Hacker News Reader

Comment by macNchz | Hacker News Reader

I've been saying for a while now that I'd love to see rules restricting the use of the term "Buy" such that it can only apply to digital products when they are DRM-free and fully downloadable. Anything where the seller retains the right to claw back their product post-sale is more of an indefinite lease or purchase of rights rather than "buying" the product itself.

I think a relatively small proportion of people buying media online fully comprehend that—based on a contract negotiation gone wrong or just the whim of a senior exec—the things they've "bought" can simply be taken away from them. Sellers should be required to make it fully clear (e.g. not just in their 73 page ToS) that they're selling something impermanent and entirely unlike owning physical media.

View on HN

I agree though I have actually noticed that Amazon is more clear about this than they used to be. They now clearly say you’re buying a license not the book and it may have just been a Europe thing but I think it even made me confirm that I knew some of the implications of that distinction.

Unlike a lot of people on here I think I don’t have fundamental problems with DRM, but I think consumers absolutely should be guaranteed more rights over the things they buy. Maybe something like.

* access is non revokable and if any part of the drm scheme stops working the provider must provide a drm stripping tool

* access is transferable

> * access is non revokable and if any part of the drm scheme stops working the provider must provide a drm stripping tool

This is unenforcable even in the presence of good will. (If a company goes bankrupt, they might simply not have the resources, or, if relevant programmers leave, then they might not have the ability, to distribute a stripping tool.) A practical measure in this direction might be to mandate that DRM schemes "phone home," which they surely do already, and that they are required to disable themselves if they don't get an affirmative signal.

(Of course, this has its problems from the publishers' point of view, but as a customer I'd be very pleased with it.)

Make it a legal requirement during development of any DRM that the tool is created with the DRM. Release of the source code for the tool during bankruptcy, release of the tool and hosting as a legal requirement if they no longer want to support it indefinitely.

Theres no reason taking away our rights should be easy for the company when DRM mostly just makes life miserable for anyone trying to buy digital goods legally.

I think there should also be a limit of how long you can use DRM. Something like 5 or 10 years. After that for most things your sales have plummeted and now you're just punishing the consumer. If you want people to buy again for some new format or whatever you need to add actual value. Working on the new thing when purposefully ignoring the old is not value.

>This is unenforcable even in the presence of good will. (If a company goes bankrupt, they might simply not have the resources

Easy. Lock it with a key that functions like a deadman switch and releases into the Library of Congress

There's no key system like that that could possibly work.

But you already are required to deposit your books (or other copyrighted works) with the British Library upon publication and many other countries do the same thing.

https://bookisbn.org.uk/legal-deposit/

The US should probably do the same thing, but the amount of American works that aren't covered by the British Library are probably minimal.

The us does have the same thing https://www.copyright.gov/mandatory/

Under content and devices Amazon list ebooks by "date acquired" not date bought. It seemed a very specific choice of language.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com