• NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 months ago

    I kind of assume this with any digital media. Games, music, ebooks, stock videos, whatever - embedding a tiny unique ID is very easy and can allow publishers to track down leakers/pirates.

    Honestly, even though as a consumer I don’t like it, I don’t mind it that much. Doesn’t seem right to take the extreme position of “publishers should not be allowed to have ANY way of finding out who is leaking things”. There needs to be a balance.

    Online phone-home DRM is a huge fuck no, but a benign little piece of metadata that doesn’t interact with anything and can’t be used to spy on me? Whatever, I can accept it.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pub
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      6 months ago

      I object because my public funds were used to pay for most of these papers. Publishers shouldn’t behave as if they own it.

      • NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 months ago

        That’s true. I was actually thinking/talking about this practice in general, not specifically with regards to Elsevier.

        I definitely agree that scientific journals as they are today are unacceptable.

    • cron@feddit.de
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      6 months ago

      Definitely better than some of the DRM-riddled proprietary eBook formats.