3 ms·
I don't know, as I never had access to that data, but I would be shocked to find that is not demanded by their agreements with the publishers. Akin to why ther
by taeric 3y ago
I don't know, as I never had access to that data, but I would be shocked to find that is not demanded by their agreements with the publishers. Akin to why there is no library that will give you non-DRM items. Is almost certainly part of a strategy by the publishers to bolster other marketplaces they find more favorable.
- 542458 3y agoIsn’t Amazon also the publisher for a nontrivial number of ebooks on Amazon?
- taeric 3y agoThe ones folks are buying? Not really. :D Publishers still do a good job signing on authors. Audio books, I think, are very different. Audible was far more active in building up a market and voice talent than the competition for a long time. That said, I am not aware of any actual anti-competitive practices that they do there. The examples that some high profile folks have used feel very weak. Prices are lower for customers than they have ever been, and profits for the talent are almost certainly up due to increased sales volume. Their percentage profit per sale is down, but the history could also be that keeping that percentage high would not have grown the market? Such that, they could not have gotten the larger pie without the smaller slice. But, now that the pie is big, they want the bigger slice.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoAn agreement is constructed by two parties, not one.
- taeric 3y agoFeels like a non-sequitur? What are you trying to say? My specific point is that I would wager money that Amazon being required to have DRM on their devices is required by publishers for them to be able to have that publisher's offerings. If Amazon drops the DRM, they lose the ability to offer that content. I'm not as confident that they have the agreement include that they will not offer authors a way to have DRM free content on the platform, but I would not be surprised by it.
- criddell 3y agoDRM doesn't have to be proprietary. I should be able to buy books from any place and read them on any reader.
- taeric 3y agoI mean... not wrong. But useful? Does this happen with any technology? Is it being blocked by practices from Amazon? Still feels like a non-sequitur.
- criddell 3y agoDVDs could be purchased and played on any player. Most of the non-Amazon ebook world uses Adobe DRM.
- taeric 3y agoAs someone that was into DVDs from other regions, this comment is laughably wrong. Edit: Heck, just playing movies on my computer DVD drives was less than straight forward. For the longest time you basically had to feel like a hacker to get it working on a linux machine.
- criddell 3y agoIt wasn’t perfect, but it was better than the current situation with ebooks. You could go into an electronics retailer and choose one of a dozen DVD players then drive across town to video store and buy or rent any DVD and the chances that the two things would work together was very high.
- taeric 3y agoNo real disagreement from me, on that general point. Things were certainly more convenient in some older formats. I'm not clear on the relevance to this particular story. For one, ebook practices are literally not part of this case. For two, the assertion in this branch is that that exists at the demands of publishers.