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When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

bbc.co.uk

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Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#121

Post by mcv »

billpollock wrote: post #101
miki123211 wrote: post #92

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.

I'm fine with watermarks. The only downside to them is that they are traceable to the original buyer if someone else gets their hands on your and decides to distribute it online, so lending them to a friend is risky.

But the watermarks really only matter when they get illegally copied around, and don't hurt the owner in the way more restrictive forms of DRM do.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#122

Post by gambiting »

novaRom wrote: post #99
miki123211 wrote: post #92

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.

Do you mean even books from Kindle store are without DRM?

There is no Kindle in Poland. In fact, there is no Amazon in Poland either(which is almost ironic considering that there are a couple huge Amazon warehouses in Poland - they serve customers of Amazon.de, as they are both very close to the German border - I suspect the labour costs are lower in Poland hence it makes more sense to have the warehouses there. Incidentally, going to Amazon.pl redirects you to Amazon.de instead).

However, in the absence of Amazon, domestic services have sprouted instead - there's a few very big ebook stores, an excellent Audible replacement(with huge superproductions involving famous Polish actors voicing the lines being made regularly), instead of Amazon and Ebay we have Allegro(which in my personal opinion has leapfrogged ebay by about a century worth of development, it's just a much nicer experience). Ebay tried entering the Polish market a few times with huge marketing campaigns and lots of deals, but Allegro's dominance is just so untouchable that I think they have just given up now. I suspect Amazon doesn't even try for the same reason - it's not even localized to Polish(although Polish customers can still order items from any Amazon site, they get delivered to Poland without any issues and for free if you have Prime).

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

luladjiev wrote: post #105
romwell wrote: post #29

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.)

Sorry for the question, but what does HIB means?

I assume "humble indie bundle".

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#124

Post by bambax »

asveikau wrote: post #8

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.

Yes I do the same. Just drag and drop into Calibre (with the right plugin) and you're done.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#125

Post by bambax »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #24
asveikau wrote: post #8

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.

So they still get your money and you deal with the inconvenience? Try buying from https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebooks where possible (DRM-free).

Kindle is actually very convenient. I wouldn't mind buying elsewhere but the reason I usually buy on Amazon is convenience.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#126

Post by miki123211 »

mcv wrote: post #121
billpollock wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should your ebook files be watermarked? Your printed books aren't. Watermarks are ugly.

I'm fine with watermarks. The only downside to them is that they are traceable to the original buyer if someone else gets their hands on your and decides to distribute it online, so lending them to a friend is risky. But the watermarks really only matter when they get illegally copied around, and don't hurt the owner in the way more restrictive forms of DRM do.

in the blind community I'm a part of, there are a lot of ebooks floating as plaintext files, with watermarks either stripped or replaced by something like "there was a watermark here, but it has been stripped. Keep trying".

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#127

Post by miki123211 »

donatzsky wrote: post #115
feanaro wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By making the owned copy ugly and harder to read yet still trivially copyable? Something does not compute here.

It's not that kind of watermark. Rather, usually at the beginning, there'll be some text saying who bought the book, along with some kind of identifier. The id can also be hidden inside the file.

The books I've investigated had a text saying "This copy belongs to: %s" where %s was an email address at the beginning, and an invisible hex string at the end of every chapter. The string had a width and height of 1px, so most conventional readers didn't show it at all.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#128

Post by mrmondo »

calcifer wrote: post #98
mrmondo wrote: post #94

I REALLY don’t agree with giving Amazon money (ethically) but I am a hypocrite and end up buying a lot of ebooks and audiobooks from them, I do my best to back up the files using calibre but I‘m sure they could lock down devices / files using DRM and their latest DRM incarnation is very hard to remove. I try to buy DRM-free ebooks and audiobooks whenever possible but I think mostly due to market domination authors an…

If you are already using Calibre, it's not hard to protect yourself from Amazon. I have a Kindle PaperWhite that's about ~3 years old and it only connected to the Internet once during initial setup. I've put it in flight mode after that and it will never go online again. As for books, when I buy them on Amazon I select "transfer via USB" which let's me download it and when I add it to Calibre, the DRM is stripped by…

Hey, thanks for your reply, I appreciate it.

I’ve used deDRM a lot in the past, but it doesn’t work with the latest DRM on (I think AWZ3 files) - but perhaps it’s been updated since I last checked about 6 months ago or so.

Re: When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too

#130

Post by sundvor »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #42
hombre_fatal wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they still get your money and you deal with the inconvenience? Try buying from https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebooks where possible (DRM-free).

There's actually quite a few eBook stores out there with DRM-free options, you just have to know where to look, and they're usually publisher-specific. Humble Bundle does a weekly Book Bundle. Wiley, O'Reilly, No Starch, and several other publishers all regularly participate with tech books, geek books, comic books, and manga. No Starch itself deserves a separate mention just because they're awesome. On their own sit…

Thanks for mentioning Manning; they are great, love buying from them - including their Early Access versions such as Jon Skeet's C# in Depth.
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