I don’t pay for data. I have unlimited as part of the Verizon plan we are grandfathered in on. And my home wifi is also unlimited with Verizon.
If I turned off access to internet, my calendars and reminders that sync from my server to my phone & computers would not work. I use audible reminders for the 6x per day I have to call my mom and have her take her medications. Nor would my email or business website notifications get through when customers contact me.
I have enough to read in free Kindle books that I do not need to borrow from Libby. Maybe one day, when I retire, I will have time.
I find that we have more spare cash in retirement than previously. I think we do less and incur fewer costs. It also helped moving out of the big city.
There’s also Project Gutenberg… Lotsa free stuff there… but it’s all stuff that’s no longer in copyright…
I think I’ve previously grabbed some 19th century Russian novels from there… Unfortunately they don’t have Sholokhov’s Don Cossacks series (early 20th century).
I like to ensure that living authors get royalties from e-books… But I sometimes find “alternate means” to get un-DRM’d e-books still under copyright… If I like them enough - I’ll buy a legit copy - I think of it as like the library - if I like something enough - I’ll buy it eventually. Anyway - I have no moralist qualms about getting something for free…
I’m not bothered about having my devices online 24x7 - I don’t pay extra for my home internet data (i.e. there’s no quota) - just a flat monthly fee for the service - I also have mine and my wife’s mobiles on the same plan - I do have a quota on monthly mobile data usage - but have NEVER gone above it - my wife’s is 10 G, mine’s 35 G, because I sometimes have to resort to tethering to my phone for work (which usually means firing up an Azure AVD RDP session, or Citrix).
e-books are generally tiny - i.e. epubs et cetera (probably not PDFs though!) - and would hardly touch the side of most data usage quotas - and I find it handy to resume reading an e-book on my phone, that I’d been reading on my iPad mini (e.g. when donating blood).
Yeah, most, but not all, of the English classic literature is out of copyright.
Copyright is very restrictive. There must be a better way to reward authors. If it is printed, recovery of printing costs is legitimate, but epub costs are really minimal.
It depends on what you read with - if it’s not a dedicated device, I imagine it wouldn’t be practical. I have a tablet that I can just put in airplane mode until I’m finished with my book.
Our local librairies offer electronic books, but only in french and my level is not high enough to try to wade through a book, I only read essentiel stuff like tax forms or minuits of a meeting.
With electronic librairies do they have a limited number of copies, so only lend stock they own, are they stammped out and in as normal books with time limits and fines for delays on return, are they unloaded from your device at a set date ?
I think it works like this: If you’re unable to read the book within the given time, you should or better have to release it to make it available for others. Later on, you’re free to get it another time to finish reading.
Personally, I don’t use any “electronic” library, beside my own calibre collection.
What is this ‘autoreturn’ thing?
Do you mean that you buy an ebook and then the supplier is likely to invade your computer and erase it before you have finished reading it?
Lending, not buying. It refers to an electronic library.
The lent books are controlled by DRM, when your lending period is over, your license to read will be capped.
This is why I avoid an DRMed books and electronic libraries like hell.
Oh, I see. Yes they have a right to deactivate it after the lending time limit is reached.
But doing it via internet seems over sophisticated. Why not have it self destruct when a certain date is reached?.. like some software trial versions.
Most of the world’s important literature is free of all this nonsense
" The Berne Convention stipulates that the duration of the term for copyright protection is the life of the author plus at least 50 years after their death.[1] For some categories of works, the minimum duration is shorter: for example, the minimum term for applied art is 25 years, movies have a minimum term of 50 years. Most countries have opted for a longer term of protection"
from Wikipedia
so anything written before about 1900 should be public domain, and quite a lot written before 1950.
That covers most of the books worth reading
and,
when a publisher reprints a classic book, all the sale proceeds go to the publisher, not to the author.
In Seattle (and no doubt other locations in the US) there are little “free libraries” scattered around. Basically individuals and some organizations will mount small weather proof boxes with a clear door next to the sidewalk and put books in them. People can take books or leave books. They are labeled as “Free Library”. One time I was thinking of buying an expensive Nordic cookbook and I happened to look in the “Free Library” at our local coop grocery store. There was the book I was thinking of buying, in pretty much mint condition!
I wonder is it possible in today’s world for someone to write a book and put it directly and immediately in the public domain without any copyright or drm.?
That would be equivalent to FOSS. Has it been tried?
There are some softer methods than the hard (Adobe) DRM. My favorite e-bookseller mostly adds a watermark to the books. This is a method I can live with, as it doesn’t block me in any way. Thus, I can copy the books on any or more of my personal readers.
