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Tool to convert HTML pages website into a secure EXE
steeladept:
I could go to a book store and buy a paperback or hardcover book dirt cheap off the clearance table, take it home, read it, and then loan it to a friend who reads it and returns it to me. And I can keep loaning it out until every friend & family member I have has read it.
I can then take that book and sell it on EBay (possibly for more than I paid for it, and thereby making a profit on it) and the buyer of the book can do the same, loaning it to all his friends & family, and then either sell it like I did or donate the book to a library where 1000's more people get to borrow and read it...all without the original author, publisher, or distributor receiving any additional compensation beyond the original discounted purchase price I paid when I bought the book at the book store...AND THAT IS LEGAL.
What I don't understand as a consumer is how anyone can possibly think it's fair to stop me from doing the same with a digital product I have purchased. Why can I not give it away after I have read it or listened to it, like I can with a physical copy? Why are my rights to pass it on when I am finished, or loan it out, or sell it, or donate it to a library, being trampled upon? Why has there not been a way for people to be able to do this, built into any existing DRM scheme yet?
-app103 (January 16, 2009, 11:02 AM)
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April, I am sure you already know the answer to this, but for the benefit of readers, I will give you the simple answer. The reason is because your distribution to others deprives you of the benefit of the book; whereas doing so digitally does not. It is not difficult, even with copy prevention, to spawn another copy that others can use while you still reap the benefits. Until respawning and distribution can be prevented, you will never have the same rights to digital media as you do for physical media.
raybeere:
Well you aren't going to find your book on some download or torrent site with 1000's of people downloading it every day. It's just not practical for book pirates to create a new account on their machine and install a new copy of Reader every time they want to grab another pirated book to read.
[....]
And if I remember correctly, there may also be a limit on the number of machines that an email address can be used on with the Reader software, and that after I think 5 uses, you can't use it any more. This would limit the original purchaser to 5 machines, pda's, or whatever, over the course of their lifetime, with the need to repurchase all of their books if they exceeded that. (not too good for the consumer that formats his machine and reinstalls every 6 months!)
[....]
And here's a bit of food for thought when it comes to DRM and sharing between family & friends:
I could go to a book store and buy a paperback or hardcover book dirt cheap off the clearance table, take it home, read it, and then loan it to a friend who reads it and returns it to me. And I can keep loaning it out until every friend & family member I have has read it.
I can then take that book and sell it on EBay (possibly for more than I paid for it, and thereby making a profit on it) and the buyer of the book can do the same, loaning it to all his friends & family, and then either sell it like I did or donate the book to a library where 1000's more people get to borrow and read it...all without the original author, publisher, or distributor receiving any additional compensation beyond the original discounted purchase price I paid when I bought the book at the book store...AND THAT IS LEGAL.
What I don't understand as a consumer is how anyone can possibly think it's fair to stop me from doing the same with a digital product I have purchased. Why can I not give it away after I have read it or listened to it, like I can with a physical copy? Why are my rights to pass it on when I am finished, or loan it out, or sell it, or donate it to a library, being trampled upon? Why has there not been a way for people to be able to do this, built into any existing DRM scheme yet?
I don't think I would be so against DRM if it were possible for me to do the same with a digital product as I can with the physical version of the same product. And it is for this reason why I will not buy an ebook or an MP3, rather than a physical book or CD. I would be paying the same money but getting less rights, as a consumer.
It's not just the authors, artists, publishers, and distributors that have rights. Consumers do too. DRM only thinks about and addresses the rights of the first group and does not even consider the rights of the second, at all.
-app103 (January 16, 2009, 11:02 AM)
--- End quote ---
Although I'm a writer, I did use the word "unreasonable" to describe many of the existing schemes, in the sense that they were unreasonable to the consumer.
Example: Five installs? I once went through that many just to convince tech support it was their hardware and not my software causing problems. I prefer a solution that works for both parties. I don't want to get ripped off, and I don't want to be forced to rip off my audience in an effort not to be ripped off. That was really my point: any of the existing solutions are either too weak, or too strong. One side or the other suffers.
As for your other points, true, a little sharing with friends isn't a huge problem - but the real point, which I didn't think I needed to spell out, is that if ordinary people can get around a scheme in order to share once with a friend, pirates will have little trouble figuring out ways to make copies to share with millions.
One of my online posts was the victim of a scraper, thanks to my use of a certain keyword. If I'd discovered someone reposted it on their personal blog, I wouldn't have a huge issue with it - but a scraper? Scrapers are just the pirates of web content, and I don't like pirates at all. But, see, that's why DRM can never work. If it is weak enough to allow enough loopholes you could share with a friend, the pirates will leap through those loopholes and bore them wide open. If it is closed up so tight you can't share at all, it isn't fair to you. (Even if you can't copy or print, I've seen software that lets you run OCR from a bitmap - in other words, a screen shot - and who is more likely to have that type of software, and misuse it, than a pirate?)
Consumers and people who create content need to work out a completely new model, because making the old model work with DRM will screw over one side or the other.
bfcbfcbfc:
Have a look at Webcompiler 3 (http://www.x2net.com/webcompiler/index.htm)
I used an earlier version and it worked well. They do a trial version - "Presentations produced by the trial version of WebCompiler are identical to the licensed version, except that an additional licensing screen appears at the start indicating the use of the trial version. "
Regards
Brian
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