there is an academic text I’ve been trying to get my hands on, and I tracked down an ebook copy held by the national library, but due to legal restrictions it’s only available for viewing on a library computer on their premises. like the only way I can read this research is to go to the national central library, book a computer desk, and scroll through it on a pc monitor for hours on end.
this digital copyright shit is so stupid, it makes me SO fucking mad. it costs nobody anything to let readers access this shit from home. it’s a bunch of bits and bytes, the ebook file already exists. but publishers (and I include universities in this) are so brain rotten and craven that they will block any attempt to make information more accessible just in case there’s a chance they’d miss out on one person with a really specific research interest paying them like £17 to look at a word document in a more comfortable chair.
want to get even madder? the library only has ‘one copy’ of this ebook. we have this infinitely reproducible data resource but only one person is allowed to go and sit in a computer lab and scroll through it at a time!!! if you want to rent access from elsewhere, that’ll be £17-30 depending on the gateway site. Want to buy a copy of the book? tough shit idiot. it’s a niche academic text that’s out of print, it’s going to cost you upward of £70.
want to become the joker? it’s a book about how the printing press fueled an explosion in accessible literature during the french revolution.
many of you weren’t on the internet in the days before voice chat, before youtube, and don’t know what it was like to hear someone roll the dice on pronouncing ‘meme’ out loud in real life. I heard mem. I heard mee-mee. I heard maim. I heard may-may. you weren’t there you don’t understand.
