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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

I wish they would add ebook DRM to the list. Amazon has essentially locked the Kindle so that it can only purchase from Amazon and Amazon ebooks can only be used on the Kindle. On top of that, they offer no way of transferring ebooks and, AFAIK, offer no way to remove DRM after a work enters the public domain.

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(disclaimer: Amazon employee)

For that one, it's mandated by publishers. There's nothing that can be done for e-readers from vendors that don't support third-party applications.

Amazon e-books are accessible on Android and other platforms in addition to Kindle devices.

Kindle is also not locked to only ebooks from Amazon, but third-party DRM schemes are not supported. Calibre for example comes with good tooling for that use case.

> For that one, it's mandated by publishers.

I believe the publishers want DRM. I'm not sure they want DRM that effectively locks in their readers to the Amazon ecosystem. I don't believe publishers would be upset if I could directly purchase books from Apple, Google, Kobo, or any other similar vendor directly on the Kindle.

Is the audiobook market different? I know Cory Doctorow for one would like to sell his audio books through Audible but they require DRM. Care to defend that?

> but they require DRM

There's no option to sell on Kindle's own store with DRM disabled indeed.

edit: A poster has a link saying otherwise. Will ask what's up on the Audible side then.

Sure there is. From here https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0879H8NNB

> At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

(Specific title as just a convenient example from that publisher)

Nothing prevents you from buying from a different seller and reading the materials on your Kindle, other than the fact those other sellers have their own DRM locking you into their ecosystem instead.

The same was true for music once upon a time, but that didn't stop Apple from negotiating for DRM-free with the publishers.

Leverage on music was much bigger because of the position that Apple had at the time, together with CDs not having DRM.

That was a unique situation that couldn't be replicated later for video and other media sadly.

Some cursory web searches reinforce an assumption I had: Amazon absolutely dominate the eBook sales market, with figures from 65-80% of all sales being indicated.

So how can you make the case that Amazon doesn't have "leverage" to negotiate DRM-free publishing?

> together with CDs not having DRM

I don't recall printed books ever having any form of "DRM".

In fact, Amazon does allow eBooks to be sold through the Kindle store without DRM, and many are sold that way. It's completely up to the discretion of the publisher.

Whereas I have many eBooks purchased years ago from Apple's store that I can only read on Apple devices, not on my Kindle.

Amazon could leverage their market power to benefit the consumer like Apple did when they eliminated music DRM.

Exactly. The publishers need Amazon, and Amazon doesn't need the publishers. They have more than enough power to be able to dictate terms.

Apple realized this and was able to bully their way to a deal that worked for Apple, and the labels had no real ability to counter Apple. Amazon has yet to do so.

Arguably, Amazon has substantially more market power now than Apple did back in the Jobs days when they were building out iTunes and negotiating with the major labels.

Or not...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Apple_Inc.

That's because publishers practice anti-competitive behavior, too.

We need to quit getting lost in the word, "monopoly". No part of this problem is from a single actor dominating the entire market. The problems are anti-competitive behavior and vertical integration.

DRM is literally intended to support copyright monopoly. The entire purpose and function of DRM is to prevent competition in the form of "copyright infringement".

What I can't figure out is that many books (such as Tor) have a notice:

  At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without
  Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Are these encrypted anyway on kindle?

Because Amazon allows publishers to choose to sell eBooks without DRM. If an eBook sold in the Kindle store has DRM, the publisher chose to have it that way.

yes, but is the kindle data file encrypted?

no, and it’s pretty trivial to grab and upload to google play books or similar sites

I don't know, as I never had access to that data, but I would be shocked to find that is not demanded by their agreements with the publishers. Akin to why there is no library that will give you non-DRM items. Is almost certainly part of a strategy by the publishers to bolster other marketplaces they find more favorable.

Isn’t Amazon also the publisher for a nontrivial number of ebooks on Amazon?

The ones folks are buying? Not really. :D Publishers still do a good job signing on authors. Audio books, I think, are very different. Audible was far more active in building up a market and voice talent than the competition for a long time.

That said, I am not aware of any actual anti-competitive practices that they do there. The examples that some high profile folks have used feel very weak. Prices are lower for customers than they have ever been, and profits for the talent are almost certainly up due to increased sales volume. Their percentage profit per sale is down, but the history could also be that keeping that percentage high would not have grown the market? Such that, they could not have gotten the larger pie without the smaller slice. But, now that the pie is big, they want the bigger slice.

An agreement is constructed by two parties, not one.

Feels like a non-sequitur? What are you trying to say? My specific point is that I would wager money that Amazon being required to have DRM on their devices is required by publishers for them to be able to have that publisher's offerings. If Amazon drops the DRM, they lose the ability to offer that content.

I'm not as confident that they have the agreement include that they will not offer authors a way to have DRM free content on the platform, but I would not be surprised by it.

DRM doesn't have to be proprietary. I should be able to buy books from any place and read them on any reader.

I mean... not wrong. But useful? Does this happen with any technology? Is it being blocked by practices from Amazon? Still feels like a non-sequitur.

DVDs could be purchased and played on any player. Most of the non-Amazon ebook world uses Adobe DRM.

As someone that was into DVDs from other regions, this comment is laughably wrong.

Edit: Heck, just playing movies on my computer DVD drives was less than straight forward. For the longest time you basically had to feel like a hacker to get it working on a linux machine.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the current situation with ebooks. You could go into an electronics retailer and choose one of a dozen DVD players then drive across town to video store and buy or rent any DVD and the chances that the two things would work together was very high.

No real disagreement from me, on that general point. Things were certainly more convenient in some older formats.

I'm not clear on the relevance to this particular story. For one, ebook practices are literally not part of this case. For two, the assertion in this branch is that that exists at the demands of publishers.

If Amazon refused to enter that agreement, would the publisher simply refuse to sell ebooks on Amazon? I sincerely doubt that.

If Amazon was actually motivated to refuse DRM, then we would be in an entirely different situation. The reality is that the opposite is true, and that Amazon itself is one of the publishers requiring DRM!

You do know there was an antitrust against the publishers and Apple where they did collude and force changes to the agreement onto Amazon, right? This isn't even hypothetical. Literally happened. Amazon absolutely cannot live without publishers right now.

But can publishers live without Amazon?

My point is that that question was never asked: practically all of the publishers that sell on Amazon's marketplace - including Amazon Publishing - agree that they want DRM incorporated into Amazon's digital marketplace platform.

Almost certainly they would be fine, given some time. Is why they were willing to strong arm Amazon into changing terms on how they sell ebooks.

And you seem to be dodging my point? My assertion/wager/whatever is that the publishers actively want it so that Amazon has to have DRM on their devices and sales. Just as they want it on libraries lending. Do I /know/ this? No. That is why I worded it as something that would shock me.

I agree that my willingness to wager on this would go down as I extend it to my larger guess, that they also have terms covering things that Amazon publishes. That said, it lowers my willingness, but it does not seem beyond the pale.

"on the kindle".

They have a web based kindle app. They have apps for android, iphone, pc, mac and probably 10 other things I'm unaware of.

You can easily use ebooks from anywhere on the Kindle. However, agreed on the DRM. Blindsided me when I tried to open some comics I had purchased on my computer (to read them in color). Luckily others have already made tools to remove that DRM...

You can at least copy files onto it if you already have non-DRMed ones

The Kindle has support for side loading books so I’m not sure how it’s locked to only reading Amazon purchases.

Is this new? I specifically went for Kobo years ago because my research told me that Kindle didn't have that capability, and Kobo did. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

No, even the very first model could be mounted as a USB drive and you could add files that way. It doesn’t natively support epubs — that might be what you’re thinking of — but converting them into mobi or azw format is pretty trivial anyway.

Adding a new book to a kindle is as simple as sending an email with a PDF attachment.

Does calibre not work on new kindles?

I assume you are talking about the DeDRM tools? If so, the answer to your question is that it doesn’t work as well as it used to. The era of easily strippable DRM is ending.

Amazon’s latest file format KFX hasn’t been entirely cracked and it’s possible it won’t ever be entirely cracked. The best anybody can do so far is to buy an older Kindle and download it to that in order to get a crackable version. The problem with that is you lose all of the typography improvements only available in KFX.

If you buy a PS5 game you can only play it on the PS5 and they don't remove DRM after the came goes into public domain.

PS5 doesn't have a monopoly over the console market, Amazon does.

Sony almost certainly has more marketshare of the console market than Amazon does of anything. The numbers that came out for sales of XBox were... sobering for how badly Microsoft is throwing cash to stay in the game.

So with Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo: Sony has about 50% market share and Microsoft and Nintendo have about 25.

That’s a very different (I’d argue healthier) world than online retailers where Amazon has like 36% but the next largest (Walmart) is like 6%.

You need to weigh the market share against the number of players in the space.

Also that’s not to mention how all 3 major game console players have some kind of moat or walled garden (exclusives.)

Most online retailers are basically interchangeable, but Amazon is still the single largest player by far at 36%

Note that I don't mean one to be a defense of the other. It can be argued well that both markets are unhealthy. :D

To your numbers, though, I'm not sure I see the argument? I'd be very surprised if that 25 is evenly split between Nintendo and Microsoft. And where is Valve in that?

Playing into your argument, is Walmart really only 6%? Of all sales that happen period, how is the online/offline split? From my perspective, folks love to hate tech companies. You'll see silly headlines about 1 in 169 people work for Amazon. You don't often see similar headlines for Walmart, which has twice the associates, if I recall...

And even in consoles, you have the option of never buying one: you can play videogames on PC, on a tablet or on a mobile phone. And now you even have the cloud option with NVIDIA or MS' Game Pass Ultimate.

With Amazon however, it's more complicated since they control so many businesses. Visiting a website? Very probably it's hosted on AWS, or on a platform that runs on AWS. Visiting a friend with a smart doorbell thingy? Quite probably an Amazon Ring. Want to buy an e-book to read? Sell your soul to either Apple, Google or Amazon, or other smaller platforms (or pirate the book or buy it physically).

Note that AWS is actually not a part of this lawsuit. So that is mostly not relevant.

No, but it still is part of Amazon. In fact, as others have commented, AWS helps subsidise parts of the Amazon store that would otherwise result in losses.

But how is it at all relevant to this story? And if it is a vital point, why not get mentioned by the FTC?

I don't think there is nothing at all there. However, most of the criticisms you will see in the wild about how AWS pays for retail are almost certainly from ignorance of how retail had to literally seed AWS.

And don't take my criticism of that point as some sort of promotion of Amazon. I can be critical of the complaints without having to worship them.

Is that explicitly the case? Because the same antics apply to the marketplace and the copying of ecosystem participant services there too..

Is what explicitly the case? The PDF for the allegations of this case are in the link. No mention of AWS.

But Amazon is mentioned and Amazon owns AWS and many of the abuses described with respect to the e-commerce marketplace are also relevant to the AWS marketplace. I hear you on how they are not directly and literally mentioned in the text explicitly however one can understand why there's a thematic overlap and certainly I can imagine if I were AWS I would be sweating right now

You can't think of a few reasons this is not a great comparison? Like, base expectations to begin with would disqualify this analogy as useful.

My kids have been confused on why I have to buy separate copies of many indie games for both Steam and Playstation and/or Switch. And... it actually is rather obnoxious.

Ps5 games are specifically programmed for that architecture and sometimes studios are paid for exclusivity. The written word is universal.

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