But lets see the Positive side: Now the Nazis wont have to burn thousands of books, saving tons of co2 in their Plan to take over the world with propaganda. So, yay for the envoirment I guess
You must log in or register to comment.
I’d also point towards alternative reading apps and hardware and drop everything related to Amazon.
Is there a way to donate to the authors? Because I think pirating and then donating the money (directly) to the author is much more ethical than putting a megacorp or a publisher in between
Even better if you send it with something like Monero which doesn’t even put the bank between you and the author
You mean the authors would actually earn money instead of the “publisher”? How unfair! /s
When mist books were made of paper, the publishers job was quite the deal including printing, delivering, stocks, pulp the rests etc. So they took the lions share of the price together with the bookstore and the author got maybe 10-15% from the final price.
Today it’s just theft.
Imagine: pirating ebooks but donating money to the author at the same time. Win win.
Amazon’s ebook store front (as well as the internet in general) is flooded with AI slop. The internet is a place where the signal to noise ratio is dropping rapidly.
Physical media is necessary. Especially books. Especially the kinds of books regimes might want to ban. When it’s time to rebuild, we’ll need firm ground to stand on, and physical books work as long as you can hold them.
Or DRMless digital. But yeah, they need to coexist with paper ones.
DRMless digital is great - I have a calibre library of thousands - but still more vulnerable.
Canticle of Lebowitz is a great post apocalyptic novel. After the nukes, Catholic monasteries preserve the ancient tradition of copying down manuscripts. Text doesn’t require any form of infrastructure.
There are also many texts/other media that are not available in any digital format. Obscure or older. For as much of an Information Age we are in, a lot of knowledge is being lost through neglect.
The overwhelming majority of my library is actually not digital-native - rather, pdf or djvu scans. I should really contribute to Libgen by scanning some of my library.
Don’t use kindle? They aren’t the only ebook provider
it blows my mind that people buy ebooks when Libby is free.
Seriously. Anna archives, libby. There are so many open source projects out there for the ereader community
Uh, title is a bit clickbaity, editorialized. Amazon isn’t changing books yet, they are planning to make it possible for publishers to do so, I think, and also recoking ownership. And the video is not great either.
The man who made that video is annoying. The story he read out was from the twits by Roald dahl, it was a few years back that those changes were made. Dahl was a great author but wasn’t a very pc person , his family have had to apologise for his anti semitism. So whoever is in charge of his works wanted to make them more modern and less insulting which misses the point of Dahl but anyway. They’ve done it with Enid blyton books too. In one of hers they have a dog called the n word so probably more necessary with her work lol.
All amazon have done is update the digital edition to the match the latest edition. There’s a million things to hate Amazon for you don’t have to make things up. And also if you want books that can’t be altered buy a paper book, you own them and they don’t run out of electricity.
Changing words seems wrong with it sanitizing and makes future audiences unaware of how bigoted and flawed writers of a time period might be. It underplays cruel parts of society leading to a flawed rosy colored outlook. Now future readers won’t know how far from PC writers like Dahl were.
Dahl was a great author but wasn’t a very pc person , his family have had to apologise for his anti semitism.
That is putting it very mildly.
"There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity, maybe it’s a kind of lack of generosity towards non-Jews. I mean, there’s always a reason why anti-anything crops up anywhere. Even a stinker like Hitler didn’t just pick on them for no reason.”
He said that in *checks notes* 1971.
Worse, it was in response to criticism to an article he wrote that was justifiably criticizing Israel at a time when it wasn’t so popular to do so. And when he was accused of the old “you’re anti-Israel, so you’re anti-semitic” nonsense, he decided to go, “hell yeah I am!”
Oof
He’d probably like today’s politics, it seems fashionable to just lean into anything bad someone says about you.
And also if you want books that can’t be altered buy a paper book
The books on my 1st generation kindle have been there 15 years unchanged. Just don’t connect devices to the internet that don’t need to be connected to the internet.
The “internet of things” that was sold to us is just a way for corporations to exert more control. I am pro-technology. I think an ebook reader is infinitely more useful and valuable than a paper book - I can fit tens of thousands of books on my Kindle, more than I could read in a lifetime, and a full charge lasts more than a month at a time.
I can use whatever font I want, I can scale the size to what I want. I can change the margins, place bookmarks, gives a % of how far I am in a book, skip to chapters, etc.
Like, it’s objectively better than a book.
But it doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.
That’s still not OK
Doing it silently without consent is definitely not okay. Or if they do such a thing, they should notify the user and give an option to rollback if they wanted. That’s what a company that respect users would do.
Printing new editions of a book was always a thing
Forcibly destroying all previous editions is not however
Quietly swapping your earlier edition with the current edition was not, however.
Yeah, I’m with you on this one.
That’s why I only read manuscripts. Don’t trust machines. F*cuk Gutenberg
This reminds me of a joke…
A new monk arrives at the monastery and is assiged to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. When he looks closer, however, he notices that they are copying copies, not the original books. The new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this. He points out to the head monk that should there be an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the other copies. “We have been copying from the copies for centuries,” says the head monk, “however, I must admit you make a very good point, my son.” The head monk then goes down to the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours pass and no one sees him, so one of the monks decides to go downstairs to look for him. When he arrives he hears loud sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old head monk leaning over one of the original books crying. “What’s wrong,” he asks the old monk. “The word is CELEBRATE!” sobs the old monk.
“The word is CELEBRATE!” sobs the old monk.
I don’t get the punchline.
Monks are celibate. But if someone were to transcribe that incorrectly…
Ahhhhh, now I get it. Thanks for the clarification.
Heh. Even funnier to me, as I’m currently reading Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is set in an abbey that has monks who copy manuscripts.
It’s time to de-Google, de-amazon, de-Microsoft, de-apple, etc.
Now? As if they were so ethical all those decades before.
You know what they say about the best time to plant trees. It applies to many things.
It has been time for that, long ago. Why did you have to wait for everything to go south?
I did it a long time ago. The best time to change was 5-10 years ago. The second best time is now.
Self hosting your email server, are you? How many hours a month does that take?
I use Tutanota for my email
So, Google before the IPO.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
Would you rather people switch to non google services or think that since they are all equally evil they might as well keep using the same service.
Did Google ever offer an open source client for the email?
“How about instead of words, we fill books with numbers?”
13+ years ago when I’d say why I hate social media, cloud services, all this convenient dependence, everybody would act as if this was stupid.
My logic was that if there’s a mechanism allowing such influence, no matter how small, its power will grow almost until the death of such an ecosystem. Because the returns of abusing it will always be more than the expenses.
I don’t like this Cassandra feeling really.
Most people have an astounding lack of imagination. Its like they thing that things can’t get much worse because that would be too different to now…
At the same time, they unfortunately can’t imagine things being better. That’s why societies differ a lot between cultures in different parts of the world.
Well that and the fact that some of us define better in such ways that others think may be worse. For example there was a trend some years back where Instagram models were damaging Joshua trees, I am of the complete and unshakable opinion that their blood shouldve water a new Joshua tree and their corpse reduced to mulch for said tree. I aint got nothing against whoring oneself out after all money is money but hurting the Joshua trees is a worthy of death.
Instagram isn’t for sex is it?
Yeah, see, I even have a mental condition which should supposedly make that my problem more than that of most people.
Aphantasia?
I think there’s more than one kind of imagination. It’s like the opposite of ‘thinking outside the box’.
Theirs is more like ‘wow this box is big! I’m gonna get inside a smaller one’.
Not exactly aphantasia, though some kinds of imagination are close to that for me. Rather that something remote is very hard to imagine, while triggers, like sounds and smells and physical feelings and harmonic progressions, make something very easy to imagine.
So if I know that I have to do something or else my head rolls off, the deadline being in 3 hours, I won’t be as concentrated as the typical person.
Honest question, how is this different from the left doing the same? Take this for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl_revision_controversy
As an outsider, it seems the USA is currently in a culture war, and neither side minds burning & changing the books they deem offensive?
I’m all for the Trump hate, what’s happening there is insane, but the American left wing being bothered by books being changed seems pretty hypocritical seeing recent events…
Have you, as a foreigner, been caught up by the American political-polarization bugtm!? Here are a few warning signs that you may be affected.
- Do you find yourself often injecting “left-wing” or “right-wing” into titles?
- Do you have a perceived notion that anything negative being said must involve a certain political party?
- Do you feel the need to bring Trump up in a post that has nothing to do with him?
- Do you find yourself in the comments blaming “sides” without having read the article or watched the video?
- Have you found yourself demanding answers or change that’s addressed in the post? (he literally brings up Dahl as his first example)
If you suspect that you or a loved one suffer from this syndrome, please turn off the devices and go outside.
A punchier example would be And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - the best selling murder mystery of all time - which was first published as Ten Little Niggers
Is indeed a fine example. Keeps raising the same questions: is it ok to rewrite books? We’re supposed to be outraged when maga does it, but it’s ok if we do it?
I mean it’s not an easy question to answer is it? How is my ideological position that ‘nigger’ is not acceptable and removing it makes the book suitable for modern readers any different from someone else’s ideological position that, e.g., ‘transgender’ is not acceptable and removing it makes whatever book suitable for modern readers?
@Hossenfeffer @racemaniac n*r is deemed a slur *by the group it is used about*. “Transgender” is not. Changing references to be more inclusive/respectful of a group is very different to erasing the existence of a group entirely.
Yes, I agree.
But surely you can acknowledge the possibility that some people believe transgenderism is an affront to god and an existential threat to children, or whatever, then their position is not dissimilar.
That’s the issue. What makes ‘this is offensive’ more valid than ‘this is dangerous’?
This is just another front in the war between religion and reason.
@Hossenfeffer well “this is offensive [to the subject]” is more valid than “this is dangerous [to the reader]” for one. A subject can’t choose what the reader thinks of them afterwards - they have to hope that the reader understands enough context to realise they are, actually, equally human. A reader, in contrast, gets to choose whether they agree with the premise. Otherwise history would have destroyed all copies of every religious book, or Mein Kampf or the Little Red Book or Das Kapital.
@Hossenfeffer as with everything it usually boils down to who has the power/control. An (adult) reader can choose what they read or how they interpret it, and can also often control what a child reads and how that child interprets it too. A subject cannot choose how they are read about, so it is up to the writer and publisher to control that message and reduce misinterpretation where possible. It’s a similar framework to cultural appropriation or “doing an accent”. Are you punching up or down?
Indeed, that’s why i hate it that so many people here are raging about this while it’s something both sides are doing…
I get all the Trump & conservatives hate, but sometimes this community is raging over something that’s just done by both sides… So being outraged about it is pretty hypocritical…
The controversy you pointed out is about someone who was writing factually false information and feeding hate against people who should be covered under the freedom of speech. The ban happened during his life, and not years after he died. Therefore his works were not a peace of gone culture, but hate in the present of time.
If I follow your argumentation, that being that you should allow people write false information feeding hate against specific people just living their life in peace, you should be against censoring Hate speech against Lgbtqia+ people too, or the better question would be: where do you draw the line? At Jews? At queer people?
I have honestly no clue what you’re trying to say???
If you read the wiki page i linked, it’s about changing his books after his death, so not things about when he was still alive? Is also not about a ban? Did you even read the wiki? It literally starts with "Puffin Books, the children’s imprint of the British publisher Penguin Books, expurgated various works by British author Roald Dahl in 2023, sparking controversy. "
And you’re talking about hate against races, but the wiki talks about removing the word queer (which used to just be a synonym for strange), removing all kinds of gendered language (not sons & daughters, but children, etc…). So rewriting the books to fit your narrative.
My argumentation is simple: the right wing can’t change books, but the leftwing can? Both sides seem to be trying to rewrite history, that’s all. Whether what’s in the books is acceptable or not, who cares. If the book is no longer appropriate, don’t read it but complaining about the other side rewriting books seems hypocritical. That’s all. You can just not recommend books to readers and suggest more modern alternatives that are more appropriate, or read the old works taking in mind the era they were written in.
I am with you on this one. I do think it would be appropriate to have a disclaimer in the beginning, saying that these words used to have a different meaning, and that in the context of the time they were written they meant different things than today.
There is a German book where this is done that uses the N word for people of color.
This is the more appropriate way of handling this, because i am totally with you: we shouldn’t change what was written in books. If we start doing that, we destroy what authors have done, and in a sense we also edit history, because in this case we try to erase that these words were used in another context back in the days.didn’t know JK Rowling is into Lemmy now
Ah yeah, going for the insult rather than engaging with a difficult talking point…
I for sure hate trans people when i say it’s hypocritical to complain about the right wing changing books to fit what they view as correct, when the left wing is doing the exact same (strange… my point isn’t even about trans people it seems… how peculiar).
I haven’t even said that i have a problem with more gender neutral language, i just gave it as en example of what it’s about since the parent post was all about hate speech, (and there was some issue with that too in his childrens books, but afaik hardly any).
And i focused on that because OP made it sound as if just hate speech was being targetted, not rewriting old works to fit very left wing desires about how gender is mentioned.
But the question remains: if the right does it, it’s Nazism, when the left does it, it’s… <???> (at least totally not Nazism, because when we do something that we claim is blatant Nazism when the others do it, it’s ok, because obviously, we’re not Nazis, even when we do things that we call out as blatantly Nazism when others do it).
(and why am i trying to call this out: because i hate hypocrisy & polarization. It’s fair to disagree with that, but then calling it Nazism and being all wronged about it while the American left wing is doing the exact same, and then get’s called out the exact same by de maga idiots… That’s just stupid on both sides, and i’d prefer our side to be genuine and honest, and not be all offended when others do the same thing they’re doing)
Soon:
“Protestors who were planning to publish video evidence of police brutality find the videos mysteriously vanished from their phone”
In some Star Wars book, of the period between PT and OT, there was a similar moment, but I don’t remember details. Context - it’s described as some slow transition, while the Republic of the Clone Wars had military censorship and many freedoms curbed, after the war supposedly ended and the Empire proclaimed, it legally and procedurally was mostly the same and the military limitations were in part lifted. So there were protests and attempts to use legal mechanisms, with such funny events.
I’ve got an old Kindle, but not too old, which I jailbroke just yesterday with Winter break. I recommend that method for those considering getting drm free usage out of their device (instead of it contributing to ewaste).
Been using 10th gen kindle, 5.17.1 firmware, as my daily driver. It’s not jailbroken, use calibre server to download my alternately sourced ebooks, convert to .mobi as needed.
I looked at Winterbreak. Decided not to fool with it as I can still sail with stock.
Any advantage to a jailbreak other than future proofing against side loading being disabled?
I think that’s pretty much it. Future proofing seems to be the idea I’m getting, that and customisations/custom firmware. I used to have custom screensavers on one many years ago, which I’m going to do again.
Why not too old? I bought 4 gen 4 & 5 kindles off ebay for like $20 on purpose. I hate backlights and they still work great.
I’m glad I’ve already pulled my audible library in to audibookshelf, I didn’t have many ebooks so didn’t bother with them. I’m moving to librofm this month I think.
I just buy physicals of the reference books I really want and pirate the digitals of anything else that isn’t sold DRM-free. I WILL own what I bought, whether they like it or not.
I wish I could do the same. I prefer paper books, we have a massive library and mostly read in our language on paper (except uni textbooks, I wouldn’t want to buy them and the library doesn’t have enough). However, that stopped being feasible when most of my non-fiction reading switched to English. Since English books are mostly not sold locally, I would have gone bankrupt on delivery costs alone. So thanks Libgen for my education.
