Sharing personal books accross two computers

JT (alabama24) said:

As long as you have the appropriate "use internet" options still turned on, then the metadata (i.e. title, author, etc.) automatically syncs, as does the PBB project.

I'm no longer sure that's still (or always) true, based on my two L9/V9 installations. 

JT (alabama24) said:

FL does not currently have (nor do I think they have plans to implement) a means to delete the file from their servers. If that would be an issue, it may be best not to "upload" the compiled file. If it is only a mild issue, then if you decide to not use that resource you can 1) hide it or 2) wipe over it with new content. 

Generally speaking, it seems strange to me that people trust FL with their prayers and their sermons, but then object against having PB files on FL's servers where they probably are stored in encrypted form anyways. Uploading after every build is the most easy way to have PBs synced between two installations. 

Kevin said:

Do you know of a way of modifying an uploaded personal book in this scenario, where for whatever reason, you lose access to that original Logos installation?

If you lost the source docx files you would be unable to modify a PB (uploaded or otherwise). It would be advisable to back them up to a removable drive, or store them in the cloud as well as locally e.g. OneDrive. I'm not sure what you mean by having full backups of our Logos folder, as that would refer to the built PB in the Resources folder. If you upload all your PB's, you won't lose those files, otherwise you have to rebuild them! You don't store the docx files in the Logos folder...

David Ames said:

Question: Are they encrypted?  Some time back FL did an analysis on all of the PBB that were uploaded and that is when they discovered that most PBBs are files taken from the internet as text or PDF files and loaded into Logos. 

I think they are encrypted just with the same algorithm as our other library books. But metadata such as author and title are not encrypted. Logos could decrypt the actual books if they wanted, but I don't think they would feel any desire to do so.

David Ames said:

And they complained that many were books that they have offered as Logos Resources.

Also, maybe you put more into FL's "Analysis" of PBs than they actually did. I didn't want to google that old post, but my recollection is not that FL did an in-depth analysis of all PBs actual content, but just glanced at the titles ordered by frequency and it was one book by AW Pink that they found was near the top of the seemingly most-popular PBs and to be taken from the internet (at that time it was not offered by Logos, but was freely available at CCEL and other websites. Many of FL's very reformed user base just thought they needed it "for completeness sake". In fact I have a PB copy of this myself - and a copy I bought from FL. This probably was a very special case, the book possibly still being copyrighted (at least in Europe, where the publisher sits who back then refused to allow FL to sell it) and available from so many websites on the web. I know that at the time when I first built it, I thought the text from CCEL was PD (and it actually may be, at least in the US).

This analysis might even lead to wrong conclusions: Years ago I started putting "dummy" PBs into my library with the exact title, author, publisher etc just to get library search hits and as a reminder I owned this work in another bible software or in paper. I stopped doing that (too much effort without scripting), but such books from their metadata look like a "competing" PB when actually they aren't - and I ended up buying the Logos edition for many of those anyway.   

Of course, many or most PBs are not documents produced by the individual Logos user, but are public domain works or otherwise free resources that users build to enhance their libraries. I personally find that PBs don't compete much with Logos resources. There might be the argument that every book competes with every other book. And in theory, FL could bring every PD book ever written to Logos. Looking at their bandwidth to actually get books produced, they are not able to keep up even with the volume of new books pushed out by their most trusted publishing partners.

My impression, making and using PBs from L4 onwards, is that the PB community is very ethical in the PBs that are shared here in the forums: no blatantly stolen books, no PD works that are offered at CP (even though we know it takes years for them to go through). It's rather that PB fills up areas where FL is not strong enough to make an offer. I think that PBs are a strong component of getting users from underdeveloped faith traditions (like the restoration movement) or non-English languages to actually find Logos usable. My personal conviction is that without PBs, there would not be an active user community in e.g. the German language - and if FL wants to grow other languages (as they seem to do with French now, and as they probably should do with Dutch/Afrikaans), my sincere recommendation would be to get the users making PBs in order to overcome the dearth of resources. 

Are there users who sometimes might privately build a PB that is a book FL sells? Surely. I personally have done so once or twice in the past, as a proof of concept for format conversion for a book I legally owned in another format (worked well; nevertheless I bought the Logos resource) and once as a test for making a devotional from an FL eBook. Such format conversion may be considered a grey area by some, but is probably legal and falls under Fair Use for most users anyway. Some student or bivo pastor may think they can grab a text from archive.org for free and save the bucks they really can't afford in the Logos store. I don't believe that this actually cuts much into Logos revenue - maybe to the contrary: Experience from the forums seems to show that people who actually tried building a commentary or a bible with the same full functionality as a Logos resource are the first who jump in when some cheapo starts to whine about Logos prices, as building such PBs clearly teaches the amount of effort, diligence and time needed to produce a Logos resource. This may make users more willing to pay Logos prices even for PD works.

EDIT: I took much too long to write this up, but I see that Bradley in the meantime confirmed at least my answers to your question /EDIT

Bradley Grainger (Faithlife) said:

Bradley Grainger (Faithlife) said:

Our analysis was based on the assumption that [titles of well-known works] were probably not personal books authored by the users who uploaded them.

NB.Mick said:

This analysis might even lead to wrong conclusions: Years ago I started putting "dummy" PBs into my library with the exact title, author, publisher etc just to get library search hits and as a reminder I owned this work in another bible software or in paper.

The conclusion we drew was that Personal Book Builder was being used for things other publishing the user's personal content (not necessarily that it was being used for widespread copyright violation).

Fair enough and thanks for clarifying.