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---
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1. The Danger of E-Books {#the-danger-of-e-books .chapter}
========================
In an age where business dominates our governments and writes our laws,
every technological advance offers business an opportunity to impose new
restrictions on the public. Technologies that could have empowered us
are used to chain us instead.
With printed books,
- You can buy one with cash, anonymously.
- Then you own it.
- You are not required to sign a license that restricts your use
of it.
- The format is known, and no proprietary technology is needed to read
the book.
- You can give, lend or sell the book to another.
- You can, physically, scan and copy the book, and it’s sometimes
lawful under copyright.
- Nobody has the power to destroy your book.
Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical):
- Amazon requires users to identify themselves to get an e-book.
- In some countries, including the US, Amazon says the user cannot own
the e-book.
- Amazon requires the user to accept a restrictive license on use of
the e-book.
- The format is secret, and only proprietary user-restricting software
can read it at all.
- An ersatz “lending” is allowed for some books, for a limited time,
but only by specifying by name another user of the same system. No
giving or selling.
- To copy the e-book is impossible due to Digital Restrictions
Management[(1)](#FOOT1) in the player and prohibited by the license,
which is more restrictive than copyright law.
- Amazon can remotely delete the e-book using a back door. It used
this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George
Orwell’s 1984.
@firstcopyingnotice{{@footnoterule @smallskip Copyright © 2011, 2014
Richard Stallman\
{This version of this essay is part of @fsfsthreecite}
Even one of these infringements makes e-books a step backward from
printed books. We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom.
The e-book companies say denying our traditional freedoms is necessary
to continue to pay authors. The current copyright system supports those
companies handsomely and most authors badly. We can support authors
better in other ways that don’t require curtailing our freedom, and even
legalize sharing. Two methods I’ve suggested are:
- To distribute tax funds to authors based on the cube root of each
author’s popularity.[(2)](#FOOT2)
- To design players so users can send authors anonymous
voluntary payments.
E-books need not attack our freedom (Project Gutenberg’s e-books don’t),
but they will if companies get to decide. It’s up to us to stop them.
Join the fight: sign up at <http://DefectiveByDesign.org/ebooks.html>.
<div class="footnote">
------------------------------------------------------------------------
### Footnotes
### [(1)](#DOCF1)
@raggedright See “The Right to Read” (@pageref{Right to Read}) for more
on this. @end raggedright
### [(2)](#DOCF2)
@raggedright See both “Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer
Networks” (@pageref{Copyright vs. Community}) and my 2012 open letter to
the President of the Brazilian Senate, Senator José Sarney, at
<https://stallman.org/articles/internet-sharing-license.en.html>, for
more on this. @end raggedright
</div>
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