Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

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"Microsoft will refund customers in full for what they paid, plus an extra $25 if they made annotations or mark-ups."

that... I mean, if they automatically refund everyone? that sounds... really pretty good? I mean, I've got a few grand into my kindle books. I bet I have more than a grand in obsolete technical books alone. If the kindle was no longer the dominant platform (or rather, if there was another platform with more books) if you wanted to pay me several thousand dollars to re-buy my library on a different platform? Sure, I'd take that deal.

(I mean, if it's not an automatic refund, if it's instead the more usual "we'll refund if you remember to call us between this time and that time, and if you are willing to argue for hours, that is a very different sort of thing, of course. I just think you can make the argument that we should be very forgiving of businesses if they want to unwind in a way that causes them to refund every penny of revenue they ever acquired.)

if you wanted to pay me several thousand dollars to re-buy my library on a different platform? Sure, I'd take that deal

And what do you do when the media you want isn't available on another platform?

In the recent article about the burning of the Universal music archive we learned that less than 11% of recorded music is available online. Anyone who subscribes to a streaming service knows content comes and goes.

The only way to keep the things you buy is to actually own them. Not continually rent them from one online service after another.

>The only way to keep the things you buy is to actually own them. Not continually rent them from one online service after another.

Eh, as someone who has owned (and lost or destroyed) a bunch of physical things, my experience is that I have to continually rebuy physical things I use; I mean, records, CDs, books... these all get lost and destroyed in various ways if you carry them around with you and otherwise use them. I don't think that the way I own and store things is more reliable than a major content licensing platform. If I use a thing consistently and long term, then licensing it is certainly more reliable than buying a physical copy, and may very well be cheaper for me than buying physical copies new.

I'd argue that what protects availability of things that go out of print is more that other people own the thing and can sell me a copy when mine is lost or destroyed. You could argue this is a bit of a tragedy of the commons, or it could be, if E-books started pushing physical books out of print (as opposed to books that are e-only mostly being books that wouldn't have been printed at all before the advent of e-book technology)

Of course, for things that are rare (and things that are popular are a lot less likely to go out of print) this gets expensive pretty fast, but first sale doctrine does assure me that I can usually get a copy, if I'm willing to pay enough, while the possibility does exist, with electronic copies, that I won't be able to get a copy at all... that's true.

This is why copyright should only be granted on things that don't have DRM, or where a system is in place to release the un-limited copies when support of licensed copies ends.

We should allow licensing, but only if the companies allow the benefit of that - perpetual replication allowing goods to never fail - to accrue with the licensees.

Yeah, the point is to encourage creation; I agree that there should be some requirement that you must distribute a work to keep that copyright.

Encouraging creation is part of the deal, preserving culture, and enabling wider education were also parts of the deal -- Queen Anne (or her advisers) seem to have really valued the availability of literature for the people (or at least the priveleged people with access to the BL and Uni libraries).

eh, but copyright as it stands now, decreases the availability of literature (I mean, aside from how it encourages creating it, which is super important, of course.) so those things couldn't have been reasons for creating copyright law as it stands in the US.

(an interesting side effect, as a person willing to spend money on books? It's a lot easier to get a good e-book of something still under copyright than of something out of copyright. Like, I'm super happy to pay $20 or whatever for something better-than-gutenberg and that's really a lot of effort. I don't really know how they do it, 'cause half the for pay out of copyright books for kindle on amazon are worse than just downloading the .mobi from gutenberg. For anything public domain, you have to wade through a sea of badly formatted garbage, even if you are largely price insensitive; price isn't a reasonable signal either way. On the other hand, if it is in public domain, you almost certainly will be able to find an e-book of it, and the quality you get just hitting gutenberg really isn't that bad, while if it is in copyright, if it is an obscure book, your only real option is paper.)

I wonder how much of my problem with finding well formated kindle books is my own lack of familiarity with the search tools and publishing houses? or with amazon's lack of features (like, some sort of rating for the publisher would be useful here. Right now, amazon makes it really hard with their combining of reviews for different formats/editions/publishers. Like sometimes the kindle version and paper version (for out of copyright books) will be different publishers, and amazon just glomps the reviews together, making it really quite difficult.

>those things couldn't have been reasons for creating copyright law as it stands in the US //

I don't think your analysis stands, there was a deposit system in USA too so that all copyright books were deposited at the Library of Congress. In order to get your copyright you had to place on deposit two copies that people could, with access to the library, view and which would be preserved even if your work only had a short run and other copies were lost.

https://www.loc.gov/wiseguide/jan04/deposit.html

Everything else I thinkg I can agree with. Particularly the problems with Amazon's review and ratings system -- I guess it must work to bring more money to Amazon, but it's really annoying.

Ah, perhaps I misunderstood. I thought you meant availability to the general public; I mean, two archival copies of a work doesn't do a lot to ensure I can read it; as I understand, if you can't find the rightsholder, that still doesn't let you print copies until copyright is up.

>Everything else I thinkg I can agree with. Particularly the problems with Amazon's review and ratings system -- I guess it must work to bring more money to Amazon, but it's really annoying.

I personally think it's amazon's biggest problem; some of their products are distinctly premium; The kindle experience is way more expensive than just buying used books... and for in copyright books, it's a premium I'm happy to pay. I spend a lot more on books now that I have a kindle (I read a little more... but I also pay more per book)

The same goes for goods. Like, I'm happy to pay extra for something that arrives fast and that is what it says on the tin. I mostly (but not always) get that from major brand goods that sell a lot, but for unbranded stuff? I might as well go to aliexpress or something; the reviews don't match the product quite often.

I personally think that this is amazon's biggest problem; at least it's amazon's biggest problem when it comes to getting more of the money I spend. I don't know how representative I am.

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