Allowing user to copy text in the reader into clipboard
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Could you allow user to copy text in the novel they are reading in the reader so they can paste that text for easier reporting of corrections?
Why explicitly put that kind of protection in there? Are you trying to prevent pirating? That really doesn't make any sense to come from a company which distributes DRM free ebooks which doesn't come with any kind of protection.
This seems to put unnecessary burden on the users who post collections of the prepubs. I really like to use the official reader, but for this single reason, I'm afraid I have to keep on using the unofficial reader which allow me to do that - https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/3353/yet-another-pwa-jnc-client
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@hiroto This has come up before, and I'll answer with my own opinion which in part reflects the company's opinion on the matter: Preventing text selection in novels defends against a small subset of people who #1 Are not motivated enough to interact directly with our currently DRM-free APIs (lack of skills, knowledge etc.) and #2 operate aggregator sites. Having observed and interacted with the "ripping" community for a long time, I know these people well. If you give them a nice tool w/ GUI on e.g. GitHub to rip prepubs, they will use it. If you make it easy for them to copy-paste the text on the site, they will do so. And many times they don't know what "sailing the high seas" refers to.
That said, we might consider unlocking copy-paste on owned volumes on the app/site, and you are free to personally use your DRM-free EPUBs however you want.
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Do you have any alternative suggestion on how you could accommodate the corrections reporting?
This is the kind of post I do:
https://forums.j-novel.club/post/115300I like to provide the full context of the text I'm commenting on, and if you tell me that only alternative is to type all that myself, it will really discourage me to do so.
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Corrections reporting is entirely voluntary. While we appreciate suggestions that are made, if you feel that it's too inconvenient, then you don't have to do it.
If you are interested in applying to be a paid proofreader, please send your resume and cover letter to jobs@j-novel.club.
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The copy pasting has already been completely possible and very easy with third party readers. At least I haven't heard of any rampant ripping community but they have been possible already. Also, providing the same tools for paying customers that pirates already have would be nice. Pirates get to copy paste all they want to when they want to quote a part of a book when they talk about it with their friends while paying customers can not (unless they use a third party reader). Crippling your own product to make pirates get the better deal is a real down side to fighting piracy.
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I feel like this unwillingness to accommodate people with disabilities will jeopardize your likelihood of keep my businesses. I rely on text-to-speech readers to consume your content fully
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@lookman373 I use text-to-speech with 90% of J-Novel's prepubs currently, almost every day. It works perfectly fine (at least on the apps, haven't tried on a browser).
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If the goal is to make reporting corrections easier, then perhaps a method to highlight a string of text and directly report a correction with it would alleviate the need to actually put it on the clipboard.
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As has been said, J-Novel Club has no incentive to make community corrections reporting any easier. They already pay editors and proofreaders (for the final epubs).
You need a better argument for it, such as dictionary definitions for ESL users or highlighting. I believe Bookwalker has a feature where you can select text to either highlight or look up on a dictionary, but without the option to copy text. Maybe that is a possibility. -
@LegitPancake what did you use since it work ed on the old reader. but not this one
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The new reader is even easier to "copy-paste" from and it removes important formatting. Copy-pasting applies the correct formatting. This means that those that copy-paste the prepubs will offer better quality products than the new reader. For these two reasons, the reader should be reverted.
For example: In Ascendance of a Bookworm, Volume 3, Part 5, when copy-pasted it reads, "I hope it goes well. Operation Grimm... Eheheh." However, the new reader shows it as, "I hope it goes well. Operation Grimm... Eheheh." The new reader removes the very important italics.
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@Avastar That is unintended and will be fixed.
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@lookman373 I agree. I use text to speech as well (I'm legally blind) and have been importing the parts to my ereader app through the browser on my ipod. That no longer works with the new reader. In fact, I can't even get the ipod's native TTS to work on the browser page.
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@ladyillusion I just tried TTS on chrome on the beta website on a prepub (I set it to vertical scrolling) and it’s working for me just fine on my iPhone 8.
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@LegitPancake said in Allowing user to copy text in the reader into clipboard:
You need a better argument for it
Why? Isn't an argument "I'm a paying customer so I should get at least the same features that pirates do?" a good enough argument? The fact that paying customers want something and they find use in it should not really be dictated by anyone else than those users. The story should end there, and obviously since we still can't have it we can make additional arguments and no additional argument is a bad one. What they are trying to prevent can already be done with third party readers, so there is really no even theoretical benefit of making it harder for pirates to rip this stuff.
A bad company would "solve" this by closing their APIs so that third party readers could not be used to copy paste pre-pubs and making it worse for everyone. I however have trust in JNC since they seem to be so innovative on so many fronts, not afraid to put out their content DRM free etc. They know that ease of reading is a thing that brings in customers, and I wonder why it is so hard in this single case. If they did not have APIs for third party readers to use the argument might have even a little bit of weight behind it, but the current situation just benefits no one since it is making their official reader worse without preventing ripping.
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@Tube said in Allowing user to copy text in the reader into clipboard:
They know that ease of reading is a thing that brings in customers, and I wonder why it is so hard in this single case.
This is why I use JNC and have almost exclusively used them for reading LN. I don't like paying Amazon because they are such a hegemony in the book space, I can't use Kobo's epubs on my kindle, and Bookwalker is a joke because of their DRM and forcing people on an app.
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@LegitPancake I use safari but I’ll give chrome a go.
Edit: Looks like that works. Thanks. -
@Tube said in Allowing user to copy text in the reader into clipboard:
Why? Isn't an argument "I'm a paying customer so I should get at least the same features that pirates do?" a good enough argument?
Aren't you getting exactly that though? Paying pirates can use the APIs to rip the pre-pub text (at least I'm assuming so based on what's been said), you are also free to download the pre-pub text using the APIs and load it onto your favourite text editor for easy consumption.
I won't argue the reader (both versions) can't be better, but purely from a features standpoint, the only difference between a pirate site and another paying end user is that the pirate site has put in the technical effort to leverage the options that are available to them to consume the output onto their own reader while the vast majority of regular users are just using the default client and don't bother to explore building their own personalized client using the same tools.
It sort of comes back to what LegitPancake is saying. What's the use case for JNC here? Is it an accessibility issue? Does text to speech not work without the ability to copy and paste text? Is it purely a QoL update so people can report pre-pub errors more easily? Just because a paying customer wants it doesn't mean it's worth doing from the company's standpoint. The benefits that it brings us the customers is going to be weighed against the downsides and time it would take on the business' side.
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Okay, now, incoming rant here because I feel this is a perspective that needs to be considered.
Accessibility is not optional. Disabled people have as much right to access content that they paid for as much as anyone else--and they deserve the same consideration as everyone else.
Far too often, the needs of disabled people are ignored because 'it's not worth it, they're just a minority and we can afford to lose them.'
I'm sorry, but that's a lousy attitude to have. JNC has always been great about accommodating the needs of disabled readers, and I really hope that doesn't change. Please remember that accessibility features exist for a reason and need to be supported by website creators.
/Rant over. I'm sorry but I've dealt with this on other sites and it sucks. I hope that JNC remembers it's disabled users and continues to try to accommodate them.
