuff then the number of false/stupid copyright infringement claims would go down a lot.

Actually… Now that I think about it, we should all send them money immediately before they start charging parents who read night time stories to their kids.

– Suramya

Once in a while you will find a book that is so good that you end up staying up till morning just to finish the book. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is one such book. I started reading it thinking that I would read a couple of chapters then crash as it was late and I had an early morning meeting the next day that I couldn’t miss. However the book was so engrossing that I ended up staying up till a bit after 5:30am to finish it. The next day was a blur that I survived only with the help of a *lot* of caffeine but the book was worth it.

The book is based in the near future (2044) where the world is an ugly place and most of humanity spends their waking hours in a virtual reality (OASIS) where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed. The creator of OASIS (James Halliday) hid an Easter egg in the game that would give whoever found it controlling shares of the parent company that created OASIS which immediately translated to multimillion dollars of real world money and lots of power (enough to create a whole generation dedicated to finding the egg).

What makes the book really interesting is that James hid clues to find the Easter egg in references to 80’s movie/books/sci-fi/music in the virtual world and the players had to really know their 80’s trivia to find the hints. I am a big fan of a lot of the books/movies referred to in the book and had spent a lot of time playing some of the Games referenced as well, so the book was a great trip down memory lane. I am now really tempted to download some of the old games esp the text adventure games to relive some of them.

Some of the sub-plots in the book were a little predictable and a bit one dimensional but the main plot was pretty well paced and any issues with the complexity were easily ignored to enjoy a well crafted story line. The hacking shown in the book was a bit over the top but easily ignorable. Its not like most books don’t go overboard in showing that.

This is the first book by the author and I am eagerly waiting for more books by him. I believe that Warner Bros. has purchased the film rights to the script and I really hope they don’t screw it up as this has the potential to be a cult classic movie if done right.

Check it out: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

– Suramya

Long time readers of this blog will remember (or atleast I would like to think so) that I am an avid reader and have been posting a lot about ebooks on the blog. Today I saw this article(Ebooks on Tablets fight Digital distractions) on NY Times which made me laugh. The article starts off with the following heading:

Can you concentrate on Flaubert when Facebook is only a swipe away, or give your true devotion to Mr. Darcy while Twitter beckons?
People who read e-books on tablets like the iPad are realizing that while a book in print or on a black-and-white Kindle is straightforward and immersive, a tablet offers a menu of distractions that can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.

Then gets more silly as it goes on, This excerpt was especially interesting:

“The tablet is like a temptress,” said James McQuivey, the Forrester Research analyst who led the survey. “It’s constantly saying, ‘You could be on YouTube now.’ Or it’s sending constant alerts that pop up, saying you just got an e-mail. Reading itself is trying to compete.”

Indeed, the basic menu for the Kindle Fire offers links to video, apps, the Web, music, newsstand and books, effectively making books (once Amazon’s stock in trade) just another menu option. So too with the multipurpose iPad, which Allison Kutz, a 21-year-old senior at Elon University in North Carolina, bought in 2010. She says her reading experience has not been the same since.

She is constantly fending off the urge to check other media, making it tough to finish books. For example, in late September 2010, she bought “Breaking Night,” a memoir about a homeless girl turned Harvard student. Ms. Kutz said the only time she was able to focus on it was on an airplane because there was no Internet access.

“I’ve tried to sit down and read it in Starbucks or the apartment, but I end up on Facebook or Googling something she said, and then the next thing you know I’ve been surfing for 25 minutes,” Ms. Kutz said.

Blaming tablets because you don’t have the self control to focus on one task at a time is a bit like blaming doughnuts or McDonalds for being fat because you don’t have the self control to stop eating. I read a lot on my tablet and I read a lot of paper books as well, and so far I don’t see a big difference in my reading experience or the time I need to finish a book on either platform.

I know some people have medical conditions that make it difficult for them to focus on one thing at a time (ADHD) but for most people the problem is a lack of discipline and self-control instead of an actual medical problem. The people who get distracted while reading an ebook will get distracted while reading a regular book as well. There is nothing that prevents a person reading a regular book from picking up the remote to watch a bit of TV or the phone to call someone or a laptop to surf the net. I don’t know Allison Kutz personally but I have a feeling that she would be hard pressed to finish a regular hardcopy book also without getting distracted in the middle.

These ‘studies’ seem very contrived and a conspiracy theorist could argue that the publishing houses are trying to scare people against buying ebooks and push them towards buying paper books. The following article in the Telegraph (Jonathan Franzen: e-books are damaging society) doesn’t do anything to convince me otherwise either. People made the same claims about TV, Radio’s, VCR’s etc etc and we are still here… You can’t stop technology/progress, all you can do is adapt and work with it.

Well this is all for now, I will get off my soap-box and go back to my corner to finish this book I was reading.

– Suramya