In real life, this would be the equivalent of getting one bad meal at a restaurant chain in a city you’ve never been to before, so you stop eating at that chain anywhere else, despite positive experiences in the past.
The headline says that he won’t ever buy ebooks, then lists good places to buy ebooks. I guess he is exaggerating for effect?
But it’s true, nobody should accept DRM. Here is the statement of the publisher who sells my gnuplot book:
“We believe that when you buy a book, it belongs to you. That’s why we use no ‘digital rights management’ or anything else that interferes with your rights. You can make as many personal backups as you want, and use the book on any number of your own devices. If you lose your files, you can just download them again, forever.”
One would hope the author is exaggerating but I have seen a number of people in my life be this irrational. I’m inclined to take the title as is given any lack of evidence to the contrary.
True, but then the author also says "So I bought it. For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook".
So I can't tell what is going on.
It may be hyperbolic, but I basically feel the same way, because I had more or less the same thing happen: I saw a book I wanted to buy, it said EPUB; there was absolutely no indication that there was DRM, that I'd be required to install Adobe software, or anything. I bought the book, and after paying for it, was told about all this.
I was so furious I emailed them immediately and demanded my money back (which they complied with). But it certainly put me off buying e-books from random websites -- I haven't even thought about doing it since.
I'm all for finding ways of letting authors survive, or better yet thrive. But the current market seems to cater to the publishers, not the authors (cf: movie industry, music industry) so I don't even feel all that bad about that.
To stay in the allegory: if it was common practice and somehow widely acceptable for restaurants to use boatloads of laxatives during food preparation, but they only told you so after you asked to see the manager, would you judge the people who just outright refused to eat out any longer? The stress of finding a laxative free restaurant would simply outweigh the benefit from eating out.
There are books I'd buy today if they weren't published by publishers which only distribute with DRM. If it isn't desirable enough in that case to justify buying a dead tree version, I just pass entirely.
When pirating books, I download it, put it on my ereader, and read it.
When actually purchasing books, I need to install Adobes proprietary DRM-program, open the book in there, unlock it with my account, then use the Adobe program to transfer it to my tablet.
Not a huge hassle, but pirating just works, and offers an experience that's infinitely more pleasant.
I'm very comfortable with pirating, but if I actually end up benefitting/consuming the product I try to find a way to pay for it.
(That's if you're willing to hold your nose about having DRM at all, the remote deleting of books, Amazon's near-monopoly and so on - personally I don't buy any ebooks I'm not willing to lose)
I do believe my reader has the same ease-of-use if I purchase books from the company selling it. Might be only if buying things using the reader itself, not sure.
Libgen has everything and it's so much easier than dealing with online retailers and Adobe's bullshit. If you know stores that sell DRM-free ebooks I'd be very interested.
Tor went DRM-free many years ago. I know their catalog is on Amazon.
I have been a Libgen user and contributor for many years now, but I find myself simply buying more and more physical books, since so much of what I want to read is not available on Libgen or anywhere else digitally.
There's a reason why companies put customers through all this garbage and the reason is because I can easily pirate these books. So the story isn't as one sided as this guy makes it out to be. It's a contentious issue between customer rights of ownership and piracy.
There's a reason why customers pirate and the reason is because companies put customers through all this garbage.
I would wager that there's a good number of people who pirate things for the simple reason of them not wanting to pay for anything. This is the catalyst.
So really it's like if someone usually takes food off the hot plate at a restaurant to steal it, and the one time they sit down and pay it's a shitty experience so they decide they're going to keep stealing lol.
It's very hard to get caught and prosecuted for piracy though, which is why the "experience" is so much better.
Nah.
Take netflix for example: you pay your subscription and you get to watch movies. ez pz.
Now take the pirating route: you have to find torrents, such torrents have to have seeds, you need disk space, you need a torrenting app, you might have to leave your computer turned on for a long time etc etc.
Netflix is sucessful because they managed to make paying better than pirating.
Popcorn Time exists, and it's just as easy as Netflix. Much better catalogue too. It also downloads while streaming, so if you have to stop in the middle, you can more easily pick back up where you left off because it's already downloaded. Also you can then share this downloaded file with whomever you want because it's DRM free, but you can't send a Netflix movie to someone else, which was the author's main quibble anyway.
Much better UX for movies with piracy, even with Netflix, which is a great service.
But while it's widely known, it's still less easy to use than netflix.
Regardless, my broader point is a complete rejection of the idea that "businesses should just make getting X easier than piracy" is a reasonable point to make at all. The onus is not on the business.
Do you know what else is an easier experience when you steal? Clothes shopping. The UX is much better when you just walk in to a clothing store, pick out what you want, and then walk out. No waiting in a queue to checkout, no receipts, etc. etc. Clearly the onus is on clothing stores to make the experience of paying for the good easier than just walking out with them, right?
What about restaurants? Wouldn't it be so much nicer if you could just go in, sit, eat your meal, and then not have to pay? No having to deal with tipping, splitting the bill, arguing over charges, etc. Just walk in, eat, and leave. Clearly then the onus is on restaurants to make the "paying for your meal" experience easier than dining-and-dashing, right?
“So I bought it. For the first time in my life, I bought an ebook, because it's 2020, so why not.”
Yeah, ebooks are higher tech than paper, but I find the experience to be worse than paper.
I have no problem reading long-form content on a screen, but I'd rather be reading a long scrolling HTML page than a "paged" ePub or PDF.
I just set up an Obooquity server on my network so I can access my eBooks from any device, and I dislike the experience. FWIW, I dislike physical eBook readers and mobile eBook reading apps too.
DRM aside, I feel like "it's 2020", and the fact you have to flip pages to read eBooks to be somewhat ridiculous.
The problem with those vendors really comes down to selection, and they have a smaller selection. Like it or not, if there's something highly desirable and current, and he _must_ have it, he's going to have to deal with the inevitable pains of DRM, or resort to piracy.
I'm sure the bean counters at content producers have done the calculus of losing a certain percentage of prospective paying customers vs. convenience, and have decided that certain inconveniences are worthwhile.
Same happened with music (Sony had rootkit bundled in their CDs), DVDs (the FBI warning screen), games and so on. You get punished if you try to be a good behaving customer.
I failed to do this after getting food poisoning once, thinking it was just bad luck/one bad restaurant in the chain, and I soon regretted it.
I think the author mentions it is the first time he buys an ebook.
Also if you think the problem is systemic ("it seems that all the restaurants in this chain behaves this specific way I dislike") then you might as well move on and don't try your chance a second time.
well, supposedly a chain will sell the same dishes everywhere.
If you don't like the menu of a certain chain, what's the point in trying at another location?
It's gonna be the same menu.
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Coming back to the article: my advice would be to download that illegally. If in order to use your legally purchased content you have to go through illegal means (and become a pirate anyway) you might as well save those seven euros.
Obligatory XKCD: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/steal_this_comic.png