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Comment by dublinben | Hacker News Reader

Digital products are also worse than physical ones, because the content cartels have used DRM to trample on your first-sale rights like resale and lending. It's no coincidence that digital books are often more expensive than paper books, because the publishers have killed the second hand market.

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digital books also run the risk of being censored or disappeared from your devices overnight. Another nice thing about physical books is that you don't have to worry about anyone spying on you and collecting data on what you read/when/where/how often/how quickly, etc.

> Another nice thing about physical books is that you don't have to worry about anyone spying on you and collecting data on what you read

If you buy in a bookshop, for cash. If you think Amazon et al don't know your interests, I have a bridge to sell you.

True! Although ordering a book off amazon doesn't tell them that you bought it for you, or that you read it, or when, or how, etc. That doesn't stop Amazon from making assumptions about you that can be used against you, but the less ammo you give them the better.

Even bookstores don't always guarantee your privacy these days and libraries just keep getting worse on the privacy front. Librarians fought hard to keep the government from collecting lists of the books we check out, but they lost that fight, and now they're pushing users to use third party apps to download DRM filled digital ebooks.

>If you think Amazon et al don't know your interests, I have a bridge to sell you.

If they know then they certainly don't seem to act on that information.

You've got to be kidding, right?

  "Frequently bought together"
  "Keep shopping for"
  "Deals for you"
  "Gift ideas inspired by your shopping history"
  "Buy it again"
  "Pick up where you left off"
  "Related to items you've viewed"
  "Top picks for you"
  "Products from Small Businesses related to items you viewed"
  "Inspired by your shopping trends"
  "Recommended deals for you"
  "Fashion items recommended for you"
  "More items to consider in Outlet"
  "Related to items you've saved"
  "Tap to browse" (related to items I've viewed or purchased)
  "More top picks for you" (this one specifically has books related to books I've purchased or shown interest in).
  "Books that you may like" (ditto)
  "Everyday essentials for you"
  "Similar to your past purchases"
  "Hassle free reordering"

[...]

And that's just in retail...

That's the thing about surveillance capitalism. Nobody is going to tell you when they use the data they have against you. When my insurance premiums go up, my insurance company isn't going to tell me that it's because I've spent more time in drive-throughs over the last 6 months. The employer who doesn't hire me won't tell me that it's because of a political opinion I shared on facebook 12 years ago. When a store tells me that their return policy is returns within 3 days and I need a receipt, they aren't going to tell me that they told the last person who asked them the same question something very different based on the score they saw from a consumer reputation service.

The data being collected by companies is increasingly used to influence more and more of your life, but you aren't allowed to know when or why. Amazon's data could be being used to show you certain items while hiding others from you when you shop at amazon.com. It could determine what prices you pay vs your neighbors for the exact same items. It could be used to push certain content on prime. It could influence what ads you're shown. Amazon may sell your data to businesses they partner with (like “Starbucks, OfficeMax, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, J&R Electronics, Eddie Bauer and Northern Tool + Equipment.”) and they too will use that data in whatever ways they feel will benefit them.

Amazon isn't collecting and storing massive amounts of data on every facet of your life just to ignore it. They spend the money required to gather and keep that data because it is highly valuable to them in one way or another. That might mean taking more of your money from you, or that might just mean manipulating you and trying to sway your opinion, but you can be certain that they're using that data every chance they get to their own advantage and you can be certain that they aren't going to tell you when they do it.

Don't connect your device to the internet, and nobody is deleting your books. I sideload all my epubs from various stores and back 'em up. It's mine, not theirs.

That seems like the way to go honestly. Just be careful to back up your books too because just one mistake can be enough to screw you over. I have a friend who ran into that very problem. Enabled wifi just one time without thinking and all his books were deleted. There were a ton of posts about it https://old.reddit.com/r/kindle/comments/18csl9d/all_books_g...

No idea if they ever fixed that or not. My friend had to try to track down which books were even on the device and then re-obtain what he could.

I'd suggest using calibre or similar to make alternate copies of any digital books you buy and storing them as backups in files completely outside any device you use to read them with (especially a DRM'd device). This can get tricky with newer editions of media through devices like Amazon's kindle, but there are usually workarounds. You bought them, they are rightfully yours and fuck any "ownership" model that treats what you bought as something to be taken away from you on a bullshit legal whim.

Also, if some DRM'd digital book you've bought is truly impossible to remove from the device you're using to read it, an alternative is to just pirate a copy from certain obvious sites (cough, libgen, cough) as a backup edition in a format you fully control. Since you did indeed buy the book, also having a pirate copy is at least morally legit as far as compensating the author goes, even if it's legally shaky. Then again, many laws themselves are legally shaky, if not morally too. This applies especially to all the absurd legal contortions and false outrage practiced by proponents of the legal dumpster fire that is DRM.

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