4 ms·

Apparently it's a US-only feature. I'm allowed to buy "loanable "ebooks from amazon.com but I can't actually lend them since I'm not from the US. Nice. Given

Apparently it's a US-only feature. I'm allowed to buy "loanable "ebooks from amazon.com but I can't actually lend them since I'm not from the US. Nice. Given that the lending feature is only ONE loan for the whole lifetime of the purchase, it's more of a joke. I think people should rather write a kindlebay not kindle lending clubs. Amazon is also doing this wrong -- an ebook is conceptually either lendable or not. I would say it is, so allowing the publisher to toggle this checkbox seems beyond stupid. If Amazon is afraid of wide scale distribution (like this kindle lending club) perhaps they just need to define lending as something between 2 physical kindle devices done in a peer-to-peer manner. That is, I have to be physically next to my friend's Kindle in order to share a book (using some adhoc wifi connection for example). Or, if I want to 'lend' to a friend 1000 miles away -- make the lending happen with a delay of a few days (for 'shipping') and even add some small ($1 ?) cost. Basically they could have introduced with software all the inconvenience of actual physical book lending (proximity, distance issues) but instead they invented something new: one lending per book lifetime and publisher-defined "lendability". Of course, the sane option would be to have all ebooks as lendable with some normal limits (say, once per month).

burgerbrain 16y ago
I can't imagine that Amazon being afraid of anything is the limiting factor here, but rather book publishers being afraid. Amazon has sold DRM free mp3's for years now so it's not like they have some sort of pervasive fear of people sharing things they bought from Amazon... Furthermore, some books are loanable and others are not. It's definitely a publisher thing.
acabal 16y ago
Amazon has already demonstrated that it's more than willing to sell DRM-free products, as evidenced by its DRM-free MP3 downloads. I think the issue here is that publishers are the scared ones. I suspect that ebooks will follow the same path that the music industry did: first with terror, paranoia, draconian restrictions, and maybe even lawsuits; next with acceptance of copying as a way of life, but refusal to make it easy for people by lifting DRM; finally, by realizing that it's usually in their best interest to remove DRM, and then allowing certain distributors to do so--like Amazon. If the music industry is any kind of parallel, we still have a few years to go before publishers agree to lift all DRM. In the meantime, clever people will simply use any of the Kindle-DRM-breaking scripts out there to unlock the books they've purchased (usually for nearly the same price of a physical book, I might add) or just download them from torrent sites.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Amazon has publicly stated that they want to move to DRM free e-books eventually. However, as you say, the sticking point is the publishers. This is all the more relevant because the profits on most books for authors and publishers are not nearly as good as with music. And also because e-books are far, far smaller and that much easier to share or pirate than albums or movies (even in pdf form a full e-book is likely to be smaller than even a single mp3). Which I think helps explain some of the skittishness of book publishers. Though a few have already made the jump. Manning (a technical book publisher) allows you to buy DRM free e-books (which come in pdf form and are watermarked with the purchaser's name).

burgerbrain 16y ago

I can't imagine that Amazon being afraid of anything is the limiting factor here, but rather book publishers being afraid. Amazon has sold DRM free mp3's for years now so it's not like they have some sort of pervasive fear of people sharing things they bought from Amazon... Furthermore, some books are loanable and others are not. It's definitely a publisher thing.

acabal 16y ago

Amazon has already demonstrated that it's more than willing to sell DRM-free products, as evidenced by its DRM-free MP3 downloads. I think the issue here is that publishers are the scared ones. I suspect that ebooks will follow the same path that the music industry did: first with terror, paranoia, draconian restrictions, and maybe even lawsuits; next with acceptance of copying as a way of life, but refusal to make it easy for people by lifting DRM; finally, by realizing that it's usually in their best interest to remove DRM, and then allowing certain distributors to do so--like Amazon. If the music industry is any kind of parallel, we still have a few years to go before publishers agree to lift all DRM. In the meantime, clever people will simply use any of the Kindle-DRM-breaking scripts out there to unlock the books they've purchased (usually for nearly the same price of a physical book, I might add) or just download them from torrent sites.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Amazon has publicly stated that they want to move to DRM free e-books eventually. However, as you say, the sticking point is the publishers. This is all the more relevant because the profits on most books for authors and publishers are not nearly as good as with music. And also because e-books are far, far smaller and that much easier to share or pirate than albums or movies (even in pdf form a full e-book is likely to be smaller than even a single mp3). Which I think helps explain some of the skittishness of book publishers. Though a few have already made the jump. Manning (a technical book publisher) allows you to buy DRM free e-books (which come in pdf form and are watermarked with the purchaser's name).