13 ms·

The Danger of E-Books

147 points by tomkwok 11y ago

Albright 11y ago
> Amazon can remotely delete the e-book using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell's 1984. Tell the whole story, guys. Framing it just this way is dishonest.
- jordigh 11y ago
  Do the other details matter? That Amazon had to recall the book and refunded customers? Not to me. They simply could not have "recalled" all books if they had been physically sold. They are holding a loaded weapon pointing at our e-books. The circumstances that make them fire it are not as important as the bizarre fact that they have this loaded weapon in the first place.
  - Delmania 11y ago
    Yes, the details matter. The FSF is once again using aggrandizing to present their case. Amazon did not go in without cause and revoke the book. There was a specific reason they did so, and they did refund the customers' money. There was no back door in to the Kindle, it was all done through the account management services. The way the FSF is presenting it is intentionally done to make Amazon appear malicious, when the reality is it what a mistake on their part and they corrected it. This is typical of Stallman and his organization. They have good points, but the presentation of them is over the top to the point where people just stop caring.
    - boomlinde 11y ago
      How is it over the top? Is any of what they say false? That Amazon are able to remove a book from your reader is exactly the kind of contrast to physical books that the list intended to point out, regardless of their reason for doing so or the fact that they refunded their customers. The effect of these differences is that less power is in the hands of consumers, regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise or how they mitigated it.
      - fixermark 11y ago
        I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        The probabilistic chance that Amazon will do something untoward with your purchased content is completely irrelevant. The fact that they have that ability in the first place is. That is not a thing that they should have the ability to do. Full stop, end of story.
        fixermark 11y ago
        Why not? It's a business-necessity to offer the catalog they offer.
        jordigh 11y ago
        > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do: https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/ https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/
  - fixermark 11y ago
    That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that building the loaded weapon was a prerequisite for their capacity to offer the world's largest library of commercially-viable ebook content, and without that "bizarre fact," the content simply wouldn't be available to anyone electronically because of the legal wrangling necessary to get it into publicly-accessible electronic format.
    - jordigh 11y ago
      These manacles are always sold to the public as "for your own" or "for your own protection" as if they were an inevitable fait accompli of how things should proceed. Very Machiavellian, very gangsterish. We have evidence of these libraries growing without these restrictions, so we know it's simply a lie that we need these restrictions. The ends do not justify these means.
      - fixermark 11y ago
        They grow faster with the restrictions. Digital music was doable, but wasn't easy until Apple did the business work necessary to make the iTunes Music Store possible. eBook access to the latest publications on day-of publication across fiction and nonfiction was functionally a non-starter until Amazon did the business work necessary to make the Kindle Store possible. Their competition who didn't want to play by the rules of the restrictions the content owners wanted were plowed under by the volume and convenience generated by successful business partnerships. It's inconvenient for those who prefer a world without business-driven constraints that the processes that create those constraints also create massive convenience. But they do, and the world is full of potential customers who want that convenience. Because the alternative of a marketplace where they can pay someone (and play by that someone's terms of service) to do the work for them is to learn to do that work themselves, and that's not what people want to specialize in.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- jeremysmyth 11y ago
  Adding more details (the book's publisher did not have rights to sell that edition; customers were refunded) does not change the key message being communicated: Amazon removed books that had been purchased in good faith from Kindles without the purchasers' involvement or consent. That's something Amazon could do (and still can) that would not be possible to do with paper books or ebooks that were not purchased through Kindles or other devices that are not directly connected to the Internet. Not without some sort of massive intrusive recall effort anyway. Having said that, this article is quite straw-manny. I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. For books that I purchase, I still need to do so electronically, and that usually requires identification (through PayPal or credit card). I have no problems with ebooks in general, though; not every ebook format or reader grants the same access to the vendor, and it's not that difficult to vote with your feet.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    > I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. I don't think you're "fairly typical" in this regard, nor is most of the HN user base. Most people are doing what Amazon publishes as "most convenient", which is internet-enabled e-readers with all of Amazon's restrictions.
    - jeremysmyth 11y ago
      Very true. The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple (although in that regard, I expect much of the HN user base is happy to be subjected to the joys of that particular walled garden). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform
      - masklinn 11y ago
        > The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple It's somewhat unclear what you mean, especially with apple having added sideloading support in Xcode 7/iOS9.
panglott 11y ago
Wow. E-books such as non-DRM'ed ePub are great sharing and accessibility tool. I can't quite decide whether this conflating of e-books with the Amazon Kindle store is stupid or dishonest. The Kindle format/store is only "typical" in that Amazon is a major bookseller. There is nothing preventing every benefit listed there of printed books with ePub, and even people who are blind can access them too.
- netcan 11y ago
  I don't get the complaint. This is the context: "printed books …(stuff that applies to printed books) ..Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical).. (stuff that applies to kindle ebooks and other DRM restricted formats):" Its fairly typical in that Amazon is the biggest retailer, a trend setter and other retailers and tech providers follow their lead putting out similar stuff. I don't perfectly agree with the Free Software Foundation at a high level, but I think this comparison is pretty fair. If you compare in most people's physical and legally obtained digital book collections, this is what you will find. The ebooks don't come with the same rights.
  - panglott 11y ago
    e-book != DRM EDIT: To be more clear, it says "We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom." But every single benefit it notes of printed books is also true of non-DRM'ed ePub book, except that non-DRM'ed ePubs respect your freedom even more—your freedom to freely copy and distribute it, your freedom to have it displayed by a screenreader or braille device. If you want more free e-books, just go to m.gutenberg.org, find one, and open it in your app of choice.
    - netcan 11y ago
      I don't disagree with this and neither does the article. It is however true that in the practice, in the wild, ebooks mostly do have DRM. Hence, it's a problem with e-books to the the extent that it is a problem.
- 1wd 11y ago
rmc 11y ago
Should really be called "The Dangers of DRM'ed E-Books". There are several advantages of ebooks over paper books: * Less environmentally harmful * Take up less space * Easier to copy, I can send 1 subversive ebook to 1,000 people.
- bartlantz 11y ago
  > Less environmentally harmful I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
  - froo 11y ago
    Vs maintaining it on a USB stick? I think it's a hollow argument
  - tedunangst 11y ago
    Well, how many joules does it take to maintain a paper library for a century and how many joules to maintain an ebook library?
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      On a hard drive or tape system? On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries. And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader. And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.) I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold? The original article is factually wrong in significant ways. Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM. At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.
optimuspaul 11y ago
There are a lot of other sources for ebooks. I've never bought one from amazon. This article is FUD.
- sacul 11y ago
  So where do you buy general interest non-DRM ePubs these days? I used to buy from Barnes & Noble when it was easy to remove the DRM. They've made it much more difficult, so I don't buy from them anymore. P.G. Wodehouse is a good example of an author I like to buy as ePub.
  - ArtB 11y ago
    I honestly just use my Kobo for tech books like Manning and classics from Project Gutenberg. Otherwise dead tree.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    Kobo has some, but doesn't make them easy to find. It's a note on the bottom of each store page instead of something you can search by. I have no idea why; if I could find the good books with no DRM I'd have spent way more money there. Recently discovered that Brandon Sanderson's books are among the DRM free (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, others), which is a great set of reads for fantasy fans.
rocky1138 11y ago
On one hand, I understand the dangers from a philosophical viewpoint. On the other, I don't care what Amazon considers their rights or licenses with my Kindle. I'm going to read what I want to read, when I want to read it, on my Kindle, whether Amazon wants me to or considers me to have a license or not. Basically: I don't care what the EULA states for my Kindle. It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss. If it ever came to the point of Amazon disabling Kindles for sharing this viewpoint, then I'm sure there would be a groundswell of support for an open-source OS for the Kindle and we'd all get coding. In the end, I'm not all that scared.
- keithy 11y ago
  I'm in the same boat, it's just too convenient to read from a Kindle compared to having to hold a paperback while laying in bed. These rules that Amazon imposes on ebooks doesn't really affect me, I purchase the books and I get to read them, that's it.
  - davexunit 11y ago
    Give me convenience or give me death.
- liveoneggs 11y ago
  amazon cares and enforces what they want, like when they deleted 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
  - ajuc 11y ago
    People just use callibre or other software to read anything they damn want on their kindles. When it stops being possible people won't buy kindles. As gog.com and CD Projekt RED shown - it's perfectly possible to make a living selling non-DRMed games (when their servers failed last tuesday people still bought the Witcher 3 expansion in gog, and then downloaded it from torrents), so I don't see how it's impossible to do with ebooks.
vixen99 11y ago
There are e-book publishers who offer tech books with zero restrictions beyond basic copyright requirements applicable to physical books. Immediate access and freedom to make copies or even resell. What's not to like? People can make up their own mind about Amazon from whom I buy hardbacks. I wouldn't touch their e-format but I'm not that someone else for whom the formula fits.
SlimXero 11y ago
I own several kindle devices, have never purchased an ebook through Amazon, and do not connect any of them to the internet for any reason. It's a battery hog, and I have no desire to buy books directly from the device, and if i need to access the web, i have a plethora of other devices capable and at hand. Furthermore, I don't allow myself to restricted to DRM'd books. In the event I was unable to acquire a book in a non-DRM'd format, I'd purchase the book (using a prepaid credit card, as i do with all my internet transactions) and strip the DRM. If it was unavailable in that manner, then I would purchase a physical copy of the book. But that is not a deterrent for me. I own a few ebooks that don't exist in physical form (at least not for mass market to my knowledge) and I own a few physical books that do not exist in digital format (once again, to my knowledge). Neither will kill the other, they can both co-exist happily, and in my case, they do. I carry my kindle keyboard everywhere and often time have at least 2-3 paperback books on me as well. As a matter of fact, I am currently reading a book on my kindle, another in paperback form and a third is being read to me on Audible. Not all at the same time mind you, but concurrently.
akmiller 11y ago
A bit over the top. Yes, utilizing Amazons devices gives them full power over the content on your device but why do we need to suggest that E-books have to deliver on the same business model as print books?. There are benefits to e-books that regular books don't offer so just ask yourself if the tradeoff is worth it. I'm certain Amazon, in general, does not want to be in the business of removing books from peoples devices.
- fixermark 11y ago
  Basically. "A bit over the top" could very well be the byline of gnu.org/philosophy. They are the impractical philosophical anchor at one end of a line of conversation; if the world worked the way the philosophy described, everyone would be a bit technologically poorer (but "freer", at least).
  - thebaer 11y ago
    How exactly would we be technologically poorer in this case? Would Amazon / B&N / Apple / any ebook distributor suddenly lose their impetus to develop ebook-reading tech / devices?
    - Albright 11y ago
      Maybe they wouldn't lose their impetus, but they might lose their ability to sell the idea of e-books to publishers. The major stores sell DRM-free music now, but do you think that Apple would have been able to get music publishers on board if the iTMS had no copy protection on day one?
methou 11y ago
The major difference between the ebooks and paper books is that if you share a paper book with someone, you lose it from the moment you lend it out, until you get it back. But sharing an e-book is much painless and convenient, thus can easily abused.
- davexunit 11y ago
  >But sharing an e-book is much painless and convenient, thus can easily abused. I find it strange to see the word "abuse" used when talking about sharing. Sharing is caring, after all, not abusing.
cryoshon 11y ago
Just pirate your ebooks online or buy hard copy if you're uncomfortable with Amazon's tomfoolery. Or, "borrow" them via Amazon, then rip the DRM out with some pirate jag. Technologically, DRM is a solved problem, and has been for years-- just check out the Pirate Bay. Notice how I've mentioned the word "pirate" so many times? This is the result of finding a practical solution to the problems that Amazon has created. This costs them money, directly, as I could just as easily be buying books from them rather than using them to scout books then finding the pirated version.
trothamel 11y ago
Is e-book DRM even remotely effective? It seems like with something like the Kindle web reader, it would be trivial to write a script that took screenshots of every page of the book, and optionally applied OCR. Of course, this could also be done with the physical devices and an appropriate machine to press the buttons. The "Analog Hole" is quite present in books, which can be reproduced with no loss of quality. I actually wonder if the Kindle DRM is more a way of appeasing publishers than something that was actually intended to be effective.
- masklinn 11y ago
  Depends what you mean by "effective". It's similar to e.g. steam or appstore DRM: relatively easy to trivial to bypass (or you can access the content with bypassed/removed DRM easily enough) but the system is convenient enough that most won't care to do so unless and until it's being repeatedly and widely (ab)used by the keys authority. It won't hinder the motivated and technologically inclined but they're a small minority, meanwhile the scheme spreads, and if/once devices or accounts get killed it's too late.
tacos 11y ago
The Stallman "cube root" thing is adorable and quotable but wasn't the right curve then, and certainly isn't the right curve now. Love the guy, disagree with many his methods, but love the results he seeks to achieve. But like licensing, he seems willfully ignorant of outliers and is increasingly guilty of oversimplification. And more so as he ages. He's also obsessing on Amazon, and not entirely for reasons that immediately make sense. Prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355978
halosghost 11y ago
This is one of those things where the FSF has the completely correct idea, but has accidentally pointed their finger at the wrong culprit. The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom. I completely agree with the whole point of this article but wish it had used this case as a further tie-in to the various other articles asserting DRM's horrible. I think that the use of the specific case with specific examples to draw into a larger argument is often more effective than continuing to just point the finger at the single instance of the problem.
- davexunit 11y ago
  The FSF advocates against DRM in general as a major part of their campaigns work. Not sure why you'd suggest they are only pointing at a single instance of the problem.
  - halosghost 11y ago
    My point was that this particular article doesn't tie-in with the others and instead focuses on this specific case rather than taking this case as an instance of the larger problem and driving the issues with the larger problem home. (Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been either, doh!)
- masklinn 11y ago
  > The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom. So… how did the FSF point their fingers at the wrong culprit when they state black on white that the problem is DRMs but that ebooks are not intrinsically problematic?
  - halosghost 11y ago
    The title and major thrust of the article is that ebooks are generally bad. The real point only made at the end though is that they aren't, they're only bad when corporations and DRM are in-control. Imho, if they had been clearer from the get-go that the problem is DRM, not ebooks in-general, it would be much more powerful.
rikkus 11y ago
Yesterday I wanted to share a sentence of text from an ebook with two friends on Google Hangouts. I clicked the 'share' button in Nook Reader and chose 'Hangouts' as the destination. It pasted a URL pointing to a barnes and noble site with some ID appended. This is not what I want to happen. I ended up screenshotting the page, cropping it, and pasting the image onto chat. It might have been easier to type the whole thing out (though I'm not great at typing on mobile). This annoyance alone has spurred me to look again at keeping my own catalog of DRM-free files in Calibre and using a reader that doesn't do this sort of thing. Any advice on 'flow' to make this sort of approach easy is welcome (apart from the DRM bit, that's off-topic).
- Slippery_John 11y ago
  Put your calibre library in Dropbox or Google Drive. Get Calibre Cloud Pro to have a good-looking, easily searchable library on your device (you download from there as needed). Use Moon+ or some other reader to read the books. Calibre also has a server function (which Moon+ supports), but not everybody has a public IP to access their books everywhere. These are all Android, but there's probably some equivalent on iOS. You will want to convert all your ebooks to a format that your reader supports, such as epub. There are extensions for Calibre that will strip DRM if you're into that.
DannoHung 11y ago
Does anyone know of a store front for fiction and non-computer non-fiction books that all are unencumbered by DRM? I think Tor is releasing everything DRM free right now, but I'd like to see any stuff from other publishers that is also DRM free.
yuvadam 11y ago
Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/
blfr 11y ago
As far as free flow of information goes, you can't torrent a paper book. It's also not true that Amazon pushes DRM. They include it as a gesture to the publishers. You can put a DRM-free ebook on Amazon if you choose so.
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  "You can put a DRM-free ebook on Amazon if you choose so." Absolutely, and many do so. You can spot the ones that don't have DRM by looking for "Simultaneous device usage: unlimited" in the description. Most indie books and some major publishers (O'Reilly and Baen have been mentioned here) don't use DRM, even on Kindle. Blaming Amazon for DRM is pointing the finger at the wrong party, IMO.
  - ernesth 11y ago
    Blaming Amazon is totally pointing the finger at the culprit: Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility! http://lexbrage.tumblr.com/post/13212628647/amazon-bragelonne-drm http://lexbrage.tumblr.com/post/13212628647/amazon-bragelonn... explains (in french) why Bragelonne (french publisher against DRMs) surrendered to having DRM on amazon.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      "Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility!" Sorry, that is not correct. I've got several indie books on Amazon, none with DRM, and Amazon has never "threatened" me with anything. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. All of them have text to speech enabled. Here's a link to an O'Reilly book (not one of mine). Check for yourself that "simultaneous device usage" is "unlimited" (i.e., no DRM) and that "text-to-speech" is "enabled". http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-ebook/dp/B007Q4T040 http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-ebook...
  - 11y ago
gnufied 11y ago
I own a Kindle Voyage and read heavily on it and yet I can get behind this FSF campaign with all my heart. 1. There is no reason Amazon/publishers can't distribute DRM free books which I can backup and share (within reason, not putting for torrent). 2. It is amazing how badly Kindle supports other languages. I was trying to read a book written in Hindi on it and it was meh. Page turning is slow, font rendering is awful. Are we ready for a world where literature means English literature?
drikerf 11y ago
I agree to some points but still, pdfs/ebooks will help distributing books to more people making information more available. And with these arguments, are libraries bad? Considering you need to identify yourself and they are in charge for choosing which books you're can to read, and which ones you can't.
- lhopki01 11y ago
  Was looking for this point. For me I moved over to ebooks because I didn't want more physical books cluttering up my already small living area.
imgabe 11y ago
I use Calibre and the DeDRM plugin to remove the DRM from all the ebooks I buy. Very convenient and only takes a second.
- pgrote 11y ago
  Does this leave it in mobi format and if so, can t still be read on a kindle?
  - scruple 11y ago
    You can export as various formats and it is still 100% readable on Kindle (I have experience with both apps and a few devices). It doesn't mangle anything. Not who you replied to, but I've been using this exact setup to protect my e-book collection for a long time and couldn't be happier.
zupreme 11y ago
This comment is probably going to be unpopular with this audience, but there is a really good argument to be made for DRM in the e-book space. When selling a physical book there is a real barrier to propagation of the entire work in the form of a prohibitive cost or effort for the average person to produce unauthorized copies. In an era where even little kids know how to do a copy and paste this is definitely not the case with e-books. An author who releases his/her e-book without DRM would be, for all practical purposes giving it away to the vast majority of the reading audience. Maybe the future of both books and music are that recorded and written works will be freely given as promotion for other more lucrative efforts (like concerts, seminars, and so forth) but as long as the publishing industry and authors rely on the sales of books/e-books for the majority of their income, DRM is here to stay.
- dangoor 11y ago
  This is plainly not true. O'Reilly sells their books DRM-free to a very technical audience. In the US, at least, music that is purchased() today is sold without DRM. DRM is user hostile and not required to make money. () purchased does not include Spotify, Apple Music, etc. of course, because those are specifically renting the music.
- Karunamon 11y ago
  That may be the case if it weren't for the fact that DRM both completely destroys fair use (I should be able to move my Amazon/Audible purchased books to any device I want), and is completely ineffectual at its stated goal, stopping copyright infringement.
  - rhino369 11y ago
    It's ineffectual at completly stopping copying, but it's far from completely ineffectual. The average person doesn't have a good tracker and doesn't know how to use calibre. They could learn / be taught but it's a pain. Easier to just pay. It's not all or nothing. If you prevent 70% of copying, that's a huge win. I'm not sure drm is actually worth it, music has shown its not needed in that industry. But that industry had piracy catch on in a way that no other had. My mom can't pirate anything except for mp3s. The napster legacy.
esaym 11y ago
I've thought about getting the amazon kindle a few times. I really can't make myself do it though. It would be nice to have on airplane trips, as I normally only read tech manuals/programming books, but the fact that there is no "used book" market for the kindle is what drove me away. I'd rather pay $5-$10 for a used tech book then buy the E version for $15-$30. Sure I could get online and bootleg an ebook version but that is not really right either.
otabdeveloper1 11y ago
e-books != Amazon. The vast, vast majority of e-books in the world do not come with DRM nor are related in any way to Amazon. (They also infringe on copyright, but that's another issue.)
codeisawesome 11y ago
YES. Ebooks are a great idea, but definitely not in the way currently implemented. I hate the idea that XYZ Corp., can start streaming ads into my books or have detailed analytics of which lines I read/skipped/copied/researched just because I bought it from them. It's really convenient: they control the format, hence they control the software to (legally) read it, hence that software can behave pretty much any way it likes! It's even further horrible when you consider a future when books will only be available in one format, that too by XYZ Megacorp ONLY. I don't want the world I inhabit waltzing into that future. Thank GNU that GNU exists.
- jobigoud 11y ago
  From the comment in the thread it seems people are not aware of Kobo readers… They are great hardware-wise and the default format is standard epub. You can find everything in this format, create your own books with tools like Sigil, convert from other formats with Calibre, etc. Please stop conflating ebooks with the crappy format of one vendor.
javajosh 11y ago
I would like to add three other dangers of e-books. First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but selectively change it. The Information Ministry never had it so good! Second, and this is true especially for kids, I think e-books are psychologically problematic. A physical book has fewer degrees-of-freedom, and that's good because the content has nearly infinite-degrees-of-freedom. The way the device works is no mystery to kids, and once you've read it you put it on the shelf (or give it away). With e-books, you always have your whole library right there, and focus becomes an act of will instead of the default. Third, and this is true especially for thoughtful books, you can't read an e-book with a pen. I shudder to think about reading Marcus Aurelius _Meditations_ without pen in hand! As an added bonus, books trap carbon! So the more books we have, the better off our environment!
- jobigoud 11y ago
  Your first point (like the points raised by OP) is not about e-books at all, it's about a certain kind of books sold by a certain vendor.
  - javajosh 11y ago
    Consider that a sufficiently talented programmer constructing a very powerful piece of malware could, in fact, alter every copy of something everywhere, simultaneously, no matter what it's format. And they wouldn't have to be 100% successful, they'd only need to affect enough copies to sow doubt into people minds about which is the authentic copy. My point applies to all digital media, for the simple reason that computers are remarkable in their ability to modify the state of very small things.
- cableshaft 11y ago
  Personally I hate marking up physical books, so the Kindle with its highlighting feature (that saves your selections on their server and allows exporting to text file) has been a great boon for me, and I prefer Kindle for thoughtful books now.
joelberman 11y ago
I download books from my library (Boston Public). They are DRM'd and only usable on my Kindle for a few weeks. But that is enough. The range of books available is good. ANd if it is a text or something I like, I can then buy it. If it is just a garbage novel to ease a flight, then that is good too. The Kindle, on a per book rate, was really cheap and the library is even cheaper!
jwalton 11y ago
Awesome places to get DRM free ebooks: Baen has their entire catalog online, DRM free: http://www.webscription.net/ http://www.webscription.net/ They also include CDs with some p-books that have the complete collection of a given series, which you can download for free here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ (Check out the Miles Vorkosigan series and the Honorverse series, if you're looking for some good reading.) All Tor/Macmillan ebooks are available DRM free from Google, Amazon, and everywhere else they are sold. Where are your favorite sources of DRM free books?
Intermernet 11y ago
I'm always confused by the contradiction implied by the fact that the "free market economy" seems proud that the price of any good or service should be defined by what people are willing to pay, until such time that people aren't willing to pay for it at all. After which, not paying for it rapidly becomes a criminal offense. Somehow reminds me of Mozart and Allegri's Miserere.
jasonkester 11y ago
It is easy to write a list of upsides of Thing A and downsides of Thing B. But unless you also do the opposite, you can't really come to a good determination of which is better for a given task. They could just as easily written an article about how printed books are cumbersome, and how you can easily copy text from ebooks. It's like watching a truck commercial, reading this piece. The Good thing is the best at everything. The Bad Thing is the worst at everything.
EdwardCoffin 11y ago
I have a concrete anecdote about ebooks I bring up in these discussions, which I am just copying-and-pasting below [1]: In 2006 I purchased from Amazon the special edition of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", an Adobe eBook (the only way this special edition was available). Last year [six years ago, as I paste this], when I went to have another look at the eBook on my latest computer (not the one I originally purchased the book on), I found that it no longer worked: I could not enable the book on my new computer because Amazon's license server for Adobe eBooks no longer worked. It took me several back-and-forth emails with Amazon's customer support to get someone to admit that once Amazon moved over to the Kindle, support for the Adobe ebooks went away (most of them didn't even seem to be aware that there were eBooks prior to the Kindle). I'd have settled for them replacing my eBook with the Kindle equivalent, but I don't own a Kindle. At the time there was no Kindle eBook reader for OS X. I eventually got a refund, but it took a lot of work to get them to even recognize that there was a problem. Additionally, I didn't want a refund, I wanted to read the special content in this special version of the book, one that is not available in paper. Given that experience, I'm a bit reluctant to purchase the Kindle version, even though there is apparently an OS X reader now. I think the thing that most disturbs me about this whole incident is not just that a book I bought stopped working it is that I had no indication that it had become unavailable to me until the instant I went to re-read it. It had probably been inaccessible for months if not years without me knowing, with me thinking that I had the book ready for me to go read whenever I felt like, but when I went to check on something, it just didn't work. My shelves of paper books don't present me with that kind of problem. NOTE that when I bought this ebook I registered it to my email address. They HAD my email address, and could have sent me an alert when the server's retirement was imminent, so I would have a chance to at least authorize my book on my current crop of devices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1333441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1333441
giaour 11y ago
We went through this with music, and DRM-free files won. They were rightly seen as intrinsically more valuable, and no one was willing to buy a restricted file when a regular mp3 of the same content was available for the same price. The same is true of ebooks. Many publishers offer DRM-free ebooks, but they cannot compete with kindle ebooks on price. A freely distributable PDF is worth more to me than a one with DRM, but not infinitely more. Eventually the prices will equalize and everyone will buy open formats.
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I sort of agree, except I try to buy from publishers who provide PDF, iPad, and Kindle versions. When I do buy from Amazon, I try to copy to a PDF for backup for my own use, which I believe to be legal. Backing up to a PDF does not always work however.

147 points by tomkwok 11y ago

> Amazon can remotely delete the e-book using a back door. It used this back door in 2009 to delete thousands of copies of George Orwell's 1984. Tell the whole story, guys. Framing it just this way is dishonest.

jordigh 11y ago
Do the other details matter? That Amazon had to recall the book and refunded customers? Not to me. They simply could not have "recalled" all books if they had been physically sold. They are holding a loaded weapon pointing at our e-books. The circumstances that make them fire it are not as important as the bizarre fact that they have this loaded weapon in the first place.
- Delmania 11y ago
  Yes, the details matter. The FSF is once again using aggrandizing to present their case. Amazon did not go in without cause and revoke the book. There was a specific reason they did so, and they did refund the customers' money. There was no back door in to the Kindle, it was all done through the account management services. The way the FSF is presenting it is intentionally done to make Amazon appear malicious, when the reality is it what a mistake on their part and they corrected it. This is typical of Stallman and his organization. They have good points, but the presentation of them is over the top to the point where people just stop caring.
  - boomlinde 11y ago
    How is it over the top? Is any of what they say false? That Amazon are able to remove a book from your reader is exactly the kind of contrast to physical books that the list intended to point out, regardless of their reason for doing so or the fact that they refunded their customers. The effect of these differences is that less power is in the hands of consumers, regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise or how they mitigated it.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      I think "regardless regardless of what positive effects it might have had otherwise" is generally the foil in accepting the full FSF position on political topics. When one's philosophy is that the Four Freedoms strictly trump any convenience in any context, you're missing out on the collective benefits that make the current transition to shared, administered, cloud-based technologies so powerful for the users that adopt them. Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% chance that Amazon kills their favorite book from their device, without their consent, with a refund. That's not evil; it's the nature of progress (along the same lines as accepting that you might have to pay taxes---in essence, give up your own hard-earned possessions to a collective over which you have minimal power to decree how those possessions will be used---to live in a place where you don't have to arm yourself against bandits or maintain your own roads, etc.). Hell, if you don't like the way Amazon is administering its chunk of the cloud, it's a lot easier to leave Amazon than to leave a country.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        The probabilistic chance that Amazon will do something untoward with your purchased content is completely irrelevant. The fact that they have that ability in the first place is. That is not a thing that they should have the ability to do. Full stop, end of story.
        fixermark 11y ago
        Why not? It's a business-necessity to offer the catalog they offer.
      - jordigh 11y ago
        > Users are willing to accept a massive spike in convenience and utility for the drastically-less-than-1% They're usually not willing, just feel helpless and like they don't have a choice. They don't know they have a choice. They are also frequently unaware of what Amazon can do: https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/ https://www.epic.org/privacy/survey/
- fixermark 11y ago
  That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that building the loaded weapon was a prerequisite for their capacity to offer the world's largest library of commercially-viable ebook content, and without that "bizarre fact," the content simply wouldn't be available to anyone electronically because of the legal wrangling necessary to get it into publicly-accessible electronic format.
  - jordigh 11y ago
    These manacles are always sold to the public as "for your own" or "for your own protection" as if they were an inevitable fait accompli of how things should proceed. Very Machiavellian, very gangsterish. We have evidence of these libraries growing without these restrictions, so we know it's simply a lie that we need these restrictions. The ends do not justify these means.
    - fixermark 11y ago
      They grow faster with the restrictions. Digital music was doable, but wasn't easy until Apple did the business work necessary to make the iTunes Music Store possible. eBook access to the latest publications on day-of publication across fiction and nonfiction was functionally a non-starter until Amazon did the business work necessary to make the Kindle Store possible. Their competition who didn't want to play by the rules of the restrictions the content owners wanted were plowed under by the volume and convenience generated by successful business partnerships. It's inconvenient for those who prefer a world without business-driven constraints that the processes that create those constraints also create massive convenience. But they do, and the world is full of potential customers who want that convenience. Because the alternative of a marketplace where they can pay someone (and play by that someone's terms of service) to do the work for them is to learn to do that work themselves, and that's not what people want to specialize in.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
jeremysmyth 11y ago
Adding more details (the book's publisher did not have rights to sell that edition; customers were refunded) does not change the key message being communicated: Amazon removed books that had been purchased in good faith from Kindles without the purchasers' involvement or consent. That's something Amazon could do (and still can) that would not be possible to do with paper books or ebooks that were not purchased through Kindles or other devices that are not directly connected to the Internet. Not without some sort of massive intrusive recall effort anyway. Having said that, this article is quite straw-manny. I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. For books that I purchase, I still need to do so electronically, and that usually requires identification (through PayPal or credit card). I have no problems with ebooks in general, though; not every ebook format or reader grants the same access to the vendor, and it's not that difficult to vote with your feet.
- jordigh 11y ago
  > I've an ebook reader that I cannot connect to the Internet, and I use it daily. I don't think you're "fairly typical" in this regard, nor is most of the HN user base. Most people are doing what Amazon publishes as "most convenient", which is internet-enabled e-readers with all of Amazon's restrictions.
  - jeremysmyth 11y ago
    Very true. The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple (although in that regard, I expect much of the HN user base is happy to be subjected to the joys of that particular walled garden). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_platform
    - masklinn 11y ago
      > The same is also true in other situations where the dominant player creates a "walled garden"[1] over which they have complete control, as with Apple It's somewhat unclear what you mean, especially with apple having added sideloading support in Xcode 7/iOS9.

panglott 11y ago

Wow. E-books such as non-DRM'ed ePub are great sharing and accessibility tool. I can't quite decide whether this conflating of e-books with the Amazon Kindle store is stupid or dishonest. The Kindle format/store is only "typical" in that Amazon is a major bookseller. There is nothing preventing every benefit listed there of printed books with ePub, and even people who are blind can access them too.

netcan 11y ago
I don't get the complaint. This is the context: "printed books …(stuff that applies to printed books) ..Contrast that with Amazon e-books (fairly typical).. (stuff that applies to kindle ebooks and other DRM restricted formats):" Its fairly typical in that Amazon is the biggest retailer, a trend setter and other retailers and tech providers follow their lead putting out similar stuff. I don't perfectly agree with the Free Software Foundation at a high level, but I think this comparison is pretty fair. If you compare in most people's physical and legally obtained digital book collections, this is what you will find. The ebooks don't come with the same rights.
- panglott 11y ago
  e-book != DRM EDIT: To be more clear, it says "We must reject e-books until they respect our freedom." But every single benefit it notes of printed books is also true of non-DRM'ed ePub book, except that non-DRM'ed ePubs respect your freedom even more—your freedom to freely copy and distribute it, your freedom to have it displayed by a screenreader or braille device. If you want more free e-books, just go to m.gutenberg.org, find one, and open it in your app of choice.
  - netcan 11y ago
    I don't disagree with this and neither does the article. It is however true that in the practice, in the wild, ebooks mostly do have DRM. Hence, it's a problem with e-books to the the extent that it is a problem.
1wd 11y ago

rmc 11y ago

Should really be called "The Dangers of DRM'ed E-Books". There are several advantages of ebooks over paper books: * Less environmentally harmful * Take up less space * Easier to copy, I can send 1 subversive ebook to 1,000 people.

bartlantz 11y ago
> Less environmentally harmful I believe this is a pretty naive analysis. If you look at the energy expenditures for maintaining a library over a decade, let alone a century, a paper book would be far more environmentally friendly.
- froo 11y ago
  Vs maintaining it on a USB stick? I think it's a hollow argument
- tedunangst 11y ago
  Well, how many joules does it take to maintain a paper library for a century and how many joules to maintain an ebook library?
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    On a hard drive or tape system? On a reader - if you're counting the cost of electricity, let's count the cost of shipping entire forests of paper around the world, first to paper mills, then to print factories, then to bookshops and libraries. And the cost of travel to and from a lending library for every reader. And why not also include the cost of lighting to read the book? (I can read my Kobo in the dark because it has a very low energy backlight. My eyes don't work so well with the lights off, so I've never been able to do that with paper.) I wonder how many people here understand that giant warehouses full of overstocked print are regularly shipped back from stores and pulped. Does everyone understand how much space and weight a million copies of a failed bestseller takes up? Does everyone know that paper books are always sold sale-or-return, so if they don't go out the front door they go out the back door onto a truck, with the covers stripped so they can't be resold? The original article is factually wrong in significant ways. Not all ebooks are sold by Amazon, not all ebooks have DRM, and not all ebooks that start with DRM continue to have DRM. At this point, arguing against digital publishing because Amazon is like arguing against the printing press because the medieval Catholic church was fond of censorship and burning.

optimuspaul 11y ago

There are a lot of other sources for ebooks. I've never bought one from amazon. This article is FUD.

sacul 11y ago
So where do you buy general interest non-DRM ePubs these days? I used to buy from Barnes & Noble when it was easy to remove the DRM. They've made it much more difficult, so I don't buy from them anymore. P.G. Wodehouse is a good example of an author I like to buy as ePub.
- ArtB 11y ago
  I honestly just use my Kobo for tech books like Manning and classics from Project Gutenberg. Otherwise dead tree.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  Kobo has some, but doesn't make them easy to find. It's a note on the bottom of each store page instead of something you can search by. I have no idea why; if I could find the good books with no DRM I'd have spent way more money there. Recently discovered that Brandon Sanderson's books are among the DRM free (Mistborn, Stormlight Archive, others), which is a great set of reads for fantasy fans.

rocky1138 11y ago

On one hand, I understand the dangers from a philosophical viewpoint. On the other, I don't care what Amazon considers their rights or licenses with my Kindle. I'm going to read what I want to read, when I want to read it, on my Kindle, whether Amazon wants me to or considers me to have a license or not. Basically: I don't care what the EULA states for my Kindle. It's the same attitude I have around pirating movies or shows: if a movie company won't let me pay them to let me watch a movie/TV show via Steam, Netflix, or even from their own site, then I'll just watch it on Popcorn Time and it's their loss. If it ever came to the point of Amazon disabling Kindles for sharing this viewpoint, then I'm sure there would be a groundswell of support for an open-source OS for the Kindle and we'd all get coding. In the end, I'm not all that scared.

keithy 11y ago
I'm in the same boat, it's just too convenient to read from a Kindle compared to having to hold a paperback while laying in bed. These rules that Amazon imposes on ebooks doesn't really affect me, I purchase the books and I get to read them, that's it.
- davexunit 11y ago
  Give me convenience or give me death.
liveoneggs 11y ago
amazon cares and enforces what they want, like when they deleted 1984: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18ama...
- ajuc 11y ago
  People just use callibre or other software to read anything they damn want on their kindles. When it stops being possible people won't buy kindles. As gog.com and CD Projekt RED shown - it's perfectly possible to make a living selling non-DRMed games (when their servers failed last tuesday people still bought the Witcher 3 expansion in gog, and then downloaded it from torrents), so I don't see how it's impossible to do with ebooks.

vixen99 11y ago

There are e-book publishers who offer tech books with zero restrictions beyond basic copyright requirements applicable to physical books. Immediate access and freedom to make copies or even resell. What's not to like? People can make up their own mind about Amazon from whom I buy hardbacks. I wouldn't touch their e-format but I'm not that someone else for whom the formula fits.

SlimXero 11y ago

I own several kindle devices, have never purchased an ebook through Amazon, and do not connect any of them to the internet for any reason. It's a battery hog, and I have no desire to buy books directly from the device, and if i need to access the web, i have a plethora of other devices capable and at hand. Furthermore, I don't allow myself to restricted to DRM'd books. In the event I was unable to acquire a book in a non-DRM'd format, I'd purchase the book (using a prepaid credit card, as i do with all my internet transactions) and strip the DRM. If it was unavailable in that manner, then I would purchase a physical copy of the book. But that is not a deterrent for me. I own a few ebooks that don't exist in physical form (at least not for mass market to my knowledge) and I own a few physical books that do not exist in digital format (once again, to my knowledge). Neither will kill the other, they can both co-exist happily, and in my case, they do. I carry my kindle keyboard everywhere and often time have at least 2-3 paperback books on me as well. As a matter of fact, I am currently reading a book on my kindle, another in paperback form and a third is being read to me on Audible. Not all at the same time mind you, but concurrently.

akmiller 11y ago

A bit over the top. Yes, utilizing Amazons devices gives them full power over the content on your device but why do we need to suggest that E-books have to deliver on the same business model as print books?. There are benefits to e-books that regular books don't offer so just ask yourself if the tradeoff is worth it. I'm certain Amazon, in general, does not want to be in the business of removing books from peoples devices.

fixermark 11y ago
Basically. "A bit over the top" could very well be the byline of gnu.org/philosophy. They are the impractical philosophical anchor at one end of a line of conversation; if the world worked the way the philosophy described, everyone would be a bit technologically poorer (but "freer", at least).
- thebaer 11y ago
  How exactly would we be technologically poorer in this case? Would Amazon / B&N / Apple / any ebook distributor suddenly lose their impetus to develop ebook-reading tech / devices?
  - Albright 11y ago
    Maybe they wouldn't lose their impetus, but they might lose their ability to sell the idea of e-books to publishers. The major stores sell DRM-free music now, but do you think that Apple would have been able to get music publishers on board if the iTMS had no copy protection on day one?

methou 11y ago

The major difference between the ebooks and paper books is that if you share a paper book with someone, you lose it from the moment you lend it out, until you get it back. But sharing an e-book is much painless and convenient, thus can easily abused.

davexunit 11y ago
>But sharing an e-book is much painless and convenient, thus can easily abused. I find it strange to see the word "abuse" used when talking about sharing. Sharing is caring, after all, not abusing.

cryoshon 11y ago

Just pirate your ebooks online or buy hard copy if you're uncomfortable with Amazon's tomfoolery. Or, "borrow" them via Amazon, then rip the DRM out with some pirate jag. Technologically, DRM is a solved problem, and has been for years-- just check out the Pirate Bay. Notice how I've mentioned the word "pirate" so many times? This is the result of finding a practical solution to the problems that Amazon has created. This costs them money, directly, as I could just as easily be buying books from them rather than using them to scout books then finding the pirated version.

trothamel 11y ago

Is e-book DRM even remotely effective? It seems like with something like the Kindle web reader, it would be trivial to write a script that took screenshots of every page of the book, and optionally applied OCR. Of course, this could also be done with the physical devices and an appropriate machine to press the buttons. The "Analog Hole" is quite present in books, which can be reproduced with no loss of quality. I actually wonder if the Kindle DRM is more a way of appeasing publishers than something that was actually intended to be effective.

masklinn 11y ago
Depends what you mean by "effective". It's similar to e.g. steam or appstore DRM: relatively easy to trivial to bypass (or you can access the content with bypassed/removed DRM easily enough) but the system is convenient enough that most won't care to do so unless and until it's being repeatedly and widely (ab)used by the keys authority. It won't hinder the motivated and technologically inclined but they're a small minority, meanwhile the scheme spreads, and if/once devices or accounts get killed it's too late.

tacos 11y ago

The Stallman "cube root" thing is adorable and quotable but wasn't the right curve then, and certainly isn't the right curve now. Love the guy, disagree with many his methods, but love the results he seeks to achieve. But like licensing, he seems willfully ignorant of outliers and is increasingly guilty of oversimplification. And more so as he ages. He's also obsessing on Amazon, and not entirely for reasons that immediately make sense. Prior discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9355978

halosghost 11y ago

This is one of those things where the FSF has the completely correct idea, but has accidentally pointed their finger at the wrong culprit. The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom. I completely agree with the whole point of this article but wish it had used this case as a further tie-in to the various other articles asserting DRM's horrible. I think that the use of the specific case with specific examples to draw into a larger argument is often more effective than continuing to just point the finger at the single instance of the problem.

davexunit 11y ago
The FSF advocates against DRM in general as a major part of their campaigns work. Not sure why you'd suggest they are only pointing at a single instance of the problem.
- halosghost 11y ago
  My point was that this particular article doesn't tie-in with the others and instead focuses on this specific case rather than taking this case as an instance of the larger problem and driving the issues with the larger problem home. (Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been either, doh!)
masklinn 11y ago
> The problem here is not e-books, it's DRM. The article even says as much at the bottom. So… how did the FSF point their fingers at the wrong culprit when they state black on white that the problem is DRMs but that ebooks are not intrinsically problematic?
- halosghost 11y ago
  The title and major thrust of the article is that ebooks are generally bad. The real point only made at the end though is that they aren't, they're only bad when corporations and DRM are in-control. Imho, if they had been clearer from the get-go that the problem is DRM, not ebooks in-general, it would be much more powerful.

rikkus 11y ago

Yesterday I wanted to share a sentence of text from an ebook with two friends on Google Hangouts. I clicked the 'share' button in Nook Reader and chose 'Hangouts' as the destination. It pasted a URL pointing to a barnes and noble site with some ID appended. This is not what I want to happen. I ended up screenshotting the page, cropping it, and pasting the image onto chat. It might have been easier to type the whole thing out (though I'm not great at typing on mobile). This annoyance alone has spurred me to look again at keeping my own catalog of DRM-free files in Calibre and using a reader that doesn't do this sort of thing. Any advice on 'flow' to make this sort of approach easy is welcome (apart from the DRM bit, that's off-topic).

Slippery_John 11y ago
Put your calibre library in Dropbox or Google Drive. Get Calibre Cloud Pro to have a good-looking, easily searchable library on your device (you download from there as needed). Use Moon+ or some other reader to read the books. Calibre also has a server function (which Moon+ supports), but not everybody has a public IP to access their books everywhere. These are all Android, but there's probably some equivalent on iOS. You will want to convert all your ebooks to a format that your reader supports, such as epub. There are extensions for Calibre that will strip DRM if you're into that.

DannoHung 11y ago

Does anyone know of a store front for fiction and non-computer non-fiction books that all are unencumbered by DRM? I think Tor is releasing everything DRM free right now, but I'd like to see any stuff from other publishers that is also DRM free.

yuvadam 11y ago

Obligatory xkcd https://xkcd.com/488/ https://xkcd.com/488/

blfr 11y ago

As far as free flow of information goes, you can't torrent a paper book. It's also not true that Amazon pushes DRM. They include it as a gesture to the publishers. You can put a DRM-free ebook on Amazon if you choose so.

Turing_Machine 11y ago
"You can put a DRM-free ebook on Amazon if you choose so." Absolutely, and many do so. You can spot the ones that don't have DRM by looking for "Simultaneous device usage: unlimited" in the description. Most indie books and some major publishers (O'Reilly and Baen have been mentioned here) don't use DRM, even on Kindle. Blaming Amazon for DRM is pointing the finger at the wrong party, IMO.
- ernesth 11y ago
  Blaming Amazon is totally pointing the finger at the culprit: Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility! http://lexbrage.tumblr.com/post/13212628647/amazon-bragelonne-drm http://lexbrage.tumblr.com/post/13212628647/amazon-bragelonn... explains (in french) why Bragelonne (french publisher against DRMs) surrendered to having DRM on amazon.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    "Amazon has been threatening publishers that if they choose no drm, their books won't benefit from text-to-speech, and various other possibilities of the kindle, including future compatility!" Sorry, that is not correct. I've got several indie books on Amazon, none with DRM, and Amazon has never "threatened" me with anything. It's a checkbox in the publishing portal. All of them have text to speech enabled. Here's a link to an O'Reilly book (not one of mine). Check for yourself that "simultaneous device usage" is "unlimited" (i.e., no DRM) and that "text-to-speech" is "enabled". http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-ebook/dp/B007Q4T040 http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick-ebook...
- 11y ago

gnufied 11y ago

I own a Kindle Voyage and read heavily on it and yet I can get behind this FSF campaign with all my heart. 1. There is no reason Amazon/publishers can't distribute DRM free books which I can backup and share (within reason, not putting for torrent). 2. It is amazing how badly Kindle supports other languages. I was trying to read a book written in Hindi on it and it was meh. Page turning is slow, font rendering is awful. Are we ready for a world where literature means English literature?

drikerf 11y ago

I agree to some points but still, pdfs/ebooks will help distributing books to more people making information more available. And with these arguments, are libraries bad? Considering you need to identify yourself and they are in charge for choosing which books you're can to read, and which ones you can't.

lhopki01 11y ago
Was looking for this point. For me I moved over to ebooks because I didn't want more physical books cluttering up my already small living area.

imgabe 11y ago

I use Calibre and the DeDRM plugin to remove the DRM from all the ebooks I buy. Very convenient and only takes a second.

pgrote 11y ago
Does this leave it in mobi format and if so, can t still be read on a kindle?
- scruple 11y ago
  You can export as various formats and it is still 100% readable on Kindle (I have experience with both apps and a few devices). It doesn't mangle anything. Not who you replied to, but I've been using this exact setup to protect my e-book collection for a long time and couldn't be happier.

zupreme 11y ago

This comment is probably going to be unpopular with this audience, but there is a really good argument to be made for DRM in the e-book space. When selling a physical book there is a real barrier to propagation of the entire work in the form of a prohibitive cost or effort for the average person to produce unauthorized copies. In an era where even little kids know how to do a copy and paste this is definitely not the case with e-books. An author who releases his/her e-book without DRM would be, for all practical purposes giving it away to the vast majority of the reading audience. Maybe the future of both books and music are that recorded and written works will be freely given as promotion for other more lucrative efforts (like concerts, seminars, and so forth) but as long as the publishing industry and authors rely on the sales of books/e-books for the majority of their income, DRM is here to stay.

dangoor 11y ago
This is plainly not true. O'Reilly sells their books DRM-free to a very technical audience. In the US, at least, music that is purchased() today is sold without DRM. DRM is user hostile and not required to make money. () purchased does not include Spotify, Apple Music, etc. of course, because those are specifically renting the music.
Karunamon 11y ago
That may be the case if it weren't for the fact that DRM both completely destroys fair use (I should be able to move my Amazon/Audible purchased books to any device I want), and is completely ineffectual at its stated goal, stopping copyright infringement.
- rhino369 11y ago
  It's ineffectual at completly stopping copying, but it's far from completely ineffectual. The average person doesn't have a good tracker and doesn't know how to use calibre. They could learn / be taught but it's a pain. Easier to just pay. It's not all or nothing. If you prevent 70% of copying, that's a huge win. I'm not sure drm is actually worth it, music has shown its not needed in that industry. But that industry had piracy catch on in a way that no other had. My mom can't pirate anything except for mp3s. The napster legacy.

esaym 11y ago

I've thought about getting the amazon kindle a few times. I really can't make myself do it though. It would be nice to have on airplane trips, as I normally only read tech manuals/programming books, but the fact that there is no "used book" market for the kindle is what drove me away. I'd rather pay $5-$10 for a used tech book then buy the E version for $15-$30. Sure I could get online and bootleg an ebook version but that is not really right either.

otabdeveloper1 11y ago

e-books != Amazon. The vast, vast majority of e-books in the world do not come with DRM nor are related in any way to Amazon. (They also infringe on copyright, but that's another issue.)

codeisawesome 11y ago

YES. Ebooks are a great idea, but definitely not in the way currently implemented. I hate the idea that XYZ Corp., can start streaming ads into my books or have detailed analytics of which lines I read/skipped/copied/researched just because I bought it from them. It's really convenient: they control the format, hence they control the software to (legally) read it, hence that software can behave pretty much any way it likes! It's even further horrible when you consider a future when books will only be available in one format, that too by XYZ Megacorp ONLY. I don't want the world I inhabit waltzing into that future. Thank GNU that GNU exists.

jobigoud 11y ago
From the comment in the thread it seems people are not aware of Kobo readers… They are great hardware-wise and the default format is standard epub. You can find everything in this format, create your own books with tools like Sigil, convert from other formats with Calibre, etc. Please stop conflating ebooks with the crappy format of one vendor.

javajosh 11y ago

I would like to add three other dangers of e-books. First, that a central authority could reach out and change all copies of an extant work. Not delete it, but selectively change it. The Information Ministry never had it so good! Second, and this is true especially for kids, I think e-books are psychologically problematic. A physical book has fewer degrees-of-freedom, and that's good because the content has nearly infinite-degrees-of-freedom. The way the device works is no mystery to kids, and once you've read it you put it on the shelf (or give it away). With e-books, you always have your whole library right there, and focus becomes an act of will instead of the default. Third, and this is true especially for thoughtful books, you can't read an e-book with a pen. I shudder to think about reading Marcus Aurelius _Meditations_ without pen in hand! As an added bonus, books trap carbon! So the more books we have, the better off our environment!

jobigoud 11y ago
Your first point (like the points raised by OP) is not about e-books at all, it's about a certain kind of books sold by a certain vendor.
- javajosh 11y ago
  Consider that a sufficiently talented programmer constructing a very powerful piece of malware could, in fact, alter every copy of something everywhere, simultaneously, no matter what it's format. And they wouldn't have to be 100% successful, they'd only need to affect enough copies to sow doubt into people minds about which is the authentic copy. My point applies to all digital media, for the simple reason that computers are remarkable in their ability to modify the state of very small things.
cableshaft 11y ago
Personally I hate marking up physical books, so the Kindle with its highlighting feature (that saves your selections on their server and allows exporting to text file) has been a great boon for me, and I prefer Kindle for thoughtful books now.

joelberman 11y ago

I download books from my library (Boston Public). They are DRM'd and only usable on my Kindle for a few weeks. But that is enough. The range of books available is good. ANd if it is a text or something I like, I can then buy it. If it is just a garbage novel to ease a flight, then that is good too. The Kindle, on a per book rate, was really cheap and the library is even cheaper!

jwalton 11y ago

Awesome places to get DRM free ebooks: Baen has their entire catalog online, DRM free: http://www.webscription.net/ http://www.webscription.net/ They also include CDs with some p-books that have the complete collection of a given series, which you can download for free here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ (Check out the Miles Vorkosigan series and the Honorverse series, if you're looking for some good reading.) All Tor/Macmillan ebooks are available DRM free from Google, Amazon, and everywhere else they are sold. Where are your favorite sources of DRM free books?

Intermernet 11y ago

I'm always confused by the contradiction implied by the fact that the "free market economy" seems proud that the price of any good or service should be defined by what people are willing to pay, until such time that people aren't willing to pay for it at all. After which, not paying for it rapidly becomes a criminal offense. Somehow reminds me of Mozart and Allegri's Miserere.

jasonkester 11y ago

It is easy to write a list of upsides of Thing A and downsides of Thing B. But unless you also do the opposite, you can't really come to a good determination of which is better for a given task. They could just as easily written an article about how printed books are cumbersome, and how you can easily copy text from ebooks. It's like watching a truck commercial, reading this piece. The Good thing is the best at everything. The Bad Thing is the worst at everything.

EdwardCoffin 11y ago

I have a concrete anecdote about ebooks I bring up in these discussions, which I am just copying-and-pasting below [1]: In 2006 I purchased from Amazon the special edition of Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", an Adobe eBook (the only way this special edition was available). Last year [six years ago, as I paste this], when I went to have another look at the eBook on my latest computer (not the one I originally purchased the book on), I found that it no longer worked: I could not enable the book on my new computer because Amazon's license server for Adobe eBooks no longer worked. It took me several back-and-forth emails with Amazon's customer support to get someone to admit that once Amazon moved over to the Kindle, support for the Adobe ebooks went away (most of them didn't even seem to be aware that there were eBooks prior to the Kindle). I'd have settled for them replacing my eBook with the Kindle equivalent, but I don't own a Kindle. At the time there was no Kindle eBook reader for OS X. I eventually got a refund, but it took a lot of work to get them to even recognize that there was a problem. Additionally, I didn't want a refund, I wanted to read the special content in this special version of the book, one that is not available in paper. Given that experience, I'm a bit reluctant to purchase the Kindle version, even though there is apparently an OS X reader now. I think the thing that most disturbs me about this whole incident is not just that a book I bought stopped working it is that I had no indication that it had become unavailable to me until the instant I went to re-read it. It had probably been inaccessible for months if not years without me knowing, with me thinking that I had the book ready for me to go read whenever I felt like, but when I went to check on something, it just didn't work. My shelves of paper books don't present me with that kind of problem. NOTE that when I bought this ebook I registered it to my email address. They HAD my email address, and could have sent me an alert when the server's retirement was imminent, so I would have a chance to at least authorize my book on my current crop of devices. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1333441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1333441

giaour 11y ago

We went through this with music, and DRM-free files won. They were rightly seen as intrinsically more valuable, and no one was willing to buy a restricted file when a regular mp3 of the same content was available for the same price. The same is true of ebooks. Many publishers offer DRM-free ebooks, but they cannot compete with kindle ebooks on price. A freely distributable PDF is worth more to me than a one with DRM, but not infinitely more. Eventually the prices will equalize and everyone will buy open formats.

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I sort of agree, except I try to buy from publishers who provide PDF, iPad, and Kindle versions. When I do buy from Amazon, I try to copy to a PDF for backup for my own use, which I believe to be legal. Backing up to a PDF does not always work however.