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the-danger-of-ebooks.html (6884B)

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 <title>The Danger of E-Books
 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
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 <h2>The Danger of E-Books</h2>
 
 <address class="byline">by Richard Stallman</address>
 
 <p>In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws, 
 every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new 
 restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us are 
 used to chain us instead.</p>
 
 <p>With printed books,</p>
 <ul>
 <li>You can buy one with cash, anonymously.</li>
 <li>Then you own it.</li>
 <li>You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use of it.</li>
 <li>The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read the 
 book.</li>
 <li>You can give, lend or sell the book to another.</li>
 <li>You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it's sometimes lawful 
 under copyright.</li>
 <li>Nobody has the power to destroy your book.</li>
 </ul>
 
 <p>Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical):</p>
 <ul>
 <li>Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an e-book.</li>
 <li>In some countries, including the US, Amazon says the user cannot
 own the e-book.</li>
 <li>Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of the 
 e-book.</li>
 <li>The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software can 
 read it at all.</li>
 <li>An ersatz &ldquo;lending&rdquo; is allowed for some books, for a limited time, but
 only by specifying by name another user of the same system. No giving or 
 selling.</li>
 <li>To copy the e-book is impossible due to 
 <a href="/philosophy/right-to-read.html">Digital Restrictions Management</a> 
 in the player and prohibited by the license, which is more restrictive than 
 copyright law.</li>
 <li>Amazon can remotely delete the e-book using a back door. It used this 
 back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell's 1984.</li>
 </ul>
 
 <p>Even one of these infringements makes e-books a step backward from 
 printed books. We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom.<a
 href="#footnote1">[1]</a></p>
 
 <p>The e-book companies say denying our traditional freedoms is
 necessary to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system
 supports those companies handsomely and most authors badly. We can
 support authors better in other ways that don't require curtailing our
 freedom, and even legalize sharing. Two methods I've suggested
 are:</p>
 
 <ul>
 <li>To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each 
 author's popularity.<a href="#footnote2">[2]</a></li>
 <li>To design players so users can send authors anonymous voluntary payments.</li>
 </ul>
 
 <p>E-books need not attack our freedom (Project Gutenberg's e-books don't), 
 but they will if companies get to decide. It's up to us to stop them.</p>
 
 <div class="announcement comment" role="complementary">
 <hr class="no-display" />
 <p>Join the fight: sign up
 for <a href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/ebooks.html">
 our mailing list about the dangers of eBooks</a>.</p>
 <hr class="no-display" />
 </div>
 
 <h3 class="footnote">Footnotes</h3>
 <ol> 
 <li id="footnote1">[2019] To show our rejection of Amazon's e-book reader,
 we call it <a href="/philosophy/why-call-it-the-swindle.html">the
 Swindle</a>.</li>
 <li id="footnote2">See both my speech
 <a href="/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.html">&ldquo;Copyright
 versus Community in the Age of Computer Networks&rdquo;</a>
 and <a href="https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html">my
 2012 open letter to the President of the Brazilian Senate</a>, Senator
 José Sarney, for more on this.</li>
 </ol>
 </div>
 
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 <p>Copyright &copy; 2011, 2015, 2021 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>
 
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 <p class="unprintable">Updated:
 <!-- timestamp start -->
 $Date: 2021/10/02 16:24:05 $
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