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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

I listen to them while going to sleep. That way I enjoy going to sleep every night. I set a sleep timer to turn off the audio after 30 minutes but usually only make it 10 minutes in. The next night I skim through to where I don't recall hearing and start again. Rinse and repeat, I've listened to perhaps a hundred audiobooks in the last several years, love going to sleep, and get to sleep far quicker too.

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Currently this feature in Audible is implemented in a way that makes it unusable for me: I add 10 min timer. Almost falling asleep when the time us up, but not fully, so I would like to continue. So I gently press play on my headset. But then the timer is off, so if I fall asleep it will play for hours. So to combat that, I have to bring up my phone and add a new timer. This takes me out of the almost-falling-asleep, and back to square one.

That's why I set it for 30 minutes for me. 95% of the time I am asleep by then. 10 minutes wouldn't work for me either.

And this is why we need DRM-free audiobooks -- so we can have a competitive market of audiobook player apps rather than being locked into the distributor's app. Luckily, https://libro.fm has a good selection of DRM-free audiobooks. (They also offer their own app, but you don't have to use it.)

Audible files don’t use any special DRM. They’re just encrypted with your user ID and you can convert them to a portable format like mp3 with either a couple terminal commands or one of a few utility software options. I move my Audible books into iTunes.

The fact that we know how to easily break the DRM is fantastic, but it does not make the files DRM Free.

My point is that the files don’t contain DRM; they use a standard encryption format with a key that Audible gives you (your ID.) You could lock your own audio using the same formatting without installing anything special.

It would be DRM if Audible locked the file to their player with a key pairing that only they knew and refused to provide the user or forbade them from accessing via usage terms.

There were many years during which the only known way to decrypt Audible books was by burning CD's and ripping them back, or exploiting the analog loophole. The encryption may have been standard, but no one had figured it out, and it's not as though Audible told anyone what to do.

Again, it's great that we now know how the encryption works, and everyone should go ahead and decrypt their books. But DVD's aren't DRM Free just because the encryption format was broken a long ago.

Furthermore, Audible's usage terms do restrict you from decrypting your audiobooks! Whether you want to abide by them are of course up to you.

You’re right, the terms do ask you not to do that. My mistake.

I’m glad it’s at least straightforward to do so now if it wasn’t in the past, even if it’s against the terms.

As a matter of fact, I keep aa set of udio books on my phone specifically as a sleep aid. I find that listening to a steady voice puts me straight to sleep within a few minutes.

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