Roald Dahl ebooks remotely updated to censored versions after purchase
thetimes.co.uk
thetimes.co.uk
> Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks ...
> Readers who bought electronic versions ...
It has been proven to us (members of the general populace) time and again that we're not actually "buying" and we don't "own" digital media: whether ebooks, digital movies, music, or games. We are licensing or renting them. And apparently the terms of the license often include altering the contents or removing access (e.g. the Kindle 1984 fiasco) at the whim of the licensor. To be honest, I'm not really sure if the license explicitly allows that or not -- I'm not reading multi-page terms and conditions every time I make a digital purchase, even though I know I should -- but it has certainly happened on multiple occasions.
It's odd to me that we've accepted this for digital purchases. Can you imagine checking out at a grocery store and being presented with a hundred page amalgamation of terms of use for every item you're buying?
I know government regulation is a non-starter for many, but I personally would not mind if the government established some sort of digital version of the first sale doctrine and stopped businesses from using terms like "buy", "purchase", or "own" for practices that did not meet those criteria. Sure, let Amazon license you ebooks that can be edited or revoked at the whim of Amazon or the publisher, but let's "call a fig a fig and a trough a trough".
Buying directly from creators is great when available, and usually the resulting file is unencumbered enough so that pirating it just makes no sense. (This is why most money I spent on music pass through Bandcamp.)
That's not clear. The person quoted as having it happen to them posted that it happened the same day as the announcement of the non-bowdlerized versions, and the linked article was also published that day.
The default user action is null. If they had the new one released separately, nobody would have purchased it. By replacing the old one, few will buy the original.
The bleaching will be much more complete this way.
This is true, and they wouldn't have wanted to do that, not least because it would reflect poorly on the changes, but this would have been an alternative honest way to have released the new editions had they wished to, in contrast to what they actually did.
Not any more.
The True Believers of Wokeness^tm are now completely sidelined and we're in the feeding frenzy stage of the fad. Wizards of the Coast cash grab for D&D was the first time that I was someone _completely_ transparently trying to fleece their customers while being draped in a rainbow.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/1423-an-update-on-the-open-g...
In their own words.
Wokeness has reached its due by date. The great washed masses need to find something else to colonize and destroy now.
The very first sentence in the 'what's next' part of that post starts out, "The next OGL will contain the provisions that allow us to protect and cultivate the inclusive environment we are trying to build"
So sounds to me like they're doubling down on the ideology while relaxing (at least some of) the licensing terms.
It isn't an either/or situation. Seems likely they are motivated by both money and ideology. If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all (which would cost them money).
That doesn't make sense, how would that make them money?
Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?
They are retroactively altering/censoring the books that people have already purchased, and offering the original uncensored version as a new purchase.
>Secondly, as these are e-books, how would releasing copies of the originals cost them money?
They are not "releasing" copies of the originals, they are selling them for money. People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.
But that wasn't what was said, unless it was a typo.
> > If it was purely money they could retroactively censor existing books without offering the original version at all
Implying that they wouldn't offer the originals if it was all about money. That was what I meant by "that doesn't make sense". It sounds like you agree so it was just miscommunication.
> People who bought these books as originally written are now going to be forced to pay more money in order to revert their purchases to the original, uncorrupted version.
You originally said it would cost the publishers money, which is what I questioned. But again, I think we agree and this is just a language barrier.
Everyone knows demand For his books was going nowhere, the only change is these new people pretending they're the arbiters of everything proper and polite. Wasn't a fan of churchy nobodies telling me what media I shouldn't consume, nor will I kowtow to a bunch of Otherwise irrelevant art graduates.
If it is ideology, how do you explain that they changed a reference of Conrad to Austen? A third option is that they acted clumsily in good faith by trying to keep the book up-to-date with the new generation. The fact that some people are offended and want so much believe into a culture war move tells more about these persons than the publishers.
Replacing male with female author.
I don't know if the reason is that Steinbeck is leftist or not. It is even possible that it is a woke agenda reason. What is worrying is that some people are just wanting sooo much for it to be a woke agenda, and the problem is that you can always turn everything into a woke agenda. If they would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling, you would have said "it's because Kipling's books are talking about other cultures and Steinbeck talks about America, and for the wokes, it's bad to talk about America".
That being said, maybe I'm a bit biased, because so far, in a lot of cases, those moral panics turn out to be blown out of proportion: the "bad wokes threatening freedom" turn out to not defend the ideological position they are told they have. It may be the case here too: all this story may be just idiots who clumsily tried to keep the book relevant for what they think was the new taste.
>they did not replace Hemingway and Kipling
In fact, they replaced Kipling.
At the end, it's basically what I'm saying: they replace Conrad by Austen, and one says "it's woke because they replace men by women", but they replace Kipling by Steinbeck, and one says "it's woke because they replace a man with a right ideology with a man with a left ideology". They would have replaced Austen by Conrad and one would have said "it's woke because Conrad was anti-imperialist". They would have replaced Steinbeck by Kipling and one would have said "it's woke because Kipling is more multicultural than america-centered Steinbeck".
Amazon removes some editions of Orwell's 1984 from Kindle Devices after issue with owner of book rights (2009) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8930904
NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
(Imagine the near future, when GPT denounces citizens to the police for reading unapproved texts... Philip K Dick cross Orwell cross Ray Bradbury.)
So they already have all the data, but nobody is looking at it. But soon (or perhaps already) we'd have (the functional equivalent of) a conscious being paying 100% attention to your every act.
It's almost flattering!
We're there. It's outsourced to Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
"Why isn't your desk in front of the telescreen?" - 1984
Who needs infrastructure, education, public health, etc. when your primary concern is spying on your own population? The STASI and Gestapo - and their clients - would have understood.
Reminds me of the Culture novels by Iain M Banks. They use AI drones to prevent criminals from reoffending by constant monitoring.
> The Culture doesn't actually have laws; there are, of course, agreed-on forms of behaviour; manners, as mentioned above, but nothing that we would recognise as a legal framework. Not being spoken to, not being invited to parties, finding sarcastic anonymous articles and stories about yourself in the information network; these are the normal forms of manner-enforcement in the Culture. The very worst crime (to use our terminology), of course, is murder (defined as irretrievable brain-death, or total personality loss in the case of an AI). The result - punishment, if you will - is the offer of treatment, and what is known as a slap-drone. All a slap-drone does is follow the murderer around for the rest of their life to make sure they never murder again. There are less severe variations on this theme to deal with people who are simply violent.
Still, it's pretty easy to get a church to give you a Bible, I think the Gideons will send you one, so not the best choice to bootleg.
The Australian Project Gutenberg site has them available for free download.
We don't have a word for it yet, given that classical censorship developed in the era of printed books, when such activities were technologically impossible. But I would say that it falls under penumbra of censorship because of the intent. And the intent is to remove certain speech from average reader's view without the reader's consent.
Censorship does not have to be total in order to be censorship. Even in authoritarian states, small oppositional media outlets may be tolerated, so that foreign accusations of media control can be rebuked: "Hey, look at Radio X, we are definitely not censoring them." But their reach is carefully kept limited.
"Computer Fraud and Abuse" seems like it would cover it? :)
Here in Australia, maybe "Unauthorised access with intent" too. Would need real lawyers/court to figure it out though.
Don’t want changing books? Pirate your ebook or buy a paper book.
(But having once reviewed a swath of inclusiveness edits via side by side comparisons first hand out of intellectual curiosity about what is going on, it was kinda a nothingburger was my takeaway.)
Doesn't mean you can sell license subscriptions or whatnot, but what you sell has to match up with what the buyer thinks they're purchasing.
Odd, when I look at a Kindle book on Amazon it shows a button to "Buy now".
> You also licensed the ebook provider to remove or alter the content as they see fit.
It is good that at least the EU has started to recognize the concept of informed consent. Clicking agree on a multi-page contract when that is the only way to access content that you (or someone else) have already paid for is not it.
> Don’t want changing books? Pirate your ebook or buy a paper book.
Those are the immediately available options, but that doesn't mean we have to just accept digital "purchases" being whatever the seller wants them to be while still trying to lure in people by making it seem they are buying something.
Last one I bought was years ago, about Jimi Hendrix. Still available but I don't know if you get the audio CD with it containing his solo acoustic home recordings. Very nicely illustrated: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42100.Voodoo_Child
Step one: Download Calibre - https://calibre-ebook.com
Step two: Install Alf's DRM removal tools for Kindle bought ebooks https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com
Some people will still want to read ebooks that aren’t available DRM‐free from anywhere. I don’t expect to convert everyone to my way of thinking. But by advocating DRM‐free media, especially in scenarios like this where publishers use their power in ways people don’t like, I hope to convince some people who wouldn’t have thought about it otherwise.
And, too, it’s like free software. People can benefit greatly from using some free software some of the time, even if they never desire to use all free software all of the time. People who purchase some of their books DRM‐free improve the state of the industry even if they don’t have 100% devotion to DRM‐free media.
Like if you're not a computer person how are you supposed to use any of this stuff without being bombarded with ads or getting fleeced by dark patterns.
TIA
You're not.
It's perfectly fine if only we get access to this stuff. We warned them. We all warned them about DRM, computer freedom, corporate exploitation. They didn't understand, they didn't care. Leave them to it. Would be nice if we could save everyone but we're all better off trying to secure our own freedoms.
So what response should the company receive? Boycott? Hacktivism? Flagrant piracy? Perhaps not. Should we lobby to limit the rights of an estate edit posthumously? Should a blurb indicating the edit be required on the cover of the book?
Instead, I think a more grassroots effort is desperately needed. We need something akin to a software license that an individual author can include in their contracts with publishers and in their estate planning. It should be entirely frictionless and unambiguous. It should be the easiest path for an author to take.
I propose that a small foundation be created for the purpose of its creation and dissemination; and that a public website / petition exist so that any author publishing today can see that the idea is endorsed by the very people who inspired them to become writers.
Having said that, I can speculate that an author could stipulate that no changes may be made but I can also imagine that many may choose to allow flexibility.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/netflix-acquires-rights...
Awesome.
Netflix owns RDSC. RDSC had to authorize changes by Penguin. I'm sure you're excited about the new version, given your confident denunciation that was dead wrong.
I agree with the first half of your sentence, but not the second. If an author finalizes their work, then that's it. The publisher can choose to publish or not publish it, but they do not own the copyright on the work, and are not permitted to make modifications and then distribute what can only be considered an unauthorized derived work.
Granted, copyright holders may of course contractually allow publishers to do this. I can only assume this is the case for Dahl's works, as I'd be surprised if a major book publisher did something that would infringe on an author's (estate's) copyright. But I don't think this should be the default, and I'd hope and expect copyright law agrees with me.
Nope, not with the sold copies. Not to mention copyright terms in the US are ridiculously overextended by congressmen comfortably sitting in Disney's pocket. So no argument about "extension" plays anymore - they overplayed their hand so hard there it is not even close to something natural, it's purely "the law is what I can buy" now.
The problem isn’t the new version. The problem is censoring the old version.
I think Keanu Reeve's approach in restricting digital edits to his acting via contracts is the best interim solution until the world converges on something.
There's a legal+technical+cultural problem where people aren't purchasing immutable copies of books or other media anymore, instead they're purchasing a complicated license that grants access to whatever they say the thing is at the time you request it. That problem can have a legal solution, or a technical+culutural solution (the technical solution alone is insufficient since there's still the cultural issue that most people don't care most of the time).
But there's also a separate purely cultural problem, which is that people felt like these changes to these books were a good idea in the first place. To me that's at least as concerning as the first problem. The sorts of changes made here--e.g. expunging usages of the word "fat"--are totally disrespectful to the author and the readership. There is already an established pattern for making material changes to a book for the sake of young and/or sensitive readers: Publish an abridged version. Make it clear that it is abridged, and sell it as a separate product. I remember reading a handful of classics as a very young kid in a format like this, which I'm sure I couldn't have managed at that age otherwise.
That second problem is emphatically not a legal problem, or even a much of a moral problem. Nobody should be prevented from behaving this way. But it's still evidence of a cultural problem. You don't make material modifications to a wildly-successful author's books and publish them like it's just another printing. That wasn't the way things were done two decades ago, and it's starting to be the way things are done now. Not illegal, and maybe not even morally wrong, just... not good.
I recall when I was at school decades ago at a time when the use of certain words in public was much less acceptable than now that our Shakespeare texts had certain words expunged from them as they had been deemed unacceptable for our 'delicate' ears.
We highschool students were completely oblivious of the fact until to save costs I found a copy of my father's Shakespeare text which he had kept from his schooldays and used it as my textbook. When following its text in class I found my copy contained a paragraph that had been omitted from the authorized school edition.
Suffice to say, my edition became a sensation amongst the kids, everyone wanted to read the 'naughty' bit. It's so long ago that I can't remember chapter and verse but the word we delicate little flowers weren't supposed to see was bastard. Big deal!
What was immediately obvious to me even at that young age was that bannings, prohibition and censorship is counterproductive and it's much more likely to have the opposite effect of what's intended.
Around that time there was much controversy over the publication of D. H. Lawrence's† Lady Chatterley's Lover which was deemed by the Wowser Brigade as obscene. This only had the effect of multiple 'clandestine' copies turning up in the school playground with us boys huddled in small groups reading the 'naughty' parts.
Several years later a similar controversy erupted over Philip Roth' Portnoy's Complaint, and even later I came across that strange and most peculiar of works W.S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch at a secondhand book sale which shocked even my somewhat blunt sensibilities (its controversy was somewhat before my time but its notoriety still lingers even now).
It is almost certain that I would never have come across any of these works let alone bothered to have read them UNLESS public attention had made them notorious—the fact is I just don't read this sort of stuff unless controversy has first thrust it into the public limelight. There's a lesson here to be learned with respect to this Dahl affair.
Methinks there may be somewhat more to this controversy than just protecting young minds. There's nothing like a controversal beat-up to improve sales.
I'm almost certain that our censored Shakespeare texts had no impact on our morals whatsoever, if anything it made us kids more worldly and less naïve after we'd found out that we'd been censored.
We adults underestimate both the intelligence and resilience of kids, they know and don't forget when we've been hoodwinking them. No doubt, kids definitely need protection but overprotection can ill-equip them for the realities of a harsh world.
_
† Incidentally, in hindsight, it's interesting to note the double standard that applied when I was at school. On the one hand, our Shakespeare was censored over a nonsensically trivial matter, at the same time we had to study and be examined upon controversial novelist D.H. Lawrence's novel Sons and Lovers.
Whilst Sons and Lovers was a slightly saucy novel for that time it was somewhat of a joke that we kids had to study it around the time that the publication of Lawrence's more notorious novel was the subject of court action—that is, it was in the news for all the 'wrong' reasons. The dichotomy was damned obvious, even to us kids.
Take Harry Potter, for example, or Star Wars. End copyright at death of creator might give people some ideas on how to deal with ideas of canon.
Or take JK Rowling right when HP started to be popular. Who'd profit if she died then? Probably the publishers that are already having the books set, printing and deals with bookstore chains already signed. I don't think "sudden death" should be something that ever enters a business strategy meeting.
Or just natural death at that moment would leave her family just as poor, quite obviously contrary to her wishes.
When a prominent writer dies, their output should become zero.
What’s really morbid is when a writers next of kin keeps finding and editing works long after their death.
J.R.R kept publishing new work until his son Christopher died. All of it merely “edited” by Christopher, or course.
When a key creative talent dies, there are consequences. I don’t see why eliminating copyright is especially bad.
Problems with canon are possible regardless of copyright, and changing copyright durations does not add or remove these problems.
If it is made clear that any changes or new works made due to modified canon are not the work of the original (now dead) author, then this may mitigate some of these problems somewhat.
Abolishing copyright makes it easier to improve too, since then if someone thinks they have a better idea (which might or might not be true, but it can be judged by people after it is done, and it is OK if people do not all agree) then they can do it without a lawsuit. (Just, you will have to be clear than these are now new works rather than the original works. The original canon is not to be changed, but you can make up new ones which are based on them.)
Imagine a fairly young but successful author dying suddenly. If their family was relying on them for income their exclusive rights to sell their books shouldn't just end immediately on their death - that could really screw people over. Making things unpredictable should be avoided.
And it does. To migitate that and other similar circumstances this we have social safety nets. What is it with this expectations that not just authors of creative works but also their descendants should have this special ability to profit from their labor long after it was performed.
Meanwhile every company "selling" digital content wants that content to be bound to a single living person and go poof once that person does.
Having said that, I'd happily pirate any content that someone censors, and not give any single penny to any censoring authority (for other non-censored content too) and wouldn't feel any guilt doing it.
Do the same with public libraries, except the new version is kept next to the almost porn books.
I haven't actually checked, but I would expect e.g. Naked Came the Stranger, Lolita, and Lady Chatterley's Lover to just be filed under "fiction". I'm not aware of a separate category for "fiction that some people do or once did consider scandalously erotic".
There is a category for actually-porn books, "romance", but you can't make any case for putting an edition of Roald Dahl there.
Maybe a law that requires the old version be made available for free with the digital purchases. This way people can choose which version they want to read. It cost publishers and distributors next to nothing - you can have all the versions within the same "file" so there is no increase in distribution overhead apart from a minor increase in file size.
Also what does this do to citations?
If we want to say that copyright also includes editright (does it? I would never have said so), and so the current owner of a copyright also has the right to edit, well ok but then is the new text still attributed to the original author?
If you put words into someone else's mouth, what does it mean anymore to quote from a book and cite the author, but the author didn't actually say that?
Somehow the new work should be divorced from the original author, except, the bulk is valued and that came from the original author, which should not be stolen from them.
It's almost like it doesn't matter if you like it or not, what an author wrote is what they wrote. Editing it to taste is nothing but an absolute lack of integrity.
Most authors wouldn’t have the bargaining power against publishers to have that included, unless it is granted as an inalienable right by law.
This is changing something after someone purchased it.
IMO, ideally, authors should offer digital copies of their books gratis-with-the-option-of-paying. Obviously, these copies shouldn't come with restrictions.
The upside of truly free books for everyone is so great that any alternative seems terrible.
It’s always the copyright holders of dead ones.
I agree. However, authors should not be required to do such a thing, but nobody should be prohibited from freely making copies (and modified versions, as long as they are not claimed to be the original version, and not replacing a copy that someone else has already made that does not want their copy replaced), even if the author does not do it by themself. If copyright laws are abolished, then this will be legally possible.
The person who owns the intellectual property rights for the book is publishing a modified version of the book. Absolutely be mad about your already purchased copy being changed under your nose - that probably should be illegal.
But it's not really clear whether there's anything sensible that can be done past that without ironically violating the freedom of speech of the person publishing the book. (I would definitely support much shorter copyright terms though. An author who died 30 years ago doesn't need encouragement to produce more works anymore, which is supposed to be what copyright is for)
Corporations are not human beings. I'm not even sure they should have any rights at all, to say nothing of free speech.
There’s also always a person behind it, no matter how many corporations deep you go into the ownership structure.
But this Kindle censorship stuff is the fault of the woke scolds. Their spirit could be found in a society of superstitious cavemen, among the religious nuts of the 1600’s, and now this.
In the forward march of humanism, this particular fight is a social and legal one.
There is a simple solution. Require continued distribution for continued copyright protection - for every single version individually.
Even without that, changing the works is cultural vandalism.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/25/roald-dahl-thr...
No, except perhaps that they should not be permitted to sell versions that are modified if they claim to be the original work by the original author; if they do not claim such a thing, then it should be permitted. (However, the original version should still be made available too. If it was not copyright then anyone could do so if they want to do.)
However, they should not remotely change ebooks automatically in this way. This is independent of whether or not they are allowed to make modified versions (which should be allowed).
> Should a blurb indicating the edit be required on the cover of the book?
Yes. There are a few ways to do such a thing; one way would be to write "abridged" like another comment in this thread suggests. But it should be marked so it is clear that it is different from the original work.
This is always the only correct answer to copyright insanity.
Information wants to be free.
Copyright is just a game. You participate mostly voluntarily. You can opt out of playing it at any time. Let them figure out how to bring you back into the game if they can.
2. Better yet, shouldn’t we just have a system where consumers have access to all revisions of a book? We’re talking about digital records, not physical books that need to be printed and shipped, after all.
A key component of censorship or falsification is hiding the fact that it even takes place. They are tools of deception, and if you tell people exactly how you are deceiving them, it is no longer effective.
Look no further than China and their systematic scrubbing of the Tien-an-men massacre from history.
Except they didn't. They licensed a copy of the book, and that license was revocable or changeable at any time. It's all there in the 175 page agreement they were forced to sign before the purchase went through.
Consumers lost the digital ownership battle a long time ago.
I can slightly sympathize that digital media may have different rules than physical, but some are just misleading.
Oh yes, and if I'm ok with a used copy, it's $2.15. Would I shame anyone (including myself) if somehow, by an unexplained miracle of nature, it happens that a DRM-less digital copy of the same book appears on their hard drive? No, I won't.
Cassandra was just able to see the future (and no one would believe her).
Tangentially, I think it's interesting that Greek mythology takes such a clear stand on the nature of time travel: it's possible, but history (past, present, or future) can't be altered.
That is one of a couple of rival models in modern science fiction, and generally not a particularly popular one.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
It's frightening to watch this cyberpunk hellscape unfold.
Roald Dahl: Original books to be kept in print following criticism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34925396 - Feb 2023 (301 comments)
The rewriting of Roald Dahl is an act of cultural vandalism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34872760 - Feb 2023 (140 comments)
Roald Dahl: Rishi Sunak joins criticism of changes to author's books - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34869868 - Feb 2023 (66 comments)
Hundreds of changes made to latest editions of Roald Dahl's books - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383 - Feb 2023 (904 comments)
Roald Dahl books rewritten to remove language deemed offensive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34845933 - Feb 2023 (12 comments)
Wait what? That's a pretty bizarre thing to change. Really does feel orwellian to change the authors being referenced.
I do think there's something a bit off in selecting an American writer instead of a Brit though. That and replacing ladies and gentlemen specifically with folks removes some of the Britishness and offends me as an American.
At the same time, these edits feel substantial and I don't think they should be pushed without consent of the purchaser. Otoh, I would love for ebooks to magically get mistakes fixed (and even more so, if I could report mistakes, so they could get fixed).
> This change I feel is one of the least objectionable, IMHO.
I think it's one of the most objectionable changes. Removing authors whose politics have gone out of style, and replacing them with more palatable ones, reminds me of Party members airbrushed out of photos with Stalin.
That it's done in a children's book is that much worse - a middle-man censor posing as Dahl and recommending what books to read, and presenting a false consensus on which authors were popular.
But, these changes aren't anywhere near changing the name of a main character. The author references are a tiny tiny part of a large work that never comes up again. It's not at all like when Wally was renamed Waldo, or when Wilma was replaced with Wenda.
Okay, in the next installment you would be fine to watch "Amazing Huggy Wuggy against Teletubbies". Because you know, spiders are scary and gremlins/mob bosses/mad scientists are scary too.
Do you think children in 1988 had a better understanding of who Joseph Conrad was than kids today? Maybe slightly, as I'm sure some parents bought Heart of Darkness after Apocalypse Now came out, but I certainly had no idea who he was at the age I read Dahl books.
Do you remember analyzing books in school? One of the things we were taught to keep in mind as a lens of analysis was the author as a person, and why they might have written what they wrote. I think this is a great example: Why did Dahl choose the authors he chose to mention? In Matilda, in many cases, I believe he did it to tacitly recommend those books and authors to his readers. To the age group that makes up Dahl's readership, most of them probably weren't well known even at the peak of their popularity. That's sort of the point: Dahl's saying--possibly--"go check this out, my young readers".
So yeah, I think it's pretty crass to just change it to a different author. Dahl is an author calling out fellow authors in his book. It happens in movies a lot, too, where filmmakers will put subtle (or not-so-subtle) nods to their peers and forebears and inspirations in their work. I think, as a rule, if the audience notices it, it was probably intentional. Most authors and filmmakers care about other authors and filmmakers a lot more than we do. None of them would be okay with somebody in the future mucking with their references because people aren't immediately getting the reference. They'd be like... "No! The whole point was to immortalize that person or work further by mentioning it in my work!"
Because 'namedropping' an author that the child may not have heard of is exactly the way they do start to hear of them.
If you can read it today, you can (should be) read it 50 years from now, the exact same unaltered book.
If someone can access a version of the content, they should always be able to. Revoking access to future versions with updates? Fine, that's fair. But revoking access retroactively? Nope. This should be illegal by the law, otherwise licensors will keep doing this out of control.
It's really a matter of communication; what do you actually get when you pay $X for something? Right now this is too often unclear, hidden in the ToS or some such. If you want to sell access to Roald Dahl's books for only a week then I don't see anything wrong with that: as long as it's communicated clearly up-front, so I know what exactly I'm getting and can make an informed purchase decision. This is kind of how libraries work, right? It's not a problem because the deal is clear to customers up front.
So in short, I'd be in favour of laws that mandate clearer communication of the conditions, rather than laws that forces anyone to adopt a particular way of selling stuff or access to stuff.
Someone subscribing to Kindle Plus (or whatever) might not expect to have a permanent copy of each book, but someone who pays for a digital copy definitely does.
Because it's harmful to society as a whole. Many things that are overtly harmful to society, we have enacted laws against. This is no different.
Licensing vs. Ownership.
Licensing is predatory behavior aimed at deceiving, manipulating, and fleecing the populace. It's easily proven with math and economic studies already done and published.
Why are you in favor of an overtly predatory policy, @arp242?
That you don't like this model is fair and reasonable. But that doesn't mean we should ban it. I certainly don't see how it's "harmful to a society as a whole"; the only truly harmful part I see is the deception (as well as the overly long copyright duration in general, but that's a bit of a different issue and reducing copyright to a more reasonable term won't mean the death of Kindle or these kind of business models).
All of this is true for any purchase you make, and why there are clear laws in the EU for example which state that the full price must be shown up-front, with a breakdown of the cost. So this applies to more than just e-books. These laws should be expanded.
Or that’s what most people in this thread would probably want.
Not necessarily available for purchase at any time, but you if purchased access to a particular version, you should have that access.
Opting in to updates is fine, mandatory, compulsory updates are not.
For libraries though, I think a similar law should force any provider to notice X months in advance (like 3 months) before some content will be pulled, and prevent them from pulling any earlier, giving enough time for subscribers to access/watch uncensored/original content.
of course machines and math aren't enough; sufficiently repressive laws could eliminate such machines, or limit access to them to an infinitesimal group, or prevent people from learning about them. but machines and math can offer enormous leverage to such book-burnings, as amazon swindle does, or instead offer enormous leverage to those who want to resist them
but even if they did, the interest of this narrow special interest group in not having their works get pirated is clearly less important than the public interest in having reliable access to honest knowledge about the past
Are you really arguing that the majority of authors don’t want DRM but they can’t stand up as a majority group against Amazon? I don’t buy it.
that seems so obviously correct to me that it boggles my mind that someone could disagree
Did a bit of digging — seems like both JK Rowling and Stephen King are more in favor of watermarking.
This is a good question, and more practical than it might look like: there have been instances of major media outlets being caught quietly editing their "early" covid reporting from spring 2020 later in the pandemic, to better match the changes in the narrative.
I deeply regret not bookmarking some of the examples: this is now ungooglable, and not having a prooflink makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist.
In the mid seventies this trend reversed and temperatures started going up. The new explanation became different emissions from power stations. By the end of the 80s climatologists were warning about global warming but they faced the issue of why it didn't happen between the 40s and mid 70s. By the turn of the millennium they'd started replacing historical data with recalculated values that reduced the extent of the mid century cooling, and once they crossed that Rubicon new versions of old data started being released regularly. There was always a new reason being found why people couldn't accurately read thermometers back in the day. New historical data smoothly and silently replaced old data on government websites. By the 2010s global cooling had vanished from the record entirely and temperature graphs showed a flat trend during that era.
Of course censorship isn't complete without denial it ever happened. Hence if you look for global cooling today, our glorious tech firm overlords will direct you to denials it ever existed at all. You have to know where to look to see the old newspaper clippings, the videos of Leonard Nimoy telling his viewers about the coming ice age, screenshots of old graphs, scans of the letter to the president etc.
And finally, because erasing all the old copies of documents is so hard, no historical editing regime can survive without training the population not to look. The above information is verboten in polite society, the media won't touch it along with many other things. All respectable people know never to question The Science lest they be immediately fired from their job or worse. There are people in this thread gamely saying they will just read pirate versions of these books to their kids, but that's not how it works. Give it ten years and reading the old editions of Dahl will be considered a firing offense and your kids will be trained by their teachers to disown you, if they catch you with such copies. Because that's already happened for issues the leftists care about more.
...
When I am gone, if that happens, then I’ll wish mighty Thor knocks very hard on their heads with his Mjolnir. Or I will send along the 'enormous crocodile' to gobble them up."
-- Roald Dahl, 1982
He has been ranting on about ebooks since they were invented. But it took over a decade for the “technically they could do this” to become “they are doing this”
Are you sure about that? Given the concerted smear campaign against him?
What he said was "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to tell her to conceal that from most of his associates."
He has also stated that Epstein should be considered a serial rapist.
Presenting herself as entirely willing does not mean that suddenly the person who is "consuming" is not participating to a sexual assault when this person is conveniently closing a blind eye on either or not she has been coerced: Epstein already had a bad reputation and was a registered sex offended at the time, including for coercing minor to have sex. It is just bs to play coy and say "weeeell, maybe he did not know", and just show the person saying that is going out of their way in semantic to reshape the discourse into victim blaming.
My next reader will be a Kobo, but my Kindle that is not connected to the internet is still going strong.
Someone who explains the same thing better than I do: https://helenpluckrose.substack.com/p/defining-woke-and-woke...
I think it's the trick with the "woke" definition: people who think it's a good definition always end up given a definition which describe them very well or describe the group that they are claiming is the victim of the big bad wokes.
The best definition that exists is "woke are people that defend a view point I don't like. I'm using the same strategy as them to defend my own view point, but because I like my views, I think my views are reasonable, and because I don't like their views, I think their views are unreasonable"
This shouldn't come as a surprise really, certain words have been in vogue in the last few years (i.e. "systemic", "white supremacy", "inequities", ...), and they all share a common theme/premise about race, sexuality, and gender. Associated with these beliefs are people who use these beliefs to justify illiberal behaviour. Is it then unreasonable to denote this observable phenomena with a term, which just so happens to be called "woke"? This is the same line of reasoning which has led to the (rightful) creation of terms like "right-wingers" to denote illiberal people on the political right, and their associated beliefs. There's nothing here that's partisan or conspiratorial. So what's your deal with describing observable phenomena with some word?
Perhaps you should consider that your final paragraph more aptly describes your position than it does mine.
He said some vaguely questionable thing about the definition of the word assault and people sought to interpret that in the absolute worst way possible.
He's a weirdo, and he says some stuff that clearly indicates there's some social stuff he just doesn't quite understand. Like the fact that "assault" or "rape" doesn't necessarily mean an outright violent physical assault.
I mean who the hell expects RMS to have a nuanced understanding of interpersonal relationships?
I have no problem buying ebooks, because I know the deal.
Nothing beats a hardback.
That said, ebooks provide worthwhile benefits in their own right. Fulltext search, text‐to‐speech, changing fonts and font sizes, small physical size convenient for travel… other times I come up with some operation I want to perform on a particular book, like counting how often a particular phrase is used, or comparing certain passages side by side, where having an ebook copy would be useful.
So for these reasons, I often buy the ebook edition of my hardcopy books, if I can find it DRM‐free. Similarly, after reading a good ebook I’ll often get a physical copy to stash on my shelf. (In any case, though, DRM‐encumbered ebooks are off the table, at least for me!)
Makes me wish for a well‐made book scanner and OCR package, so I can format shift all those physical books I can’t find acceptable ebooks of.
Don't allow censorship.
They're printing his name on it like he's the author, but they've gone way beyond mere editing. Wouldn't putting his name on it alone be some kind of misrepresentation.
I know it works like that with ghost writers, but those are ostensibly approved by the author. There is no such thing here.
I know that for my own works, I don't care if someone wants to remove attribution, but if someone modifies it, then I do not want them to keep the attribution to me unless they also include a notice about the modification (but no such notice is needed if the attribution is also removed). (However, I am unaware of any licenses that work like this, as far as I know.)
The Roald Dahl fiasco feels more like editors out of 1984 making edits to control thoughts.
Or, without reading conspiracy into it, it feels like some current "writers" using someone else's name to push their views on how things should be. Whatever is going on they seem to be changing the story itself. I don't think language drift can be blamed, because it is an active, intentional act to change our language.
Or maybe it's just a bubble wrap the children issue.
This is why we each choose a book to memorize, just in case.
But I don't understand the hand wringing about the publisher changing newer editions of the book. All media either changes with the times to find a new audience, or faces obsolescence. My generation grew up watching Romeo + Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About You, rather than pouring over the original Shakespearean plays.
The changes in Roald Dahl's books are limited to asides about characters or superfluous details that are archaic. We are not loosing a literary gem by dropping the cheap "Wong number" joke from the Great Glass Elevator.
It's not like this is some new thing, either. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was edited after publishing by Roald Dahl himself, because having Oompa Loompas be enslaved pygmies from deepest darkest Africa is kinda shitty.
But you were not deceived into thinking those were the originals.
Umm, im pretty sure im the same generation and we were required to pour over those in school.
If you mean the average person isn't reading Shakespeare for fun, i think you would have to go back many many generations. For that matter, he was probably never "read" for fun by the average person (his plays were of course watched by the average person once upon a time)
If it can be modified without your consent,. If it can be pulled from your devices without your consent,. Etc then you don't own those books.
If Amazon nukes your account on you do you still think you own those books?
Some people do read books more than once. There are a few books I enjoy enough that I've read them quite a few times over the past 25 years or so. I've lost, sold, or given away the physical copies of nearly all of them, and have replaced them with ebooks. I would be very upset if those ebooks just disappeared someday.
(I don't have to worry, as I've de-DRMed and backed up all the books I've purchased. But I don't expect most Kindle owners to know how to do that, or even know that they need to do that to be safe.)
Even an author’s own revisions can be heavily criticized when they diminish the quality of the original work. Witness the Star Wars special editions, which aside from making questionable edits to dialogue and pacing, also jammed in incongruous CGI effects that stick out like a sore thumb, making the films feel inconsistent, and though perhaps the CGI was cutting edge for its time, in retrospect those effects have not aged nearly as well as the original effects, which were cutting edge for their time.
The Puffin changes are similar in kind. Roald Dahl as an author is known for his dark humor and misanthropic themes. Throwing in a moralizing sermonette in The Witches (whose eponymous witches are bald) that “there are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that” is unnecessary and inconsistent with the tone of the original work. Meanwhile, Dahl’s own moral points are obfuscated or eliminated. Dialing down Augustus Gloop’s obesity interferes with his purpose as a lesson on gluttony; cutting out Mike Teevee’s obsession with guns dampens the consequences of his obsession with television. George Kranky’s grandmother was such an unpleasant person that she was never really missed after he murdered her—well, that point’s not made anymore.
Then there are more minor changes, unremarkable physical descriptions that are apparently no longer acceptable coming from a mainstream publisher. Describing Miss Spider’s black head, or Earthworm’s lovely pink skin. Scared people who are white as a sheet. Tall skinny Bean and dwarfish pot‐bellied Bunce. What once were colorful descriptions (often literally) are replaced with bland unremarkable alternatives, not because anyone of consequence took offense, but because whatever company the publishers contracted this “modernization” task to wanted to justify its paycheck.
And the worst of it is that the rightsholders are the ones doing it. The Bowlders who first Bowlderized Shakespeare were resoundly made fun of for their delicate sensibilities, but I don’t really take issue with them, because they were just a family sharing with others how Shakespeare could look according to their tastes. No adult was deprived of Shakespeare by the Bowlders.
The situation is different here because had it not been for the vociferous outcry you complain about, the originals would no longer be available to anybody. Due to the public response, now they’ve said they’ll continue providing uncensored versions (whether they’ll keep that promise remains to be seen). Had readers shrugged and moved on, the censors would have won, and we would see these changes more and more throughout the publishing industry. But now maybe there’s a chance that this trend will change direction: that the industry will regain its faith in normal people to read books from another era without having to be coddled.
Right, and who made these changes and published them under the Dahl's name? Not the dead author, that's for sure.
Thank Netflix for this.
They own all rights to Dahl's books.
https://www.scotsman.com/news/people/netflix-acquires-rights...
The Roald Dahl Story Company owns the rights, and authorized Penguins changes. They are owned by Netflix. So no, this isn't disinformation you censorious hall monitors.
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-acquires-iconic-ro...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/22/netflix-is-acquiring-the-r...
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-acquires-iconic-ro...
RDSC had to approve the changes.
Where in the link does it say that?
Why are you spreading this misinformation?
So stop spreading misinformation about my misinformation.
Edit:
Yeah it wasn't misinformation:
https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-acquires-iconic-ro...
The article posted we are commenting on explicitly states RDSC authorized the changes.
I think that the original versions should be preserved, but that they can make modified versions too if they want to do; however, the modified versions should not be called Roald Dahl's original versions, and should not be claimed to be them; they should be something else. (Fortunately, this seems to be what they are doing, in this case, so that is good, but it does not justify remotely updating the ebooks.) (Copyright often makes both such things difficult though if you do not hold the copyright, but copyright is bad and should be abolished, and then you can both preserve original versions and make modified versions.)
Usually the changes are pretty minor, fixed typos, maybe a movie cover or a new introduction. You can turn it off although I don't think you can roll back versions?
(I do back up my ebooks right after purchasing, though, so at least I have "originals".)
But seriously, this is the major risk with 'everything online' our just electronic media is general. It really is possible to change history at the press of a button. Cut and paste history.
And how would anyone even know this has happened? No one is paying attention. If someone did spot some history editing, why would that get any traction? Who alert the world to it?
And with ai to generate reams of bullcrap... my my, most people are going to be in trouble! A connection to truth will become hard to find.
There is an answer - and that is to recognise what you know (in a strong sense) from what you believe on account of something you were told or saw on a screen. You only know what you have personally - the rest is hypothetical.
I do seem to recall noting that books that get updated with new editions often do sport a new copyright date. Not sure if the changes made here would qualify, though.
If an author wants to release a new edition of a book because they themselves have evolved in their thinking, great.
If an author wants to stop publication of the original work, fine.
But a publisher revising a work on behalf of an author is not fine. It’s legal, they own the rights, but it’s not okay.
Hopefully this changes the dynamics of rights agreements for works of art and creators can bar opt rights holders for unilaterally revising a creative work.
This seems more like a legal issue rather than a culture issue.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
I mean, it is not like the books have been rewritten or history erased, has it?
And even if it were the author doing it, it would be dishonest to have multiple versions under the same title, unless there was a note at least briefly mentioning alterations.
Can I rewrite any book as I want and for any cries just say "Hey! I printed an original version! The whole 10 copies! Locked in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of The Leopard'?
It's just the publishers weren't in the same country or even in the same political block.
"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."
The only part I can read is the sub-heading, which says "Puffin announces plans to publish a classic collection as it emerges online libraries are being automatically updated with sensitivity changes."
This is not the same as remotely updating a version that you have on your Kindle. Rather, it would be like a library receiving an updated version of the book, which you then check out -- which could totally happen in the physical world as well.
Key paragraphs:
Owners of Roald Dahl ebooks are having their libraries automatically updated with the new censored versions containing hundreds of changes to language related to weight, mental health, violence, gender and race.
Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.
[..]
Clarissa Aykroyd, 43, who works in children’s publishing, reported on social media that ebooks she bought before 2020 had been changed. She told The Times: “It feels Orwellian that we are having the updated versions forced upon us and has made me weary of ebooks. “I assumed that because the changes to the work were so big that I would be given the option of whether to download it.”
https://twitter.com/stoneandthestar/status/16287703797821399...
This also all happened before the decision was announced to publish both the original and the new versions, so it may have already changed again.
No need to read an article for that; if you dig through the settings on a Kindle, there's an option to allow automatic book updates (probably enabled by default).
The updates happen automatically, in the background, when the device syncs, without confirmation or presenting a list of changes.
I sometimes look at left-leaning websites (other than HN) to get a broader view of the world, and the support for the bowdlerization of Dahl seems near 100 percent among our more righteous, liberal, blue-stockinged thinkers.
Example: https://www.metafilter.com/198336/Dont-gobblefunk-around-wit...
Consider the Magic Faraway Tree edits. The children no longer go on adventures without adult supervision. Never mind that venturing out and exploring is a fundamental curiosity for children - it's inherently risky and potentially dangerous, and that's the point.
Other edits include new characters and lands introduced. Lessons on gender quality in response to someone asking for help with chores.
It's creative contamination. Heavy-handed tonal modification of the story, disrespects the author efforts to create a specific atmosphere and world, and have that maintained for the life of the art work.
Along comes Netflix or whoever the estate owner is, and sets the 'Sensitivity Enforcement Team on the task. Words and ideas go flying in a bizarre censorship frenzy.
This is on top of them releasing "new" editions that do not feature the censorship changes, which they will gladly sell to you for full price. If you pay retail price again, we'll let you have the book you already purchased.
Utterly unacceptable.
The gatekeepers are here, they moved to post-publishing.
Failing that then deliberate mass piracy of the original works will.
These bastards need to be taught a lesson.
Here, the publisher has altered the contract without my permission or knowledge. I no longer have what I paid for.
As far as I'm concerned the publisher has not only deceived me but also has committed fraud.
_
Edit: here's an analogy: I license Windows in perpetuity on my computer (which is the usual arrangement), and unbeknownst to me Microsoft has placed a timer within the code to disable the O/S after say 18 months then all hell would break loose. This is effectively what the publisher has done here (the contractual mechanism is the same).
I believe there's also a Kindle setting (default enabled, probably) to allow or disallow automatic book updates.
Excerpt: Readers who bought electronic versions of the writer’s books, such as Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, before the controversial updates have discovered their copies have now been changed.
I like HN because we make an effort to elevate the conversation, ask interesting questions, and gain insights from each other. But in this case, these people are just assholes.
[0] Although I understand that in most ebook stores, you're buying a license to the book, and not the book itself. This may be true and legally sound, but as an end consumer it still bothers me.
(I agree that the wording of their comment is somewhat ambiguous.)
Also, apparently getting consent to do something, and than doing it, is a "violent" attack.
Stallman has been warning us about the theoretical risks of ebooks for a long time. But it’s taken so long to actually see the possibilities become realities.
Do you mean that Richard Mathew Lotfman that created the concept of closed source while working for Microsoft at MIT?