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Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

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Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#131

Post by AnthonyMouse »

markdown wrote: post #121
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep hearing complaints in the US that EU regulations strangle companies, but as a consumer I’m wildly envious. It's all a matter of what the regulations actually are. Most of them get sold as "consumer protection" but in practice are written by the industries the consumers are supposedly being protected from, in order to create barriers to entry and destroy competition. > The US is sold products that force you t…

> in practice are written by the industries the consumers are supposedly being protected from, in order to create barriers to entry and destroy competition. Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry. If that means there's less competition and higher prices, so be it. Consumer safety should come before the need for more competition and lo…

> Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry.

So then don't buy anything without third party certification. But why shouldn't you be able to choose the EU's certification rather than the US, or a private one, if you want to?

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#132

Post by markdown »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131
markdown wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in practice are written by the industries the consumers are supposedly being protected from, in order to create barriers to entry and destroy competition. Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry. If that means there's less competition and higher prices, so be it. Consumer safety should come before the need for more competition and lo…

> Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry. So then don't buy anything without third party certification. But why shouldn't you be able to choose the EU's certification rather than the US, or a private one, if you want to?

> So then don't buy anything without third party certification.

You can't tell how compliant with food safety standards a manufacturer is when you're standing in front of a supermarket shelf. It's better to just know that every juice on the shelf met some minimum food safety standard.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#133

Post by lsc »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #115
lsc wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the point is to encourage creation; I agree that there should be some requirement that you must distribute a work to keep that copyright.

Encouraging creation is part of the deal, preserving culture, and enabling wider education were also parts of the deal -- Queen Anne (or her advisers) seem to have really valued the availability of literature for the people (or at least the priveleged people with access to the BL and Uni libraries).

eh, but copyright as it stands now, decreases the availability of literature (I mean, aside from how it encourages creating it, which is super important, of course.) so those things couldn't have been reasons for creating copyright law as it stands in the US.

(an interesting side effect, as a person willing to spend money on books? It's a lot easier to get a good e-book of something still under copyright than of something out of copyright. Like, I'm super happy to pay $20 or whatever for something better-than-gutenberg and that's really a lot of effort. I don't really know how they do it, 'cause half the for pay out of copyright books for kindle on amazon are worse than just downloading the .mobi from gutenberg. For anything public domain, you have to wade through a sea of badly formatted garbage, even if you are largely price insensitive; price isn't a reasonable signal either way. On the other hand, if it is in public domain, you almost certainly will be able to find an e-book of it, and the quality you get just hitting gutenberg really isn't that bad, while if it is in copyright, if it is an obscure book, your only real option is paper.)

I wonder how much of my problem with finding well formated kindle books is my own lack of familiarity with the search tools and publishing houses? or with amazon's lack of features (like, some sort of rating for the publisher would be useful here. Right now, amazon makes it really hard with their combining of reviews for different formats/editions/publishers. Like sometimes the kindle version and paper version (for out of copyright books) will be different publishers, and amazon just glomps the reviews together, making it really quite difficult.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#134

Post by grimskin »

inlined wrote: post #44
thejenk wrote: post #40

It doesn't make sense to me that eBook retailers can claim they're selling licences to view books, instead of the books themselves. If I were to look for 1984 for a kindle, I'd: 1. Search Amazon for "1984 George Orwell" 2. Select the first option (paperback) 3. See the "Format" selector 4. Select the kindle edition 5. Click "Buy with one-click" Notably, between 4 and 5, reading the entire page gives no indication tha…

Did you pick 1984 because ironically it was once wiped from all kindles? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

I'd like to be devil's advocate here - in case of Orwell books, given that publisher had no rights for them, the situation is similar to the selling of stolen goods.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#135

Post by thejenk »

grimskin wrote: post #134
inlined wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you pick 1984 because ironically it was once wiped from all kindles? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

I'd like to be devil's advocate here - in case of Orwell books, given that publisher had no rights for them, the situation is similar to the selling of stolen goods.

I actually agree that it's a situation that's unrelated to whether the retailer is selling licenses or copies of the book, which is what my original comment is about. I do think that Amazon could have handled the situation better though. It probably would have been to everyone's benefit for them to work out the issue with the rights holders instead of passing their mistake forward to their customers. They may have tried to do that behind closed doors and failed, of course.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#136

Post by remicmacs »

Havoc wrote: post #26

That’s why is started decrypting and making backups of my ebooks. Happy to play the corporate’s game but only to a point. And it’s clear that one need a plan B cause corporates will go nuclear without hesitation. So I don’t feel bad at all about bending the rules on this

Same here. Most of my ebooks are bought DRM-free. But some times I want a book from a publisher that does not do DRM-free publishing. And EVERY TIME, it's a hassle : I have to link my e-reader to a specific website account. This account itself has to be linked to my email address, since there is no way to register anywhere without email nowadays...

Anyway, that makes me REALLY annoyed, so I break the DRM protection every time, just to avoid another hassle next time I reset my ereader, my Calibre library, or any other event.

Granted that does not happen very often, but I'll do anything to avoid yet another 2FA voodoo ritual across multiple online platforms just to claim ownership on a 100 pages book. I mean, come on !

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#137

Post by scarface74 »

dabockster wrote: post #33
ChrisLomont wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right sale doctrine doesn’t apply to products like these; these are licenses to use. If they were first sale doctrine products, you could sell your goods on secondary markets, which you cannot.

Forget sale doctrines, DRM effectively prevents a consumer from leaving to a competing service. It seems to me to be more of a matter of antitrust law since it gives a company way too much control over how a consumer, well, consumes.

There is one partial exception - digital movies.

Movies Anywhere is owned by Disney but is a partnership with four other studios. You can buy a movie from iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play, or Vudu and get credit for purchasing it from other stores.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#138

Post by scarface74 »

pmlnr wrote: post #58
awakeasleep wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allows businesses to extract greater profits from their existing portfolio

In the end, most of the world's problems can be traced back greed. I suggest to add the word "profit" to the list of synonyms of greed.

Do you work for a for profit company?

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#139

Post by AnthonyMouse »

markdown wrote: post #132
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Requiring 3rd party certification that your food/vape juice/whatever won't harm me should definitely be a barrier to entry. So then don't buy anything without third party certification. But why shouldn't you be able to choose the EU's certification rather than the US, or a private one, if you want to?

> So then don't buy anything without third party certification. You can't tell how compliant with food safety standards a manufacturer is when you're standing in front of a supermarket shelf. It's better to just know that every juice on the shelf met some minimum food safety standard.

> You can't tell how compliant with food safety standards a manufacturer is when you're standing in front of a supermarket shelf.

How can you tell any better how compliant they are with local law? The penalty can be the same for misusing the seal of the standards organization, it just gives you the choice of whose standards you're willing to accept.

> It's better to just know that every juice on the shelf met some minimum food safety standard.

But that isn't what happens. It immediately goes from requiring that the food is not rat poison to prohibiting donut holes and restricting hamburgers on Sundays and requiring apple pie to be served with cheese.

Re: Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM

#140

Post by patrick5415 »

grimskin wrote: post #134
inlined wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you pick 1984 because ironically it was once wiped from all kindles? https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

I'd like to be devil's advocate here - in case of Orwell books, given that publisher had no rights for them, the situation is similar to the selling of stolen goods.

Sure, but if the local grocer realizes he sold me stolen eggs, he doesn’t get to send his henchmen to my house in the middle of the night to steal them back.

The amazon/Orwell fiasco was the moment I decided to never buy a kindle and steer clear of anything with drm.

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