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Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

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Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#121

Post by samplatt »

omgmajk wrote: post #65
TylerE wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who works with music software, to this day, deals with the pain of physical hardware keys. A few of the software players are moving from that to cloud based drm… which is at least less annoying since it doesn’t tie up a previous USB port. It’s called iLok.

>Anyone who works with music software, to this day, deals with the pain of physical hardware keys. And anyone who works in the automotive industry, sadly.

Also the engineering industry. And Architecture. And mapping/GIS sphere.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#122

Post by chris_armstrong »

The proposed solution to market monopolisation by Amazon seems to boil down to the old refrain, "design better markets", with a lament for the innovation and freedom of the old anarchistic (i.e. unregulated) web.

It's a touch ironic but nevertheless predictable, an old problem wrapped us as a new one, making me wonder: why the book will be all that interesting?

Large publishers have forced DRM and squeezed authors in other media markets such as music or TV and film, protecting their monopolies on distribution and consequent power to market-make. What is new?

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#123

Post by Qwertious »

xavdid wrote: post #107

A slight quibble: > They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon's monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library. While it's true that your purchases are tied to your Amazon account, they are not tied to your audible subscription (if you have one). That's a nice touch. Even better, the DRM is trivially easy to remove. Audi…

The strength of the DRM isn't really relevant;_DRM is primarily intended as 1) a legal weapon under the DMCA, and 2) an inconvenience to remove.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#124

Post by BaseballPhysics »

wlesieutre wrote: post #12
taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

Audible reportedly only pays 25% to authors, bumping it up to 40% if they agree to exclusivity on Audible. Which of course a lot of authors do because they need the money, and then no other audiobook marketplace can compete.

And guess what audible exclusivity means: no libraries.

Audible is literally locking away culture from the public and it's a god damned disgrace.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#125

Post by taeric »

8note wrote: post #112
mtlynch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am curious why you don't think they aren't better than the alternatives? Are they amazing and beyond improvement? Of course not. But most of the alternatives are crap. Do you think the quality of the alternatives might be related to the fact that Amazon/Audible is strangling all competitors out of existence with their exclusivity agreements? Imagine if an audiobook competitor popped up that's a 10x better experie…

If apple extended itunes to sell audiobooks, they'd eat audible's lunch without problem. Any podcasting company could do it, because podcasts basically are audiobooks (Also disclaimer, I work at Amazon but not at audible)

I'm confused by this, Apple does sell audio books? Right?

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#126

Post by pixelatedindex »

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #24
pixelatedindex wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think Audible is pretty good. I would feel better about buying from them if it wasn’t fully owned by Amazon. Are there any good alternatives out there?

libro.fm is an option for buying books. You can purchase a subscription or buy individual books. Some of the money goes to support local bookstores, so that's kind of neat. They're also not Amazon, so that's kind of neat, too. I'm a big fan of the Libby app, which you can acccess through your local library. If your library subscribes to the service (and it's likely they do if you live in the USA), then you just need…

Thankfully my library uses Libby - I just wish they let you check out physical books too like how Overdrive used to.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#127

Post by preventionist »

wffurr wrote: post #88
diatribist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with most folks selling books about how to avoid the excesses of DRM and other exploitative practices is that most people are happy to pay a premium for the convenience of having a digital library managed by Amazon, Google, Facebook, &etc. Big tech companies must pay the bills for their servers in one way or another and charging people money to keep the data in their digital vaults is a tradeoff most consum…

The problem isn’t running your own infrastructure. It’s the extortionate rent for the big tech infrastructure and the anticompetitive DRM lock in. If there was a competitive ecosystem of client software and hardware and also online stores and it all interoperated, we would have a lot more choice, control of our purchased media and devices, and lower prices too.

What prevents the existence of such an ecosystem? What are the main obstructions? The most obvious ones I can think of are the data centers and necessary protocols but those are easily solvable problems with enough cash. The other obstruction I can think of is that consumers don't actually want these stores and protocols because they're perfectly happy with the services that big tech delivers. Convenience seems to be the #1 factor and most consumers are happy to pay a premium to be in Google's, Amazon's, and Apple's ecosystems. Even if it would be cheaper for the consumer if there were interoperable protocols for these digital vaults I am almost certain that the average consumer would not care because whatever features the big tech currently offers is more than sufficient for their use cases. Very small subset might care but they're too small of a minority to make a difference. Google consistently kills products that HN users enjoy but HN users are clearly not the target demographic that Google actually cares about since they keep killing HN favored services and products.

So if the data centers and protocols are not the problem it must be consumer preferences and going by the software quality that most consumers are willing to put up with I am certain they don't know and care enough about interoperability to actually force the big players to develop the necessary interoperability protocols.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#128

Post by taeric »

8note wrote: post #109
lesuorac wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work at a place that made expensive physical objects. Customers calling in because they could use the objects because they plugged the hardware key into a different machine was all the time ... Like the hardware had to be wired to the computer running the software. An extra hardware key that needs to be plugged into the computer as well doesn't do anything!

This gives me a fun hardware idea: Make hardware keys that have the shape of real keys, and that you have to turn to engage the USB key. The key shape isn't security, just a hint at what needs to plug where. You sell both keys and receptacles that can be put into a metal case or an otter box

This is basically what a security key (e.g., yubikey) is? I'm actually surprised I can't get a door lock that can be opened by one, yet. Could even be NFC capable, so that you don't have to plug in anything.

Similarly, this is effectively what many car keys are, nowadays.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#129

Post by taeric »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #124
wlesieutre wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audible reportedly only pays 25% to authors, bumping it up to 40% if they agree to exclusivity on Audible. Which of course a lot of authors do because they need the money, and then no other audiobook marketplace can compete.

And guess what audible exclusivity means: no libraries . Audible is literally locking away culture from the public and it's a god damned disgrace.

This is largely a point I can fully get behind. All streaming services with their "exclusives" are doing this, though. :( It is very frustrating.

Disney famously has their "vault" that basically means you can only get physical copies when they deem it worthy to resell something. Relevant for libraries as they are bound by the same limitations, at that point.

Re: Kickstarting a book to end enshittification, because Amazon will not carry it

#130

Post by abawany »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #6
taeric wrote: post #5

I have a hard time getting behind some of these criticisms of audible and the like. Its annoying, as I am against most DRM schemes out there. But to pretend those came from "big tech" is laughable, at best. A ridiculously large portion of "tech" is perfectly fine with sending copies everywhere. Is literally how many of us get our operating system. Music files and shareware copying were huge before the internet. Mod f…

I actually think Audible is pretty good. I would feel better about buying from them if it wasn’t fully owned by Amazon. Are there any good alternatives out there?

I'm a fan of downpour.com: no-drm downloadable mp3s, no monthly subscription lock, and a good selection.
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