links for 2009-02-28
Filed Under: Link Dump
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page 155
Archive for February, 2009
Photo: To Scale
Filed Under: Photography
Those little dots are people. That’s how big these sand dunes are. I had no idea what I was getting into until I got there.
On the Amazon Kindle 2 Controversy
Filed Under: SF Business, Speculative Fiction, Uncategorized
Some authors have posited that having an ebook reader able to convert words into sounds on the fly is a good thing. See Neil Gaiman. Others have argued that such technology should be covered under audiobook rights. And Wil Wheaton has created an audio comparision between a human reading a book and the Kindle.
What a load of greedy bullshit, and perhaps the most boneheaded idea to come along since those self-destructing DVDs called Div. I’m a writer. I like money. I don’t get much of it for my work. You would think that I would agree with anything that stands to make me more money, but I am not an insane greedy monkey. I am also a reader and a consumer and the thinking behind this attitude is utterly ridiculous. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I come down firmly on Neil Gaiman’s side on this.
This “parcel out the means in which media can be consumed to squeeze out dimes” approach to literature is going to do NOTHING but alienate consumers. Here’s why:
When we buy a book, we believe that we can do whatever we want with it short of printing up copies and selling them. We reject any notion of technology being used to artificially limit our rights to media. DRM is dead, just ask the RIAA. We want to share and we want to remix. It’s been demonstrated time and time and time again across all media. You cannot fight the use of technology to interact with media with more, evil technology. It’s a perversion of the natural state and it NEVER lasts. The system always rights itself. The human information network routes around things like DRM and artificial rights as if they are damage. All you do is frustrate your honest consumers and waste money.
If it can be consumed by the human mind, it can be shifted, translated, transmitted, and and all those other things that technology inherently makes possible and makes greedy bastards wake up in a cold sweat, afraid that somewhere, someone is using their “property” in a manner for which they could have tried to rape your wallet. No. We as consumers are not going to put up with it. We haven’t been putting up with it.
When we buy an audio book, we are NOT buying the book. We are buying a recording of a performance of the book. It is a distinct enough entity from a book that I believe the rights do deserve to be sold seperately. But the text itself, that’s just one right, as far as I am concerned. You sell me access to the text, and I will do whatever I want with it. I will cut up your book’s pages and make a hat. I will scan it with an OCR and put it in my personal database. I will even give the book away to a friend when I am done with it if I don’t want it taking up space anymore. You can’t stop me. Publishing industry, seriously, with the decline of readership and sales, is this what you want to be spending man-hours on? Finding ways to LIMIT the ways that people can interact with your products?
With readership falling like a fucking stone, with everything else that is going on today thanks to the Depression-like economy, the publishing industry has bigger things to worry about than a text-to-speech function, something my computer has been capable of since 1997! Just because Amazon adds it to a ridiculously expensive e-reader doesn’t mean now it’s suddenly time to hyperventilate and claim that rights are being trampled and money is being lost.
If I was president of the Author’s Guild, I’d be focusing my energy on figuring out how to get my members works printed on cereal boxes and billboards. Massive dissemination, through any channel I can think of. I would be doing everything in my power to encourage reading. The money will follow if you just let people get on with the act of consuming the ideas. We don’t mind paying, but we will not be gauged repeatedly for the access to the same material.
Anyone who thinks that the Kindle’s text-to-speech function is more akin to a performance and less equivalent to showing some words on a screen–well, there’s not much hope for you as far as I can tell. I hope you enjoy frustration, because I predict an awful lot of it in your future on this issue.
