It started when I purchased a new PC. Little did I know that this was a Violation Of Federal Law!!!
My editorial comments are in brackets:
From: Ric Frost
Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2001 5:25 PM
To: randy
Subject: When you were offline...(via HumanClick)
[Meaningless subject line was due to customer support web form being sub-contracted through some other company. This should have been my first clue that this was going to take a while.]
User number 2777.
I recently purchased a new PC. Is there a way to transfer my digital owl content to my new pc? They are linked via ethernet.
Thanks!
From: Customer Service
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 9:59 AM
To: Ric Frost
Subject: RE: When you were offline...(via HumanClick)
Dear Ric Frost,
Due to the digital protection applied to the content it can not be copied or transferred to another computer. Viewing the content on another computer would require another purchase.
If you require any further assistance pleased contact us toll free 866-681-2788 or via email customer.service@digitalowl.com
Thank You
The Customer Service Team.
[At this point, I knew from Scott Adams' newsletter that the e-book was an experiment. I figured I would bring him into the loop as to how the experiment was going]
From: Ric Frost
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2001 10:51 PM
To: scottadams@aol.com
Cc: Customer.Service@DigitalOwl.com
Subject: FW: When you were offline...(via HumanClick)
Scott; I sure hope that you find this unacceptable. I have not even had a chance to read your book _God's_Debris_; now it looks as if I never will. I wish you luck with the electronic publishing adventure, but you will need to find another publisher (Baen Books is more reasonable) to count me as a customer. Fool me once and all that...
Ric Frost
[Which got me a clueless manager type that didn't bother to read my original e-mail.]
From: Randy Janis
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2001 6:43 PM
To: Ric Frost
Subject: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
Dear Ric Frost,
As mentioned in a previous email, the content is digitally protected and cannot be transferred or copied to another computer.
This level of protection assures the author that there will be no unauthorized distribution of their work.
You made your purchase original purchase on May 14, 2001 and our records indicate that the content was successfully downloaded at 5:03PM Eastern Standard Time. As mentioned in the Help section on the storefront, "..If any downloaded content is corrupted or unreadable, we will gladly replace the same content." I am not sure the reason you feel that you will never be able to view the content, as we have had no correspondence stating that the content was unreadable and I can assure you that we want everyone who purchases the book to be able to view and enjoy it. To protect the author we don't provide multiple download links for single purchases as this could provide a means to distribute the book to individuals who did not purchase it. This is the exact reason more authors are beginning to distribute digitally protected content, as unprotected content can quickly and easily be distributed with the advent of the internet and email.
Scott Adams, by popular demand, has added printing rights to God's Debris and has the understanding that previous purchasers will request a new copy of the book with printing enabled. In order to resolve this issue, I have reset your account in order to provide you with the printable version of God's Debris. Please connect to the internet and click on the content download link below. TitleVision will launch automatically and the Download Assistant window will display. Please be patient as this may take a few moments depending on your internet connection speed. Once the Download assistant window is displayed, click on the 'Download My Content Now' button and the content will be downloaded to the new content shelf within TitleVision
Download God's Debris: [URL deleted]
If you require further assistance or have any questions please contact us at customer.service@digitalowl.com or toll free at (866)681-2788.
Thank You,
Randy M. Janis
Customer Service Manager
DigitalOwl, Inc.
www.digitalowl.com
phone: (407)681-2788 x246
fax : (407)681-3478
[Which prompted my somewhat snide reply]
From: Ric Frost
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 3:39 PM
To: Randy Janis
Subject: RE: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
I'm very glad for your concern over the rights of Mr. Adams. I'm somewhat less thrilled with your concern over the rights of your customers that have paid money for content that you force them to either abandon or re-purchase for having the nerve to do something so clearly illegal as purchase a new PC. If you had read my e-mail, I never said I had any problem downloading God's Debris; I simply would like to move it to a new PC because I have no intention of keeping my old desktop sitting around in my already-cramped living quarters just to read one e-book. As I have not yet had the time to read God's Debris, this means I will not be reading it ever as I refuse to re-purchase what I already own.
Let me ask you a question: Do you re-purchase all your hardcopy books when you move to a new home and burn your original copies? Do you take all your originals to the library and make Xerox copies at $.05 per page then burn the originals? No? Then why do you expect my understanding or support when you demand that I do precisely that with an e-book?
I completely understand authors desire to protect their work; what you are doing does not do that. Anyone with modest programming skills can capture anything that is put to the screen. I would not be surprised to find pirate copies already available on the net. All you are doing is alienating Mr. Adams' (and any other authors you publish) long-time fans.
[My original complaint about Digital Owl did in fact elicit a number of offers of the e-book as an ASCII text file, which I promptly accepted and forever banished Digital Owl to the trash bin. As I purchased a copy of the book, it cannot be considered piracy by any legal or moral standard.]
Ric Frost
http://www.rdfrost.com/
From: Randy Janis
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 4:06 PM
To: Ric Frost
Subject: RE: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
Dear Mr. Ric Frost,
As stated in my previous email, we have enabled your account so that you can download the content to your new computer, which will not require you to repurchase the content.
[If you go back and read his e-mail, this is not what he said; he said he reset my account to allow the activation of the print option, not downloading a copy to my new PC.]
In the event a customer has to reformat their system or purchase a new PC we can provide a new link for the content, but we do not provide additional links just because a user wants it on another computer as this could provide a means for unauthorized distribution. [I said right from the start that I had purchased a new PC and was transferring everything to my new PC. I never asked for "an additional link just because a user wants it on another computer". We will leave for now the legal right I have under Fair Use to make as many copies of anything that I own that I wish to make. Just another indication as to how clueless this moron is.] All eBook systems work this way as the main goal is to protect the distribution channels for the author and the rights to the content are tied to the computer.
I apologize for the misunderstanding and hope you enjoy the content.
Thank You,
Randy M. Janis
Customer Service Manager
DigitalOwl, Inc.
www.digitalowl.com
phone: (407)681-2788 x246
fax : (407)681-3478
From: Ric Frost
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 12:30 AM
To: 'Randy Janis'
Subject: RE: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
All e-book systems most certainly do not work this way, but that seems at this point to be irrelevant. In any case, the link simply downloads a 662-byte file called gvf that doesn't seem to do anything.
Ric Frost
http://www.rdfrost.com/
[Note that the process for installing Digital Owl e-books had completely changed during this conversation. If I had thought about it for five seconds I should have figured to download the software, but by this point, I was beyond fooling around in these clowns' crap-laden web site looking for a download link.]
From: Randy Janis
Sent: Thursday, June 14, 2001 12:54 PM
To: Ric Frost
Subject: RE: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
Dear Ric Frost,
Prior to downloading your content you must have TitleVision installed on your system and we have included a link below to download TitleVision. Once installed, TitleVision will able handle the process of downloading and unlocking your content as done during your initial purchase. If you have saved the "gvf.egg" file to disk, connect to the internet (after TitleVision is installed) and double click on the file in order to initiate the download process. TitleVision will then start automatically, and you will be asked to register prior to downloading your content. Once registered, click on the 'Download My Content Now' button on the download assistant window and your content will be downloaded to the New Content shelf.
Please feel free to call toll free at (866)681-2788 between 9am-9pm and we will gladly assist you in the downloading of your content.
Download TitleVision: [URL deleted]
Thank You,
Randy M. Janis
Customer Service Manager
DigitalOwl, Inc.
From: Ric Frost
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 11:30 PM
To: 'Randy Janis'
Subject: RE: eBook Purchase: God's Debris
Sorry for the delay; it's been one of those weeks.
That did the trick; at least until my hard drive crashes or I drop my Palm Pilot.
Interesting sentence in the intro [of Scott Adams' book]: "For maximum enjoyment, share your legal copy with a smart friend and then discuss it while enjoying a tasty beverage." How precisely did Mr. Adams intend for me to do that?
In any case; good luck.
Ric Frost
http://www.rdfrost.com/
And that is the last I ever heard from Digital Owl. As I said I received the book as a plain text file which I can convert to Palm file format with a free utility and read it as much as I like on any device I prefer and transfer it to any number of PC's. I see Scott Adams has come out with a sequel. If I bother, I think I will just buy hard copy from Amazon. Much simpler.
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