4 ms·
A slight quibble: > They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon's monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you
by xavdid 3y ago
A slight quibble:
> They require mandatory DRM for every book sold, locking those books forever to Amazon's monopoly platform. If you break up with Amazon, you have to throw away your entire audiobook library.
While it's true that your purchases are tied to your Amazon account, they are not tied to your audible subscription (if you have one). That's a nice touch.
Even better, the DRM is trivially easy to remove. Audible already allows you to download the files you bought and ffmpeg has the `-activation_bytes` flag which will pop the DRM right off. There are sites like https://github.com/audible-tools/audible-tools.github.io https://github.com/audible-tools/audible-tools.github.io to help you find your account's bytes (which you only need to do once; they don't change). Not ideal, but not as bad as it seems.
All that said, support alternative audiobook sources when you can, like https://libro.fm https://libro.fm and your local library!
- freeAgent 3y agoI can only assume that Audible’s weak DRM will be replaced as soon as they deem the audiobook market sufficiently captured.
- xavdid 3y agoIt's certainly possible, but it seems pretty captured already. I'm not sure how much of a blip it is for them. Definitely a good reason to back up any audible purchases sooner rather than later (as as soon as you buy any future ones!)
- freeAgent 3y agoYeah, the first thing I do with every single Audible purchase I make is strip the DRM. In fact, the Audible app is so bad that I don't even use it. I use BookPlayer (iOS) instead. It's much better.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- patmcc 3y agoReally strong DRM on audio files is pretty silly because it's so easy to workaround, if you've got an audio signal going to speakers you can capture/record it no problem.
- freeAgent 3y agoThat's true, but they could definitely make it more difficult than it is today.
- lyvxh 3y agoMaybe we need HDCP headphones/speakers?
- qingcharles 3y agoNo, we need HDCP ears.
- Qwertious 3y agoThe strength of the DRM isn't really relevant;_DRM is primarily intended as 1) a legal weapon under the DMCA, and 2) an inconvenience to remove.
- merdaverse 3y agoRelevant to what? There's a huge business in videogames to make DRM constantly stronger and more intrusive. Definitely not as easy to break as the parent comment description for Audible.
- cpill 3y agoyour also forgetting that it gives publishers some reassurance that their books are not going to be easily pirated, which gives them confidence to actually make digital versions of their catalogue. As with most things involving humans, there is a political angle