8 ms·
I've only bought a few ebooks but even then, I've immediately went and pirated them too to feel like I have something, even though it's only a few hundred kilob
by GlacierFox 2y ago
I've only bought a few ebooks but even then, I've immediately went and pirated them too to feel like I have something, even though it's only a few hundred kilobytes. I know it's a digital book and I know someone worked really hard on it but when I buy an book from Amazon or some other site which works this way, I feel like I'm buying... nothing. I sometimes buy physical books with the intention of keeping them for when I'm in the mood to read them, sometimes this might be months or even years. But with a digital book delivered with a licence I've always got a niggle in the back of my mind thinking about a digital collection dissappearing or the service becoming obsolete. In regards to non-drm ebooks, the lack of tangibility peeves me slightly but isn't so much an issue as I actually have something I can keep. But licenced ebooks are fugazi, ethereal nothingness existing on the whims of a mega corporation.
- skydhash 2y agoI don't mind temporary license if I trust in the business stability. Meaning either I have a minimum period guaranteed by law or the business is not changing the TOS for no reasons. I bought software on Apple's App Store and games on PlayStation Store and I'm fine that I only have a license tied to the existence of my account. But I have limited trust (no real reason) in Amazon regarding to Kindle.
- xnzakg 2y agoWouldn't be so sure about trusting PlayStation content to be there in a few years: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/ https://www.playstation.com/en-us/legal/psvideocontent/
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y agoKindle has been around for over a decade. And Amazon is huge. Why the distrust? Honest question. I'm trusting Steam with over 400 games. I don't read a lot of ebooks but I don't see why Amazon would redact something I've paid for.
- m4rtink 2y agoDidn't Amazon just discontinue their Android app store, including leaving people who bought stuff there hanging dry ?
- Finnucane 2y agoall both of them?
- sunaookami 2y agoSo where do we draw the line? How many people need to be affected? 100? 1000? 10000? It's okay when 99 people loose their money but not 100?
- account42 2y agoSteal from one person (natural and otherwise) and you need to pay them back and get fined/locked up on top of it. Steal from thousands and can just give five bucks to each of them in a class action settlement.
- rovr138 2y agoAmazon has deleted books off of people’s kindles before.
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 2y agoThat's not cool.
- fastball 2y agoIn response to what?
- rovr138 2y agoRights, licensing, content guidelines, “offensive”, public backlash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amazon Read under the section “Anti-competitive practices” They’ve done it multiple times. They have the mechanism to delete them. They also have the mechanisms to push content to kindles. While I don’t have examples of them redacting, they can clearly do so. A government order would be a great example of this.
- ncallaway 2y agoI also think temporary licenses if they are marketed appropriately. This disclosure is a small step in the right direction, but I don't think it's enough yet. Any words like "Buy", "Purchase", "Own", etc should be absolutely banned. They should be forced to to use verbs like "Rent". Saying you're purchasing a license is better than saying you're purchasing the book, but if it's not a perpetual license, they should be required to specify the duration (or, if indefinite but revocable, it should be so stated). Things like: - "Rent for 1 week" - "$2.99 to borrow for a month" - "Rent for as long as we decide to allow" I also think if the marketing materials explicitly disagree with the terms within a clickwrap license agreement, the marketing materials should be binding.
- KingMob 2y agoI agree that words like "buy" are deceptive, but changing the language won't fix the underlying problem that it's getting harder and harder to actually buy certain things permanently.
- bornfreddy 2y agoNot necessarily. The clear language would help consumers determine what they are getting out of the transaction. Many could decide it is not worth it or would search for a better deal elsewhere (where they could buy the book, not just rent it). I'm sure Amazon would come up with new ways to combat this though.
- goosedragons 2y agoYeah, and so we should change the rules, not accept a weakening of the meaning of buy or make it more clear that you're renting. Companies already have an enforcement mechanism against copyright infringement. It's called the courts. They don't need DRM, they're just assholes. We need to place reasonable limitations on DRM use. They don't need to have DRM for the entire 50+ years of the copyright term. Putting a digital lock on something shouldn't mean YOU get to decide what the customer does with something and how they interact with it.
- eastbound 2y ago
- wlesieutre 2y agoSoftware, especially on mobile platforms, feels a little more ephemeral anyway. An app left unmaintained won't support high DPI, won't support new screen sizes, won't have dark mode, doesn't support 64-bit CPUs, or even just gets deliberately turned shitty via updates because there was money to be squeezed. So if I buy an app and come back in 10 years I'm pleasantly surprised to ever find that it still exists and works. That's very different from buying digital music (which I buy from Apple DRM free) and digital books, which should not change after I buy them, don't need compatibility updates, and really ought to work as long as I have the files, even if someone goes out of business and I can't redownload them. Books really have much more in common with music than they do with software, and it's unfortunate that digital books and ebook readers escaped the "I bought hundreds of dollars of music and I should be able to play it on whatever MP3 player I want" arguments that freed us from music DRM lock-in.
- throwaway4220 2y agoPer fair use law in us - can you just pirate the book after you buy it on kindle?
- tingletech 2y agoAs far as I understand, fair use is more a doctrine than a law. It seems like more of a moral position than a legal one.
- punnerud 2y agoFair use comes from Berne Convention §10 (snipet): “It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public…” I guess OpenAI and Google use that to be able to build search and training ML-models. Almost all countries in the world is bounded by that.
- yojo 2y agoNot sure exactly what you mean, but it’s definitely on the books[1]. There’s also a decent body of case law around copying things you have access to (say, Sony v Betamax). 1: https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-17-copyrights/17-usc-sect-107/ https://codes.findlaw.com/us/title-17-copyrights/17-usc-sect...
- Finnucane 2y agofair use is part of copyright law, it’s just defined in a way that what you can claim as fair use is fought over in court.
- hansvm 2y agoNAL, not legal advice, just my current understanding: > after you buy it Generally, yes. What you do with that digital copy might be illegal, but the download was legal. Using a torrent to download (and seeding) might still be illegal even if only as a means to copying. > after you buy it on kindle That's a more interesting question. Given that they only grant you a license, you're in gray/black territory. When they previously gave you the impression that you were making a purchase you might have been in gray/light territory, but ignorance is rarely an excuse. > legalities vs practicalities Once I had one of those torrent honeypots catch a neighbor seeding. Comcast wasn't very careful with their timestamps or enforcement (or maybe the lawyer wasn't), and it happened close enough to an IP renewal that I caught the flak. If you don't get a lawyer involved, they'll blatantly ignore your right to counter DMCA claims and just infantalize you with a sermon about not stealing from intellectual property owners, placing you on a list of problem customers and eventually cancelling service (that last bit never materialized because it was my IP and my devices after the incident, so I never had too many strikes). What happens, exactly, if you "legally" pirate a book after you buy it on kindle? Who knows, but it might have negative consequences on par with actual enforcement as if you'd broken the law.
- unethical_ban 2y agoSame. I buy it and crack it. I'll take my business to whichever distributor acknowledges my ownership of the book. Kobo is crackable, I believe. Also lib gen.
- exe34 2y agoYou can remove the drm using calibre+dedrm. Legality may vary based on your locality.
- fajmccain 2y agoI had an issue with calibre+dedrm not working as of early 2024 (possibly due to an update the the DRM used by Amazon). Have you had luck doing this recently?
- BigGreenJorts 2y agoAmazon is removing the ability to download (DRMed) copies of Kindle book to your local store.
- underseacables 2y agoLibrary Genesis has been a great alternative
- GiorgioG 2y agoAnna's Archive too
- tlavoie 2y agoEver since Amazon removed copies of Orwell's "1984" from people's Kindles after sale, it's served as a reminder that ownership is a fickle thing. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-kindle-5317703 https://gizmodo.com/amazon-secretly-removes-1984-from-the-ki... I buy some ebooks, always without DRM where possible, and promptly strip DRM and stash free copies for others (e.g. from Kobo).
- brandall10 2y agoThis seems like an isolated case where an illegitimate provider committed fraud in the early days of the program. Amazon refunded and surely readers were able to purchase a valid copy not much later. Are there any examples where legitimately purchased licenses were made unavailable?
- trescenzi 2y agoSony has recently been caught up in a few things like this. The Discovery shows being the biggest example I’m aware of. It’s definitively not an isolated thing. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/sony-playstation-discovery-shows-removal.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/06/technology/sony-playstati...
- gaius_baltar 2y ago> Are there any examples where legitimately purchased licenses were made unavailable? From customers point of view, these purchases were legitimate. But the important point is that they did it in the past and only the right balance between bad PR and expected profits will prevent them from doing again.
- LiamPowell 2y agoWhat profits are you referring to given that they refunded everyone?
- fc417fc802 2y ago> legitimately purchased licenses Don't confuse an illegitimately purchased license with a legitimately purchased illegitimate license. This is the trouble with "licenses" instead of "items". If I purchase a bootleg book from a physical shop it's not getting clawed back later. The supplier might get in trouble, the physical shop might as well, but nothing is happening to the physical good that I purchased.
- otterley 2y agoWhat you’re buying is the right to consume someone’s hard work in quasi-perpetuity[1]. It’s not a tangible object, but it’s not nothing, either. That’s the essence of “intellectual property.” Most HNers are employed building things that their customers will never have tangible representations of. It’s how life is today. [1] technological or business limitations make promises of true perpetuity impossible as a practical matter today.
- NilMostChill 2y agoThe difference is most of those things aren't built with tangible, perpetual representations in mind. For literally all of the time that the written word has existed, if you bought a physical copy it was yours for whatever version of perpetuity you'd like to use. Of course libraries exist, as do rentals, but it's clearly understood what the deal is with such services. The specific issue i see here is that this is changing retroactively and without recourse, the ability to download a copy of the item you purchased, which was the deal at the time of purchase. If you buy anything from now on, however, knowing the details of the sale, that's on you.
- tw04 2y agoIt is also hopefully going to result in people going back to libraries. If Amazon is telling you that you can never own an ebook, why pay for it at all? Just borrow it from the local library for free.
- kelnos 2y agoI feel like the average person isn't going to think through the implications, or won't care, and will continue buying Kindle books. I wish more people were on the same page (heh) as us here when it comes to licensing vs. ownership, but I just don't believe that's the case.
- poisonborz 2y agoI never got this. Software is stored, bytes are a physicality, just more easily distributeable. They even have some measurable weight theoretically, with a similar attributed value like an artwork or book - that is subjective and hard to interpret.