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I value ebooks less than I otherwise would because the DRM makes them scarily impermanent. I have no faith at all that, five years from now, the ebook I buy tod

I value ebooks less than I otherwise would because the DRM makes them scarily impermanent. I have no faith at all that, five years from now, the ebook I buy today will still be readable. You might think I could replace my reader even if it died, but what if the reader's entire product line dies out? (That's not exactly a thought experiment: Every reader prior to the Kindle died out; the Newton died out; even very successful platforms like the Palm died out.) What if the software becomes extinct? What if the publisher goes bottom-up? And given that the net cost of buying the book used, reading it, and then selling it used is so small (or even smaller, if it's the kind of book one can find at the library) it's hard to justify the ebook. Frankly, if it wasn't for the superior physical experience of carrying, handling, and storing an ebook nobody would bother with the things. Even the crappiest trade paperback I own has an order of magnitude longer shelf life than any DRM system.

EdwardCoffin 17y ago
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, 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.
- jacoblyles 17y ago
  I don't always agree with the torrent freaks, but I do believe that if you've already purchased it once then you have the right to steal a jail-broken copy.
  - EdwardCoffin 17y ago
    There are two problems with this though: a) either jail-breaking or torrenting the book (if it is even available as a torrent) isn't something that the average reader would be able to figure out how to do (in my opinion) and b) it would open one up to the possibility of being charged with piracy, and the penalties for that are getting scarier all the time. I'm not convinced that the likelihood of being charged is minuscule either. Neither of these seem to be reasonable options for most people. And in any case, I have now received a refund, so I wouldn't feel comfortable jail-breaking a copy. I may buy the Kindle version when I get an iPad though. I have a bit more confidence in the durability of that format. Not enough to start acquiring many books in it, but since this particular book is unavailable in any other way, and it is really important to me, I'll probably relax my principles for it.
  - hristov 17y ago
    Where did you hear that? I don't think this is the case under US law.
    - ramchip 17y ago
      A moral right, not a legal one. He did say "steal".
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  I admire your patience, and this is exactly why, even now that I own an iPad, I can't make myself buy ebooks. [1] I've never called tech support for a paper book. -- [1] Except for my Safari Books subscription. As alluded to downthread: O'Reilly pretty much gets it. Their medium is impermanent, but it is also priced accordingly.
rsaarelm 17y ago
I wonder how things would work if ebook publishers would drop the idea of owning books entirely, and just go subscription-based. You'd pay a monthly fee and have DRM'd access to all the books in the catalog. Stop paying the fee, access is gone. You wouldn't have local copies, except for caching, just books viewed from the publisher's server. Now it would be no problem that the service might go out of business in a year and take the catalog out with it. You'd subscribe while it lasts, read all sorts of books you want to read but don't care to own, and then find a new service when the old one's gone.
- absconditus 17y ago
  See O'Reilly's Safari Books Online: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home?cid=orm-nav-global&portal=oreilly http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home?cid=orm-nav-global&...
joubert 17y ago
That's why you should purchase an ebook reader based on epub, instead of proprietary formats.

EdwardCoffin 17y ago

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, 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.

jacoblyles 17y ago
I don't always agree with the torrent freaks, but I do believe that if you've already purchased it once then you have the right to steal a jail-broken copy.
- EdwardCoffin 17y ago
  There are two problems with this though: a) either jail-breaking or torrenting the book (if it is even available as a torrent) isn't something that the average reader would be able to figure out how to do (in my opinion) and b) it would open one up to the possibility of being charged with piracy, and the penalties for that are getting scarier all the time. I'm not convinced that the likelihood of being charged is minuscule either. Neither of these seem to be reasonable options for most people. And in any case, I have now received a refund, so I wouldn't feel comfortable jail-breaking a copy. I may buy the Kindle version when I get an iPad though. I have a bit more confidence in the durability of that format. Not enough to start acquiring many books in it, but since this particular book is unavailable in any other way, and it is really important to me, I'll probably relax my principles for it.
- hristov 17y ago
  Where did you hear that? I don't think this is the case under US law.
  - ramchip 17y ago
    A moral right, not a legal one. He did say "steal".
mechanical_fish 17y ago
I admire your patience, and this is exactly why, even now that I own an iPad, I can't make myself buy ebooks. [1] I've never called tech support for a paper book. -- [1] Except for my Safari Books subscription. As alluded to downthread: O'Reilly pretty much gets it. Their medium is impermanent, but it is also priced accordingly.

rsaarelm 17y ago

I wonder how things would work if ebook publishers would drop the idea of owning books entirely, and just go subscription-based. You'd pay a monthly fee and have DRM'd access to all the books in the catalog. Stop paying the fee, access is gone. You wouldn't have local copies, except for caching, just books viewed from the publisher's server. Now it would be no problem that the service might go out of business in a year and take the catalog out with it. You'd subscribe while it lasts, read all sorts of books you want to read but don't care to own, and then find a new service when the old one's gone.

absconditus 17y ago
See O'Reilly's Safari Books Online: http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home?cid=orm-nav-global&portal=oreilly http://my.safaribooksonline.com/home?cid=orm-nav-global&...

joubert 17y ago

That's why you should purchase an ebook reader based on epub, instead of proprietary formats.