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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

#91

Post by johnrgrace »

daeken wrote: post #9
sami36 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...then we can't rurn around and demand that it also isn't and that we should have right to infinitely ask for additional copies - however cheap it might be to create them. oh Yes, We can. The reason we're entitled to it is the fact that DRM stands in the way of us customers backing up our purchases. If my eBook were in a format devoid of DRM & I could back it up by saving it in Droppbox or my external hard drive,…

You can put the DRMed files on Dropbox and then copy them to your Nook. This isn't a DRM issue, just dumb business practices.

Only if you put it back onto the same Nook, because the DRM uses your device identification number to lock the file to one specific Nook.

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

#93

Post by javajosh »

aneth4 wrote: post #57
javajosh wrote: post #6

The simple fact is that the ebook experience sucks all the way around. I gave it a shot with the Nook Touch, and I really dislike it, even if DRM wasn't an issue. Over the years my subconcious has grown used to indexing the story according to certain physical properties of the book. "Oh yes, that happend about a cm in on the right side page, like halfway down" is something I might think- but this coordinate system do…

You might try an e-ink device. That will solve your problems of fiddling and pixelation. I find them far more comfortable to read as well. Regarding your memory system, this is a matter of changing habits. As for the nostalgia, I could tell you I miss my CRT and the clack of a first generation remote, or the times when video content was limited so everyone watched the same thing, of when folks could design with their…

>You might try an e-ink device.

The Nook Touch is an e-ink device. The pixelation thing is the lowest on the list.

Two more things: the feeling of a scam, and ebooks are editable. It seems far-fetched, but the possibility exists that a malefactor can literally edit every copy of a book from a central location. This possibility does not exist with physical books.

E-books feel like a scam, and I admit it's not entirely rational - although I will say that paying $10 for bits vs. $7 for paper just doesn't seem rational, and it's a change that only seems to benefit a small few. E.g. if e-books offered authors a bigger cut, then I'd be more supportive of them. If the royalty was 50% of $10 vs. 10% of $7 I'd say that reason alone made ebooks a better choice for readers wanting to support authors. But as ever, the system seems to benefit the few with customer reach, rather than the few with some actual talent. And that is a failure of our society as much as it is a failure of the market.

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

#94

Post by pjriot »

monochromatic wrote: post #87

> strip the drm off of the ones you purchase so you can you the book you BUY on all your devices This attitude right here is part of the misunderstanding, and part of the problem. You haven't BOUGHT the ebook. You've paid for a license, and in all likelihood, that license prevents stripping the DRM.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fatal-fruitcake-mary-kay-and...

Funny, the button clearly says "Buy now". Not "License now" or anything else. If retailers want to make that distinction clear thats fair enough, otherwise I'm perfectly happy with the attitude you refer to.

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

#95

Post by epochwolf »

thinkling wrote: post #86
dansingerman wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The default Adobe DRM implementation requires that you need an Adobe ID (i.e. an account with Adobe) to access the book. (DRM licences are against Adobe accounts) The bigger players who use Adobe DRM (Like B&N) of course don't want this, so there are alternative schemes where you can use a token to represent the user that is not the Adobe ID. In the B&N case, I believe that token is based on the credit card details.…

Ah, the credit card number is part of the encryption/decryption key [1]. Since it seems unlikely that the Nook decrypts the book once and stores a decrypted copy, the Nook also must store the credit card number--or hopefully a hashed version of it. Apparently so [2]. [1] "I cannot unlock my books" at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/nook-books-frequently-asked-... [2] http://i-u2665-cabbages.blogspot.fr/2009/12/circum…

The credit card number is the decryption key. The DeDRM tools for Calibre only require the credit card you used to purchase the book. In contrast, Amazon encryption only requires the serial number for the Kindle you are pulling the books off of.

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

#96

Post by epochwolf »

kabdib wrote: post #71

It's really simple: I buy ebooks, then break the DRM so that I can make a backup. If it wasn't possible to break the DRM, I wouldn't buy them. Non-DRM'd books are better, of course. I want my descendents to be able to read my e-books just as easily as they can read my physical books. So my conversions include collapsing rich text to plain text, which I am reasonably sure will survive format changes over the next 100…

Exactly. I currently buy books on my kindle and use Calibre with plugins to strip the DRM on import. Before I had a kindle, I would use iTunes to purchase books and use Requiem to strip DRM from them.

I don't go to the extreme of converting to plain text. Epub is a zipped collection of html. There should be tools to extract data from those for a very long time into the future.

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

#97

Post by CrossCircuit »

sami36 wrote: post #4
pilif wrote: post #2

As far as I understood the article, this is about a second download of a book purchased some time ago. I think in this case, it's not as clear-cut as the article makes it out to be. To stay with the real world analogy: while the article is right that nothing will glue the pages of a physical book together once the credit card expires, it is also the case that purchasing a book once doesn't entitle you to go to the bo…

> ...then we can't rurn around and demand that it also isn't and that we should have right to infinitely ask for additional copies - however cheap it might be to create them. oh Yes, We can. The reason we're entitled to it is the fact that DRM stands in the way of us customers backing up our purchases. If my eBook were in a format devoid of DRM & I could back it up by saving it in Droppbox or my external hard drive,…

I think your point here is valid - if backup options are restricted via DRM, then the company does have at the least a moral obligation to provide re-downloads. Companies like Barnes and Noble that probably have very thin margins would do well to enact business practices that gain them long-term customers.

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

#98

Post by Retric »

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 know about B&N but you can easily go though the Amazon checkout process without any mention of DRM. Most people only learn about it when DRM prevents them from doing something they would otherwise assume they could do like read there book on a nook.

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

#99

Post by tolos »

batiudrami wrote: post #17
javajosh wrote: post #6

The simple fact is that the ebook experience sucks all the way around. I gave it a shot with the Nook Touch, and I really dislike it, even if DRM wasn't an issue. Over the years my subconcious has grown used to indexing the story according to certain physical properties of the book. "Oh yes, that happend about a cm in on the right side page, like halfway down" is something I might think- but this coordinate system do…

Your experience is with ereaders is nearly the complete opposite of mine (putting DRM aside, like you). I love that I don't have to remember my page or use a bookmark, I love that I can change the font size, I love that I can select a word and get an instant definition for it, and I love how light it is to carry around and much more comfortable to read with. I prefer them over real books in every way (though, I'm fro…

Don't forget the ease of one-handed reading, and the ability to lay the e-reader down, e.g. to type out a passage. Neither of those are convenient at all with the books I read, unless I want to horribly mangle my book. Unlike GP, I prefer to keep my books pristine.

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

#100

Post by chc »

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…

Not so. AFAIK none of the major ebook retailers go out of their way to mention this, and they target their marketing towards consumers who are not savvy enough to know to ask. They will only inform you of the DRM when you run into one of the limitations it imposes.

EDIT: Actually, I should clarify. One ebook retailer does make this explicit — Google. But I wasn't counting them because they don't "own" a market segment and you'd probably be pretty savvy to be buying from them anyway.

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