Comments on: Is It Possible to “Rip” eBooks?

By: kirk

kirk — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 11:14:10 +0000

Unfortunately, this is because of issues related to the sale of books in different countries. If you can set up an iTunes Store account in the US or UK, you can then access books in English.

By: anglophone

anglophone — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 10:55:22 +0000

I am an anglophone living in France. I just bought an iPad. Everything downloads in French. I’d much rather have English versions. Any way to do it?

By: kirk

kirk — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:20:49 +0000

I’m very interested in reading PDFs on my soon-to-be-shipped iPad. But I’m guessing that Apple will provide a solution for that, though there will be third-party tools that may have better features.

By: David Toub

David Toub — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 11:17:25 +0000

Goodreader works well on my iPhone for allowing me to read PDFs, Word docs, etc.

By: BAP

BAP — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:23:44 +0000

I don’t want to rip E-books, but I want a good way to read PDF’s, text files, Slideshows, and Word Docs while away from my office without using a heavy laptop or jail-breaking my iPhone. The iPad or a Kindle would be worth the price for me if I could do this, especially if I could access a .Mac account and read files uploaded from my office.

Of course this would need to be affordable.

By: BAP

BAP — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:19:30 +0000

As with the person above, Britain is in Worldcat and the EU, maybe you could get books that way,

I guess you read “A Year in Provence” too many times, N’est-ce pas. Beware “Le Mistral”. Bonne Courage!

By: BAP

BAP — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 23:12:02 +0000

Since my eyes hit middle-age, I prefer to listen to books and most audio books are difficult to get. I would use Audible if they were DRM free, but I am already in double digits on the number of Macs I’ve owned and almost to double digits if I addup all of the iPods and iPhones.

Ask your librarian about getting into Worldcat, which will let you get books, CD’s, and DVD’s from other libraries in the US. They do not seem to have reciprocal agreements with Britiain, Australia, and New Zealand, which is too bad
as some things are only available overseas.

By: footagehead

footagehead — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:57:04 +0000

Living in the sticks of France, all the English books at our local library, were donated by me. So David, I’m sorry I can’t feel your pain about your local library (or your local gas prices) Granted the opening prices are not what we would like to see, but as all of the new ibusiness models evolve, it seems that
creative people are coming up with legal ways of obtaining “content” at more reasonable prices. Spotify is a perfect example of better than ITunes (free and legal), but artists still get their royalties.

By: george

george — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:47:02 +0000

Not to be completely contrary but I bet there is a 13 year old in Norway or LA who can break the DRM as soon as they try. That’s way faster than scanning and a run through OCR.

I think you’re tilting at windmills.

By: David Toub

David Toub — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:05:50 +0000

Kirk, the music industry certainly didn't have a plan B. But they were given a lifeline of sorts by the iTunes Music Store (now the iTunes Store). But that lifeline worked for the most part because prices were cheap enough that many folks figured it was acceptable and were willing to pay a small price rather than pirate. But I'm not seeing eBook prices going down. If anything, the iPad model seems to encourage higher prices, at least at this time. That would make it much less palatable to me and many others. At prices about $10, I'd rather take it out from the library if possible (sadly, many books I want to read aren't available in the entire PA library system!). Even Kos indicated on his blog his desire to not see price elevations and he's an author himself.