8 ms·

I'm a fairly happy Kindle owner, but the DRM is the biggest source of my dissatisfaction. I'd like to share my books with my wife (who has her own Kindle and Am

by hexis 17y ago

I'm a fairly happy Kindle owner, but the DRM is the biggest source of my dissatisfaction. I'd like to share my books with my wife (who has her own Kindle and Amazon account), but the DRM doesn't allow that. I'd like to read my books on my other devices (laptop, etc) but the DRM doesn't allow that. Of course, I knew those limitations when I got the Kindle and the books, but they are still limitations that bug me. What my Kindle experience, in contrast to the DRM-free MP3's I buy from Amazon.com, etc., is teaching me is that even having the burden of learning the particular policies of a particular DRM scheme might be too much work for me. With my MP3's, I share them with my wife, burn them to CD's for the car, listen to them on all my devices, etc and so forth. I do not put them on file-sharing networks of any kind and never would. The same would be true of books. So, ultimately, the device limits mentioned in the blog post is not even that big of a deal. Ultimately the problem is in the fact that DRMed ownership is a sort of negotiated ownership, and that by its nature makes it harder work and probably unsatisfying.

dgallagher 17y ago
This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon MP3's. Amazon needs a hook to get publishers to trust the device. If it gains mass appeal you'll probably see the DRM fade away.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  It's much harder. E-books don't have a huge analog loophole.
  - khafra 17y ago
    Like a photocopier/scanner?
    - JoelSutherland 17y ago
      No, not like a photocopier/scanner. A song with DRM can be played and rerecorded in real time. So ~4 minutes a song. This can also happen without human intervention. A book can be scanned in hours at best, with a human involved the whole time. (I am sure there is specialty hardware that can do this, but that isn't quite the same a a commodity PC)
      - 0x44 17y ago
        http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-... According to the author of the above instructable, it takes about 20 minutes to scan a book.
        ramchip 17y ago
        Still requires a lot more hardware and work than for music, but I must admit I've been surprised by the (obviously hand-scanned) books you can find sometimes on the net. Sometimes people are willing to go the extra mile...
        0x44 17y ago
        In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and $300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.
      - natrius 17y ago
        The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Write a script to take screenshots and page through the book. Bonus points for OCR. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?
        mikedouglas 17y ago
        The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Nope. The iphone simulator doesn't emulate the ARM architecture, so even if you cracked the app store drm, you'd need to run it on an actual device. For something to run in the simulator, it would need to be compiled to i386.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      Exactly. Laboriously scanning a whole book is far more effort than ripping a CD.
    - bartl 17y ago
      One loophole is that the contents for most books is plain text. I remember having read that within days after some Harry Potter books were available in bookshops, they were already available in electronic form, retyped by dozens of volunteers. (for example: http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-20-summit/ http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-...)
      - furyg3 17y ago
        Some were even translated... amazing.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    Who uses the analog loophole anymore? Do what modern audio DRM stripping utils do and take the output of the document before it leaves the computer and programmatically re-assemble it. The eBook version of this would be creating a program that scrolls around the page area taking screen shots and reassembling them.
  - graphene 17y ago
    Even if the loophole for books is smaller, the point is, it only has to be applied once by anyone anywhere, after which it can be shared freely like any other non-DRM'ed file. I'm not convinced that the total amount of internet sharing of a work is decreased too much by the fact that is was in a physical form to start with.

by hexis 17y ago

dgallagher 17y ago

This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon MP3's. Amazon needs a hook to get publishers to trust the device. If it gains mass appeal you'll probably see the DRM fade away.

rbanffy 17y ago
It's much harder. E-books don't have a huge analog loophole.
- khafra 17y ago
  Like a photocopier/scanner?
  - JoelSutherland 17y ago
    No, not like a photocopier/scanner. A song with DRM can be played and rerecorded in real time. So ~4 minutes a song. This can also happen without human intervention. A book can be scanned in hours at best, with a human involved the whole time. (I am sure there is specialty hardware that can do this, but that isn't quite the same a a commodity PC)
    - 0x44 17y ago
      http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-Trash-and-Cheap-C/ http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-... According to the author of the above instructable, it takes about 20 minutes to scan a book.
      - ramchip 17y ago
        Still requires a lot more hardware and work than for music, but I must admit I've been surprised by the (obviously hand-scanned) books you can find sometimes on the net. Sometimes people are willing to go the extra mile...
        0x44 17y ago
        In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and $300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.
    - natrius 17y ago
      The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Write a script to take screenshots and page through the book. Bonus points for OCR. Is there a reason this wouldn't work?
      - mikedouglas 17y ago
        The Kindle app can run in the emulator, right? Nope. The iphone simulator doesn't emulate the ARM architecture, so even if you cracked the app store drm, you'd need to run it on an actual device. For something to run in the simulator, it would need to be compiled to i386.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    Exactly. Laboriously scanning a whole book is far more effort than ripping a CD.
  - bartl 17y ago
    One loophole is that the contents for most books is plain text. I remember having read that within days after some Harry Potter books were available in bookshops, they were already available in electronic form, retyped by dozens of volunteers. (for example: http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-20-summit/ http://chrishall.wordpress.com/2006/03/17/link-list-reading-...)
    - furyg3 17y ago
      Some were even translated... amazing.
- ynniv 17y ago
  Who uses the analog loophole anymore? Do what modern audio DRM stripping utils do and take the output of the document before it leaves the computer and programmatically re-assemble it. The eBook version of this would be creating a program that scrolls around the page area taking screen shots and reassembling them.
- graphene 17y ago
  Even if the loophole for books is smaller, the point is, it only has to be applied once by anyone anywhere, after which it can be shared freely like any other non-DRM'ed file. I'm not convinced that the total amount of internet sharing of a work is decreased too much by the fact that is was in a physical form to start with.