The Bitter Reality of Ebooks and the Kindle Model
diessi.ca
diessi.ca
My understanding (I'm not a lawyer) is that this is perfectly legal to do in the US, because you're allowed to remove DRM from content you've purchased (a license to) for personal use.
It has been changed substantially
What do you mean?
Arguably since physical books do degrade over decades you also don’t own those forever but since the time frame is so long it’s a moot point.
There's this interesting machine called a scanner that solves that problem.
So yeah, all power to those who feel a need to own physical copies of everything, I no longer subscribe to that ideal. I'd rather a library model where we pay collectively.
Why do you think that you are an outlier? That every discussion of it online inevitably descends into discussion of DRM does not mean that people (techie or not) in general like using Kindle and its ecosystem.
I also really like Kindle (and the newest one's faster speed makes it all the better). iOwning one surprised me in how it changed the way I read. I did not anticipate the freedom of being able to move between books at any time for any reason.
I have many dozens of cards from libraries around the US, and can borrow almost anything at any time. It's great being able to hear about an interesting book, finding it at overdrive.com (which searches across multiple libraries), then borrowing it within 30 seconds.
From the other side, DeDRM(doDRM) and the KFX input plugin can remove the latest Kindle DRM, and Calibre can convert the AZW folders to an Epub.
That's horrible just to think about it.
It's hard to get any less complicated than that.
The Kindle doesn't even have to be connected to your computer.
In fact, I have never paid for an ebook at all – already in 2011 the ebook filesharing community was well developed, and today LibGen and Anna’s Archive have 95% of everything I want to read in English. Through Internet Archive scans of library holdings, Anna’s Archive now has loads of fairly obscure twentieth-century publications that I never expected to see in digital form unless I, or some other member of the community, had scanned and uploaded them ourselves.
Not snarking, genuine question: how do you expect the authors to make a living creating and writing the content you enjoy reading if you don’t pay for it? Do you only read content that authors publish for free?
For English-language works of fiction that I will read a single time, I have no qualms about downloading them. People in English-speaking countries could get these for free through their public library, whether there on the shelves or through ILL. What, I have to pay for them just because where I am, I have no access to such libraries?
I still buy a lot of physical books, but I tend to purchase only what I know I will read multiple times over the years. That means, in the first place, poetry. And since poetry is a genre where page layout really matters, and ebooks still struggle with complex and large-format layout, it is especially nice to have the physical book.
I get your point about libraries, and if you outright don’t have access in your location that’s valid - one thing I’d add though is that libraries do have constrained supply and limited loan periods (even for digital content) and also a smaller collection of books so it’s not a total free access service as you suggest (at least in the UK, I can’t speak to others) - but now I’m nit picking.
Trust me, I know books are expensive, they're probably my biggest line item after rent and food, but it really is meaningful for the publisher and author when you purchase a book.
edit: I also wanted to add that the publishing industry is decidedly low tech and a huge amount of assumptions about what gets chosen to be published is based on historical (mediocre, for a host of reasons) sales data via Bookscan, so when you don't purchase a book there also is is now one fewer piece of a demand signal that may lead another similar book to be greenlit.
Furthermore, I question your claim that me purchasing a scholar’s book would benefit hurting authors. At least within my own discipline (I’m an occasional researcher when a funded project comes along, and I have published on a number of occasions) authors do not materially benefit from publishing a monograph, getting an article into a collection, or serving as an editor of a collection. It’s all for prestige/career advancement alone. In fact, the PDFs on LibGen are sometimes surreptitiously uploaded by authors themselves, who have little love for the big academic publishers like Brill.
There are two cases in my own discipline where authors do care about sales. One is textbooks, and the other is a case where a group of scholars came together to found their own press so they wouldn’t have to deal with the big corporate publishers any more. But those do not form a significant part of my own reading.
I've bought an ebook or two directly from the author and I'm not sure I could find them any more, so it feels more like my money went up in smoke.
Another thing I don't love about those "buy it from me directly" people is they're not submitting their work to reviews. Yes, there are problems with review systems and they can be gamed, but I still think they're better than "hey, trust me".
What do you mean?
Microsoft is a financially stable company as well and they closed their eBook Store
I maintain my own library using Calibre. I have a directory on my laptop that has my books in it, and use Calibre to maintain and access it. I back it up onto an external hard drive about once a month.
I briefly experimented with creating a Gitlab repo to store books in, so that it was at least as safe and secure as my code. But it's just easier with Calibre. Also I didn't feel entirely comfortable using Gitlab's free service for something other than what it is intended for, and I've learned the lesson that storing things long-term on free accounts isn't wise.
I don't know how to get there, but the DRM thing just needs to burn down.
Just as on Steam you 'Buy' and on Steam it'll tell you the number of games you "Own".
For books, I de-DRM them and I can then read them in other clients, notably The Books app from Apple.
Especially all the books she lost that were associated with the account. If anyone had bought something from me once and lost access because Amazon screwed them over, you can't convince me there's one author in the world who'd care about you pirating it.
Cory Doctorow actually had a system for this for his earlier books for matching teachers who wanted hardcopies of his books and donators who wanted to "pay" Cory in some way [1].
Just quit the silly hand wringing and get to stripping that DRM parasitism away, straight to hell. No, you're not in any way immoral for doing so.
Isn't it legal to circumvent DRM for personal use?
There are very specific exceptions to prohibitions against DRM circumvention, but many of those are so encumbered as to be useless. The standards and regulations addressing these are long, complex, and difficult to parse.
See Cory Doctorow's discussion here: "The new DRM-breaking exemptions just dropped" (2021-10-28) <https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/28/clintons-ghost/#felony-co...>
And the US Federal Register, "Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies" (2021-10-28): <https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2021/10/28/2021-23...>
I see listed: educational and derivative uses; accessibility of audiovisual works; accessibilty of literary works; medical device data; the unlocking, jailbreaking, and repair of computer programs and systems; security research; software presentation; video game preservation; and 3D printers.
But as a general exemption "for personal use", nothing at all.
"Licenced" usage rights are individually prescribed, at least at the level of individual products and licensors, and may well be specific to individual transactions. The specific rights granted or denied may be changed at any time without notice as well, or simply revoked outright, which has occurred numerous times in the case of digital works, rather notoriously with a version of George Orwell's 1984 sold^Wlicenced from Amazon, Inc.:
<https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106989...> (NPR, 2009)
"The Kindle Lawsuit: Protecting Readers From Future Abuses" <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/08/kindle-lawsuit-protect...> (EFF, 2009).
However, those covenants, deed restrictions, etc., etc., are themselves limited and governed by both local/state and federal law, to the Constitutional level in the US (e.g., restrictive covenants based on gender, race, and/or religion are utterly prohibited and unenforceable).
Real estate transactions are also exceptional among those being discussed here in that they almost universally involve multiple lawyers for multiple parties (buyer, seller, lender, buyers' and sellers' estate agents, possibly individual representatives for individuals buying a house together in some cases, e.g., family law / marital disposition of property concerns). Which is to say that this is a very high-overhead and complex transaction.
Which is precisely the opposite of what makes, in general, retail commerce possible.
When I go into a shop and purchase an apple, or a prepared meal, or a set of dishes or cookware, or a toaster, or a magazine or book ... I select product, pay (via cash, debit, or credit), and the transaction is closed, with certain exceptions for warranties and the like, though those have limited applicability for most of the items mentioned.
There are also distinctions in corporate and government purchasing, of both goods and services, where there is often (though not always) a substantial administrative overhead involving contracts and committments, though the two parties are typically operating as equals to at least a first approximation.[1]
And yes, there are other exceptions such as contracts of adhesion (you may find these on travel fares, parking services, and the like), though these both 1) are uniform for all transactions between a given vendor and their customers and 2) are very frequently also subject to strong regulation and limitations as to terms and variability.
But to state that there are no transactions in which ownership rights are near-total and all-but-universally uniform is utterly misleading. To all practical intents, there are purchases in which full rights in at least the material object do in fact manifest.
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Notes:
1. There is of course a range. National-level governments are often the more powerful party in purchase arrangements, whilst local (city, county, and often even state- or provincial-level governmental units) may be the inferior party. But both typically have at least some transactional support for tenders, and institutional expertise, not found in general retail transactions.
- That Amazon has extended special-case retail transactions to domains in which they were previously utterly absent: retail transactions of books, music, film, and other information goods.
- That the degree, scope, timeframe, variability, and obscurity of Amazon's licensing are all tremendously greater than of other similar prior transactional forms.
- That what were previously simple finite limited and closed transactions --- buying a book, music or video recording, magazine, etc., are now anything but.
- That you're introducing other examples of recent retail practices, post-dating Amazon's significant entrance into markets and subsequent distortions to those. (I'll put that at the mid-to-late aughts, though Amazon itself of course dates to the mid-1990s.) And yes, there's been a significant transition increasingly toward licensing information product sales, most especially of software and information products, which can go back a few decades, but again hadn't applied to books, printed matter, music, and video to any appreciable extent.
That Amazon, and you, continue to equivocate the term buy for transactions which are far better described as leasing or licensing. This specifically includes language on the Amazon website such as "Buy now" (for physical goods, ebooks, and audiobooks). Ultimately this is misleading and fraudulent in Amazon's case, and deceptive in yours.
You're doing this repeatedly in this thread, not just in response to me, and are similarly failing to concede any points raised which contradict or reduce your own claims. Contrast my own multiple concessions.
Etymology for buy: "get by paying for, acquire the possession of in exchange for something of like value; redeem, ransom; procure; get done".
I know we've switched completely away from indie bookstores and consolidated them into the behemoths, but I wonder if there's a future where authors and readers can win with cheap ebooks without so many middle men.
Even when I do think of buying an ebook, so often there's a $15 price tag. Purely as a consumer, that doesn't ever seem like a good deal to me.
I didn't write books to make money - I've made the national bestseller list and still get paid < minimum wage for my writing time. But it is disrepectful to my time and expertise to use such pirated sites. You probably make money with your mind and your fingers and your creativity. Why wouldn't you take some tiny part of the money you make and use it to allow me to do the same.
And for those who say "its the same as a library" - libraries buy books. And lend them on a limited basis. Sites like this are just simple theft.