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B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

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Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#61

Post by boboblong »

bad_user wrote: post #27
pilif wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stay with the real world analogy: you also can't back up your book. You have that one copy and once it breaks, you are out of luck and have to buy a new one. I compare the ebook readers as a physical object with the books (also physical objects). If I can read books on that device even when my credit card has expired or other things have disabled my account, then IMHO the parity to the real world exists: I have th…

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen."

But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling them as DRM-free, that would be fraud. But (AFAIK) they're not.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#62

Post by boboblong »

ljf wrote: post #47
pilif wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stay with the real world analogy: you also can't back up your book. You have that one copy and once it breaks, you are out of luck and have to buy a new one. I compare the ebook readers as a physical object with the books (also physical objects). If I can read books on that device even when my credit card has expired or other things have disabled my account, then IMHO the parity to the real world exists: I have th…

The difference is, my bookshelf space at home is something I can choose - the internal space on my locked down device is not - so to carry on buying new books, I have to remove old content. This is saying I cannot get my content back (content I PAID for) without a CC on file. The real world analogy does not work here - as I can carry on storing the books I want, and am fully aware that when I choose to remove a book,…

>This is saying I cannot get my content back (content I PAID for) without a CC on file.

You didn't pay for a book in the abstract. You paid for a DRM-protected file, and you got it.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#63

Post by bad_user »

dllthomas wrote: post #48
bad_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

> The only real danger for thhe preservation of books in physical form is fire. Also water.

If we are talking about valuable books, then content can be recovered at least partially from a wet book, depending on how good the printing ink and paper were and how long that book stayed under water.

Fire is more dangerous than floods and historically we've lost more books by fire than from anything else, although I'm pretty sure there are effective methods to recover content partially from books that are only partially burned.

The durability of physical books is amazing and the only thing going for digital content is that the cost of copies is zero, which means you can easily make backups in multiple places of this world instantly and retrieve those backups with whatever device you happen to have in front of you. Unfortunately that's exactly what DRM is trying to prevent.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#64

Post by bad_user »

boboblong wrote: post #61
bad_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen." But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling th…

I personally know about it, that's why I rarely buy DRM-protected content in general and I only do so for content I only want to watch / read / hear once or twice. Good movies, good books, good music - these are things for which I want to keep a personal library and so I stay away from DRM.

Unfortunately from what I've seen, the public has no idea what DRM is, as the technical details are hard to understand. When buying a DRM-protected copy of something, that copy is not yours, you don't own your copy in any way, your only right is time-limited access to that copy, you know like renting with a public library subscription (it's actually even worse, since when renting something you usually have a contract that guarantees availability for a specific time period, whereas with DRM you never know for how long it will last).

And I disagree with your point on advertising - because buying something DRM-protected is really renting, customers should be informed of this.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#65

Post by pseingatl »

yk wrote: post #25

The problem with ebooks (as with software and other files) is, that they are simpy not physical goods. From the viewpoint of a consumer, a nice advantage of files is the essentially zero costs of replacement, so that I can resonably expect a vendor to replace a copy lost due to an accident. (Unlike with a physical book, where replacement costs actual money.) On the other hand, I have the means of production for an eb…

Are you suggesting that digital goods cannot be sold and can only be licensed? What is your basis for this? It seems to me that this was a sale of goods. The fact that the goods are in digital format is irrelevant. It is unlikely that the courts will treat the sale of a book the same as a software license. Ultimately sales of goods are governed by law, and one party is not permitted to breach their contracts.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#66

Post by RexRollman »

vertis wrote: post #13

I would blame this on a badly designed system rather than deliberate attempt at DRM. i.e. Product owner goes to dev: We want to make sure that customers always have a valid credit card on file so that when they go to purchase it doesn't distract them (etc, etc). Dev makes it so that you can't do anything with the website until you've updated your expired credit card.

Having worked at B&N, I believe this is the case, as a credit card is required to be on file even when paying for ebooks with a gift card.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#67

Post by DanBC »

dllthomas wrote: post #48
bad_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

> The only real danger for thhe preservation of books in physical form is fire. Also water.

Also bugs.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#68

Post by hmottestad »

boboblong wrote: post #61
bad_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen." But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling th…

But wouldn't it be so much nicer if there was no DRM on e-books. That's a law worth lobbying.

And for the record. Norwegian law states that you can freely distribute anything you own to a few friends and also make backups of it. DRM is technically illegal in Norway, but no one has brought a case to court over it yet.

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#69

Post by josephlord »

belorn wrote: post #52
Elepsis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Except that's wrong. It's not fair use to photocopy an entire book and it never has been. Let's not lose sight of the actual laws in our blind rage against DRM.

Making private complete copies is legal in most countries, in particular European ones. Private copying levy stems from this concept. Photocopy an entire book for private use only is thus perfectly legal if you are in one of those countries which allows it.

Not all of Europe. It certainly isn't allowed in the UK but we don't have a levy on recordable media. It isn't even legal to rip music to listen to on a computer or an mp3 player. Not that this law is widely followed (or to my knowledge enforced).

Re: B&N Decides That Purchased Ebooks Are Only Yours Until Your Credit Card Expires

#70

Post by carlisle_ »

boboblong wrote: post #61
bad_user wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples. Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire. > by centra…

"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen." But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling th…

I don't think most consumers have really thought the whole thing through. Anecdotally I would say most people don't back up files without DRM, e.g. digital photos. I'm sure for everybody reading this comment it seems really obvious that you would want to back up your photos. If the average consumer doesn't understand the very real possibility of total data loss and losing all of those photos, why would they even consider the downsides of purchasing and downloading e-books onto a single device?

Granted I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, but I think it's entirely silly to expect people to know things that are very firmly technical knowledge and not common sense. The person you replied to might have known that their eBook reader is prone to failure but what about the vast majority of consumers?

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