Aliens (Special Edition)

[stugatz]

Good point, but what about the fragility of the CD/DVD format as far as long-term preservation? I don't feel as comfortable investing $20 into a piece of plastic that might deteriorate in a few decades. Part of the reason the vinyl market is making a comeback.

I've thought about that myself, very good question - as none of my CDs or DVDs have rotted, I haven't thought much about CD rot even though I'm aware of it.

 

[Sombro]

The paranoid part of me wonders if at some point they'll start doing this sort of retroactive editing to books, but for political reasons.

Amazon is already doing this with your Kindle ebook editions, but this could be a separate thread in itself.

 

[stugatz]

Amazon is already doing this with your Kindle ebook editions, but this could be a separate thread in itself.

I've already thought that through - I just downloaded the raw MOBI files of my ebooks, so they're on my hard drive, safe and sound from the cloud. Take that Amazon.

This was in 2016, though, when I went on an ebook downloading binge. I don't know if they've since made all their stuff cloud-only.

 

[Dr Mantis Toboggan]

Amazon is already doing this with your Kindle ebook editions, but this could be a separate thread in itself.

Any hard proof of this already happening? I think we all suspect this will start happening in the near future (I actually recently bought hard copies of 1984 and Animal Farm for exactly this reason) but wasn't aware it had already started.

 

[GodfatherPartTwo]

Loved Aliens even though james camoron was trying to be a good little sjw. I declare the film insufficiently sjw.

I'll still take Alien, the Ridley Scott film.

 

[Sombro]

Any hard proof of this already happening? I think we all suspect this will start happening in the near future (I actually recently bought hard copies of 1984 and Animal Farm for exactly this reason) but wasn't aware it had already started.

Somewhat dated article:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/07/amazon-sold-pirated-books-raided-some-kindles/

"Can Amazon Legally Delete Books from Your Kindle?"​

https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/can-amazon-legally-delete-books-from-your-kindle

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, we've already seen the fall of DRM regarding music; the EFF further theorizes that if a settlement in the Kindle case doesn't include the outright removal of all DRM from Kindle's e-books, it should at least include rewriting Amazon's terms of service to disable Amazon's ability to "control, access and delete the books." The settlement may also force Amazon to be more transparent about what information it collects, to create a stronger privacy policy, and to make it clear that e-book purchases are product sales and not merely licenses.

Whether or not Amazon's deletion of e-books from Kindle was legal, its actions have brought to the forefront a major concern of e-book readers that probably won't go away without some compromise. This will most likely mean changes or even the abolition of DRM for e-books—and you have to wonder whether somewhere, George Orwell is smiling at the thought of Big Brother being taken down a notch.

 

[fokker]

Good point, but what about the fragility of the CD/DVD format as far as long-term preservation? I don't feel as comfortable investing $20 into a piece of plastic that might deteriorate in a few decades. Part of the reason the vinyl market is making a comeback.

That's why software like Exact Audio Copy and Handbrake exists.