Hacker News Reader

Comment by r3bl | Hacker News Reader

Inconvenience?

It's really not that complicated. You download them from a web interface and you drag and drop them into Calibre (with a de-DRM plugin installed). Done, they're now available together with all the ebooks that you got from other sources.

Having all the purchased ebooks in one place is more convenient for me, not less. The alternative isn't a different book store, it's pirating. While I do have an appreciation for all the books I got from DRM-free places, I don't pick what I'm going to read next based on where it's available. The majority of the books I want to read are available on Amazon, and breaking their DRM is very easy. They wouldn't get my money if any of those two were untrue. I'd probably revert back to pirating.

View on HN

one could argue that you not paid for that kind of usage and basically pirating in the sense that you use it without permission. It has probably even been denied explicitly to you to break the DRM too. In some countries its even illegal by default to circumvent digital protection measurements.

Just saying, you probably could directly pirate the books too. Putting your money where your rights are respected and you are given the freedom to read your books on any device you want is probably a better idea. Even if it is just to make them grow more.

There are far worse intellectual property offenders all around me, and I've never heard of a single person that ever got into trouble within my country. (Coincidentally, I've heard of dozens of cases of people from my country getting slapped with hundreds of euros of fines for pirating while being abroad, all of them in Germany).

The worst thing that could happen to me is that I could have my Amazon account terminated. Everything physical on Amazon gets slapped with an additional $60-80 of taxes (even if the item itself is $10-$20), so I really don't use Amazon for anything else but its bookstore.

Books take months or years to write, and I want to award that behavior with whichever percentage of my $10 ends up in the author's pockets. Don't get me wrong, if I see a book I want to read on Humble Bundle on Kobo, I'll click on it first. But if I don't, I'll pick Amazon over Google Play Books, this Microsoft's one, or any other DRM-enabled store. Not because Amazon is in any way better than them, but because I know I can break the DRM effortlessly and reliably, while still pitching in something to the author. If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't look for a different store — I'd still be pirating.

I respect your choice and would likely do the same now and then. However, i think it could be beneficial if publishers realize DRM free books get pirated less or even bought more often :)

I said publishers but i am not sure who wants this to be enforced in this case. Its just usually the case that its the rights holder like film studios or music labels but in this case i could see amazon wanting it for themselves too.

> Inconvenience? It's really not that complicated.

You're joking, right? DRM-stripping is inherently unreliable, by definition. It's a last resort only, and we shouldn't be expected to deal with it.

Untrue for ebooks - I doubt a week's gone by without me having done this for years, without a thought or a problem.

> we shouldn't be expected to deal with it

Agreed, and with this as for many other things perhaps one day (after the revolution) we won't. But railing against the universe won't make books available for me to read today.

> "DRM-stripping is inherently unreliable, by definition."

Which definition is that? I've owned an old model 'Kindle Keyboard' for many years. The only thing needed to strip DRM from those ebooks is to type in the serial number of my kindle into calibre. It's never not worked for me; in actual practice it's very reliable.

I must admit though, these days I typically just go to Library Genesis. Because I'm a dirty rotten thief.

By definition?

Not a heavy eBook user but I buy all movies and TV shows through iTunes because I have a (lossless) De-DRM program I can use. Works consistently every time on everything. It may stop working altogether someday, but if that happens I’ll stop buying from iTunes. Until then, the program is 100% reliable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com