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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

bekkelund.net

311–320 of 494 posts

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#311

I'm not saying this to be rude, so I apologize in advance if you personally take offence: In my mind, you're a complete idiot if you are an e-book consumer at this point in time. You essentially rent the book for a price often higher than owning a physical copy of the exact same material. All this for the slight mobility advantage, and instant purchase ability. You can't share your ebooks with friends. You run the ri…

You're understating the benefits and missing a few key ones.

First, the instant purchase ability is extremely important. It means that books gain some measure of equality with other forms of media (the internet, movies/tv, music). With a Kindle I can read whatever book I want whenever I want, which means that I read many more books than I used to.

Second, the mobility advantage isn't slight at all, especially for people who read a lot. If you're never carrying more than a single book around that's one thing, but I read 1-2 books a week, and a lot more (often 5+ a week) if I'm traveling. Even just during my daily commute, it's far easier to read while standing on the subway with a Kindle instead of a book.

Beyond that, I find reading on a Kindle to be far more comfortable than reading a book. The actual reading experience is much nicer than trade paperbacks, which are printed very cheaply. It's much lighter and only requires one hand to hold/turn pages, so I can more easily read while lying down, and the newest version has a very nice backlight, so that I can read in bad lighting.

There are obvious disadvantages, and I absolutely hate that DRM is still a thing, but the benefits absolutely outweigh any possible disadvantages for me. Anecdotally, it's the difference between me reading 5-10 books a year and me reading 50-100 books a year, and I'm a much happier person in the latter state.

--

Also, if you're not saying something to be rude, you should actually write like that, not add a disclaimer at the top of what you're writing. There were a lot of ways to get the same message across without calling people idiots.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#312
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She should next demand a copy of all information Amazon has on her under the Data Protection Act (1998), since that's what the Act is for.

Excellent idea. Though I fear that this will be essentially ignored too (as the recent precedent with Facebook shows). It is very unfortunate that apparently the only way to resolve such cases is to bring them to enough media spotlight, that the corporation involved has to do something to avoid damages to its image.

Since media shaming only solves the problem for one person, I think it makes things worse in the long term. For every customer who gets un-screwed by Amazon, how many screwed customers do we not know about?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really arguing whether one action is any better or worse than the other; seeding a pile of ebooks isn't really something for which any valid defense can usually be given. My point is that there's clearly a very large amount of effort being expended protecting the ever-expanding rights of content owners, and -- near as I can tell -- zero effort being spent protecting content purchased by honest consumers from…

"seeding a pile of ebooks isn't really something for which any valid defense can usually be given" How come? If you seed a pile of ebooks (let's assume it's a very big pile that contains a good chunk of books humanity considers important) than you're helping our culture spread. It is in fact very important for books to be massively copied in order to survive future catastrophes: whatever they come in form of nuclear…

Seriously 20g? I bet you didn't read all of them!

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#314

I'm not saying this to be rude, so I apologize in advance if you personally take offence: In my mind, you're a complete idiot if you are an e-book consumer at this point in time. You essentially rent the book for a price often higher than owning a physical copy of the exact same material. All this for the slight mobility advantage, and instant purchase ability. You can't share your ebooks with friends. You run the ri…

You're confusing e-books with Kindle books. You can still buy a ton of DRM free books online. You can even buy DRM free .mobi (Kindle) books.

PS: Calling someone "idiot" is never a good way to start a discussion. Especially when you're wrong.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#315
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent idea. Though I fear that this will be essentially ignored too (as the recent precedent with Facebook shows). It is very unfortunate that apparently the only way to resolve such cases is to bring them to enough media spotlight, that the corporation involved has to do something to avoid damages to its image.

Since media shaming only solves the problem for one person, I think it makes things worse in the long term. For every customer who gets un-screwed by Amazon, how many screwed customers do we not know about?

I wouldn't say it makes things worse in the long term, but it certainly helps. I do not think that it is good that it has to be done this way, but it seems that at the moment this is often the only way to make something happen at all.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#316
Actually, DRM at its finest. Until enough people get screwed by DRM, the R from DRM will come from Rights instead of Restrictions.

Unfortunately, I see no shortage for stories like this in the future.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#317
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I treat all E-books purchased with DRM as rentals. Good for you. Nobody else outside of HN does.

> Nobody else outside of HN does I agree with this, provided that we adopt Joel Spolsky's definition of "Nobody:" Please understand that I'm talking about large trends here, and therefore when I say things like "nobody" I really mean "fewer than 10,000,000 people," and so on and so forth. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html That's the meaningful definition of nobody, and while it's entertaining for me…

I tend to use the phrase "Of course there are some people who do X, but we don't care about either of them."

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#318
post #152

Could you ever imagine a local retailer in your area breaking and entering into your home, taking away all your books, and then not giving you a straightforward explanation as to why they did so? Me neither. Breaking and entering into someone else's physical property, and talking away their physical possessions without explanation is so obviously wrong and illegal! Yet that's pretty much what Amazon did to this poor…

I completely agree with you, but the consumer here isn't without fault. By purchasing a Kindle and DRM'd books for it, you're agreeing to Amazon's policies. It's true that kindle books don't work like regular books, but being ignorant of that fact isn't an excuse. This is why I categorically refuse to pay a single penny for any digital media that has DRM attached to it and might prevent me from playing it at any time…

> It's true that kindle books don't work like regular books, but being ignorant of that fact isn't an excuse.

I very much doubt there's a plain english clause that goes a little something like:

"If we think you have violated (our?) DRM policies, we will delete every book you've ever purchased, and close your current and future accounts. If you think this is done in error, you may not ask us why we closed the account. You may only sue us to get an answer"

To call out a consumer for not being prepared for a no-warning, no explanation ban (and removal of all legally purchased content) seems extreme.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#320
post #152

Could you ever imagine a local retailer in your area breaking and entering into your home, taking away all your books, and then not giving you a straightforward explanation as to why they did so? Me neither. Breaking and entering into someone else's physical property, and talking away their physical possessions without explanation is so obviously wrong and illegal! Yet that's pretty much what Amazon did to this poor…

DRM isn't exactly great for authors or artists either. Here's a Doctorow article on DRM implications for book authors:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blog...

Why use DRM? Demand an alternative, buy a physical copy, or holdout. Hopefully the ship will begin turning around soon.

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