9 ms·

Digital Comic Publisher Quits, Customers Lose All Their "Purchased" Titles

127 points by Daiz 14y ago

Daiz 14y ago
Yet another case that demonstrates that as long as DRM is involved (in this case, being restricted to online reading of titles only), you're never actually buying anything, merely renting them indefinitely. http://xkcd.com/488/ http://xkcd.com/488/ keeps being sadly relevant. It's also such a damn shame that genuine digital purchasing (as in, something that involves DRM-free downloads) is such a rarity outside the music industry. I just can't understand why every other industry (especially the video industry) thinks that offering DRM-free downloads would somehow kill them or whatever when digital music sales have only got better since the wide-scale ditching of DRM, especially since huge video files are much harder to share casually than small music files. There is value in the catalog subscription model that the likes of Netflix offers, but it should really have actual buying options available next to it (ideally, a service could combine both models - pay a lump sum for catalog streaming rights, then actually buy individual titles, and as a bonus, not only do you get DRM-free downloads, but you could also offer extras, formats that aren't possible with streaming, unlimited streaming rights for actually purchased titles since they have the available infrastructure for it, and so on).
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  I've been able to buy a lot of e-books without DRM (mostly tech books). But still, it is rather ridiculous, I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Maybe. Or perhaps people just give up and the corps get their way and all content is rented; and can only be accessed by devices with DNA biometrics. There will be niche boutique artists creating dead tree books of obscure short stories and bad poetry, for phenomenal pricing.
    - TillE 14y ago
      Big corporations don't even have a monopoly on multimillion dollar videogames (thanks to Kickstarter), let alone novels or nonfiction books which are typically produced by a small handful of people in a year or two. A dystopian DRM future is not impossible, but generally I think people do want to "own" things, and eventually we'll see digital goods treated as such legally.
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      Based solely on what seems to be a technological advantage to those who desire content to be un-DRMed, I'd say that scenario is very unlikely. At least not without an extensive world-wide police state enforcing it.
      - DanBC 14y ago
        For many years when I bought a console game I was able to sell that game when I'd finished with it. Japanese[1] companies were especially unhappy with the second-hand market, and took vigorous efforts to stop it. US companies are also keen to prevent this re-sale of games. Now many games are unable to be sold on. When I buy a DVD there is a clear benefit to me in being able to play that DVD in my player, no matter where I buy it. Yet DVDs are region locked. VHS tapes had Macrovision anti-copy signals; DVDs had region protections and CSS; BluRay has region protections and several layers of DRM; restrictions continue to get tighter, not more relaxed. Laws are also getting stricter. The 1996 WIPO treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty) led to the introduction of the DMCA and similar laws in other regions. (Circumventing technical protections is illegal under the DMCA but it's also illegal throughout Europe, with various difference in each country). I agree with "unlikely", but I'm not so sure about very unlikely. [1] Japanese companies have been doing this longest, since SNES times. I think, but I could be wrong, that they managed to make second hand sales of games illegal. Maybe they just wanted to do that?
  - porsupah 14y ago
    Though, we might also wind up in the scenario depicted in the satirical three minute short, "Welcome to Life".. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
  - coldtea 14y ago
    >I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad. Only if those people have progressed beyond capitalism and big corporations having control over laws.
- shmerl 14y ago
  Why, you are buying it. You just need to be diligent and back stuff up. And if DRM is not easily breakable - avoid buying it altogether. Publishers who use DRM can't be trusted, so backups should be a norm.
  - Fargren 14y ago
    DRM may be easy to break, but breaking it is illegal under the DMCA. And even if it's not a crime normally prosecuted, that's a very big problem.
    - shmerl 14y ago
      Even if it's illegal, society at large ignores it, and there is nothing practically wrong with ignoring it. Surely the right thing to do would be to nullify the 1201 section altogether, but currently it already makes unrealistic demands on reality and people simply don't consider this restriction valid.
      - Fargren 14y ago
        But the fact that it's illegal has wider implications than the prosecution of the infringing person. For example, it becomes hard to distribute tools to remove DRM, should someone build them. Thus, it is unfeasible that DRM removal could become commonplace, since everyone has to do it for himself, or make a big effort to get help. There can't be legal commercial incentives to help people solve this problem, and even if someone made a free good tool for that, it would be legally attacked if it became popular; that means it probably won't be solved.
        shmerl 14y ago
        Who said those incentives should be commercial. They probably should make a point not to be. But practically this usually happens with placing the tools outside the jurisdiction of DMCA. For example repositories that host libdvdcss are located outside US, since the whole purpose of libdvdcss is to remove DRM from DVDs to enable playing them in open source players (which is naturally 100% fair use - i.e. to view the legally purchased content). And it is widely used - all Linux users basically use it to watch their DVDs. The level of "mainstream" penetration of such tools will depend on the level of DRM penetration. The more DRM will be pushed on people, the more commonplace the circumvention tools will become. In practice however the developing trend tends to be to use less DRM in various areas, so circumvention tools are kind of not very widespread either.
- spc476 14y ago
  Copy protection has been a recurring problem since the early 80s. That's over thirty years. You'd think by now we would have learned our lesson, but I fear it will take another thirty before the powers-that-be start to question the wisdom of copy protection, and another thirty for them to give up.
JOnAgain 14y ago
The punchline: >> Is there a way to download the manga I have purchased? It is not possible to download manga from My Page. All digital manga content will no longer be viewable after May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time)
koide 14y ago
Companies should have the term "buying" forbidden if DRM is involved. (This page http://www.jmanga.com/hoshi-no-samidare-the-lucifer-and-biscuit-hammer/5 http://www.jmanga.com/hoshi-no-samidare-the-lucifer-and-bisc... is filled with "buy" this and that)
- hga 14y ago
  I'm inclined to agree ... but on the other hand, from reading the Anime News Network forum topic it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith and that the rug got pulled out from underneath them. You could effectively ban DRM that depends on active servers or schemes like this where the content is always kept on theirs' by requiring them to post a bond sufficient to refund the customers who've been screwed. Not the full amount, but enough to compensate for value promised but not delivered. It would be essentially declaring it is not in the public interest to allow companies to play these games, but here's a mechanism if you're really determined. Liability of some sort really needs to be established, and it would be wise for the companies playing these games to do something intelligent before extreme DRM becomes too toxic.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    At least in the US, the word "buy" should apply only to things subject to the right of first sale.
  - polemic 14y ago
    > "...it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith" I don't think that matters. They're not in good faith selling ownership, because they're not selling ownership.
  - clinth 14y ago
    Good faith means less when you're selling an ongoing service and accept money. When they promised an ongoing service to host purchases, they laid the rug out and stood on it.
- belorn 14y ago
sinak 14y ago
Just a quick plug for http://fixthedmca.org http://fixthedmca.org If you care about issues relating to DRM, please spare a few minutes and take action by tweeting at your Congressional representatives. Not only should owner's rights be protected, but people should have the right to circumvent DRM systems when there's no copyright infringement.
mikecane 14y ago
It will probably be unpopular to say so: But learn how to strip DRM. If you paid for it, you should own it.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  It wouldn't help in this situation, since you can't even download the stuff you bought[1]. Your "purchase" only got you on-line viewing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377617
  - gngeal 14y ago
    What about a caching proxy? You can't view it on your screen unless the browser downloads it anyway.
    - ShawnBird 14y ago
      Someone should make and distribute one before May 30th.
    - greenyoda 14y ago
      It could be something like a streaming Flash video, which the browser never has a complete copy of.
      - WalterSear 14y ago
        Streamloaded flash video is stupid simple to grab. On windows, navigate to: Users\USER\AppData\Local\temp\acro_rd_dir And create a >hard< symbolic link for the .tmp file you will find there, renaming it to .flv . I am sure, on a mac, the location name is similar. Close the browser window, the tmp file will be deleted and the flv will no longer be locked for access, and is now yours. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/ http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbo...
      - gngeal 14y ago
jiggy2011 14y ago
The purchasers are issued a refund in the form of a gift card. So, if you purchased it and DRM stripped it then you get to keep the comic and get the refund! Edit: Looks like you don't The point I am more worried about here is that we are actually reliant to an extent on piracy and DRM stripping in order to preserve abandoned works.
- Tcepsa 14y ago
  The refund appears to only apply to "Unused JManga Paid Points". If you used your points to <strike>buy</strike> license manga, you will not be getting a refund for them. (edited to replace "buy" with "license")
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  This is a big problem with the web as well (the transfer of data may be distributed and redundant but the hosting of it is not).
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    True, but at least with the web we have archive.org and other archiving efforts. With DRMd ebooks there are legal and technical measures in effect to try and prevent archiving.
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      Archive.org is great but it's at best a very, very incomplete solution to a huge problem.
      - jiggy2011 14y ago
        That's true, but physical archiving has it's challenges too. I think there's an important difference between something being hard because it is and something being deliberately made more difficult that it needs to be.
- ChrisClark 14y ago
DanBC 14y ago
How does the DMCA handle cases like this? Are you allowed to rip the protection to keep access to something you've "bought"? Or is that circumvention and thus a criminal offence?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  It is circumvention and it is illegal. There are only 6 allowed exemptions to the rule as of the last rulemaking, and making backup copies is not one of them, no matter the situation. The only exemption that exists for DRM-protected ebooks is to make stripping that DRM legal when no version of the ebook compatible with screen readers or read-aloud functions exists, so that the visually impaired can access the text.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    What about it simply being fair use? Scraping DRM for personal backup is well within it.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
      - shmerl 14y ago
        >DMCA circumvention clause makes many types of fair use illegal. > If you make a personal backup by circumventing digital access controls, you are not violating copyright but you are violating the DMCA; you are committing a crime. It looks to me like self contradicting laws then. How are such cases legally resolved i.e. when law A directly contradicts law B? Fair use says it's legal. DMCA says it's illegal. What is correct then? And fair use is not a "defense". It's a description of lawful legal actions which aren't affected by restrictions granted in limited monopoly of copyright to begin with.
        deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]
cmorgan8506 14y ago
Friend of mine runs something similar. http://www.thefabler.com/ http://www.thefabler.com/
- kefka 14y ago
  If your friend uses strong DRM and/or uses cloud based "purchasing" to keep users from possessing the bought files, I hope he fails. The last thing I want is more DRM peddlers catering to people who aren't in the know about every tech nuance out there. So yes, it can he unduly harsh. But in our legal environment (with little recourse), drm providers almost always deserve it. An exception to that is companies that sell "drm" servers to authenticate that only X licenses of software are used at one time. License compliance is another drain on innovation, but can be effective in keeping legit in compliance.
shmerl 14y ago
Another reason to backup all your purchases from the "cloud" services, scraping off any DRM from them first.
unsignedint 14y ago
Ah... JManga... I didn't think this place was the best example of electronic publishing to begin with. Their page structure was very misleading, too. They had some "informative" page, that is unavailable to "buy" and such. The idea of the service it was actually interesting, and they perhaps had a better chance if it was all-you-can-eat subscription model as opposed to retailing. A bit of shame especially after coming into the market with big fanfare of how all Japanese publishers joined the force making this possible... (and, it is plausible whole business model was dictated by influences of those publishers.)
RexRollman 14y ago
The problem is that there are no consumer protections built into DRM law. People should never be locked out of their content. In my opinon, JManga should be forced to continue to support their authentication systems or be forced to permanently unlock the content.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  The problem is, how do you define DRM vs just a regular online service? If I launch a web-app for example I don't necessarily want to have to support it forever.
  - pifflesnort 14y ago
    This is, at its core, the problem with webapps.
    - coldtea 14y ago
      Really? How is it any different from: a) regular proprietary apps. b) regular open source apps that they don't have a community to continue them after the original coders lose interest, and you don't know enough programming to support them nor have the money to pay someone to work on them?
      - kevingadd 14y ago
        b) is like saying 'how is this any different from a car if you drive it until it runs out of gas, and then push it into the ocean, and then wait until it rusts from being under the water, and then you forget where it is?' Yes, of course it is possible to deny yourself the ability to view content, use software, or access goods that you have purchased. That is beside the point, which is that webapps are inherently transient - unless you have access to the ability to configure and run your own server to host the application, the ability to use it can be revoked at any time, either through malice, negligence, or the regular operation of business. There are numerous examples of all three categories. This is, in fact, worse than proprietary software. At least with proprietary software (DRM/authentication notwithstanding), you have an executable, and it works on the machine you have right now. VM software like VMWare allows you to preserve a particular software configuration indefinitely if you wish, and access that software as long as you like.
ehmuidifici 14y ago
So let's change the title: instead of "Digital Comic Publisher", put "Steam", "Sony" or EA. DRM is the 21th century worst trap of all and we must stop it from spreading.
rcfox 14y ago
For what it's worth, it looks like the preview books simply have every byte XOR'd with 0x42, and you can see the image requests coming in on the Network tab of the Chrome developer tools while you're in the Flash-based reader. (I can't say for sure if the previously-for-sale books have the same scheme though.) I doubt that this will reach the eyes of most of the users being screwed by the DRM though...
johnrgrace 14y ago
What has me puzzled is why they didn't try and sell their usebase, I'd be willing to make a modest offer. But now that they've gone off really pissed off their customers the value of that asset just dropped like a rock.

127 points by Daiz 14y ago

Daiz 14y ago

Yet another case that demonstrates that as long as DRM is involved (in this case, being restricted to online reading of titles only), you're never actually buying anything, merely renting them indefinitely. http://xkcd.com/488/ http://xkcd.com/488/ keeps being sadly relevant. It's also such a damn shame that genuine digital purchasing (as in, something that involves DRM-free downloads) is such a rarity outside the music industry. I just can't understand why every other industry (especially the video industry) thinks that offering DRM-free downloads would somehow kill them or whatever when digital music sales have only got better since the wide-scale ditching of DRM, especially since huge video files are much harder to share casually than small music files. There is value in the catalog subscription model that the likes of Netflix offers, but it should really have actual buying options available next to it (ideally, a service could combine both models - pay a lump sum for catalog streaming rights, then actually buy individual titles, and as a bonus, not only do you get DRM-free downloads, but you could also offer extras, formats that aren't possible with streaming, unlimited streaming rights for actually purchased titles since they have the available infrastructure for it, and so on).

InclinedPlane 14y ago
I've been able to buy a lot of e-books without DRM (mostly tech books). But still, it is rather ridiculous, I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Maybe. Or perhaps people just give up and the corps get their way and all content is rented; and can only be accessed by devices with DNA biometrics. There will be niche boutique artists creating dead tree books of obscure short stories and bad poetry, for phenomenal pricing.
  - TillE 14y ago
    Big corporations don't even have a monopoly on multimillion dollar videogames (thanks to Kickstarter), let alone novels or nonfiction books which are typically produced by a small handful of people in a year or two. A dystopian DRM future is not impossible, but generally I think people do want to "own" things, and eventually we'll see digital goods treated as such legally.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Based solely on what seems to be a technological advantage to those who desire content to be un-DRMed, I'd say that scenario is very unlikely. At least not without an extensive world-wide police state enforcing it.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      For many years when I bought a console game I was able to sell that game when I'd finished with it. Japanese[1] companies were especially unhappy with the second-hand market, and took vigorous efforts to stop it. US companies are also keen to prevent this re-sale of games. Now many games are unable to be sold on. When I buy a DVD there is a clear benefit to me in being able to play that DVD in my player, no matter where I buy it. Yet DVDs are region locked. VHS tapes had Macrovision anti-copy signals; DVDs had region protections and CSS; BluRay has region protections and several layers of DRM; restrictions continue to get tighter, not more relaxed. Laws are also getting stricter. The 1996 WIPO treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty) led to the introduction of the DMCA and similar laws in other regions. (Circumventing technical protections is illegal under the DMCA but it's also illegal throughout Europe, with various difference in each country). I agree with "unlikely", but I'm not so sure about very unlikely. [1] Japanese companies have been doing this longest, since SNES times. I think, but I could be wrong, that they managed to make second hand sales of games illegal. Maybe they just wanted to do that?
- porsupah 14y ago
  Though, we might also wind up in the scenario depicted in the satirical three minute short, "Welcome to Life".. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
- coldtea 14y ago
  >I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad. Only if those people have progressed beyond capitalism and big corporations having control over laws.
shmerl 14y ago
Why, you are buying it. You just need to be diligent and back stuff up. And if DRM is not easily breakable - avoid buying it altogether. Publishers who use DRM can't be trusted, so backups should be a norm.
- Fargren 14y ago
  DRM may be easy to break, but breaking it is illegal under the DMCA. And even if it's not a crime normally prosecuted, that's a very big problem.
  - shmerl 14y ago
    Even if it's illegal, society at large ignores it, and there is nothing practically wrong with ignoring it. Surely the right thing to do would be to nullify the 1201 section altogether, but currently it already makes unrealistic demands on reality and people simply don't consider this restriction valid.
    - Fargren 14y ago
      But the fact that it's illegal has wider implications than the prosecution of the infringing person. For example, it becomes hard to distribute tools to remove DRM, should someone build them. Thus, it is unfeasible that DRM removal could become commonplace, since everyone has to do it for himself, or make a big effort to get help. There can't be legal commercial incentives to help people solve this problem, and even if someone made a free good tool for that, it would be legally attacked if it became popular; that means it probably won't be solved.
      - shmerl 14y ago
        Who said those incentives should be commercial. They probably should make a point not to be. But practically this usually happens with placing the tools outside the jurisdiction of DMCA. For example repositories that host libdvdcss are located outside US, since the whole purpose of libdvdcss is to remove DRM from DVDs to enable playing them in open source players (which is naturally 100% fair use - i.e. to view the legally purchased content). And it is widely used - all Linux users basically use it to watch their DVDs. The level of "mainstream" penetration of such tools will depend on the level of DRM penetration. The more DRM will be pushed on people, the more commonplace the circumvention tools will become. In practice however the developing trend tends to be to use less DRM in various areas, so circumvention tools are kind of not very widespread either.
spc476 14y ago
Copy protection has been a recurring problem since the early 80s. That's over thirty years. You'd think by now we would have learned our lesson, but I fear it will take another thirty before the powers-that-be start to question the wisdom of copy protection, and another thirty for them to give up.

JOnAgain 14y ago

The punchline: >> Is there a way to download the manga I have purchased? It is not possible to download manga from My Page. All digital manga content will no longer be viewable after May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time)

koide 14y ago

Companies should have the term "buying" forbidden if DRM is involved. (This page http://www.jmanga.com/hoshi-no-samidare-the-lucifer-and-biscuit-hammer/5 http://www.jmanga.com/hoshi-no-samidare-the-lucifer-and-bisc... is filled with "buy" this and that)

hga 14y ago
I'm inclined to agree ... but on the other hand, from reading the Anime News Network forum topic it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith and that the rug got pulled out from underneath them. You could effectively ban DRM that depends on active servers or schemes like this where the content is always kept on theirs' by requiring them to post a bond sufficient to refund the customers who've been screwed. Not the full amount, but enough to compensate for value promised but not delivered. It would be essentially declaring it is not in the public interest to allow companies to play these games, but here's a mechanism if you're really determined. Liability of some sort really needs to be established, and it would be wise for the companies playing these games to do something intelligent before extreme DRM becomes too toxic.
- rhizome 14y ago
  At least in the US, the word "buy" should apply only to things subject to the right of first sale.
- polemic 14y ago
  > "...it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith" I don't think that matters. They're not in good faith selling ownership, because they're not selling ownership.
- clinth 14y ago
  Good faith means less when you're selling an ongoing service and accept money. When they promised an ongoing service to host purchases, they laid the rug out and stood on it.
belorn 14y ago

sinak 14y ago

Just a quick plug for http://fixthedmca.org http://fixthedmca.org If you care about issues relating to DRM, please spare a few minutes and take action by tweeting at your Congressional representatives. Not only should owner's rights be protected, but people should have the right to circumvent DRM systems when there's no copyright infringement.

mikecane 14y ago

It will probably be unpopular to say so: But learn how to strip DRM. If you paid for it, you should own it.

greenyoda 14y ago
It wouldn't help in this situation, since you can't even download the stuff you bought[1]. Your "purchase" only got you on-line viewing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377617
- gngeal 14y ago
  What about a caching proxy? You can't view it on your screen unless the browser downloads it anyway.
  - ShawnBird 14y ago
    Someone should make and distribute one before May 30th.
  - greenyoda 14y ago
    It could be something like a streaming Flash video, which the browser never has a complete copy of.
    - WalterSear 14y ago
      Streamloaded flash video is stupid simple to grab. On windows, navigate to: Users\USER\AppData\Local\temp\acro_rd_dir And create a >hard< symbolic link for the .tmp file you will find there, renaming it to .flv . I am sure, on a mac, the location name is similar. Close the browser window, the tmp file will be deleted and the flv will no longer be locked for access, and is now yours. http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbolic-links-symlinks-on-windows-or-linux/ http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/16226/complete-guide-to-symbo...
    - gngeal 14y ago

jiggy2011 14y ago

The purchasers are issued a refund in the form of a gift card. So, if you purchased it and DRM stripped it then you get to keep the comic and get the refund! Edit: Looks like you don't The point I am more worried about here is that we are actually reliant to an extent on piracy and DRM stripping in order to preserve abandoned works.

Tcepsa 14y ago
The refund appears to only apply to "Unused JManga Paid Points". If you used your points to <strike>buy</strike> license manga, you will not be getting a refund for them. (edited to replace "buy" with "license")
InclinedPlane 14y ago
This is a big problem with the web as well (the transfer of data may be distributed and redundant but the hosting of it is not).
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  True, but at least with the web we have archive.org and other archiving efforts. With DRMd ebooks there are legal and technical measures in effect to try and prevent archiving.
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    Archive.org is great but it's at best a very, very incomplete solution to a huge problem.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      That's true, but physical archiving has it's challenges too. I think there's an important difference between something being hard because it is and something being deliberately made more difficult that it needs to be.
ChrisClark 14y ago

DanBC 14y ago

How does the DMCA handle cases like this? Are you allowed to rip the protection to keep access to something you've "bought"? Or is that circumvention and thus a criminal offence?

dangrossman 14y ago
It is circumvention and it is illegal. There are only 6 allowed exemptions to the rule as of the last rulemaking, and making backup copies is not one of them, no matter the situation. The only exemption that exists for DRM-protected ebooks is to make stripping that DRM legal when no version of the ebook compatible with screen readers or read-aloud functions exists, so that the visually impaired can access the text.
- shmerl 14y ago
  What about it simply being fair use? Scraping DRM for personal backup is well within it.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - shmerl 14y ago
      >DMCA circumvention clause makes many types of fair use illegal. > If you make a personal backup by circumventing digital access controls, you are not violating copyright but you are violating the DMCA; you are committing a crime. It looks to me like self contradicting laws then. How are such cases legally resolved i.e. when law A directly contradicts law B? Fair use says it's legal. DMCA says it's illegal. What is correct then? And fair use is not a "defense". It's a description of lawful legal actions which aren't affected by restrictions granted in limited monopoly of copyright to begin with.
      - deleted 14y ago
        [deleted]

cmorgan8506 14y ago

Friend of mine runs something similar. http://www.thefabler.com/ http://www.thefabler.com/

kefka 14y ago
If your friend uses strong DRM and/or uses cloud based "purchasing" to keep users from possessing the bought files, I hope he fails. The last thing I want is more DRM peddlers catering to people who aren't in the know about every tech nuance out there. So yes, it can he unduly harsh. But in our legal environment (with little recourse), drm providers almost always deserve it. An exception to that is companies that sell "drm" servers to authenticate that only X licenses of software are used at one time. License compliance is another drain on innovation, but can be effective in keeping legit in compliance.

shmerl 14y ago

Another reason to backup all your purchases from the "cloud" services, scraping off any DRM from them first.

unsignedint 14y ago

Ah... JManga... I didn't think this place was the best example of electronic publishing to begin with. Their page structure was very misleading, too. They had some "informative" page, that is unavailable to "buy" and such. The idea of the service it was actually interesting, and they perhaps had a better chance if it was all-you-can-eat subscription model as opposed to retailing. A bit of shame especially after coming into the market with big fanfare of how all Japanese publishers joined the force making this possible... (and, it is plausible whole business model was dictated by influences of those publishers.)

RexRollman 14y ago

The problem is that there are no consumer protections built into DRM law. People should never be locked out of their content. In my opinon, JManga should be forced to continue to support their authentication systems or be forced to permanently unlock the content.

jiggy2011 14y ago
The problem is, how do you define DRM vs just a regular online service? If I launch a web-app for example I don't necessarily want to have to support it forever.
- pifflesnort 14y ago
  This is, at its core, the problem with webapps.
  - coldtea 14y ago
    Really? How is it any different from: a) regular proprietary apps. b) regular open source apps that they don't have a community to continue them after the original coders lose interest, and you don't know enough programming to support them nor have the money to pay someone to work on them?
    - kevingadd 14y ago
      b) is like saying 'how is this any different from a car if you drive it until it runs out of gas, and then push it into the ocean, and then wait until it rusts from being under the water, and then you forget where it is?' Yes, of course it is possible to deny yourself the ability to view content, use software, or access goods that you have purchased. That is beside the point, which is that webapps are inherently transient - unless you have access to the ability to configure and run your own server to host the application, the ability to use it can be revoked at any time, either through malice, negligence, or the regular operation of business. There are numerous examples of all three categories. This is, in fact, worse than proprietary software. At least with proprietary software (DRM/authentication notwithstanding), you have an executable, and it works on the machine you have right now. VM software like VMWare allows you to preserve a particular software configuration indefinitely if you wish, and access that software as long as you like.

ehmuidifici 14y ago

So let's change the title: instead of "Digital Comic Publisher", put "Steam", "Sony" or EA. DRM is the 21th century worst trap of all and we must stop it from spreading.

rcfox 14y ago

For what it's worth, it looks like the preview books simply have every byte XOR'd with 0x42, and you can see the image requests coming in on the Network tab of the Chrome developer tools while you're in the Flash-based reader. (I can't say for sure if the previously-for-sale books have the same scheme though.) I doubt that this will reach the eyes of most of the users being screwed by the DRM though...

johnrgrace 14y ago

What has me puzzled is why they didn't try and sell their usebase, I'd be willing to make a modest offer. But now that they've gone off really pissed off their customers the value of that asset just dropped like a rock.