9 ms·

It's always a bit alienating to me when people suddenly wake up with their stuff taken away and are all like "how could this happen to me? why did noone warn me

It's always a bit alienating to me when people suddenly wake up with their stuff taken away and are all like "how could this happen to me? why did noone warn me about this? how could amazon _do this to me_?" and then go off on their ways and "buy" the next movie from them (in addition to the amazon prime membership they already pay for that for some reason only includes the 480p version of the movie). It's not like they haven't been warned that this would happen. At some point, most people experienced some kind of abuse based on subsciption or otherwise questionable licensed service models. yet, they continue to not change a single thing about their behaviour. I really like ebooks. I like my newfound ability to carry around the novel I'm reading in the form of a pocketbook sized tablet with a matte screen that can be lit with warm orange light if I want it. But I buy all my books directly from the publisher, drm-free. That gives me the right to create as many copies as I want for personal use, makes it legal to integrate it into calibre, make a backup and store it on my ereader all at the same time. Buying from publishers is not hard. It's the second entry on ddg when I search for the book I'm currently reading. They even accept giropay without the need to create an account. With movies and music I can partially understand the streaming model because the average joe wants much of it, he wants it pre-curated to his taste and he wants it fast, without hassle. This is easy to accomplish with streaming in the drm-hell landscape it has become. But books? He buys a book maybe once every two weeks and the convenience is en par with the garbage dump amazon has set up and much less abusive than that. --- fixed spelling

timwis 6y ago
Interesting.. how often can you find the publisher offering a drm free copy? I buy _a lot_ of books (usually one or two per week), and I have a feeling I’d only find 1 in 5 from a publisher but haven’t checked. Also, I always do the “try a sample” first which has saved me a lot of money from buying books that weren’t what I expected. Wish there was an equivalent to that!
- f1refly 6y ago
  I think all book I read in the last three years I bought without drm applied to the files. Most of them have some kind of invisible watermark I couldn't care less about that presumable helps the publisher track down who distributed a book if the user didn't remove it, but it being invisible and probably bit-sized, that's an okay thing in my book (heh). Now that I think of it, it might have to do with the fact that I read sci-fi almost exclusively, where the authors have some kind of political interest in freedom themselfes and might pick publishers accordingly, but I have no way to back that idea up. The majority of the books I bought are published by Bastei Lübbe (https://www.luebbe.de/ https://www.luebbe.de/), but smaller publishers usually allowed me to do the same. I don't read book samples because I check the reviews for books I plan on reading on whereever I can find them, but I might start if the reviews start failing me. Might have to figure out where those are possible then :)
auggierose 6y ago
Yes, I also try to get it directly from the publisher. This has the advantage, that often you get the much better quality PDF version than the Amazon version with garbled math in it. I have bought maybe 5 books for Kindle that I couldn't get any other way. It sucks, because I cannot make these 5 books part of my Calibre library.
- justinclift 6y ago
  > It sucks, because I cannot make these 5 books part of my Calibre library. Depending on a range of factors, this might be useful for solving that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685279
  - auggierose 6y ago
    Yeah, I've tried it once, but I couldn't get it to work quickly. Easier to just not buy books for Kindle.
  - sho 6y ago
    I use this and it works beautifully. I never even load onto my kindle, which is sitting in a draw somewhere. Remove DRM, convert to epub and read in iBooks.
toyg 6y ago
> I buy all my books directly from the publisher, drm-free Most publishers don't do that. Why do you think Amazon has DRM? It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes, they were among the first to sell straight MP3s even. It's because most publishers love DRM. See also the lawsuit against Internet Archive at the first whiff of creaks in the DRM dam.
- f1refly 6y ago
  As I replied to the sister comment, I might be biased because I love science fiction and most science fiction authors are probably somewhat aware what drm is and pick a publisher that fits them not only from a financial standpoint but also the ethical one. This whole comment might've looked different if I'd be a fan of historical fiction, but I don't really feel like finding out.
- criddell 6y ago
  > It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes They sure do enjoy the lock-in that results from publishers demanding DRM. Books feel like they are in a special class of digital good and I think most people would support legislation ending the use of permanent, proprietary digital locks on books.
smt88 6y ago
> It's not like they haven't been warned that this would happen. Not only have they not been warned, services like Audible and Kindle are actively marketed to hide that possibility. If they really wanted people to understand that these purchases can be revoked at any time, they'd stop using words like "own", "buy", and "my library". It's fine to hold consumers responsible, but only if companies are transparent. "Buy" is a word with a specific definition in the physical world, and Amazon is abusing that understanding.
- DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
  Pretty sure the fact that they use words like "own", "buy" and "my library" everywhere except the fine print could be used against them in court to argue that they really did "sell" a book and you indeed "own" it, despite what they put in some fine-print.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Good luck against Amazon's lawyer army.
Lammy 6y ago
I don't think victim-blaming is a great way to educate people on the existence and dangers of DRM. Convenience might even be worth it to some people, but I think it's more often a problem of ignorance. Any TV ad for a Kindle is going to focus on the broad selection and ease of use. Telling those people about the DRM isn't participating in the same conversation that sold them the device.
- f1refly 6y ago
  On the other hand, I dont think victim-blaming is an excuse for rampant and continuous ignorance either. At some point, after getting abused again and again, users are to blame. All this shouldn't suprise any of them, it's in the ToS after all. Some users read the ToS and made an educated choice, some didn't read them and decided to not participate in any business with a company that obfuscates its goals in a 50-page wall of legal damage control, and some just ignore it and use the service. The ones that ignore the ToS and that get caught by suprise later are absolutely to blame for their own neglectance of the contract conditions.
  - Qahlel 6y ago
    You cannot avoid the TOS. They are all designed to protect the seller not the buyer. On top of that, you -as a single consumer- has no choice to select parts of the TOS. It's a unilateral-contract by definition.
    - f1refly 6y ago
      You, as a comsumer, always have the right to not accept the ToS and take your money elsewhere. Amazon fortunately doesn't have a monopoly on the ebook market.
      - leereeves 6y ago
        What store sells ebooks legally and doesn't have similar ToS?
hrktb 6y ago
> how could amazon _do this to me_? This is the main complain IMHO. Most people trust amazon to be around in 10 years, and do not mind to be bound to a specific company. It would be fine if there was a recourse when getting kicked out of the platform. This is similar to mail data on gmail, people are aware of the limitations, but are still pissed off when Google shuts down their account without any explanation. Your point about DRM-free is another form of having a way out of the platform in case of dispute, but there could be other solutions as well I guess.
DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
I stopped buying music on amazon the day their stupid website told me my browser is too dumb to download the MP3 files and I should get chrome instead (using an up to date vivaldi, based on chromium, at most a month or so behind chrome in its feature-set). It's their right to try ripping me off, but it's disgusting that they don't communicate this. You click "buy now", but somewhere in the small print it says "oh but you're not really buying buying it though". That should be illegal. In fact, pretty sure it is illegal. Chances are, if someone wanted to spend the thousands if not millions of dollars/euros/pesos/whatever to actually take legal action to demand the content they paid for, it's not unlikely that the decision would fall along the lines of "You can't just effectively sell something and claim you didn't really sell it" It's like the "It's not monetization I swear, they're just donating and we're giving them something back to show our gratitude" bullshit people pull with Arma 3 servers. Everyone sees through it, but it works as long as nobody has a real interest in actually stopping it.
- f1refly 6y ago
  I noticed that they disabled downloading on mobile as well, when I open a link from amazon to download the music I just bought they told me to download their stupid app and and export from that to my filesystem. After setting it up there was no option to export, so I forced the desktop site with firefox and could download after clicking through two dialouges that tried to convince me that downloading is _really_ not what I want to do. Never bought any media on amazon again after that.
dalbasal 6y ago
Blame structures, intentional structures, not people. People are just buying books the way books are sold. They can go elsewhere is not a reasonable response in amazon's case, considering the % of digital book market do they own? It's reasonable for the average person to expect stuff to be reaspnable.

timwis 6y ago

Interesting.. how often can you find the publisher offering a drm free copy? I buy _a lot_ of books (usually one or two per week), and I have a feeling I’d only find 1 in 5 from a publisher but haven’t checked. Also, I always do the “try a sample” first which has saved me a lot of money from buying books that weren’t what I expected. Wish there was an equivalent to that!

f1refly 6y ago
I think all book I read in the last three years I bought without drm applied to the files. Most of them have some kind of invisible watermark I couldn't care less about that presumable helps the publisher track down who distributed a book if the user didn't remove it, but it being invisible and probably bit-sized, that's an okay thing in my book (heh). Now that I think of it, it might have to do with the fact that I read sci-fi almost exclusively, where the authors have some kind of political interest in freedom themselfes and might pick publishers accordingly, but I have no way to back that idea up. The majority of the books I bought are published by Bastei Lübbe (https://www.luebbe.de/ https://www.luebbe.de/), but smaller publishers usually allowed me to do the same. I don't read book samples because I check the reviews for books I plan on reading on whereever I can find them, but I might start if the reviews start failing me. Might have to figure out where those are possible then :)

auggierose 6y ago

Yes, I also try to get it directly from the publisher. This has the advantage, that often you get the much better quality PDF version than the Amazon version with garbled math in it. I have bought maybe 5 books for Kindle that I couldn't get any other way. It sucks, because I cannot make these 5 books part of my Calibre library.

justinclift 6y ago
> It sucks, because I cannot make these 5 books part of my Calibre library. Depending on a range of factors, this might be useful for solving that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24685279
- auggierose 6y ago
  Yeah, I've tried it once, but I couldn't get it to work quickly. Easier to just not buy books for Kindle.
- sho 6y ago
  I use this and it works beautifully. I never even load onto my kindle, which is sitting in a draw somewhere. Remove DRM, convert to epub and read in iBooks.

toyg 6y ago

> I buy all my books directly from the publisher, drm-free Most publishers don't do that. Why do you think Amazon has DRM? It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes, they were among the first to sell straight MP3s even. It's because most publishers love DRM. See also the lawsuit against Internet Archive at the first whiff of creaks in the DRM dam.

f1refly 6y ago
As I replied to the sister comment, I might be biased because I love science fiction and most science fiction authors are probably somewhat aware what drm is and pick a publisher that fits them not only from a financial standpoint but also the ethical one. This whole comment might've looked different if I'd be a fan of historical fiction, but I don't really feel like finding out.
criddell 6y ago
> It's not because they enjoy running DRM schemes They sure do enjoy the lock-in that results from publishers demanding DRM. Books feel like they are in a special class of digital good and I think most people would support legislation ending the use of permanent, proprietary digital locks on books.

smt88 6y ago

> It's not like they haven't been warned that this would happen. Not only have they not been warned, services like Audible and Kindle are actively marketed to hide that possibility. If they really wanted people to understand that these purchases can be revoked at any time, they'd stop using words like "own", "buy", and "my library". It's fine to hold consumers responsible, but only if companies are transparent. "Buy" is a word with a specific definition in the physical world, and Amazon is abusing that understanding.

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago
Pretty sure the fact that they use words like "own", "buy" and "my library" everywhere except the fine print could be used against them in court to argue that they really did "sell" a book and you indeed "own" it, despite what they put in some fine-print.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Good luck against Amazon's lawyer army.

Lammy 6y ago

I don't think victim-blaming is a great way to educate people on the existence and dangers of DRM. Convenience might even be worth it to some people, but I think it's more often a problem of ignorance. Any TV ad for a Kindle is going to focus on the broad selection and ease of use. Telling those people about the DRM isn't participating in the same conversation that sold them the device.

f1refly 6y ago
On the other hand, I dont think victim-blaming is an excuse for rampant and continuous ignorance either. At some point, after getting abused again and again, users are to blame. All this shouldn't suprise any of them, it's in the ToS after all. Some users read the ToS and made an educated choice, some didn't read them and decided to not participate in any business with a company that obfuscates its goals in a 50-page wall of legal damage control, and some just ignore it and use the service. The ones that ignore the ToS and that get caught by suprise later are absolutely to blame for their own neglectance of the contract conditions.
- Qahlel 6y ago
  You cannot avoid the TOS. They are all designed to protect the seller not the buyer. On top of that, you -as a single consumer- has no choice to select parts of the TOS. It's a unilateral-contract by definition.
  - f1refly 6y ago
    You, as a comsumer, always have the right to not accept the ToS and take your money elsewhere. Amazon fortunately doesn't have a monopoly on the ebook market.
    - leereeves 6y ago
      What store sells ebooks legally and doesn't have similar ToS?

hrktb 6y ago

> how could amazon _do this to me_? This is the main complain IMHO. Most people trust amazon to be around in 10 years, and do not mind to be bound to a specific company. It would be fine if there was a recourse when getting kicked out of the platform. This is similar to mail data on gmail, people are aware of the limitations, but are still pissed off when Google shuts down their account without any explanation. Your point about DRM-free is another form of having a way out of the platform in case of dispute, but there could be other solutions as well I guess.

DarkWiiPlayer 6y ago

I stopped buying music on amazon the day their stupid website told me my browser is too dumb to download the MP3 files and I should get chrome instead (using an up to date vivaldi, based on chromium, at most a month or so behind chrome in its feature-set). It's their right to try ripping me off, but it's disgusting that they don't communicate this. You click "buy now", but somewhere in the small print it says "oh but you're not really buying buying it though". That should be illegal. In fact, pretty sure it is illegal. Chances are, if someone wanted to spend the thousands if not millions of dollars/euros/pesos/whatever to actually take legal action to demand the content they paid for, it's not unlikely that the decision would fall along the lines of "You can't just effectively sell something and claim you didn't really sell it" It's like the "It's not monetization I swear, they're just donating and we're giving them something back to show our gratitude" bullshit people pull with Arma 3 servers. Everyone sees through it, but it works as long as nobody has a real interest in actually stopping it.

f1refly 6y ago
I noticed that they disabled downloading on mobile as well, when I open a link from amazon to download the music I just bought they told me to download their stupid app and and export from that to my filesystem. After setting it up there was no option to export, so I forced the desktop site with firefox and could download after clicking through two dialouges that tried to convince me that downloading is _really_ not what I want to do. Never bought any media on amazon again after that.

dalbasal 6y ago

Blame structures, intentional structures, not people. People are just buying books the way books are sold. They can go elsewhere is not a reasonable response in amazon's case, considering the % of digital book market do they own? It's reasonable for the average person to expect stuff to be reaspnable.