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If DRM enables more authors to earn reasonable amounts from their Audiobooks, isn’t that a good thing? The world in which your life’s work can easily be duplica

If DRM enables more authors to earn reasonable amounts from their Audiobooks, isn’t that a good thing? The world in which your life’s work can easily be duplicated millions of times isn’t necessarily conducive to the creation of new art.

LanceH 6y ago
The complaint about DRM is that a company may suddenly stop supporting your license for the book. You don't own anything and are dependent on their goodwill. And to be clear, there are numerous ways short of Amazon going under that could result in a reader/listener no longer having access to their content. Say your phone provider stops allowing the Audible app on your phone, you can no longer use your content. To many, once a book is purchased, they should be able to enjoy it the way they want and DRM either prevents that or threatens to prevent that for your entire library. You can expect that as a user you'll have little to no recourse should that happen. There is also the discontent that DRM isn't necessarily being used to ensure payment, but being used to gouge the buyers. Less so than it was, but a lot of ebooks were costing more than their physical counterparts because there was no used/library channel for competition.
- Noos 6y ago
  Well, that's the side effect of having the increased convenience and often dirt cheap prices the kindle ebook ecosystem gives. If you don't like it do what some of us do and just buy physical media.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    I don't buy the "Kindle is cheaper argument". I have both a Paperwhite and a Kobo reader (as well as a way of stripping DRM off of both), so I usually look up the prices on both before purchase. I'd say it's 30% chance of an ebook being cheaper on Kobo, 30% chance of an ebook being cheaper on Kindle, and 40% chance of the price being the same on both. I only remember one example of an ebook being absurdly cheaper on Kindle (like $10 compared to >$20), everything else deviates by like a dollar or two one side or the other.
samatman 6y ago
Is there so much as a single example of DRM preventing dishonest or amoral actors from accessing content? If it's digital, it can be copied. With audio, the analogue loophole (record the output off an aux cable, re-digitize) is trivial, and any loss of fidelity won't be noticed. So your "if" is kind of bootless here. Audible's platform, convenience, and the desire to do the right thing and reward creators, is the "good thing", and DRM is a paranoid annoyance. This is the world in which, if your life's work is an audio file, it can easily be duplicated millions of times. It's as conducive to the creation of new art as any such world would be.

LanceH 6y ago

The complaint about DRM is that a company may suddenly stop supporting your license for the book. You don't own anything and are dependent on their goodwill. And to be clear, there are numerous ways short of Amazon going under that could result in a reader/listener no longer having access to their content. Say your phone provider stops allowing the Audible app on your phone, you can no longer use your content. To many, once a book is purchased, they should be able to enjoy it the way they want and DRM either prevents that or threatens to prevent that for your entire library. You can expect that as a user you'll have little to no recourse should that happen. There is also the discontent that DRM isn't necessarily being used to ensure payment, but being used to gouge the buyers. Less so than it was, but a lot of ebooks were costing more than their physical counterparts because there was no used/library channel for competition.

Noos 6y ago
Well, that's the side effect of having the increased convenience and often dirt cheap prices the kindle ebook ecosystem gives. If you don't like it do what some of us do and just buy physical media.
- input_sh 6y ago
  I don't buy the "Kindle is cheaper argument". I have both a Paperwhite and a Kobo reader (as well as a way of stripping DRM off of both), so I usually look up the prices on both before purchase. I'd say it's 30% chance of an ebook being cheaper on Kobo, 30% chance of an ebook being cheaper on Kindle, and 40% chance of the price being the same on both. I only remember one example of an ebook being absurdly cheaper on Kindle (like $10 compared to >$20), everything else deviates by like a dollar or two one side or the other.

samatman 6y ago

Is there so much as a single example of DRM preventing dishonest or amoral actors from accessing content? If it's digital, it can be copied. With audio, the analogue loophole (record the output off an aux cable, re-digitize) is trivial, and any loss of fidelity won't be noticed. So your "if" is kind of bootless here. Audible's platform, convenience, and the desire to do the right thing and reward creators, is the "good thing", and DRM is a paranoid annoyance. This is the world in which, if your life's work is an audio file, it can easily be duplicated millions of times. It's as conducive to the creation of new art as any such world would be.