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Disclaimer: I have commercial interest with oreilly. I speak at a ton of their conferences and lean on them partially for marketing and lead gen. Oreilly autho
by agibsonccc 9y ago
Disclaimer: I have commercial interest with oreilly. I speak at a ton of their conferences and lean on them partially for marketing and lead gen.
Oreilly author here. FWIW a ton of us were caught off guard by this as well. At the same time, I can't say I'm surprised.
My commercial incentives for working with oreilly wasn't about the book per se. I found a ton of value in working with them for their peripheral activities including safari, their strata , and AI conferences. I think other folks who write for oreilly tend to do these same things.
Pointing out where oreilly is making money: It tends to be large companies paying for access to safari now.
They will be putting other content in there now.
Print is a dying media. That being said: A ton of people prefer print still.
I don't think any end user or author of their's is "happy" about this per se. 1 benefit I liked of the online store was the ability to point people at that for pre releases and updates.
You can't really do that with amazon.
I may be naively hopeful in saying this, but..
That being said: this should allow them to invest in other distribution channels now as well.
Oreilly showed they know how to run a distribution channel and may use that expertise in other areas.
As someone closer to this than a lot of people, I'm happy to answer general questions about the process, other ways this could affect us etc, if that helps.
- eriknstr 9y agoWill the bookshelf I have on the O'Reilly website of books that I've paid for disappear and/or be replaced with DRMed files?
- agibsonccc 9y agoFrom the oreilly website: Your Products Every ebook and video you’ve purchased through your O’Reilly account is available below. You get lifetime access to these products, and we will alert you when they are updated. This is your account. You should be fine here.
- eriknstr 9y agoThanks.
- dorfsmay 9y agoAs someone who regularly bought eBooks from them, and kept their epub versions on my laptop, their new self as "ebook rental" does not interest me. What if I'm out of work and cannot afford the rental (Safari) fee? What about account problems? Because of technical reasons or political (say revenge because of public criticisms), there's a risk to lose access to the material. This happened to somebody with their Amazon account and their ereader. Sad day.
- agibsonccc 9y agoYeah..there's always that risk with a "life time download". That includes if the company goes bust as well. I would just consider having your own drm free backup. I understand what you mean though :(.
- e12e 9y agoWhat's the current state of the DMCA in the US? Is it now legal to circumvent DRM in order to backup titles you own? (Not that circumventing DRM will always be feasible for the casual user - see last generation of Amazon DRM for example). If circumventing DMCA is still illegal in and off itself, I'd be careful by advising people to break the law, without making it clear that they risk some serious penalties in many jurisdictions. What's the current status of inheriting DRMed works? I know that I'll be able to read the books and comics I inherit - but I'm not so sure about the kindle eBooks - without gaining access to the account of the deceased - assuming it remains active for long enough to do so?
- agibsonccc 9y agoI think you're extrapolating a lot from my post :D. Yes there are laws associated with it. You bought the book, you own the pdf. I'm not advocating or implying people giving them away. I'm not sure if you read above but I'm actually an author. Authors don't really make much money when working with publishers..but it doesn't mean I don't want something for my work. I'm also not going to hand out legal advice as I'm not qualified to comment on or do so.