Jumping thru hoops
I’ve been working on my book project. As I live in a very rural area with a teeny-weeny library, I have to find books online. Some I can find for free, others I have to buy. I have many physical books, but I do find reading the books on my iPad much easier. It’s also far easier when you’re doing any writing and note taking, and needing to refer to passages in a book.
One particular book I was looking for was available at Amazon UK as an e-book, but I wasn’t sure if I put an address for the UK, if my North American books would disappear. It was also fairly expensive. So did some searching, and found it on Apple iBooks for a reasonable price. I bought it started reading, then discovered but the Apple DRM format doesn’t allow cut and paste of text.
Back to the Internet looking for a way to convert the book to a PDF. Upgraded caliber to the latest version, downloaded a plug-in. Failure. It seems Apple has its own special DRM that has no way too convert the book to a more useable format
So back to the Internet. I found the book on kobo for eight dollars, quite a bargain. But when I tried to buy it it told me I was in Canada, and couldn’t buy it.
Off to the Internet again. Where I downloaded the VPN. Now hiding and using a faux USA address I was able to buy the book. I even managed to get Apple to refund me my money for the book.
This took two hours.
Something really needs to be done about these false borders for books and other intellectual property. There are ways to get around them, but it seems ridiculous in this age to have to jump through all these hoops
One particular book I was looking for was available at Amazon UK as an e-book, but I wasn’t sure if I put an address for the UK, if my North American books would disappear. It was also fairly expensive. So did some searching, and found it on Apple iBooks for a reasonable price. I bought it started reading, then discovered but the Apple DRM format doesn’t allow cut and paste of text.
Back to the Internet looking for a way to convert the book to a PDF. Upgraded caliber to the latest version, downloaded a plug-in. Failure. It seems Apple has its own special DRM that has no way too convert the book to a more useable format
So back to the Internet. I found the book on kobo for eight dollars, quite a bargain. But when I tried to buy it it told me I was in Canada, and couldn’t buy it.
Off to the Internet again. Where I downloaded the VPN. Now hiding and using a faux USA address I was able to buy the book. I even managed to get Apple to refund me my money for the book.
This took two hours.
Something really needs to be done about these false borders for books and other intellectual property. There are ways to get around them, but it seems ridiculous in this age to have to jump through all these hoops