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+<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
+<!-- Parent-Version: 1.84 -->
+<title>E-books must increase our freedom, not decrease it
+- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
+<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/ebooks-must-increase-freedom.translist" -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
+<h2>E-books must increase our freedom, not decrease it</h2>
+<p>by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/"><strong>Richard
+Stallman</strong></a></p>
+
+
+<p><em>This essay was originally published by <cite>The Guardian</cite>, on 17 April 2012,
+as &ldquo;<a
+href="//www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/17/sharing-ebooks-richard-stallman">Technology
+Should Help Us Share, Not Constrain Us</a>&rdquo;, with some surprise editing. This
+version incorporates parts of that editing while restoring parts of the original
+text.</em></p>
+
+<div class="announcement">
+<p>Also consider reading <a href="/philosophy/ebooks.html">
+E-Books: Freedom Or Copyright</a>.</p>
+</div>
+<hr />
+
+<p>I love The Jehovah Contract, and I'd like everyone else to love it
+too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed
+books let us do that.</p>
+
+<p>I couldn't do that with most commercial e-books. It's &ldquo;not allowed&rdquo;.
+And if I tried to disobey, the software in e-readers has malicious
+features called Digital Restrictions Management (DRM, for short) to restrict reading,
+so it simply won't work. The e-books are encrypted so that only
+proprietary software with malicious functionality can display them.</p>
+
+<p>Many other habits that we readers are accustomed to are &ldquo;not
+allowed&rdquo; for e-books. With the Amazon &ldquo;Kindle&rdquo; (for which <a href="/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.html">&ldquo;Swindle&rdquo;</a>
+is a more fitting name), to take one example,
+users can't buy a book anonymously with cash. &ldquo;Kindle&rdquo; books are
+typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon makes users identify
+themselves. Thus, Amazon knows exactly which books each user has
+read. In a country such as the UK, where you can be <a
+href="http://www.stallman.org/archives/2012-mar-jun.html#07_April_2012_%28Wrong_book%29">prosecuted for
+possessing a forbidden book</a>, this is more than hypothetically
+Orwellian.</p>
+
+<p>Furthermore, you can't sell the e-book after you read it (if Amazon has its way,
+the used book stores where I have passed many an afternoon will be
+history). You can't give it to a friend either, because according to
+Amazon you never really owned it. Amazon requires users to sign an
+End-User License Agreement (&ldquo;EULA&rdquo;) which says so.</p>
+
+<p>You can't even be sure it will still be in your machine tomorrow.
+People reading 1984 in the &ldquo;Kindle&rdquo; had an Orwellian experience: their
+e-books vanished right before their eyes, as Amazon used a malicious
+software feature called a &ldquo;back door&rdquo; to remotely delete them
+(virtual book-burning; is that what &ldquo;Kindle&rdquo; means?). But don't worry;
+Amazon promised never to do this again, except by order of the state.</p>
+
+<p>With software, either the users control the program (making such software <a
+href="/philosophy/free-sw.html">Libre or Free</a>)
+or the program controls its users (non-Libre). Amazon's e-book
+policies imitate the distribution policies of non-Libre software, but
+that's not the only relationship between the two. The
+<a href="/proprietary/proprietary.html">malicious
+software features</a> described above are imposed on users via software
+that's not Libre. If a Libre program had malicious features like
+those, some users skilled at programming would remove them, then
+provide the corrected version to all the other users. Users can't
+change non-Libre software, which makes it <a
+href="http://www.bostonreview.net/forum/protecting-internet-without-wrecking-it/root-problem-software-controlled-its-developer"> an ideal
+instrument for exercising power over the public</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Any one of these encroachments on our freedom is reason aplenty to say
+no. If these policies were limited to Amazon, we'd bypass them, but
+the other e-book dealers' policies are roughly similar.</p>
+
+<p>What worries me most is the prospect of losing the option of printed
+books. The Guardian has announced &ldquo;digital-only reads&rdquo;: in other
+words, books available only at the price of freedom. I will not read
+any book at that price. Five years from now, will unauthorized copies
+be the only ethically acceptable copies for most books?</p>
+
+<p>It doesn't have to be that way. With anonymous payment on the
+Internet, paying for downloads of non-DRM non-EULA e-books would
+respect our freedom. Physical stores could sell such e-books for
+cash, like digital music on CDs&mdash;still available even though the
+music industry is aggressively pushing DRM-restrictive services such
+as Spotify. Physical CD stores face the burden of an expensive
+inventory, but physical e-book stores could write copies onto your USB
+memory stick, the only inventory being memory sticks to sell if you
+need.</p>
+
+<p>The reason publishers give for their restrictive e-books practices is to stop
+people from sharing copies. They say this is for the sake of the
+authors; but even if it did serve the authors' interests (which for
+quite famous authors it may), it could not justify DRM, EULAs or the Digital
+Economy Act which persecutes readers for sharing.
+In practice, the copyright system does a bad job of supporting authors
+aside from the most popular ones. Other authors' principal interest is to be better
+known, so sharing their work benefits them as well as readers. Why not switch to a
+system that does the job better and is compatible with sharing?</p>
+
+<p>A tax on memories and Internet connectivity, along the general lines
+of what most EU countries do, could do the job well if three points
+are got right. The money should be collected by the state and
+distributed according to law, not given to a private collecting
+society; it should be divided among all authors, and we mustn’t let
+companies take any of it from them; and the distribution of money
+should be based on a sliding scale, not in linear proportion to
+popularity. I suggest using the cube root of each author's
+popularity: if A is eight times as popular as B, A gets twice B's
+amount (not eight times B's amount). This would support many fairly
+popular writers adequately instead of making a few stars richer.</p>
+
+<p>Another system is to give each e-reader a button to send some small
+sum (perhaps 25 pence in the UK) to the author.</p>
+
+<p>Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy. (I
+mean non-commercial redistribution of exact copies.) So sharing ought
+to be legal, and preventing sharing is no excuse to make e-books into
+handcuffs for readers. If e-books mean that readers' freedom must
+either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.</p>
+
+<blockquote class="announcement"><p>
+<a href="http://defectivebydesign.org/ebooks.html">Join our mailing list
+about the dangers of eBooks</a>.
+</p></blockquote>
+
+</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
+<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
+<div id="footer">
+<div class="unprintable">
+
+<p>Please send general FSF &amp; GNU inquiries to
+<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org">&lt;gnu@gnu.org&gt;</a>.
+There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
+the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
+to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org">&lt;webmasters@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
+ replace it with the translation of these two:
+
+ We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
+ translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
+ Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
+ to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">
+ &lt;web-translators@gnu.org&gt;</a>.</p>
+
+ <p>For information on coordinating and submitting translations of
+ our web pages, see <a
+ href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+ README</a>. -->
+Please see the <a
+href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
+README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting translations
+of this article.</p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
+ files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
+ be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this
+ without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
+ Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
+ document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
+ document was modified, or published.
+
+ If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
+ Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
+ years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
+ year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
+ being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).
+
+ There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
+ Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->
+
+<p>Copyright &copy; 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 Richard Stallman</p>
+
+<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
+href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
+Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>
+
+<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->
+
+<p class="unprintable">Updated:
+<!-- timestamp start -->
+$Date: 2017/09/25 09:55:45 $
+<!-- timestamp end -->
+</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</body>
+</html>