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Outlawed by Amazon DRM

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Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#461

Post by guard-of-terra »

beedogs wrote: post #460
guard-of-terra wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, so sue me. I was just arguing with books seeding "not being really something for which any valid defense can usually be given" If I should have read it as "any valid defense IN COURT can be given", then again, so sue me. But it's pretty easy to defend the morality of this case.

I'm with you on the morality of it.

And in the times when I can torrent a whole library of culture-defining books (whose authors mostly either passed away or no longer care), the book selling industry should reconsider the question: what exactly are they selling? What is their place to contribute to the society? Is it only about pushing vampire books by living authors while withholding vampire books by deceased authors?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#462

Post by chmod775 »

Ntrails wrote: post #448
tomp wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a native English speaker, but isn't the proper term for that "rent"?

I buy an MSDN license. I buy a fishing license. The license is simply a fixed term item that you purchase.

I do not remember buying a William Gibson: Neuromancer License

It clearly said William Gibson: Neuromancer -> Buy

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#463

Post by speleding »

chris_wot wrote: post #192
pi18n wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm one of the ones to leap out of the woodwork and shout that copying is not theft, so it's only fair that I point out this; torrenting is a massive copyright violation, as you are basically republishing the content. What Amazon did in this case is not against copyright, and the user had no claim to copyright of that work anyway. Make no mistake; I disagree with the humongous damages leveled against torrenters and I…

I feel that I need to point out that at no point did anyone accuse the lady in question of torrenting pirated content. In fact, that's part of the problem. Amazon refuse to say anything about why they took their action.

Yes. But as an aside, it's a good thing she lives in Norway and will have easy access to the pirate bay to get her books back.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#464

Post by mmariani »

maratd wrote: post #361
cletus wrote: post #335

The fact that Amazon can do this is obviously scary, particularly for those with extensive Kindle libraries. Personally I love the idea of ebooks but the publishers are doing their best to kill this market (eg Surface Detail in paperback is $6, as an ebook its $10 WTF?). Now I can't speak to the truth of these claims. I have no inside knowledge but I will say this: be skeptical of such stories. I have seen other stor…

> be skeptical of such stories Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point. Microsoft, Google, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Facebook, etc. handle millions of accounts. They have automated filters that trigger based on specified criteria that kill your account. Their default response when this happens? Talk to legal. Well, more like write to legal…

> The problem? Microsoft has your operating system, Google has your email, eBay has your stuff, PayPal has your money, Amazon has your books, Facebook has your social life, etc. And they can yank all of that away.

There's an opportunity here to make an automated backup service for people who want to keep greedy bastards from stealing the stuff they care for.

How much someone would pay to have their emails, profiles, or content safe?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#465

Post by makomk »

monkeypizza wrote: post #447
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that they are making a big mistake causing those feelings of rage and helplessnes. But the rights you list are rights we have in court. We never had any right to representation in an internal procedure of some private company. If our access to essential digital facilities ends up being dominated by a handful of global companies, these companies will be regulated like traditional facilities if they don't start…

Flickr is yahoo's toy, if they get pissed off they can take it home and deprive everyone of the game; it's still legal to be a jerk. The whole world used to be that way, though - kings owned everything and if you didn't like it, die - but it pissed people off so bad, they took back the rights to what really was the king's property. The real problem seems to be how easy it is to enter into extremely unjust agreements…

In the real world, it may even be irrational for people to keep up to date on every entity's reputation. The time it takes to do that isn't exactly without a cost itself.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#466

Post by salvadors »

mdasen wrote: post #169
pi18n wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely should be illegal to delete files from a device that is currently rented or owned by another party unless they give explicit permission. It should be wire fraud, just like hacking a server and forcing it to act in a way the owner does not desire.

The problem is that Kindle users probably did give explicit permission (for some definition of explicit permission). I'm sure there's a clause in the ToS that allows Amazon to delete content that you've purchased. I'm not the type to sound the drum saying that piracy isn't theft, but here it seems like it's trying to go both ways. It's property if you "steal" it and it isn't property if you've bought it. Part of the…

> Kindle users probably did give explicit permission (for some definition of explicit permission)

Isn't that implicit permission?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#467

Post by salvadors »

Evbn wrote: post #254
joshnerius wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often wondered about the viability of students purchasing or renting textbooks for the Kindle. Just imagine the panic/terror that would ensue if a student's collection of textbooks just disappeared in the middle of a semester. If my collection of novels disappears, I'm inconvenienced. If my collection of textbooks disappears, my academic progress is severely jeopardized. Both seem extremely wrong as you mention,…

This is the thesis of RMS's The Right to Read , written over 30 years ago, and one of the few works to have passed from the genre of science fiction to historical fact, by remaining unchanged while the world changed over time.

Over 30 years ago? Best I can tell it was first published in 1997, which is only half that.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#468

Post by adrianhoward »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #432
varikin wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how ebooks can cost more than a mass production paper book. If you are familiar with the industry of producing paper and ebooks for books that are best sellers then I would really love hear about the cost difference in producing both.

I am, at least to some degree. My back-of-the-envelope calculations a while ago suggested that ebooks are cheaper to produce than paper books, just by not as much as people probably imagine. (My figure then was 25% less, although I confess I don't remember how I came up with that now. It may have been a cocktail napkin.) There are certain fixed costs which remain the same no matter the format: you have to (or at leas…

25% sounds a little high to me. The figure I normally hear is that paper is about 10-15% of the cost of a book (I'm not directly in the publishing industry, but I've been a technical reviewer on several books and have a fair number of friends who are author/editors - mostly in the non-fiction market which is a little different from the fiction world).

See http://journal.bookfinder.com/2009/03/breakdown-of-book-cost... for some vague evidence

(The slice taken by marketing in the above seems high from what others have told me. Its also a somewhat simplistic breakdown since it ignores some of the long-term costs from publishers that aren't related to "books" directly. e.g. the advances to authors who never get published, etc. - so the potential publisher profits aren't quite as large as they appear here - there's other overhead outside the printing/distributing/selling books bit)

Also see http://ireaderreview.com/2009/05/03/book-cost-analysis-cost-...

It's also something Charlie Stross has posted about a fair bit see this collection of posts http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/04/common-m...

TL;DR - people think about book prices being related to cost of producing media. That's like thinking software costs are mostly about the price of printing DVDs or shifting bits. It's mostly about book development costs - not media costs.

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#469

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

mmariani wrote: post #464
maratd wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> be skeptical of such stories Don't be too skeptical. Most of the people on HN had some big company restrict/kill an account by some BigCo at some point. Microsoft, Google, eBay, PayPal, Amazon, Facebook, etc. handle millions of accounts. They have automated filters that trigger based on specified criteria that kill your account. Their default response when this happens? Talk to legal. Well, more like write to legal…

> The problem? Microsoft has your operating system, Google has your email, eBay has your stuff, PayPal has your money, Amazon has your books, Facebook has your social life, etc. And they can yank all of that away. There's an opportunity here to make an automated backup service for people who want to keep greedy bastards from stealing the stuff they care for. How much someone would pay to have their emails, profiles,…

Multiple local backups?

Re: Outlawed by Amazon DRM

#470

Post by j_s »

tjoff wrote: post #441
talaketu wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea about this.. but I can speculate that maintaining the DRM system indefinitely after the initial sale represents an ongoing cost whose net present value needs to be considered in contrast with a DRM-free book.

The DRM system is completely decentralized and doesn't cost anything to uphold.

Hello! I am unfamiliar with the details of the Kindle DRM implementation. Would you mind explaining at least the degree to which you are familiar with it, if not providing some background and/or links so that I can verify this statement for myself instead of just taking your word for it? Thanks!
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