What my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today:
• Dear PR flacks: If you’re writing to me about “strategically integrating authoritative informational resources,” don’t.
• Did *Zero Dark Thirty* screenwriter Mark Boal get illegal access to classified material? It sure sounds like it… Srsly?
• I, for one, welcome our cell-phone service provider overlords. And if you don’t… well, tough. They’re in charge. The Most Ridiculous Law of 2013 (So Far): It Is Now a Crime to Unlock Your Smartphone
• Okay, but how? Take Back The Net: it’s time to end the culture of online misogyny
• Here’s every science fiction and fantasy adventure movie you’ve ever seen. Right down to the idea that adventuring is something only men do. *sigh* The Reward
(hat-tip for today’s links: io9)
Wow. That short film is really… problematic.
Rumour has it that some women are not in the same category as sacks of gold and strangely-bejewelled heathen idols.
Pffft.
Rumors.
Next thing you’ll be telling us they have feelings and motivations, like pets.
Regarding the You-Can’t-Unlock-Your-Phone thing: Honestly, it is just a return to the old model of “Ma Bell”. The equipment belonged to them. You broke it, you had to pay to get it replaced. Now, though, these ‘phones’ are portable computers and we all store so much on them that we treat them as external memory…something that is, if not part of ourselves, then at least a ‘possession’. However, they aren’t. And we are suckers for thinking they are. Next, the companies will say they also own all the information we store on them.
They already do that to a certain extent. Apple restricts the number of devices on which you can access anything procured through the iTunes store, even though you have bought the content. And of course, an ebook or electronic version of a song has zero resale value, no matter how you acquire it.
Yup. And when you’ve got an eBook, I’ve gathered that on most readers the publishers can still access “your” copy to change text if they want. Of course, my information might be wrong there. It was hearsay.
Well, there was the time Amazon deleted copies of Orwell’s 1984 from people’s Kindles. (Yes. Yes they did.) And there was the time a Nook version of War and Peace replaced every instance of the word “kindle” with the word “nook” (though I don’t think this was done after purchase).
You* make it sound like Amazon hacked into their customers devices. What Amazon did was remove the (illegally published) file from the server-side libraries. When the customer’s devices contacted the server to sync the libraries, they saw the book had been removed, and removed the reference from the client-side library. A less inflammatory view on the event was a test case on how publishers and distributors intend to deal with illegal distributions of copyrighted works. Amazon has already signaled that in the future they will allow customers to keep their ill-gotten booty.
The “kindled/Nookd” kerfluffle was a) an object lesson in the dangers of “find/replace all”, and b) the digital equivalent of a misprint.
*it’s not just you
But when a real book is published in error, the purchasers don’t have to give it back. The Kindle owners foolishly thought they’d bought their books.
There’s a whole subculture of the book/printed matter/ephemera/etc. collecting world that looks just for those “errors”. Imagine what would have been missed if an earlier age had had this ability. Ecce The Wicked Bible: http://twitpic.com/9kzw1
Edited to amend my statement: I am not referring to books printed in error, but books printed with errors. This comment was really in answer to Dr. R’s Item #2 mixed with Roger’s use of error.
“If this subculture had no reason to exist, then it would never have existed”? That’s a little tautological, don’t you think? I’m not sure what of value, aside from the occasional chuckle, would have been lost? Certainly no Christian sects holding adultery as a virtue arose from the Sinner’s Bible that I’m aware of. Not that that would have necessarily been an improvement for Christianity.
Yeah, those fools. >.< The Orwell book wasn't "published in error", it was published fraudulently. Meaning all of those customers found themselves inadvertently in possession of stolen goods. Clearly Amazon had an obligation, morally, ethically, and legally, to do something. They chose to include “remove the books from circulation” to their response. But, rather than put the word out and rely on people’s sense of morality, ethics, and the law (ha ha), they used their distribution means to pull the books and refund the purchase price. The internet then responded with “ZOMG, there in mah kindle, steal’n mah bookz!” Very adult, that. But it worked, as Amazon is now on record saying they won’t do that again. Chalk one up for the little guy and his 99¢ copy of a $8 book, I suppose
The only ebook debates more tedious than the “licence /v ownership” one (as if it were impossible to make non-volatile copies of the ebook files, or to strip DRMs from ebooks, or to buy DRM-free books) are the “ebooks should be (almost) free” one (based on a desperate overestimation of the costs of printing books and underestimation of the cost of producing ebooks) and the “I like the smell of books” one (which, when you get the image of people ecstatically sniffing their books in your head, is kinda creepy). Smug self-satisfaction is just icing on that cake.
“Access” isn’t really the right word. What they can do is alter the files on their servers, which might get pushed to the devices. Despite a lot of hand wringing, this has never, AFAIK, actually happened.
I follow a very simple principle: I don’t pay for rentals if they’re described as sales. Anything with DRM on it, anything that can be taken away from me at the whim of the publisher, is a rental.
I didn’t ask that question. Of course such a subculture wouldn’t have existed. But, I think that a chuckle at human foibles has value. Misprints, purposeful or accidental, are a footprint, just as any ‘perfect’ artifact is. I think the mis- events are a little jarring and let us imagine a human scene…the fingerprint found in the ochre on a cave wall, the typo in a book printed in the 17th c., the recorded or video’d interview with a (potentially) Freudian slip…I think this perhaps trivial but not inconsequential nor valueless.
I see what you’re saying, but I think you’re over stating it. To look at your example, what do we learn from the Sinner’s Bible? All I can see is that we learn that the church took a decidedly dim view on typographical errors in typeset Bibles (not at all surprising). No one came away with the wrong message from the 7th Commandment. There’s no evidence of deliberate subversion by the typesetter.
In fact, I’d argue that the nature of the error adds to the banality of it. If the line in question had been, say, “Blessed the peacemakers”, and everyone had gotten up in arms about the missing “are”, that would have told us something at least a little bit surprising.
Also, one of the points of the story of the Sinner’s Bible is that the error was corrected. Only a handful of copies remain, the rest were destroyed, and every other English translation says “Thous shalt not…” And the copies that remain were not protected from destruction, they were just overlooked due to poor technology.