Again, paper production uses lots of resources and I doubt that they are all renewable. Each paper book in your home comes with 20 or more which are moved around, get protected from the environment - even though they never make it to a buyer and get simply pulped.
And if you take in the number of books which are read only once and then get thrown away - either directly or when the owner dies it gets worse.
Singapore has one of the most stringent copyright regimes in the world.
Pfff. You people and your âfeel and smell of real booksâ. Any true connoisseur of the written word knows that the only way to properly enjoy literature is when it is inscribed onto parchment by a monk who has taken a vow of silence. Standard fonts are an abomination to the eyes. When that monk uses a quill and writes with ink created from triceratops semen, thatâs when the true warmth and beauty of the words come through.
I think I can imagine what Googleâs answer to this will be: instead of automatically updating, it will add a check to see if you are in the same country you last updated from and warn you that you might lose your rented data (you know, the stuff called DRM).
I have a feeling in the long run that DRM will fade away, as our children grow up with a different idea of what it means to make a copy. What was once a long and costly process is becoming one where we no longer treat the copy-makers as curators at the same time, and instead reimburse the artists and curators directly.
This is a Google issue, not really a DRM issue. I had the same thing with Kindle, when I first got my tablet and bought a book from amazon.com. The book was delivered, but a day or two after I got an email from Amazon, saying that they noticed the combination of my billing information and IP indicated that I was not based in the USA.
So Kindle seems to handle this kind of thing much better than Google.
You keep stating that paper production uses lots of resources, yet say nothing of what mineral refining and plastic manufacturing uses in comparison. There is also a comparison to be made of waste that is produced by each process.
Neither is truly âcleanâ. I donât know what is released into the environment as paper degrades. What do ereader batteries release? Yet, paper does break down and degrade. Plastic, not so much.
And how many ereaders get tossed out when the next new shiny comes along? At least many books do get sold to 2nd hand stores, passed on to friends, donated to libraries.
There is a case to be made for and against both paper books and ereaders.
I think this argument can get a bit confused at times.
When you buy a CD, you donât âownâ the tracks on it. When you buy a book, you donât âownâ the story. All you own is the physical object, youâre still only licensing the media (and for good reason).
The problem with eBooks isnât about ownership, per se. You own the eBook reader, but are licensing the content. Just like with a book. The only difference is that the license can be withdrawn. Nothing about the ownership has changed, just the control over the license.
I still think that the above is a bunch of codswallop mind you.
I hand you money, you hand me product, I have every reasonable expectation that I own it.
On a similar note, I would favor legislation saying that youâre not allowed to use the word âbuyâ unless you get the right of first sale by so doing. Companies wanting to offer DRM-encumbered products would be required to call them what they are â indefinite rentals.
Iâve only bought one book from Google Play, and thatâs because it was from Tor and hence DRM-free. Everything else I buy from Amazon, because Kindle DRM is trivially breakable. I pull the files into my library DRM-free. (If DRM-encumbered Google Play books can be downloaded and decrypted, Iâd be interested to hear about it.)
No, you do. You donât own the copyright on the tracks, but you do own the specific copy embodied in the CD you have purchased. So you can sell the copy you own, but you donât own the right to make additional copies and distribute those.
In other words, there are multiple kinds of ownership. Nobodyâs demanding that we should get to own the copyright when we buy something for $3.99, just that we should get to own the copy we paid for.
Singapore has one of the most stringent copyright regimes in the world.
Doubtless because they werenât signatories to the Berne Convention until 1998 and didnât recognize copyright at all in the 80s, so I suspect the usual corporate special interests dictated their copyright laws.
I would have to disagree. You own the CD, the plastic disc. You donât own
the file or the song, not in any meaningful way. No more than you own an
MP3 bought on iTunes.
Everything past the method of storage is a license.
I think it was a more relaxed attitude to copyright in the interest of raising the overall education level.
Back in the 80s you could drop off a book at the local copy shop and get a perfect bound copy a day or 2 later for a fraction of the cost.
This is a very new interpretation of a law whose roots lie in the concept of making copies is something that costs money, unlike how computers are able to make several (fragile) copies for practically no cost at all. Your argument reminds me more of my childhood, when VHS recorders were compared to the Boston Strangler, and cassettes were to be the doom of the record industry. Or how Xerox with its newfangled photocopiers were going to kill certain publishers.
Wait a second. You just reminded me of how TSR tried to keep us players from photocopying their official character sheets with your arguments. Sheesh. You guys never learn.
Wait, what?
I was explaining how copyright and ownership works, I wasnât advocating or
scaremongering.
Put your tin-foil hat away.
Ah, well. You certainly sounded like one. 
But to get back on topic, copyright is exactly what it says: the right to make copies. When you buy a medium like a CD, you do not buy a license to the music contained therein, you bought a copy. You have the right to do with that copy as you please, even sell that CD at a flea market. This âfair useâ doctrine is established by legal precedent in the USA, though it is murkier in other countries.
The e-Book issue is murkier, as you buy a copy of the book. The provider of that copy however tries to make this seem like a âlicenseâ by tying it into the reader software - had the original blog post author not updated his iOS app for Google Play, his books would have still been available. The most important point in this case was how Googleâs âhelpâ service made a bad experience even worse, and if they are lending, then Google needs to stop calling it a âpurchaseâ.
More specifically copyright is granted to those who can make copies.
Something being covered by copyright doesnât imply that it can be copied by
the consumer. Quite the opposite.
⌠unless I misunderstood your point.
I think you have.
I am reminded of how the record industry tried to shut down second hand record stores, how the games industry is still trying to kill the second hand game trade, and even how when I was a kid role playing publishers tried to forbid making photocopies of their âofficialâ character sheets.
Or how about Jack Valentiâs famed rant about the video-recorder being equivalent to the Boston Strangler? Or the whole campaign to demonise cassette tapes? Copyright is a legal construct that was designed to protect publishers, one that gets creakier with age with each innovation that makes publishing easier.
But hey, weâre here at BoingBoing, where Cory has studied this issue and written eloquently about it time and time again. Why not browse the archives? 
side note: the BBS emoji are funâŚ
You keep trying to make this a discussion that itâs not, so Iâm going to
step out of it.
But⌠youâre using a computer right now of some sort, arenât you? So all that non-renewable, non-recyclable stuff⌠youâve already GOT it. Why not press it into more service to store and read books as well? If you read paper books, youâre not ONLY using all the resources of a computer, but ALSO all the resources of a paper book. Youâve got the worst of both worlds, you glutton!
Now, obviously your argument works a little better for completely dedicated eReaders⌠but it seems to be not an argument in favor of paper books, but rather against one-purpose computing devices where a general-purpose one will do!
I prefer paper books myself, BTW.
Yep, nothing so comfortable and relaxing as reclining in my easy chair with my PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse in my hands, eh? grins
Actually, I use my PC to read the daily news and to keep up with the tech info I need & use. Oh, and communications, such as emails, IMs, forum discussions ⌠
Paper books I read for the simple pleasure of kicking back with a cold beverage, some music playing on the PC (no stereo) and getting away from the real world.
