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Comment by potatolicious | Hacker News Reader

Disclaimer: I work for Amazon, though I am not related to the Kindle team in any way.

This is nothing new - DRM already allows banning of digital material long before the Kindle came about. Back when iTunes was stilled DRMed Apple could easily have de-authorized all instances of a particular song and done the exact same thing. Having the file is a trivial detail - it's no good if you cannot access the decrypted material.

Personally I have faith. We have, in a few short years, progressed from the draconian DRM of iTunes to the non-DRM stores that both Apple and Amazon run today. We have also progressed from restrictive DRM measures on video games to the decidedly anti-DRM stance of major game publishers today.

We have proven that DRM can be defeated, so I wouldn't scream bloody murder just yet.

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I think DRM for literature, news, or other reading material has far more serious implications than that for music, video, etc. The former is a tool to fight against opaque institutions, the latter is just entertainment.

While I see the point you are trying to make I disagree. You can't possibly think that music and video as mediums have not played their part in fighting for or against certain causes.

Do you think a right wing S African Billionaire is likely to buy the rights to the Specials' 'Free Nelson Mandela' so they can delete it from everyones iPod.

Did you have a particular right-wing SA billionaire in mind?

Screaming bloody murder is how we earned those concessions.

Why should we stop? This nonsense is not acceptable.

Not even remotely true. Steve Jobs himself screamed bloody murder in his open letter speaking out against DRM and the music labels didn't even budge.

Economic factors are the only indicators most copyright holders care about when it comes to DRM. The moment they can sell more copies without DRM than with, they'll drop DRM. And not a moment before.

Also note this nonsense is very acceptable to the majority of consumers, myself included. If you want to vote with your wallet and not buy the Kindle/iPhone/Zune until it drops DRM, more power to you. But you'll have to wait until those of us who are happy with the current arrangement have bought our fill and Amazon/Apple/Microsoft have to start looking for niche markets. Your complaining in the mean time is not likely to make an impact.

Amazon is -- like most companies do, as it is hard to quantify -- ignoring the opportunity cost of including DRM.

I and I am sure hundreds of thousands if not millions more like me would already have a Kindle were it not for the DRM.

Could you please cite sources for those numbers? Given that it's unlikely you could find millions of people who even know what DRM is, I find your claim... inventive.

It seems unlikely that a corporation with so much to gain would not have done the numbers and research here. I understand you think those with your point of view are legion, but the mere fact that a large business is successfully pursuing a strategy counter your beliefs itself argues against this notion.

It is unlikely, actually -- they were forced into DRM by the publishers, not because of any true desire to include it. DRM doesn't help Amazon; it hurts them.

As for DRM, if you think that at least 200,000 people haven't heard of DRM (all my statement requires, if you'll read closely) ok then.

Do your own research, if you want to. There are resources available. The EFF alone has around 80,000 members, I believe, and I am sure just about every one of them knows what DRM is.

The problem with measuring opportunity cost is that it is very, very, very hard to measure. DRM means that I haven't bought about $500 worth of books or so, so far, I'd guess.

Wonder how many people there are like me? More than a few, even without having hard numbers, I'd wager.

If you weren't prepared to back up your statement of millions, maybe you shouldn't have said "millions"? It makes it sound as if you're tying to inflate the importance of your argument hoping you wouldn't get called on it.

I agree completely that opportunity cost is very, very, very hard to measure. Which is why I'm more likely to believe someone with resources, incentive, and skin in the game rather than anecdotal armchair talk.

I wasn't trying to inflate the importance of my argument. I was offering a guess of a possible range, given that there aren't any statistics. That's a common thing to do, and I would do it again.

If I had to guess, I'd probably say about 5% of the US population in toto has heard of DRM and could define it to a reasonable approximation. (That's about 15 million people.)

You chose to take the higher number in my range for me to "prove." I called you on it.

There are about 5.8 million people in the tech industry in the US. I've worked in some pretty big tech shops (and some small ones) in the US. Almost everyone I've worked with has heard of DRM, no matter what they think of it.

But assuming even only 10% of them have heard of DRM (an extremely low estimate) that'd be 580,000 people right there.

That's not proof, as there can't be any such thing in this case.

I hope others will join me in not having any faith. Just ignore the kindle (a.k.a. the swindle) until an open alternative comes along. That's my plan.

Faith doesn't really go too far in maintaining a free society. You have to have legal rights to fall back on.

How to loose your argument before you've made it:

Make up Mad Magazine-esque nicknames for the subject of your argument that you (but no one else) find clever and at least semi-derogatory. See also: M$, winblows, iSheep

I agree that derogatory nicknames automatically lower the respectability of an argument. However, writing "loose" when meaning "lose" hurts credibility even more in my eyes.

(I know this type of pedantic behavior isn't ideal, and I've never made a grammar-nazi posting before, but I've seen multiple usages of "loose" and "loosing" on HN lately).

Ahhhh! Hoist by my own petard!

Mea culpa.

We have also progressed from restrictive DRM measures on video games to the decidedly anti-DRM stance of major game publishers today.

Er, have we now? We've progressed from kernel mode drivers with disc checks to kernel mode drivers with disc checks and/or limited online activations, and most companies still never bother to release DRM-removal patches which even Starforce recommends.

The most we seem to get from major publishers is the very occasional single token game that's testing the DRM-free waters, before they scream in terror and release their next game inexorably tied to some servers they control.. which is pretty much the model described here.

I mean, just look at one of the most successful online game services around right now: Steam. It's online activation with a pretty face, and they can make your games disappear whenever they like, and yet it's hugely popular and people love it. I mean, we trust Valve, right?

Hell, I don't like it, yet 168GB of my 263GB Games folder is taken up by my Steam install; it's frequently the cheapest, and sometimes the only option.

I agree with you, but have to laugh at your labeling of the iTunes DRM terms as "draconian". iTunes represented the first case of DRM I can think of whose terms were so fair that most consumers never even knew they existed. 5 computers? Unlimited devices? Unlimited burning (as long as you weren't burning the exact same playlist over and over)?!

I think we're all better off without DRM, but the iTunes model was the next best thing to no DRM at all. Hardly "draconian".

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