Amazon is changing what is written in books
-
@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?
-
@Hossenfeffer but when it comes down to it I think really we've ceded our understanding of morality to "the market" anyway. It's bad when politicians say to do it but if "the people" follow (or if, for example, we regulate schools so they *have* to follow) and that's the only way to make it sell then it's ok. Majority rules, I guess. But my personal feeling is that when it comes to pure morality it's about where the power lies. And often that's the power of controlling the narrative.
-
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.
-
I mean, I don't disagree with anything you say, but that's because I have a progressive mindset. Which kind of was the point.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I'd also point towards alternative reading apps and hardware and drop everything related to Amazon.
-
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
-
Imagine: pirating ebooks but donating money to the author at the same time. Win win.
-
T [email protected] shared this topic
-
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.
-
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!"
-
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.
-
Or DRMless digital. But yeah, they need to coexist with paper ones.
-
There's not a lot of great options for buying eBooks outside of amazon imo. There are some options out there but so many people self-publish exclusively on amazon you very well could be better buying off physical copies (which are somehow often cheaper) and legally backing up your books by finding downloads.
Here is a link for some that you can but online though.
-
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.
-
Amazon hasn't changed the content of books yet but publishers already have changed them and that is part of the issue.
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
