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Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

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Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#41

Post by w1ntermute »

anonymoushn wrote: post #35
JunkDNA wrote: post #17

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

Anyone know why it takes so long? Shouldn't it be possible to crack the DRM on Kindle (or other) ebooks and pirate them? I thought the reason it was so hard to pirate books in the past was because they had to be scanned (and preferably OCRed).

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#44

Post by myth_drannon »

anonymoushn wrote: post #35
JunkDNA wrote: post #17

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

Another side effect of ebooks is that public libraries now increasingly rely on the electronic versions of the books to save space,money and they started to unload physical books by thousands. Although it applies mostly to fiction, but no need to pirate these books , you can get them for $1.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#45

Post by TheAmazingIdiot »

VB6_Forever wrote: post #38
anonymoushn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

I'm no advocate of piracy but having twice been effectively ripped off by DRM I can see where you're coming from

And for as long as cracking a DRM scheme to gain your rightful property is illegal, I will advocate piracy.

I buy movies on DVD when I like the show. I also buy books. And occasionally, I also buy music.

The rub: I buy from Half Price Books and other used merchants. For some reason (PROFIT), I cant do this with ebooks and other e-media.

When I'm treated as an enemy, acted upon as an enemy and evil pirate, and charged an arm and a leg for media then proselytised to 'not pirate'... Yeah, Ill pirate.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#46

Post by diego_moita »

lwhi wrote: post #20

I think the idea of 'buying' an ebook is a ridiculous concept in itself. I think it would be more sensible to employ a model where books are provided via a rental service. Charge for the service, not the IP.

If your ebook reader is a Sony, Nook, Literati or Kobo you can lend ebooks from hundreds of North American public libraries: http://www.overdrive.com

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#47

Post by kingnothing »

allwein wrote: post #14
bbatsell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of this feature is to make e-books behave slightly more like real books. As it stands normally, you can't share your purchased e-book with anyone — it's prohibited by the terms of use you signed and enforced by DRM. This allows you to share your e-book like you would share a real book (well, once), wherein you can't read the book after you've loaned it out because...you don't have the book.

I realize the point of the feature, but it really is an anti-feature. It's like if you weren't allowed to skip tracks on a CD, but had to fast-forward through each individual song so that it would be more like a cassette tape.

It's not like that at all, actually.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#48

Post by sleight42 »

(1) Can someone, perhaps an Amazon employee, clarify if "loan once" means exactly what it says? Can we only loan a kindle book to one person one time only? The book cannot be loaned again to anyone? Or cannot be loaned again to the same person?

(2) As an early adopter of Kindle, It's particularly sad that, as I peruse my Kindle collection, the vast majority of our books are not loanable. I can't say that I'm surprised. But I am annoyed by it. This is perhaps a large factor in the soft launch of the loaning feature.

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#49

Post by CWuestefeld »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29
JunkDNA wrote: post #17

I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single industry that starts to shift to digital content?

I think the answer is yes -- because people who grew up with one business model find it very, very hard to give it up, logic be damned. I'm at the point now where I have a lot of money invested in my kindle e-books. E-books that Amazon says that they really own and won't let me share with folks (until now) Wonder how much abuse the average user is going to take before they decide that a book is a book. You buy a book…

Daniel, while I agree with what you said, I must in the interest of fairness say that I still see a flaw in the argument.

people who grew up with one business model find it very, very hard to give it up, logic be damned ... Wonder how much abuse the average user is going to take before they decide that a book is a book

You're assuming (as am I) that e-books are the same as dead trees, and it's the publishers holding their heads in the sand.

But why must that be the answer? Why can't it be that we're wrong, that this is a brave new world that we need to adjust to?

Re: Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live

#50

Post by CWuestefeld »

w1ntermute wrote: post #41
anonymoushn wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year after they are published.

Anyone know why it takes so long? Shouldn't it be possible to crack the DRM on Kindle (or other) ebooks and pirate them? I thought the reason it was so hard to pirate books in the past was because they had to be scanned (and preferably OCRed).

Kindle was cracked at least a year ago.

I haven't actually used it, but from what I read it's not a crypto flaw allowing the data to be extracted, but more analogous to the "analog hole". The existence of on-screen readers allows software to be written that walks through the book a page at a time, and rips the content in that way.

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