Defective by Design is targeting the Kindle

[Nate the great]

Why they are doing it:

The Amazon kindle provides convenience, but at the cost of freedom. When you purchase a kindle, you must agree to use the Digital Restriction Management (DRM) system. Since all of the Kindle ebooks you purchase from Amazon are in their proprietary DRM format, you are also promising to not share them with friends. And, because you promise to not circumvent the DRM, there is no way to move them to another device or a computer. You are locked into the Kindle and you are locked into Amazon. If you try to move them to a new ebook reader or a computer, Amazon can end your service and remove access to the books you have already purchased.

It seems that Amazon only cares to oppose DRM when they can profit from it, such as when they advertise their MP3's as "Play Anywhere, DRM-Free Downloads." The same is not true for Kindle ebooks. Perhaps if they were honest they would advertise their ebooks as "Play Only Here, DRM-Laden Kindle Ebooks."

Many people will accept the restrictions that come with the Kindle, but, they should know that their decision won't only effect just themselves. If enough people accept the DRM on ebooks, there will be no incentive in the future for Amazon, or anybody else to offer non-DRM ebooks. We are threatened by the market establishing a new cultural precedence in which books become bound to our devices, unable to be shared, and unable to be moved over to a new device or competing system. We must reject DRM on ebooks and we must reject the Kindle. Please help us in letting people know that the Kindle it is nothing more than a swindle.

from:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/1097

So what do they want you to do?

Amazon.com, perhaps the largest internet retailer, has a system of "tagging" products on its US site. You can look at a product and add a tag that describes it. As products get tagged over and over again with a particular tag, that tag surfaces to the top of the list, and displays in larger text in some views. There is also a page for pictures and discussions of the tag.

Amazon makes it very easy to tag pages if you have javascript enabled.

* Go to a product page.
* Press "tt".
* Enter the tags: kindle swindle, defectivebydesign, drm

from:
http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/1096

I don't know about you, but when I read this I laughed my butt off.

[jharker]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

I don't know about you, but when I read this I laughed my but off.

Oh, yeah? When I read it, I laughed my and, or, so, if, as, and than off!


Sorry, couldn't resist.

[allen.gotwald]

I bought the Sony. The restrictions on the Kindle appear to be far more draconian than any supposed Sony limitations or restrictions. It could be that Amazon considered people would be more enamoured by the internet access than to the availability of retail e-book distribution.

It would seem the industry should be able to place some restriction on the distribution to inhibit gross copy right violation. I don't believe the intent is to make you a slave to Amazon as much as it is to prevent you from mass distributing their retail products. It is probably a requirement placed on Amazon by the respective book publishers in exchange for their permission to sell e-book versions of their texts.

It appears that Amazon, like Napster, has to sell their wholesale soul a bit in order to provide you with a broad product selection. Personally, I don't have a problem with some of the restrictions since I don't intend to mass distribute retail e-texts across the internet. The alternative to these restrictions is to stay with paper. I still prefer my e-reader, restrictions and all.

In fact, I just finished reading Baldacci's "Camel Club" on my Sony e-reader which I bought for 1/2 the price of the paperback without leaving my house and without having to pay retail taxes. Works for me.

[mrkai]

Originally Posted by allen.gotwald

Personally, I don't have a problem with some of the restrictions since I don't intend to mass distribute retail e-texts across the internet. The alternative to these restrictions is to stay with paper. I still prefer my e-reader, restrictions and all.

When sony's book store gos belly up like their music store, what then?

If your reader breaks and you buy another, you can't read the books you bought on the new one if they aren't there to authorize them.

If you don't have an intent of spreading your purchases across the internet, you think its ok to be treated as if you in fact had this intention?

Its like going into a store and having someone follow you thru the store, walking behind you because you *might* pocket something.

Most DRM'd products have very nasty riders on them that allow the sellers to retroactively change the terms on which you may enjoy your purchase, ex post facto.

In fact Apple has done this more than once with purchases from the iTMS.

But I guess if its cool with you...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by mrkai

When sony's book store gos belly up like their music store, what then?

If your reader breaks and you buy another, you can't read the books you bought on the new one if they aren't there to authorize them.

If you don't have an intent of spreading your purchases across the internet, you think its ok to be treated as if you in fact had this intention?

Its like going into a store and having someone follow you thru the store, walking behind you because you *might* pocket something.

Most DRM'd products have very nasty riders on them that allow the sellers to retroactively change the terms on which you may enjoy your purchase, ex post facto.

In fact Apple has done this more than once with purchases from the iTMS.

But I guess if its cool with you...

Amazon has screwed over ebook readers in the past. Amazon used to sell ebooks, but they decided to stop and when they did that, they remove all the ebook purchases from the account. So if anyone needed to redownload any f Amazon's ebook purchases, they could not and that is unfair.

Now, if Sony was to someday stop the Connect shop, purchases can be made in MS Reader format, DRM stripped and the content easily converted.

And all that stuff you said about DRM books applies to the Kindle as well. It's not just Sony and the Sony DRM, but the Kindle and the Kindle DRM as well.

The benefit of the Sony Reader over the Kindle is a BIG one. Because you HAVE to download your books via the computer, you HAVE them locally. I have a case that you cannot refute where this is aVERY GOOD thing.

The book The Color of Magic was available as an ebook for a very short time. Someone on this forum did purchase it for his 500. It was pulled no long after by the publisher. This user has the ebook on his hard drive. So it can be backed up and reloaded on to that 500 or read on that computer. Now, if this user had a Kindle and downloaded this ebook directly onto the Kindle and read it and then deleted it or didn't read it and deleted it to make room for something else, that user would not be able to get the ebook back as the publisher pulled it. But because Sony makes you download to your computer, you get an automatic copy that is not on the DER (digital ebook reader).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Defective By Design is going after the wrong thing, IMO. They shouldn't be targeting the Kindle... they should be targeting Amazon.

Kindle is really no different than an iPod, in that it plays e-book files, including DRM'd files from Amazon, and other imported files, and makes it hard to move them to another reader. For a lot of people, they will not have a problem with this arrangement.

However, that wouldn't be an issue AT ALL if Amazon allowed you to purchase their e-books and load them onto the device of your choice. I see this as the only defective part of this equation.

(For the record, iTunes has this same problem. Fortunately, there are a few tools and workarounds that allow you to get your iTunes music into devices besides iPods.)

Since I have no plans to purchase a Kindle for regular use, Amazon has effectively shut me out of their e-book market. That was not smart at all, as I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one to turn up my nose at Kindle.

[mrkai]

I believe there is a way to get what you buy on the kindle off the kindle.

I don't believe there is a way to read it tho, so its not quite as useful then.

And I'm not raging on the Kindle per se...I just think that consumers ought to know what it is, what they are agreeing to, and what it isn't, they are getting when they buy into the ecosystem.

[mrkai]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Defective By Design is going after the wrong thing, IMO. They shouldn't be targeting the Kindle... they should be targeting Amazon.

Kindle is really no different than an iPod, in that it plays e-book files, including DRM'd files from Amazon, and other imported files, and makes it hard to move them to another reader. For a lot of people, they will not have a problem with this arrangement.

However, that wouldn't be an issue AT ALL if Amazon allowed you to purchase their e-books and load them onto the device of your choice. I see this as the only defective part of this equation.

(For the record, iTunes has this same problem. Fortunately, there are a few tools and workarounds that allow you to get your iTunes music into devices besides iPods.)

Since I have no plans to purchase a Kindle for regular use, Amazon has effectively shut me out of their e-book market. That was not smart at all, as I'm pretty sure I won't be the only one to turn up my nose at Kindle.

On all of the above points.

The service is the issue and the terms thereof. It lessesn the value of the product and drives honest people into the grey when things go wrong.


Or the fact that you can't load your purchases onto anything else. Worse than Apple/iTMS in this regard; at least you can play your songs on a computer or burn them to CD Audio to play on a CD player. There is a limitation on this activity that Apple retroactively changed..but I'll leave that bit of slime alone

The "iPod of eBooks" line is really an inaccuracy; unlike iPods, the Kindle adds absolutely no value whatsoever to books you already have.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by mrkai

The "iPod of eBooks" line is really an inaccuracy; unlike iPods, the Kindle adds absolutely no value whatsoever to books you already have.

Well, you can still read non-Amazon e-books on it, on a nice e-ink screen... there is that. It still doesn't make up for the disadvantages of dealing through Amazon, though.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by mrkai

The "iPod of eBooks" line is really an inaccuracy; unlike iPods, the Kindle adds absolutely no value whatsoever to books you already have.

The Kindle does a heck of a lot that the Sony can't.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

But because Sony makes you download to your computer, you get an automatic copy that is not on the DER (digital ebook reader).

You *can* copy an AZW book from your Kindle to your memory card and to your PC and make backup this way. You can purchase book and have it delivered to your email and transfer it to the Kindle using USB cable. This is recommanded for people with non-existent or flaky Sprint coverage.

If I was the owner of Kindle I would make backups of any purchases.

[dugbug]

oh shees, more DRM freedom whiners. I don't buy ebooks as heirlooms. As it is I throw paperbacks away/donate them when im done anyway.

-d

[tsgreer]

Actually you can back up AZW files, just copy from the kindle to a memory card or your computer. I have backed up all my DRM'd AZW files. So if Amazon goes belly-up tomorrow, I still have my stuff.

Also I just don't get the Kindle vs Sony stuff. How is Kindle DRM any worse than Sony DRM?!?! I don't read a lot of DRM stuff anyway. Kindle does read txt files and non-drm'd mobi files.

So yeah, you COULD buy a .lit file, break it, convert it and read it on a Sony, but you can do the same exact thing on a Kindle. You can back up Sony DRM files, you can back up Kindle DRM files. You can convert almost anything to a non-DRM Sony file AND you can convert almost anything to a non-DRM Kindle file.

Sony would prefer you to buy only stuff from the Sony store. Amazon would prefer you to only buy stuff from the Amazon store. You can but you don't have to in both cases.

So I guess what I am saying is that I don't think you can argue that Sony DRM is better than Amazon DRM. And if you hate the DRM stuff, that's cool, but Sony prefers DRM just as much as Amazon prefers DRM.

Basically I think Sony and Kindle are the same thing except for the wireless and dictionary--I have both devices. I can see the arguments regarding looks, or which has prettier formatting--but the Sony DRM vs Amazon DRM is a moot point. They both want to "own" you.

People seem to be hating on the "amazon machine" but seriously, sony is the same way. I mean, I would think the Gen 3 and the Iliad are the winners when it comes to format wars. Saying that Sony's DRM policy is better than Amazon's DRM policy is just silly--the both suck if you hate DRM, they both are great if you love DRM.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by tsgreer

Actually you can back up AZW files, just copy from the kindle to a memory card or your computer. I have backed up all my DRM'd AZW files. So if Amazon goes belly-up tomorrow, I still have my stuff.

Also I just don't get the Kindle vs Sony stuff. How is Kindle DRM any worse than Sony DRM?!?! I don't read a lot of DRM stuff anyway. Kindle does read txt files and non-drm'd mobi files.

Basically the only difference between Sony DRM and Amazon DRM is the name of the company. As far as non-DRM content Sony is worse than Amazon but has been out long enough that third party (not from Sony) solutions exist and that tends to make it better in the eyes of many. This is due to the fact that it has been out more than a year, it is not as a result of Sony's efforts.

[tsgreer]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

....As far as non-DRM content Sony is worse than Amazon but has been out long enough that third party (not from Sony) solutions exist and that tends to make it better in the eyes of many. This is due to the fact that it has been out more than a year, it is not as a result of Sony's efforts.

Good point. I will say that I like Kovid's tools for creating content for the Sony better than Mobipocket creator. So I would love for him to come up with a wicked cool html2prc program.

But Mobipocket Creator isn't a bad program, just wish they had a Mac version as well.