Why I started reading more once I got rid of my books | Hacker News Reader

Why I started reading more once I got rid of my books

ryanwaggoner.com

10 pointsryanwaggoner7 comments

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-se... :

The Amazon Kindle e-book reader (whose name suggests it's intended to burn people's books) has an Orwellian back door that Amazon used in 2009 to remotely delete Kindle copies of Orwell's books 1984 and Animal Farm which the users had purchased from Amazon.

From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-copyright.html :

We still have the same old freedoms in using paper books and other analog media. But if e-books replace printed books, those freedoms will not transfer. Imagine: no more used book stores; no more lending a book to your friend; no more borrowing one from the public library—no more “leaks” that might give someone a chance to read without paying. No more purchasing a book anonymously with cash—you can only buy an e-book with a credit card. That is the world the publishers want to impose on us. If you buy the Amazon Kindle (we call it the Swindle) or the Sony Reader (we call it the Shreader for what it threatens to do to books), you pay to establish that world.

Nah, no more than buying the original iPod helped usher in a dystopian future where the music industry controlled us all. Just the opposite happened; once the industry shifted to digital, the anti-DRM pressure rose to the point where DRM could be done away with. It's already happening with ebooks; look at the torrent networks.

That "what about the kids" thing seems to be a popular theme... I wonder about it myself in my own thinking about the Kindle: http://journal.dedasys.com/2010/11/26/kindle-thoughts

Yeah, I ultimately decided that it's probably more our nostalgia and attachment or our own way of life than anything else; just like our grandparents probably lament the downfall of records in favor of digital music.

It's not just that. Going from records to tapes to CD's for instance was all pretty linear. Not being able to physically look through what you've got is a different matter altogether though, and part of what I feel dubious about. How are they supposed to just browse around, picking up things, having a look? Something like the Kindle is still a bit crude for that sort of thing.

Well, I don't plan on having kids old enough to be browsing most of my books for at least another decade. Have to think the technology will have evolved quite a bit by then.

Synchronicity. In the last few weeks I've been thinking about getting rid of most of my books, for two reasons:

1. They make moving much harder. I'm young and I would be interested in working in different places. Owning too much stuff can tie me down to one city.

2. Before long it won't be possible to unload my second-hand books at the book exchange. Kindles are taken up mostly by hardcore readers and they will probably drive a lot of book exchanges out of businesses. I need to act now before other Kindle owners come to the same realisation and flood the market with their paperbacks.

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