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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Paper books vs ebooks

dimanche 4 mai 2014 à 14:00

Reading on paper seems to be better than reading ebooks, even in a direct practical sense.

This point is interesting, but doesn't go beyond the shallowest of values: what it's like to read. Ebooks affect other values that people have considered important.

For instance, when technology and EULAs block and prohibit people from giving or lending books freely to others, they damage our social relationships. Most commercial ebooks are like that.

When ebooks are designed for products that snoop on users' reading, and permit a store to remotely erase their books, they damage our human rights. Most commercial ebook readers are like that.

See http://stallman.org/ebooks.pdf for more details.

Even acquiring a copy means being snooped on, if you have to identify yourself to the store. That's massive surveillance. See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/surveillance-vs-democracy.html.

I've read some ebooks on my computer's screen, and it's ok. But I'd never get an ebook under the limits that commercial ebooks impose today. I won't let the question of what it's like to read distract me from what it's like to lose freedom.