Ok.
For this portion only, I'll expand. Don't ask me to talk about
bookshare otherwise though. You really don't want to hear what I
have to say.
The unpack tool unencrypts the books, this is true.
Once they're unpacked, they can be used anywhere on anything that
supports the format it's in, text, mp3, daisy, whatever. All this is
fine.
What's not fine with me is the silly unpack tool.
It's crashed my machine more than once, and I really don't see the
point.
Everytime a new platform becomes available, we have to wait for them
to write a new unpack tool before we can use it on that platform.
I've had several systems in the past, linux, dos, windows (various
versions) free bsd, even SunOs, and I almost had an AS400 once, but
darn, missed the chance for that one. :)
But I've also used other systems such as
aix, solaris, net bsd, bsdI, and several flavors of linux.
Now, how many of those platforms have an unpack tool?
Windows, possibly mac (don't know, haven't been to the site in years)
and there may be a linux one. There's sure been a lot of clamour for
one anyhow.
If the content isn't proprietary, then why is the delivery mechanism
proprietary? What if I *only* had a system they didn't support for
unpacking. I'd have to get someone else to unpack them for me and
send them back. Not allowed according to their licensing. They
already know who I am when I log in. Why not just zip the silly
thing with my login id/password as the encryption key if they have to
encrypt. Every platform with more than a few hundred users has a
unzip tool.
Why the nonsense with proprietary delivery methods.
All the platforms I've named have text viewers, mp3 players, and some
of them even have daisy players, but none of them have bookshare
unpackers by default.
All of them have unzip though.
What's the point?
It's just as secure, uses well known technology, and is compatible
with the largest possible market segment.
It took me nearly 2 weeks to get the silly unpack tool to work for me
the first time. It kept crashing, wouldn't unpack anything, and
generally left things in a mess.
I finally got it working, but even then I had to skip the step of
building the html files (or whatever that question was it asks after
the initial unpack to save another format on your hd)
Never did get that to work.
And, now, I'm getting dangerously close to talking for another hour
about the rest of my difficulties with them, so I'll put a foot in my
mouth so I can't say anything else, and send this message before i
get carried away.
On Apr 8, 2006, at 11:35 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
Can I push my luck and trouble you to explain a little further? The
books are encrypted/packed until you unpack them with the tool,
yes...but that's just the delivery mechanism. Think fancy encrypted
ZIP archive. Once you unpack them (once) with the free tool you can
use the books with a DAISY player. I guess I don't see what the
problem is. Seems a little like objecting to an encrypted ZIP
archive or similar. Am I missing something?
Joe
On Apr 8, 2006, at 10:43 PM, Travis Siegel wrote:
Bookshare requires you to use their unpack tool. If you don't,
then the book acts only as a nice little real estate stealer.
Kinda useless if you ask me.
On Apr 8, 2006, at 10:14 PM, Kafka's Daytime wrote:
Hi Travis,
We don't plan on withdrawing support for RFBD books as long as
RFBD continues to allow katieplayer as an option. And thanks for
the responses on same - we need to know. BTW, I'm not staunchly
DRM - we're just not interested in developing for any obscure
schemes or having to buy our way in to support same. We're
interested in providing playback of non-proprietary standards
like DAISY. DRM schemes for this kind of content should be
similarly open and standard (if it's the type of DRM that needs
to be built into a player). No security-through-obscurity stuff
and no using DRM as a way to limit/centralize availability of
compatible players and keep prices high.
What do you mean about Bookshare's proprietary format? The
majority of their books are DAISY 3. I know you said you won't
respond to any threads on this topic. But can I come at you from
a different angle? You're OK with DAISY 3 right? That's not a
proprietary format.
As for the rest of your feature requests - I really and seriously
am putting all of this stuff in a file. It gets ranked in a list
we maintain and we consider each request as we come to it. I'll
check out the links you kindly included.
Much thanks,
Joe
