101–110 of 297 posts
That's why I love the way we get ebooks in Poland. When we buy an ebook, we usually get a pack of files (epub/pdf/mobi), without any DRM, but with watermarks, some visible, some hidden. Same for audiobooks. There's no DRM, there's some piracy, as always, but the system works and it works pretty damn well. I wish american ebook and audiobook stores were like this.
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Not really. The hardest part is getting the activation bytes and even that is actually quite simple and you only have to do it once. For the actual converting I have a bash script that can convert all the aax files in a directory and convert them to a m4b format with all the metada intact. Using your approach you would have to manually set the chapters and the cover art. I have thousands of hours worth of audiobooks…
Since breaking DRM is itself illegal, why not just torrent the content?
I didn't start buying ebooks from Amazon/Kindle until I realized it was relatively easy to break its DRM. I've never used the files anywhere else but I keep a cracked copy of every purchase just in case. That old story about "1984" being removed gave me too much of a negative impression.
The Japanese eBook store BOOKWALKER, owned by publishing giant Kadokawa, is by far the most draconian I've seen in recent years when it comes to eBook DRM: https://bookwalker.jp Some examples of the lengths they go to: - They used to have a desktop app that allowed reading offline. Not anymore. They're phasing it out in favor of their web reader which has no offline reading functionality. Presumably because people we…
The biggest differentiator for them is they don't compress their images to oblivion like Amazon and Google Play does, which is really nice for light novels and manga where image quality makes a huge difference. Being Kobo, they also happen to be the only eBook store other than Amazon to offer their own line of eBook reader devices, most of which can be hacked to use a bigger sdcard for more storage (they literally use an sdcard for internal storage instead of emmc).
Of course, their DRM is easily crackable, but I would love to hear recommendations for DRM free Japanese eBook stores if anyone is aware of any.
That's why I love the way we get ebooks in Poland. When we buy an ebook, we usually get a pack of files (epub/pdf/mobi), without any DRM, but with watermarks, some visible, some hidden. Same for audiobooks. There's no DRM, there's some piracy, as always, but the system works and it works pretty damn well. I wish american ebook and audiobook stores were like this.
Well, that's one argument for piracy. Or at least avoiding anything that you can't have DRM-free. (I still like my Steam library, but the games I really care about are bought on GOG/HIB when possible.)
That's why I love the way we get ebooks in Poland. When we buy an ebook, we usually get a pack of files (epub/pdf/mobi), without any DRM, but with watermarks, some visible, some hidden. Same for audiobooks. There's no DRM, there's some piracy, as always, but the system works and it works pretty damn well. I wish american ebook and audiobook stores were like this.
Why should your ebook files be watermarked? Your printed books aren't. Watermarks are ugly.
Watermarks are an attempt at reproducing rules of physical space in digital space.
That's why I love the way we get ebooks in Poland. When we buy an ebook, we usually get a pack of files (epub/pdf/mobi), without any DRM, but with watermarks, some visible, some hidden. Same for audiobooks. There's no DRM, there's some piracy, as always, but the system works and it works pretty damn well. I wish american ebook and audiobook stores were like this.
Why should your ebook files be watermarked? Your printed books aren't. Watermarks are ugly.
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Why should your ebook files be watermarked? Your printed books aren't. Watermarks are ugly.
Because you can't trivially make identical - down to cuts, paper type, print fidelity - copies of a physical book. But you can trivially make identical copies of a digital one. Watermarks are an attempt at reproducing rules of physical space in digital space.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Japanese eBook store BOOKWALKER, owned by publishing giant Kadokawa, is by far the most draconian I've seen in recent years when it comes to eBook DRM: https://bookwalker.jp Some examples of the lengths they go to: - They used to have a desktop app that allowed reading offline. Not anymore. They're phasing it out in favor of their web reader which has no offline reading functionality. Presumably because people we…
By the way, if anyone's interested in buying Japanese eBooks, my current go-to store is Kobo (owned by Rakuten): https://books.rakuten.co.jp/e-book/ The biggest differentiator for them is they don't compress their images to oblivion like Amazon and Google Play does, which is really nice for light novels and manga where image quality makes a huge difference. Being Kobo, they also happen to be the only eBook store othe…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you can't trivially make identical - down to cuts, paper type, print fidelity - copies of a physical book. But you can trivially make identical copies of a digital one. Watermarks are an attempt at reproducing rules of physical space in digital space.
By making the owned copy ugly and harder to read yet still trivially copyable? Something does not compute here.
That's right. They are trivially copyable, but the copies are easily traceable. Compute now?