You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer | Hacker News Reader

You don't own your Kindle books, Amazon reminds customer

nbcnews.com

16 pointsgeekam20 comments

This story is from October 2012. It's not very obvious from the NBC website, but if you follow the link to BoingBoing it is. I seem to remember there had been some change/improvement in Amazon's TOS over this issue sometime in the last 18 months, though I don't recall when exactly so I might be wrong.

I understand old stuff getting posted because many websites recycle non-current stories automatically as 'you might also like...' linkbait, but it is worth checking the date of something before you post.

Sure. Don't buy e-books from DRM afflicted distributors. There were enough stories that anyone should learn that lesson by now. And that applies to everything, not just e-books.

By buying from them you only help proliferating that sickness.

-1 for nbcnews disabling pinchzoom on mobile devices, and rendering text on only the left 5/8 of the screen.

From the terms, here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...

I have to wonder if the authors who demanded DRM from Amazon have figured out that this is the kind of behavior that drives people to download books illegally, or if they still fail to see the connection.

Probably most of the time it's not demanded by authors, but by legacy publishers. They have some distortion in their mind, which was already compared to Lysenkoism:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blog...

Perhaps, but then I am left wondering about newly written books -- why are the authors continuing to endorse DRM? Why are the authors continuing to do business with the publishers who demand it?

It's not about new vs old books, it's about forward thinking vs backward thinking publishers.

I.e. the story goes like this:

When authors write books, and want to publish them, most of the time they has no means to do it. So they look for publishers to fund that. If publishers are thick-sculled and backward thinking (i.e. afflicted by DRM Lysenkoism), or otherwise somehow crooked, they demand DRM to be part of the deal. Authors might not like that, but they think they have no choice etc. If publishers are normal on the other hand, they don't care about DRM. Crowdfunding often helps to prevent all this mess, and it's starting to play a bigger role in publishing, not just for books, but for other media (video, games, etc.) which also is often afflicted by DRM because of the legacy publishers. Notably, practically no self publishing authors ever use DRM.

As with many areas, old publishers for some reason most of the time are afflicted by DRM. Newer ones - less so. I can't explain the exact correlation, since DRM is really such a stupid thing than anyone with common sense would know that it's bad for business. More than often my feeling is that DRM is used for stupid (Lysenkoism) or side sinister and selfish reasons (covering one's incompetence, controlling technology progress, spying on users or what not).

It definitely isn't authors, at least not conventionally-published ones.

TradPub authors have essentially zero input in the marketing and distribution of the book (they usually don't even get any input on the cover design).

Amazon's publishing portal lets the publisher add DRM or not -- it's a checkbox. So, yeah, the blame for DRM (or praise for non-DRM) should accrue to the publisher, not the author (unless it's an indie author) or Amazon.

It tends to be the legal system. With phycical books there was no question of going after illegal copies, but now with DRM you can actually go after physical copies, so the court demands that.

Amazon "usually" doesn't have a choice in this matter. Of course the better way to proceed is to make sure they don't have a choice.

What does court have to do with Amazon or publishers using DRM? It's not a sanctioned practice, it's their own unethical choice.

That reminds me of this which happened a few years ago: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/18/amazon_removes_1984_...

yes I do. I rip them off the device as soon as they download and store a copy on my PC.

That might help preserving the backup, but that contributes to the bigger problem (since you are supporting those who proliferate DRM). Voting with your wallet and avoiding distributors who insult users with this unethical garbage is a better approach.

Yeah but then you are forced to make a choice: avoid authors who fail to provide non-restricted books, or download books illegally.

It's even better that way, since you'll support sane authors and publishers who don't use DRM. I see no problem avoiding others. It's like global pollution. One can choose to avoid those who heavily contribute to it and prefer those who don't.

DRM isn't effective. Sooner or later the businesses involved are going to discover this. DRM doesn't actually inconvenience me (I'd be taking a backup anyway) so I don't mind publishers wasting their time pushing it. If DRM was effective and got in my way then I'd pirate their books; not really from an ethical stance, but purely because of convenience. Eventually the penny is going to drop and they'll realise that DRM causes piracy instead of preventing it and they'll stop using it.

Take that thing to the Consumer Protection Ombudsman in Norway

Seems like it was bought in the UK, from Amazon.co.uk, so what relevance would Norway have? They're not even in the EU.

(If I import some random device from China, I don't complain to the FTC when it doesn't work.)

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