Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

List of DRM-Free Bookshops

libreture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 91 posts

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#41

Post by plorg »

bluebarbet wrote: post #24
plorg wrote: post #5

After the recent press for Bookshop.org I saw an author I like had a new book and thought I'd try out the service - I am okay with paying slightly more for a book if the money is going to someone other than Amazon. But I should have looked twice, because Bookshop ebooks are not DRM free unless the publisher explicitly opts for it, and DRM encumbered books can only be read on their website or in their app. I know that…

The desktop web-app reader is interesting in that it's a DRM-free legal way to access otherwise DRM-encumbered e-books. Last I checked the EME DRM browser sandbox was still not required. Personally I'm fine with this compromise solution. I've read whole books in the Kindle desktop web interface. The usual line is that it's somehow bad on the eyes, but I figure that I already spend my days reading documents and articl…

There is no EME DRM, but they actually go through some means to prevent the user from downloading the ebooks. That includes anti-devtools mitigations and storing much of the ebook contents encrypted in the cloud.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#43

Post by agnishom »

amazingamazing wrote: post #8

in my experience no publisher that's producing many hits will make their stuff drm free, and for good reason. looking at the archive ( https://archive.ph/zPBbZ ), almost all of the publishers do not publish popular authors. it's just too easy to share the books. you can get tens of thousands of books for what, a gigabyte? without drm that stuff will spread like wildfire, but drm can easily be broken by those who know…

> without drm that stuff will spread like wildfire

They are already spreading like wildfire (Hint: Library Genesis). But I still buy ebooks from time to time

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#45

Post by phs318u »

_benj wrote: post #12

I hadn’t really paid attention to DMR because I was so cozy inside the kindle bubble. That notification that Amazon was going to take away the ability to download books was a very strong wake up call… When ok buys a book for kindle, it seems that one supposedly doesn’t own the book? One “owns” it at the “goodwill” of Amazon? I put my kindle on eBay today and I think going forward I’ll consider buying physical books a…

> I’ll consider buying physical books and when necessary “finding” the digital versions of it

That's exactly what I've started doing.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#47

Post by Kelvin506 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #46

Casually worth noting the obvious: There are also services like Libgen and Anna's archive that are completely DRM free and have pretty much anything you can get on Amazon except, well, for free, aside from also being DRM-free.

Also worth noting that such sites technically are piracy. I am not making any moral or ethical assertions about it, but people need to know that so they can make an informed decision before doing so. And no, it's not inherently obvious to everyone.

Libgen, Anna's Archive, et al do however provide a valuable service in maintaining access to works out of distribution or blocked by censorship.

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#48

Post by 4k93n2 »

plorg wrote: post #5

After the recent press for Bookshop.org I saw an author I like had a new book and thought I'd try out the service - I am okay with paying slightly more for a book if the money is going to someone other than Amazon. But I should have looked twice, because Bookshop ebooks are not DRM free unless the publisher explicitly opts for it, and DRM encumbered books can only be read on their website or in their app. I know that…

dedicated ereaders are another thing to get away from if possible. onyx boox ereaders for example run android as the OS so you can install whatever apps you like, kindle, nook, bookshop.org or just any basic epub or pdf reader.

the main reason i switched was so i could install syncthing and which makes the whole process of getting books onto the ereader as simple as dropping a file into a certain folder on my laptop. no more nonsense like emailing a file to your kindle or having to plug it in to sync with calibre

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#49

Post by southernplaces7 »

Kelvin506 wrote: post #47
southernplaces7 wrote: post #46

Casually worth noting the obvious: There are also services like Libgen and Anna's archive that are completely DRM free and have pretty much anything you can get on Amazon except, well, for free, aside from also being DRM-free.

Also worth noting that such sites technically are piracy. I am not making any moral or ethical assertions about it, but people need to know that so they can make an informed decision before doing so. And no, it's not inherently obvious to everyone. Libgen, Anna's Archive, et al do however provide a valuable service in maintaining access to works out of distribution or blocked by censorship.

Oh gosh, I had no idea!

I'm not an absolutist on piracy in either direction, but when X or Y megacorp and all its affiliates can claim to "sell" you goods and then whimsically restrict access to them in such a way that further, future whimsies let them take away your purchased products, i'd hardly blame anyone for pirating.

Also, a company like Meta can pirate over 80 fucking TB of ebook content for indirectly commercial purposes, have its chief lie about being aware of this, and an average person who just wants content without so much bullshit DRM lock-in hassle should feel guilty about their choice?

Re: List of DRM-Free Bookshops

#50

Post by mdp2021 »

southernplaces7 wrote: post #49
Kelvin506 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting that such sites technically are piracy. I am not making any moral or ethical assertions about it, but people need to know that so they can make an informed decision before doing so. And no, it's not inherently obvious to everyone. Libgen, Anna's Archive, et al do however provide a valuable service in maintaining access to works out of distribution or blocked by censorship.

Oh gosh, I had no idea! I'm not an absolutist on piracy in either direction, but when X or Y megacorp and all its affiliates can claim to "sell" you goods and then whimsically restrict access to them in such a way that further, future whimsies let them take away your purchased products, i'd hardly blame anyone for pirating. Also, a company like Meta can pirate over 80 fucking TB of ebook content for indirectly commer…

Some people are more concerned about a world so dumb or in such bad faith that can make and tolerate confusion between "questionable possession" and "theft".

Which, paradoxically, calls for the need for more and more intellectual practice, which is a key purpose in the access to culture we have valued for millennia.

(Similar confusion is in that mentioned idea of Meta having done something wrong in processing texts - we can access all available texts.)

Post reply on HN