Digital Rights Management could save Public Libraries, the Open Internet - and vise versa

Originally published on my Wall, at Facebook


This really cool:

I'm reading "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco on my desktop!

I went to Toronto Public Library (TPL) online, searched the title; found the ebook entry and clicked on the preview button (a blurb beside the ebook entry says all 4 copies are out already.
(??? '4 Copies' 'Out' ? - that doesn't make any sense - one copy is an infinite number of copies - it's an ebook!!!)

So, like I said, I clicked on the preview instead - and nothing happens - my OS says it will search the internet for the right program to open the file, so I say OK. It came back with nothing. So I copy and searched "Adobe EPUB eBook" (which sits rather innocuously under everything in the Library listing) and that gets me to Adobe's site - where I searched the term internally, and that gets me to the download for the Adobe ebook reader, "Adobe Digital Editions" - http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/

(Adobe is a victim of their marketing department - which turns English into brand names - which inside the sub-culture of the company become actual English - and then they try to use those words to communicate with us out here - and it doesn't work. I don't understand the words "Adobe Digital Editions", it sounds like a place where I would find ebooks - but I wasn't looking for an ebook, I was looking for an ebook reader - so search didn't work, trial and error got me to the page - it took me some time to get there; turns out "Digital Editions" is the brand name of Adobe's DRM enabled, ebook reader.)

The preview TPL is offering outside of the 'copies' it's being allowed to dole out 4 at a time, is Chapter 1 of the book, the story of Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

I've changed my mind about Digital Rights Management. Hither-to I've been a devote of Cory Doctorow's take on the digital revolution with regards to book publishing. He makes all of his book available online in full from the moment they are published in paper. His take is that he'll make his wages through 'reputation', he makes enough money to keep writing full time by doing speaking engagements, readings of his books etc. - more than he'll earn from the actual sale of the books themselves.

I'm of the opinion now that DRM is great - because it allows Public Libraries to get inexpensive, digital copies of books immediately upon publication - to loan out.

The entire book downloads onto your hard drive - but it's in a kind of Temporary File that erases after a certain amount of time. Users can request a renewal of the ebook - and that is allowed depending on the settings the publisher sets in the loan agreement.

Now - if I was a hacker - intent on defeating DRM there IS a way - as soon as the text of the book makes it's way to my computer screen it IS copy-able - Somehow; I don't know how, but I am as sure as I am that the sun will rise - there is an interface that can be constructed to copy what appears on one's computer screen.

Print Screen of "Days of  Destruction, Days of Revolt" by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco  - page 13 (Chaper 1) in ebook reader "Adobe Digital Editions"

So then I am victorious-cyberpunk-hacker-champion !!! But what''s the point? The book's available at the Library for free. :)

This is the best argument for DRM I have ever heard.

And I came up with it !

But then the gobbledygook coming out of the special interest media towers isn't much competition - blinded as they are by greed, and the popular media of greed - money.

 * * *


Originally published on my Wall, at Facebook (edited for clarity) (https://www.facebook.com/michael.holloway.90281/posts/441346309243176)




(I want a widget that can take posts I create in FB and posts them here if I click that button on my browser - I say browser because I know FB would never allow the app - at Faceboook it's Everything in - Nothing out.)



mh

Hard to copy web pages undervalue their impact on the web

Making it easy to share your content is vital to effective web publishing.

The Environmental Working Group's (copyrighted & trade marked), "Clean 15", and "Dirty Dozen"


I ain't scared...


(open image link to see full size)

Source: Environmental Working Group - "EWG 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce"
Executive Summary - http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/summary/

One way to share The Environmental Working Group's "Clean 15", and "Dirty Dozen" from the EWG's web site, is to take two Print Screen shots of it, edit them together - and publish the image to the web with an accurate title - like, "Environment_Working_Group_2012-Clean-15_Dirty-Dozen" ["Environment*al*_Working_Group..." would have been better. This mistake is fatal because it's in the Name of the organization.]

On a second try I use Print Screen again to publish this EWG free download in PDF format. This one is properly titled: "Environmental_Working_Group_2012_Clean-15_-_Dirty-Dozen_pdf_image"

(open image link to see full size)

Below is a copy and paste of the content. This is the html version of the top image, above. For it to render here images on the EWG's server must stay up, for example the image of the apple is coming from: http://static.ewg.org/reports/2012/foodnews/img/apple.jpg.

In this Blogger copy the CSS style elements are incorporated into each line of the code, while - in the original - the style parameters are served from a style file - so changing the size of this creation took over an hour. I changed several parameters in proportion (29 times) width, font and padding - using Sourceforge's "Notepad++" code editing software.

In making these changes I have fundimentally changed the style of that which the EWG created. This must be described as a "hack" of this 'copyrighted and trade marked' brand. This is exactly what you do not want to happen --- people slightly altering your brand.

As the code came, the default settings in my browser, and in Blogger, stacked the columns one on top of the other - as they were collectively too wide to sit side by side.

Dirty Dozen Plus^™

Buy these organic

1

Apples

2

Celery

3

Sweet bell peppers

4

Peaches

5

Strawberries

6

Nectarines
– imported

7

Grapes

8

Spinach

9

Lettuce

10

Cucumbers

11

Blueberries
– domestic

12

Potatoes

Plus

+

Green beans

+

Kale/Greens

+ May contain pesticide residues of special concern

Clean 15^™

Lowest in Pesticide

1

Onions

2

Sweet Corn

3

Pineapples

4

Avocado

5

Cabbage

6

Sweet peas

7

Asparagus

8

Mangoes

9

Eggplant

10

Kiwi

11

Cantaloupe
- domestic

12

Sweet potatoes

13

Grapefruit

14

Watermelon

15

Mushrooms

Bloggers are publishing this content any way they can. 


You can see lots of images of the EWG's graphical representations in Google Image Search under the EWG keywords for this study report. Here's a link to one I found in a quick search as I was editing this: 


Google Image Search: "Environmental Working Group 2012 clean 15 dirty dozen" Page 1, image 5: Image: http://amotherworld.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/dirty-dozen-20121.jpg from an article by "amotherworld.com" - "12 Foods You Should Always Buy Organic" - http://amotherworld.com/main/food/12-foods-you-should-always-buy-organic/


How an error in titling effect content's web presence

My error in the first image title is like my fingerprint in Image Search. I can use the error to get to my image quickly. If one does a 'high-light and Search Google' on the mistakenly titled URL I mentioned at at the top - in Google Images my image come up #1. Make the correction though, and my image is nowhere. 


If EWG wants a true picture of their copy righted and trade marked publications' penetration in the web they should make it easy to share - not hard. 


They could do this simply by publishing images of their beautifully coded html productions when publishing to the web - and have images of each important graphic on a separate page sxpressly posted to allow for easy sharing. 


Perhaps a button near the graphic design that opens a pop-up sizing widget - like Youtube's video sizing interface. A share widget attached to pieces of html graphic art you want to share - and then the user could size it to fit the places where they wanted to post it - and then copy the new code from a window and paste it in a blog.


Why did I do this?

Whenever I come across web sites that I think have content that is important to the social good - and that are publishing on the web using publishing techniques that make the content difficult to share - I go out of my way to share it with the commons.

At the same time I hope web developers will keep in mind that making content easy to share, gets the right demographic's eyes back their site very effectively.

I find that folks using Microsoft's office related software to create their content seem to get these 'secure' type outcomes when they publish to the web. I think this is a result of all the corporate clients Microsoft almost single-handedly tooled for the internet in the 1980's and 90's. The user interfaces must steer a coarse towards these outcomes.

This is not the case with the coding at EWG. What we find there is html/css graphic art. I think it looks great ... but all the same - it's hard to recreate elsewhere.

Taking the time to create images before publishing to the web will increase a publication's documentable penetration on the web - and thus make determining it's value on the web - possible.

In the case of a non-profit like the Environmental Working Group - easy to share spreads their message, documents how widely it has spread, and effectively brings people back to the organization's site to read the original content.

Making it easy to share your content is vital to effective web publishing.


--------



Via Mother Jones - By Tom Philpott | Wed Jun. 20, 2012 3:00 AM PDT - "Which Baby Foods Contain the Most Pesticide Residue?" - http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/06/pesticides-baby-food-ewg-dirty-dozen

Source: "Environmental Working Group - "EWG 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce" - http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/

EWG's 2012 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce, PDF link "Download guide as PDF" - http://static.ewg.org/reports/2012/foodnews/pdf/2012-EWGPesticideGuide.pdf

Image URL (full copy): https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09qO4FsxORrel3DN-Fl9DVk_68TTw_WSf_5M9jdcy176h9vsxsLgOrddZECIhPMoyrYqBN1tikaP4JEYWhLrbS4J_tQm3Fmdjx7N46GBhHbR-Jo7-omyq4LQA4ORNvHHcouetVQQB3WIz/s1600/Environment_Working_Group_2012-Clean-15_Dirty-Dozen_Full_Copy__wide-border_EDIT-5.bmp

Copyright Act of 1976 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976 *

Fair use -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use *


(* Best Lawyer I can afford)



mh