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
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It would be nice if that stuff worked more like git where yeah maybe the release version gets changed but you can always work back through the history to see earlier versions.
Not git specifically but just deltas from one version to the next instead of replacing the whole thing with a flattened text.
Like wiki articles.
Yes, but you say it like the Author himself changed it.
In the specific Example, the book is from before 2000 and the author is long dead. That book is a piece of culture now, displaying the writing style from a place in time where it was normal to discriminate against people. By changing a book, regardless of if it was actually amazon or just some manager that bought up the rights for the book, it is manipulating the Past. Amazon should not allow to do such things
Flashlight replacing rifles in E.T. was shitty to. Imagine if huck fin was changed it to Skibiddi Jim lol. Amazon can fuck itself just as hard as “the author” in changing the story. I paid for it it’s mine if you fuck with it that’s vandalism.
Oh I didn’t think I implied that at all. Certainly didn’t mean to. I was just commenting that making cultural artifacts that can be revised into delta-based distributions instead of flat is useful for many reasons. But it’s no benefit to the corps and most users don’t care so of course it won’t happen.
OK, tanks for clarifying that
Yes, it would be great.
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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)
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.Indeed
And that also bothers me about threads like this… both sides in the USA seem to be guilty of this, so to now call it propaganda & nazism when the right is doing it… It’s of course true, but the left wing is doing the exact same, so you can’t really be that outraged… You’re both doing the same thing :s
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.
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.
They got caught doing this over a decade ago as well.
That’s why Richard Stallman calls kindle the swindle.
I haven’t looked at or held or otherwise directly perceived a kindle in many years now, but when I did it was insanely easy to just pop any old file into a converter and slip that onto the kindle and pirate and read as you like. Did they put a stop to that with some proprietary nonsense?
Mr Stallman needs to be considered from all sides before deciding whether you’ll follow his lead. He’s not without some toejam.
Not sure what that means. He’s not Jesus. There’s no need to worship him! We can take the good and criticize the bad.
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In Stallman’s particular case he even substantiated his view on pedophilia with very good arguments
No, he didn’t, because none exist. Don’t defend pedophiles.
I’ve seen your wrong opinion, but without arguments it’s useless.
Paedophilia is a horrible affliction, but we shouldn’t be hanging non-offending paedos. They can’t help that they are… that thing. And they have to live with that, and that’s terrible. I can’t imagine the amount of self-hatred as society views them the same as actual child rapists.
Is that what the “you can’t download your shit anymore” is really reaching at?
I’ve heard a jailbreak was recently released for all kindle models: https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/WinterBreak/
I’ll be trying it out soon!
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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?
Not directly, but plenty of models are basically trying to get work from rich coomers and what not. On the more extreme levels it gets pretty fucking horrific, if ya want to know how bad it can get look up Instagram models who whore travel to the UAE or Dubai. Mind you you’ll probably want to turn Arabia into glass.
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.
That’s interesting, I’d never heard of that before. I know that people who are aphantasic often still dream with vivid mental images, so, it like they aren’t able to access them consciously and maybe the triggers help you in a similar way.
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.
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.
Agreed. And alternatives exist, like Kobo
I’m not saying you should call anyone a removed but you americans sure have some strange problems with words if you can’t even put it in writing.
Should we censor words like Nazi, Hitler, Accident, Hate, Rape, and so on? Who decides the approved words? How do you even transcribe events correctly?
It’s like peopke think that there is nothing bad done if we just don’t talk about it.
Smh
Wait, if you have the old edition on your kindle, do they reach into your kindle and change what is there? Or do they just change the version in the store to the new edition, preferably with a new ISBN, if Kindles have ISBN’s?
I remember about the Roald Dahl thing and it seemed pretty clear which edition people would be getting. And some of this stuff (according to another internet poster I mean) may have been intended to keep the books in copyright longer rather than to merely mess with the content. Blyton died in 1968 so her stuff could enter the public domain in the next few decades otherwise. That’s nefarious too.
I remember for sure that Huckleberry Finn had the N word. Maybe little kids shouldn’t be reading it, I’m cool with that, though I read it as a kid myself. But grown-ups who do read it can deal with an unexpurgated version.
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.
That’s still not OK
Printing new editions of a book was always a thing
Quietly swapping your earlier edition with the current edition was not, however.
Forcibly destroying all previous editions is not however
Yeah, I’m with you on this one.
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.
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.
It’s kinda odd that all these years later, you’re still better off pirating than paying for anything digital. All these services solved piracy but we’ve now gone full circle.
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if you subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music on the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
That’s a sliding scale, though. Streaming comes at a fixed price.
Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren’t available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
They also treat artists like shit. I switched over to Tidal simply to get access to Joanna Newsom’s music, as she won’t tolerate Spotify’s terms. Tidal isn’t much better, but it is slightly.
I was looking forward to blockchain cutting out the middle man in paying artists. Too bad it has so far not happened that way.
Block chain was ruined by the early adopters.
I really like Tidals algorithm for new music. I struggle to find new music I like so find it immensely helpful and it is much better than spotifys.
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
There’s a problem with this “give them what they want and they won’t pirate” when it comes to Spotify, yt music, etc: They can change the terms at any moment. AKA enshittification.
If you downloaded it or bought a CD? Ain’t no enshittification.
You’re absolutely right in that it’s a risk.
But you can always buy a CD or digital album and rip the DRM off it. Or pirate it. Assuming you care enough to do that anyways.
Me, I’m not really a music fan. Only reason I have YT Music is because it’s included with YT Premium. So it’s not going to bother me much if certain songs or albums disappear. I’ll just listen to other stuff. Music is merely background noise to me.
Interestingly, I am now going through some album series that are not on Youtube, but are on Spotify. It is frustrating because I can’t use Spotify on my phone (browser is incompatible), but I can Youtube, so music discovery is desktop-only. Good thing all of them are on Soulseek, though.
Music is easily solved.
- Qobuz store
- Bandcamp
- 7Digital
- Tidal media downloader
- Deemix
Screw streaming. Local is always better. Purchase and/or download FLAC. I’ve got nearly 1 TB of music on my NAS and my collection is regularly growing. From Qobuz and Bandcamp, anything you purchase is owned, and DRM free.
Edit - though for me as a Linux user, Qobuz has actually turned this from something perfect into a service issue. Used to be able to just download a tar of your album from them after purchase. Now you have to use their (Windows only) application downloader, or individually download each track as a single download. It’s fucking irritating. I don’t buy from them now because of it. That said, they can’t edit or alter anything I’ve previously bought and stored locally.
An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee.
A library? We solved that centuries ago.
Except a physical library can only hold so many books, they don’t have most of the books I want and you need to return them. A physical library is not useful to me.
ever heard of zlibrary?
I am aware of them, yes. It’s not the book download site that I use personally, but you can never have enough options.
which do you use?
I usually use Anna’s Archive or Lib Gen, depending on what’s actually up and working. Anna scrapes Zlib as well as other sources. Usually that’s where I can find the really obscure stuff.
Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
Like… if the book is digital, why do you have to borrow and return? This makes no sense. They want to replicate a bad experience that doesn’t need to exist, what’s the point of that?
Pleasing the copyright holders. I don’t know how it is for the Dutch national library, but with a system used by many libraries in the US there’s a cost to the library based on the number of times it’s checked out, so more revenue for the copyright holder and the digital middle man. Allowing you to have the e-book indefinitely would be, at least in their minds, no different than giving it away. 🤷
This could be solved in other ways. For example, the software can simply track what % of the books are actually read without this extra step of borrowing and returning. Just like when you listen to music on streaming services.
Imagine if you had to select the specific album in a streaming service and choose to borrow it for x days, having to “return” it and borrow again if you wanted to keep listening, and being limited to 4 albums at a time.
Good point in pointing out the discrepancy between music streaming and book borrowing. Online libraries in the US are managed by some kind of digital rights software, which seems to essentially allow libraries to own a limited number of digital copies of a book. Streaming services like Tidal and Spotify seem to pay out a tiny amount of money to artists each time content is streamed. Is it something about library budgeting that doesn’t allow for this? Is it just historical baggage that hasn’t been rethought?
The music streaming model is honestly terrible for musical artists, so I’m not saying that’s necessarily the direction we should head. But you’re right that I’m not limited to listening to a song just because someone else is, and it would be extremely helpful if the same applied to library books.
As it is, when I have time to read I put in the request to borrow a book, and then it becomes available 1 to 10 weeks later (whether or not I’m ready to read it at that point). Then I only get 2-3 weeks to fit reading it into my schedule. It doesn’t work out half the time as I get busy with other things… So how is it not easier to pirate it or buy it? I love and support my library, but golly this digital system is dysfunctional.
WB/Discovery+ just screwed people in the UK for watching cycling. It was £7 a month to watch before, which I was happy to pay. They just put an end to that and now bundled the cycling with their premium sports service for £29. I’m not paying all that when I only want cycling and none of their other content.
I cancelled my subscription, asked them to delete my account, purchased a fire stick and now paying for some dodgy IPTV service to watch it there for a fraction of the price.
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Yes, about service problems and Steam - I understand why it happened, but sanctions on Russia causing my inability to not buy, but even find in store some games kinda affect it. One small nuance is that family members of those, well, making decisions in Russia are often in the western countries feeling themselves very well (including Steam games), and those who are not do not, I think, have problems dealing with this. And, btw, topping up your Steam wallet is possible, just via intermediaries with some additional expense.
OK, this is not about Steam, this is about sanctions efficiency.
EDIT: On the subject - I pirate MP3’s. I like having my music stored locally and not dependent on various services. I may start some day using some of those services, probably.
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.
Amazon hasn’t changed the content of books yet but publishers already have changed them and that is part of the issue.
I paid for (the license to view) the books already, so I’m getting epubs from z-library without the slightest bit of moral pain.
I could do the calibre decryption thing, but meh.
Same boat man. ‘OK I’ll throw a few schmeckles in because the author does need the compensation, but i’m getting the actual book elsewhere.’
If I ever embrace my fate as a lonely housewife book author, I’m going to have a rough time, because the kind of people who would forever love me for producing my books and sharing them as free (with the option to donate) and the kind of people who buy lonely housewife books are two completely different circles and I wouldn’t be able to spend all the time necessary to ‘market’ myself online to get the books in the hands of people who want them, if I’m trying to spend that time writing.
Maybe what we need is an apparatus. A website where authors can share full-size books, users can vote on them, and if you like them enough you can give money to those writers.
I just don’t know how we’d get that, be able to allow any author to share their book, and still have quality control.
So… z-library? https://z-lib.gs
I bought a kobo recently (for the color screen) and have had to keep going back to my kindle to read smutty romance. All their newest decisions made me cancel my KU sub, and this has saved me from what I thought would be a drought.
Happy to help :)
