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TorgoX (1933)
sburkeNO@SPAMcpan.org
http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/
"Il est beau comme la retractilité des serres des oiseaux rapaces [...] et surtout, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie !" -- Lautréamont
Yow! Am I a used books OFFENDER yet?
An odd Guardian story about authors getting upset about Amazon selling used books: "Brought to book: Authors are unhappy that Amazon's secondhand book sale is reducing their royalties. But it's a bad deal for buyers, too"
I think the whole idea of people yowling about connecting used-book sellers with used-book buyers is absolutely crazy. Why don't these authors also demand that their books be made with weak binding, like a lot of college textbooks are, so that after a few weeks of use, the book falls apart, so that you can't ever sell it back?
Or print books on flash-paper, with a wee detonator in the binding that goes off after one month, reducing the book instantly to a pile of ash! And if you try to remove the denotator, the DMCA cops can hunt you down.
Next up: AOLDisneySony sends Fuzzy Lumpkins to US Congress to teach everyone to "respeck mah innellectual propertah!"
I pour myself a cup of strong coffee. :-)
-- Jarkko Hietaniemi
Every red cent is mine, Mine, MIME! (Score:1)
A few years ago, Garth Brooks loudly complained about used CDs "costing" him sales. Of course, Microsoft isn't really happy about people reselling their their software. It's all insane. There is a time to let go of one's product and I submit that a good time for doing that would be AFTER YOU SELL IT. I'm lucky enough to be an author and I'd not at all concerned about used book sales canibalizing my royalities. I like to look toward the future, not the past. I wish more people would think like this instead
Re:Every red cent is mine, Mine, MIME! (Score:2)
And while I'm ranting, I love how DVD players are "zoned", because the movie industry "needs" to be able to treat the different zones as distinct markets. I love how the word "need" gets used there. Can I do that too? As in: "I need my DVD player to play whatever DVD I can put in it."
Re:Every red cent is mine, Mine, MIME! (Score:1)
I think you can find the multi-zoned versions on ebay from time to time if you're *really* interested.
Publisher bucking the trend (Score:1)
I admit I don't listen to much of heat in this debate, but I have noticed one publisher which tends to lean in entirely the other direction: Baen Books
Not only do they provide a bunch of books for free in electronic form, they also have a service where you can buy online access to 4 or 5 of their titles. This isn't the limited access that Safari apparently provides - but the ability to download the books in a number of formats, and continued access to the books online.
The free books are available from