22 ms·
When Microsoft's eBook store closes, your books disappear too
- halfnibble 8y agoI didn't even know Microsoft had an eBook store. Somebody in marketing needs to get laid off.
- drewmol 8y agoand replaced by many more people in order to have the resources to market their next product
- specialist 8y agoJohn Beezer built the Weed Share P2P music sharing service built on top of Microsoft's DRM. Microsoft discontinued the service without notice. All the music everyone bought was lost (unplayable).
- specialist 8y agoThese downvotes capture the "hate" portion of my relationship with HN. Here's the cite: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/05/media_player_weedshare/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/04/05/media_player_weedsh... I misremembered the technical details, but the end result is the same: user's lost the content they purchased.
- LeoPanthera 8y agoThis is the second time I've lost eBooks to Microsoft. The first time was some time in the late 90s, when I used to read books on the bus on my Compaq iPAQ PocketPC PDA, using an app which I think was called Microsoft Reader? The books were of course DRM'd. Eventually the app disappeared and those files are now useless.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoYeah, I bought a few LIT format eBooks off of Amazon back in the day (predating Kindle, I believe). I think I might still have them somewhere with the DRM broken, but obviously, newer formats are nicer.
- borgishvorg 8y agoThe solution is on the high seas if you can find the trade winds, so Sayeth the old mariners.
- cbanek 8y agoI seriously worry about this with Kindle books I get on Amazon. I hope Amazon never goes away, though I guess it could at any time.
- tomjakubowski 8y agoLike another commenter has said, the DRM on Kindle e-books is pretty easy to break. https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com https://apprenticealf.wordpress.com
- jammygit 8y agoIsn't it technically a crime though? That's the kicker: the legislative backing to the schemes. Its a matter of time until this GS are so locked down that circumvention becomes impractical, even if its several years in the future. The 'it doesn't work' argument is temporary unless there is enough pushback (as happened with music, thankfully)
- sn41 8y agoThis lockdown is what organisations like EFF are trying to fight. Once I have paid for a product, I am its owner. I should be legally allowed to use it, disassemble it, or repair it in any manner I choose to. My main concern is that my book collection in all probability will outlast Amazon as a company. When they go away, should my books be unreadable? Will I get a refund when Amazon goes bankrupt? DRM violates the transactional nature of business by tying the product eternally to the seller to be usable at all.
- redwall_hp 8y agoDRM is technically a crime, too. It's infringing upon First Sale Doctrine. You, as someone buying media, actually have rights to what you purchase. The general public has just accepted the industry trampling on those rights and lobbying for laws that conflict with them.
- jolux 8y ago
- asveikau 8y agoI didn't start buying ebooks from Amazon/Kindle until I realized it was relatively easy to break its DRM. I've never used the files anywhere else but I keep a cracked copy of every purchase just in case. That old story about "1984" being removed gave me too much of a negative impression.
- frosted-flakes 8y agoI do the same with Audible. As far as I can tell, there's no way to remove the DRM that is both easy and free, so against my better judgement, I paid $30 for a program to do it for me[0]. I now have every audiobook I've bought in mp3 format, split by chapter and tagged with the correct metadata. Now I can dump them on a USB drive and plug it into my car stereo for road trips (I don't mind listening to good books more than once). [0] It's called Tuneskit Audible Converter, and I'm surprised they haven't been sued by Amazon yet.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoKeep your $30. Or... Pay me $30 :) ffmpeg -activation_bytes 1CEB00DA -i test.aax -vn -c:a copy output.mp4
- durability 8y agoDoes this really work?
- basicplus2 8y agoSlight tangent.. where is the promise of books being printed on demand locally?
- rmason 8y agoI'm unfamiliar with Microsoft's eBook offerings and the format upon which they're offered. The old Microsoft would have had a proprietary format unique to themselves but that may not be the case. Why couldn't they convert them to a standard format and put them up on an S3 with a login that pointed people to their virtual folders?
- banana_giraffe 8y agoOne assumes they'd put them up on Azure's version of S3, but that aside, no doubt no one knows if they can legally offer these things without DRM because of the contracts involved, and no one wants to take the risk. Or they know they can't and don't want to go through the effort of getting new contracts.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoMicrosoft's eBooks are EPUB-based. (The current version of Edge works as both an EPUB and PDF reader natively.) If you dig into Edge's data cache, you discover the books are stored in an "MSEPUB" format, and there's another file that contains the license for it. I imagine it is unlikely to be significantly harder DRM to strip than for other DRM'd EPUBs, but I'm not sure if anyone's bothered to dig in and see if Microsoft changed the file extension because they added some special sauce.
- nil-sec 8y agoThey refund them. Why is this an issue?
- ohithereyou 8y agoIt's an issue if there were ebooks exclusive to Microsoft and not available anywhere else. You've lost access to something that you can't get access to (legally) again at any price.
- nil-sec 8y agoThese books also don't exist in print?
- ohithereyou 8y agoThe ebook no longer exists. That's the point. Whether or not the item is available in print is irrelevant as the person who paid for it did not pay for a physical copy.
- sdinsn 8y agoWell, is that actually the case for any books?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- gnicholas 8y agoAnnotations would presumably be lost as well (if the platform supported them).
- nil-sec 8y agoMaybe. But these are all hypotheticals. The article presents it as I should be morally disgusted by this move. I don't really see it.
- DoctorNick 8y agoThe Right to Read becomes more relevant every year... https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
- gnicholas 8y ago> But with the 5G boom about to hit, experts will tell you we’re set to see a massive increase in connected devices and appliances, many of which we’ll probably only be able to licence, rather than own. Why is this more likely with 5G than 4G? What appliances are not suitable for IOT right now, but will be with 5G? Would most of my appliances be in my home, where I have wifi?
- Tharkun 8y agoThis is the usual marketing nonsense. But unless mobile carriers start offering very cheap plans for IOT devices (which is in itself unlikely), I don't see this happening any time soon. WiFi is pretty much here to stay, and is much more reliable indoors than 4/5/6/7/..G
- pmontra 8y agoMaybe manufacturers will pay a flat fee to carriers for all their devices in a country. Then when the manufacturer stops paying / doesn't pay enough / shuts down those devices become useless.
- flukus 8y ago> But unless mobile carriers start offering very cheap plans for IOT devices (which is in itself unlikely) I would have thought there was something equivalent of the electricity duck curve for *G and they've got plenty of bandwidth to sell at certain times of day.
- Tharkun 8y agoFor me it's not a matter of bandwidth, just the cost of the number of SIMs needed. I have hundreds of devices in the field, many in locations with no wifi or wired internet available. They all have sim slots, but the cost (in Belgium) makes it an impossible venture.
- swebs 8y ago>But unless mobile carriers start offering very cheap plans for IOT devices (which is in itself unlikely) Like this? https://hologram.io/pricing/ https://hologram.io/pricing/ https://www.particle.io/pricing/#cellular-data https://www.particle.io/pricing/#cellular-data
- romwell 8y agoWell, that's one argument for piracy. Or at least avoiding anything that you can't have DRM-free. (I still like my Steam library, but the games I really care about are bought on GOG/HIB when possible.)
- luladjiev 8y agoSorry for the question, but what does HIB means?
- thaumasiotes 8y agoI assume "humble indie bundle".
- dnate 8y agoaren't those still mainly activated on steam?
- Crinus 8y agoSome yes, others no. Sadly HIB has a lot of games that are available DRM-free outside of Steam, but they only provide Steam keys.
- jamesgeck0 8y agoEvery game in a Humble _Indie_ Bundle has always been available DRM free. Titles in their "Humble Trove" (a monthly subscriber perk) are also DRM free. Other bundles Humble Bundle sells are often Steam only.
- WorldMaker 8y agoI find it slightly sad that Humble Bundle watered down their brand by allowing Steam-only sales in the (Not So) Humble Store, then further by increasingly having Steam-only bundles.
- 8y ago
- egil 8y agoAnother curious situation drm-demanding publishers have created for themselves is the lack of control and leverage against the stores. With the closed Kindle ecosystem in such a major position, Amazon (with its poor drm) has tremendous leverage over the publishers.
- tjoff 8y agoSame here. Every amazon book I've read has been on my kindle, after I've unnecessarily stripped the DRM. Just so I know that the process of removing the DRM was successful. The instant I no longer can is the same day I'll stop buying DRMed books.
- bubblewrap 8y agoWon't the books remain on the reader device, even if the store closes? The discussion is also old. I realized that I end up lending only a small fraction of books to other people, and my kids will probably not care about most of my books. Storage of paper books also costs money, so rebuying the few books I want to pass on or reread may be cheaper than buying and keeping physical copies of books. So I chose ebooks.
- joe_the_user 8y agoI assume books are encrypted on the ebook reader and the reader operates by going to Microsoft each time someone tries to open a book and getting an encryption key show the book unencrypted.
- bubblewrap 8y agoThat's not how it usually works, does it with Microsoft? It would be very limiting and annoying to be unable to read books without internet access (say on the beach on holidays, for example). Certainly not the case on Kindle. There were cases were people's Amazon accounts were cancelled, so they couldn't buy new books from Amazon. The books they already bought remained on their kindles, though. There were also cases of Amazon deleting books from kindles, when the books became illegal. Any reason to assume Microsoft operated in a very different way?
- manojlds 8y agoEven borrowed Kindle Unlimited books can be read for a while if you don't connect your device to internet.
- netsharc 8y agoPresumably the tech is different, but Zune DRM for music bought before 2012 would've stopped working in 2017. The service itself closed down in 2015. So maybe they have a model where the license is valid for e.g. 5 years, and at that point in time the devices would've been clever enough to download new licenses. Has anyone made "ZuneBook" puns yet? Edit: hah Zunebook was an MS tablet that was supposed to compete with Amazon Kindle tablets...
- zrav 8y agoAfter PlaysForSure and Zune this is the third time MS shafts buyers of DRM'd content.
- microtherion 8y agoI was just thinking that it was supremely ironic that the creators of the PlaysForSure brand are serial deprecators of DRM systems.
- xtracto 8y agoMhmm, there should be a DRM-graveyard page...
- Causality1 8y agoI pay for my content but I also pirate copies of everything I like. Every DVD, ebook, audible audiobook, favored Netflix series, and graphic novel has a version in my personal archive. Hell, I even keep offline copies of my favorite YouTube videos and site mirrors of my favorite webcomics. Go down the list of your "liked" YouTube videos and take note of how many of them are now lost to you, through account terminations or being marked private. If you don't take control of the things that're important to you, you leave the door open for someone to take them away.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- miki123211 8y agoThat's why I love the way we get ebooks in Poland. When we buy an ebook, we usually get a pack of files (epub/pdf/mobi), without any DRM, but with watermarks, some visible, some hidden. Same for audiobooks. There's no DRM, there's some piracy, as always, but the system works and it works pretty damn well. I wish american ebook and audiobook stores were like this.
- novaRom 8y agoDo you mean even books from Kindle store are without DRM?
- arnvald 8y agoI believe he means polish e-bookstores. They're way more popular than Kindle store because they offer books in polish language. IIRC some of the stores started offering DRM-free books, others followed and generally it became kind of a standard in Poland.
- vsl 8y agoEvolved the same way in neighboring Czechia.
- gambiting 8y agoThere is no Kindle in Poland. In fact, there is no Amazon in Poland either(which is almost ironic considering that there are a couple huge Amazon warehouses in Poland - they serve customers of Amazon.de, as they are both very close to the German border - I suspect the labour costs are lower in Poland hence it makes more sense to have the warehouses there. Incidentally, going to Amazon.pl redirects you to Amazon.de instead). However, in the absence of Amazon, domestic services have sprouted instead - there's a few very big ebook stores, an excellent Audible replacement(with huge superproductions involving famous Polish actors voicing the lines being made regularly), instead of Amazon and Ebay we have Allegro(which in my personal opinion has leapfrogged ebay by about a century worth of development, it's just a much nicer experience). Ebay tried entering the Polish market a few times with huge marketing campaigns and lots of deals, but Allegro's dominance is just so untouchable that I think they have just given up now. I suspect Amazon doesn't even try for the same reason - it's not even localized to Polish(although Polish customers can still order items from any Amazon site, they get delivered to Poland without any issues and for free if you have Prime).
- mrmondo 8y agoI REALLY don’t agree with giving Amazon money (ethically) but I am a hypocrite and end up buying a lot of ebooks and audiobooks from them, I do my best to back up the files using calibre but I‘m sure they could lock down devices / files using DRM and their latest DRM incarnation is very hard to remove. I try to buy DRM-free ebooks and audiobooks whenever possible but I think mostly due to market domination authors and publishers end up at least mostly exclusively providing content via Amazon.
- calcifer 8y agoIf you are already using Calibre, it's not hard to protect yourself from Amazon. I have a Kindle PaperWhite that's about ~3 years old and it only connected to the Internet once during initial setup. I've put it in flight mode after that and it will never go online again. As for books, when I buy them on Amazon I select "transfer via USB" which let's me download it and when I add it to Calibre, the DRM is stripped by DEDRM_tools [1][2] before transfering into the Kindle. [1] https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools https://github.com/apprenticeharper/DeDRM_tools [2] Note that the tool only removes the DRM, it doesn't anonymise the file. It's still associated with your account.
- mrmondo 8y agoHey, thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. I’ve used deDRM a lot in the past, but it doesn’t work with the latest DRM on (I think AWZ3 files) - but perhaps it’s been updated since I last checked about 6 months ago or so.
- calcifer 8y agoI use it with AWZ3 just fine, but then I also haven't allowed my Kindle to update its software in years, so maybe Amazon is giving me files with older DRM.
- mrmondo 8y agoNow that is interesting, I have a kindle oasis and mix between reading on that (which is glorious I must be honest) and on my iPhone. If I can download a “legacy” file format - I might try that. Thanks again for your input!
- jbergens 8y agoFor anyone in Sweden there is a nice e-bookstore called Bokon. It has DRM free books that can easily be synced to a Kindle or some other device. https://bokon.se/ https://bokon.se/
- sohkamyung 8y agoCheck out this list of DRM-free bookstores, maintained by Libreture [1]. I usully buy my DRM-free ebooks from Weightless Books [2], and also subscribe to "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" and "Interzone" from that site. [1] https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ https://www.libreture.com/bookshops/ [2] https://weightlessbooks.com/ https://weightlessbooks.com/
- bo1024 8y agoThanks!
- gigabates 8y agoThis article is pretty ironic given this is exactly what the BBC did when they shut down BBC Store.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 8y agoHence why I only buy ebooks that offer epub and pdf (DRM free) as additional formats, alongside kindle.
- MarkusAllen 8y agoI use the Seth Godin model of ebook selling... I sell my ebook on Amazon AND I give away the same ebook on my website FREE. I give people the choice. Most buy the book. To see one of the examples, Google: Compiled: 713 Tai Lopez best quotes and quips revealed!
- isharamet 8y agoWell, I couldn't download half of the albums I bought 5-6 years ago in iTunes because they're no longer available in my country and there is no way to re-download them. An this store is far from being closed...
- wlll 8y agoI don't buy ebooks, and this is just one reason. This is the complete list: 1. For some reason they cost a similar amount to print books Sometimes a bit less, sometimes the same, sometimes more. Distributing a physical book means you have to print, handle, store, transport, store again, handle again and transport again (using a simplified model of the journey a book takes to the end user). That costs money, and it costs effectively $0 to get an ebook to a user. I don't see that saving being passed on to me, the consumer. Not only that, you're generally paying for less than you get with a physical book in terms of rights and (IMO convenience) 2. You can't (or maybe you can) lend them freely. Last I checked there were limits on lending with the kindle/amazon. Maybe that's changed, but I don't want to have to think about that, I just want to lend the book to someone. 3. You can't give them to someone. Maybe this has changed since I last looked, but passing on the book to someone else and it now being "theirs" isn't possible. Again perhaps that's changed these days. 3. Cognitive overhead Can I do this stuff? Can't I? How do I do it? I don't want to have to think about that. Last week I gave a book to my daughter by just putting it on her desk. It was easy. 4. Longevity In 10 years will I still be able to access my books? 20? Yes, because they're over there, on a shelf. If ebooks cost a fraction of what they cost today then I would totally consider them. It's a tradeoff. Right now ebooks don't swing the balance towards them.
- angrygoat 8y agoI agree with all of this, but I'd add: 5. Visibility A physical library can be browsed, including by a visitor, and serve a useful social purpose. I often find it interesting to see what books someone has on their shelves, and it can lead to interesting discussions. I can't recall a time when I've discussed the contents of a Kindle library with someone.
- handoflixue 8y agoIf you so desire, Kindle has GoodReads integration. I don't personally bother, but when I talk books with people online they'll occasionally link me their list :)
- ellius 8y agoI mix eBooks and physical copies, and I agree with your list, but here are a couple advantages of eBooks: 1. Space -- I have an entire closet full of books. Every time I buy another physical book, I am slowly crowding myself out of a little more space in my apartment. Electronic copies take up no physical space. 2. Can read anywhere (using my phone). I don't like this for every book, but some books are good for reading in little bite-sized chunks. I read a page here and a page there while I'm taking a break at work, waiting at the post office, whatever. The constant availability makes it a lot easier to increase my reading bandwidth vs. trying to always have a physical book on me. Plus variety--I have hundreds of books in my pocket at any given moment, and can choose whatever I'm in the mood for.
- natch 8y agoReminiscent of Microsoft’s “Plays for Sure (TM)” branded DRM system for music which eventually did not allow anyone to play their purchased music anymore, contrary to the branding. At least in this ebook case the customers are getting refunds.
- mark_l_watson 8y agoI like to write using the Leanpub.com platform because book purchasers get PDF/Kindle/ePub formats. I also like to use other publishers who provide DRM free files, I don’t mind watermarks. (I also sell using a Creative Commons share for no commercial gain license so people who buy my books can give away copies to their friends.) That said, Kindle books are very convenient and I like the ability to hilite text and add notes. In any case, as long as Microsoft refunds their eBooks purchase price to customers, I don’t see their decision to get out of the business as a bad thing. Actually it seems like a classy move on their part making refunds.
- ThomPete 8y agoIf there ever was a case for blockchain!
- zaphod12 8y agoSupport your local library! Many libraries have tons of Ebooks to lend out. It's more convenient than going to the library (since it's all online), but otherwise the same deal. Check out, read it, and return it. (1 crappy thing is that the library can only lend each copy a set number of times before it is 'destroyed', but I guess that's intended to match how physical books would fall apart. It's not ideal, but still - SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY!!)
- PorterDuff 8y agoA thing I don't get about eBook sites is why they aren't easier to browse. Simply being able to scroll through a screen equivalent of a library shelf (Dewey Decimal or LOC system) would be nice. Obviously, using libgen tends to avoid this DRM problem. No doubt as the surveillance economy ramps up, getting every last penny for copyright will ramp up also.
- jshowa3 8y agoThe whole point of the cloud is so you don't own anything anymore and so that companies can entangle you in a recurring revenue stream.
- kingaillas 8y agoI like ebooks. I like being able to resize fonts, I like looking up words immediately, I like carrying around dozens on a phone and/or kindle. I like the sales. I follow reddit's fantasy and printsf subreddits, and there isn't a week that goes by without a book on sale for $1.99. Pricing could be more advantageous (lower for ebooks) but at the same time, I just bought a few of Greg Egan's books to fill out my collection (Diaspora and Quarantine) and they are right now on the US Store at least, $2.99 ebook versus $12.99 paperback. And, the ebook versions are loanable. Yeah I could use my library more, and I use it plenty, but it turns out I LIKE AND WANT TO funnel cash towards authors I enjoy. That's how they make their living. Physical books still offer better random access to content (flipping around from chapter to chapter) but ebooks won me over for technical books as well - simply because I can have them in multiple places (home, work, travel) without lugging them around. Yes I have a physical copies of certain key books but the convenience of having them all over wins out, for me.
- makecheck 8y agoEvery virtual-book service should be required to ship you a printed copy of every book you own if they are unable to maintain their service, or significantly lower e-book pricing. They shouldn’t get close to the same money for selling time bombs.
- fturco 8y agoDRM and watermarking of e-books should be banned. Copyright should be abolished.