DRM confusion

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Jellby

For all the books I have created in mobi and ePUB format, the ePUB version is the smaller, most of the stuff being the same (particularly image sizes). Is that not being better?

Most versions I see, the mobi is smaller than the epub. (Maybe they're usually leaving out the cover pic, or using a lower resolution one? Or not putting links/formatting in the mobi?) I admit I haven't experimented; I didn't like mobi when I used a PDA (much prefered ereader PDB), and if epub with the same content is smaller, then wow, Mobi's got nothing in its favor but popularity. (I'm not claiming popularity is irrelevant, but it doesn't say much for the long-term sustainability of the format.)

I don't think epub will be notably "better" for most people until someone comes up with a device that's good for textbooks, though. While a few people really do care about the difference between 10 pt verdana in dot-letters on a computer screen and actual typography, most aren't going to notice differences between the formats until one of them supports tables, charts, and cross-document links and the other doesn't.

[FF2]

I would guess that one main difference (and it probably has already been stated) between music/cd's and ebooks is that folks did not want to get forced into purchasing whole "albums" and folks like to create their own mixes of single tracks or random tracks.

That is certainly not the case with ebooks - it pretty much is all or nothing unless it is a short-story book or book of essays. There is no discrete $0.99 chapter.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Kitabi

PDF and other textbook formats are not that great on eBook readers if you can get them at all. Plus the editing and typesetting on a lot of these books tend to be atrocious so running them through Calibre/other tools is a waste of time unless you are that desperate to read the book.

Some yes, some no. Some of the pirate versions are higher quality than the commercial ones.

Most aren't, but it's less because "people are lazy" than because there's no particular reward, not even social points, for being meticulous about bootleg ebooks. There's no way to indicate, "this one is carefully crafted to look great in your ebook reader" the way that books here at Mobileread can. There's no way to pull the lousy first-version OCR-with-errors version out of the sharing pool. There's no way to legitimately promote the better versions, and a lot of proofreaders/formatters would prefer to save their time-consuming work for stuff that can be openly shared--Gutenberg's Open Proofreaders, or doing new versions of Creative Commons works that were released in PDF, and so on.

I have seen books which look as if they were typed in by someone learning to type. Very different from a ripped cd. CD/DVD drives and sofware are more widespread than OCR's and scanning a pbook is much more tedious than ripping a disk.

So far, yes. But 30 years ago, photocopying was done at huge, expensive machines that only offices could afford; now you can have a $60 box at your desk that copies papers. (And scans. Badly.) In another couple of decades, we may have achieved "flip through this book in front of the camera & it'll convert to ebook."

For the moment, I remain unconvinced that the publishers are under the same kind of pressure that the recording industry was under.

The recording industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. A "gold" record has sold a million copies. Top-selling albums sell 10 million copies or more; it takes 20 million to make Wikipedia's records page. The book industry deals with much, much smaller numbers... Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows set publishing history with 12 million books printed for its first run.

Best-selling records count their millions of sales. Best-selling books count thousands. Oh, maybe tens of thousands... but only a handful of authors on the planet can expect to sell books by the million. *Any* popular band could jump to a million in record sales.

The publishing industries have always been scrabbling to balance cost of creation (author's work) vs cost of production (printing & distribution) vs how much the public will pay. Ebooks threaten the delicate balancing act they've put together; they're under a great deal more economic threat from ebook filesharing than the RIAA is from Napster.

[Selcien]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thanks, I did know that Amazon allows returns. Also, I guess if a sample chapter can be converted, the whole book can be converted. But it's just an unnecessary hassle and easier to shop at a store that wants my business.

Samples are DRM free so that won't work and it takes too much effort besides.

The easy way to check the format is to get a sample using the "Transfer via Computer" method, select the device that you'll be transferring to, and then you'll get a pop up window telling you what the format is (the format for the sample is the same as the format for the full version), you don't even need to download it, you can just cancel out of it if you want once you find out what the format is.

Originally Posted by KevinH

in many cases the it prevents the ability for the device to read the book out loud for the deaf, and etc.

You obviously meant blind, not deaf, but in this particular case there is an exception. If there are no available versions of an e-book that has TTS enabled, a person that needs that feature to allow the e-book to be usable can legally crack the DRM to enable TTS.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Selcien

Samples are DRM free so that won't work and it takes too much effort besides.

The easy way to check the format is to get a sample using the "Transfer via Computer" method, select the device that you'll be transferring to, and then you'll get a pop up window telling you what the format is (the format for the sample is the same as the format for the full version), you don't even need to download it, you can just cancel out of it if you want once you find out what the format is.

???

The only way I know of to download a file from Amazon is 1-Click--what is this Transfer via Computer method?

[Selcien]

Originally Posted by Catlady

???

The only way I know of to download a file from Amazon is 1-Click--what is this Transfer via Computer method?

Below the "Send sample now" button is a "deliver to:" option box, it'll list the devices you have registered to your account first, and then it'll have the "Transfer via Computer".

So you'll want it to say.

"deliver to:

Transfer via Computer"

and then you press the "Send sample now" button. You'll be taken to another page, on that page you select the registered device you want to send it to (you can go with the default setting) and hit the "continue" button, that's when you'll get the pop up showing the format.

It should be noted that I'm not capable of running the Kindle 4PC app, I keep getting an error that forces it to close, so I have no way of knowing whether you'll get the "Transfer via Computer" option if the PC app is your only registered device.

[Catlady]

Thanks. I do have the Kindle for PC registered, and my only options are to send to that app, or to register another Kindle. (I only have that single Kindle app.) So that must be why my options are different.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy
It is covered by circumvention of copy protection schemes, which trumps any "fair use" laws you might have in your country. The entertainment industry paid a lot of money for those laws, so they are here to stay.

Originally Posted by BWhite

No. As someone who has served on a jury there is no 'trumps' in US of A courts. The REALITY is that if you have paid for the book the entertainment industry will tell you that you have broken the law and then your lawyer will advise you that no one is going to take you to court as long as YOU DO NOT DISTRIBUTE.

The author/publisher of the book are not going to go to trial because they have to toss the dice with a jury; with you having paid for the book and only stripped the DRM for personal use - pretty sure 99% of authors/publishers do not want to go up against those kind of odds during a trial.

And you are correct, the Entertainment Industry paid a lot of money for those laws (mainly the DMCA) and to take folks to court for only stripping off the DRM would ultimately just result in shortening the life of those laws. At least in the US of A with its saga of Prohibition.

The vast majority of juries, judges, congressmen are not going to fill up U.S. prisons with DRM Strippers. It even reads silly as I type it. Not going to happen.

I think that Mr. P's point is that the practical effect of the DRM laws is to trump fair use. He's absolutely right about that.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by speedlever

So by this, I would infer that I could legally use Calibre to strip DRM from library ebooks to read on the K3? But just not strip DRM from purchased books? (why would I want to?)

I think you have that backwards.

In the US, you can legally strip DRM from purchased books. What you can't do is distribute the software to do it with, or the liberated ebook after you have done it. The reason you can do this is that when you work your way through the law about DRM, it turns out that the one thing that has not been made a violation is stripping DRM from an ebook that you have bought.

Amazon, Sony et. al. might try to convince you that you are only licensing the ebook, but the technical legal term for that argument is "baloney."

But a library book might be a different matter, because you do not own the ebook. The library does. The intent of the law is to prevent the unauthorized distribution of ebooks. Arguably, you are violating the law by distributing the library's book to yourself in unDRMed form when you strip the DRM. The answer could go either way, though.

As a practical matter, of course, if you can strip the DRM, and just use it on your own EBR, who's gonna know in either circumstance? And in my view, when you do that with a library book, you are just extending the lending period.

The practical problem is that it is illegal for anyone to distribute the software TO you so that you can do the stripping.

But if you have a tender conscience about all this, strip the DRM from your purchased ebooks with no concern, but leave the library ebooks alone. At least, in the US.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by Catlady

They're locking in customers, but they're also locking out customers. Now that I've bought a non-Kindle, they don't want my business anymore.

But that's not really true. Amazon has lots of ways for you to read their books on other devices - just not on other EBRs.

Personally, I don't use my iPad as an EBR, but for a while I did, & the Kindle App is what I used in preference to my dedicated EBRs or any other iPad app. A lot of that had to do with being able to also read it on my iPhone, of course, but some of it was the ease of using Amazon to buy ebooks.

I'm not entirely sure that the ebook retailers/publishers are trying to lock out readers. Nor am I sure that they are trying to make their proprietary EBRs necessary to reading their ebooks, although I wouldn't rule that motive out.

What I think is that they really really believe that DRM is good, and accomplishes its purpose of preventing piracy & copying. Any other reason is secondary.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Harmon

But that's not really true. Amazon has lots of ways for you to read their books on other devices - just not on other EBRs.

But why not? Why does BN, for example, allow me to read on other devices, including non-Nook readers (like my Jetbook Lite), while Amazon does not? The end result is that Amazon loses my business. That's fine with me, but I don't understand their business logic. Instead of simply losing me as a Kindle buyer, they lose me as a book buyer. And it's not just for e-books--now I am finding myself going to Amazon less, which means I'm not seeing their targeted recommendations for other items as well.

Originally Posted by Harmon

I'm not entirely sure that the ebook retailers/publishers are trying to lock out readers. Nor am I sure that they are trying to make their proprietary EBRs necessary to reading their ebooks, although I wouldn't rule that motive out.

What I think is that they really really believe that DRM is good, and accomplishes its purpose of preventing piracy & copying. Any other reason is secondary.

I don't know WHAT they think they're doing. I am not a techie by any means, and if I could learn how to get around it with a few Google searches, surely DRM is not stopping anyone bent on large-scale piracy. So what is the point?

[DiapDealer]

surely DRM is not stopping anyone bent on large-scale piracy

DRM is not stopping piracy, period. Large, medium, or small scale. DRM doesn't even hinder the weekend pirate.

The only thing DRM does is annoy honest people who don't understand why they can't move an ebook they purchased to any device they want.

[Ken Maltby]

I think that DRM is an accommodation to some of the various complex and competing
components of the publishing system. Some want it, some don't want it, many could
care less. I doubt the sales and marketing, distribution side of the business want it.
I would not be surprised if only those within the system with law degrees are really
calling for it. From the author's agent to the publisher's legal/contract dept., to the
distributor's procurement division/buyers. In Amazon's case there may have been an
added Machiavellian voice from the forces that launched the "Kindle" project.

I could see it as having developed where the e-book sales section of Amazon first
got sold the the idea that they could sell a lot more e-books if they only had some
good handheld readers out there, by the Kindle visionary. Part of the spiel for the
Kindle was probably the idea that it would lock-in e-book sales to Amazon.

Over time the Amazon e-book sales department probably came to argue that they
needed other platforms for their e-books to be read on, besides just the Kindle and
the other apps came on the scene.

I also suspect that when the initial DRM started to be widely circumvented the
Pro-DRM forces pushed for the adoption of the stricter "Topaz" DRM. Then they
encountered a drop in sales and an increase in complaints. So the sales dept.
became less than enthusiastic about the use of "Topaz" and may be somewhat
reluctant to support its use.

The thing is, everyone in the system thinks that all the others are out to get them,
or cheat them of what they are due. So it is easy to sell the idea that something
that is touted as providing "protection" for their rights is a good and needed thing.
The lawyers love this situation and the DRM, the merchants - not so much.

Just my opinion.

Luck;
Ken

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by DMSmillie

I've seen many authors post on forums like this that they won't publish without DRM, because they don't see why they should make it easier for thieves to steal their work and distribute it for free.
- Donna

When you see them saying that you should point out that DRM has no affect on piracy at all, it only puts restrictions on the people who buy their product. Pirated ebooks do not have DRM, therefore they are more attractive to some readers than the official product. The way to combat piracy is NOT to release an official product that is inferior to the unofficial product.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by KevinH

Instead of adding DRM (and all of its associated costs and headaches) I would rather see a small extra fee paid to some author/publisher association by everyone for every device, dvd, cdrom sold. Much easier and much cheaper to implement and better for everyone involved (no one is forced to become a "criminal" just to get what they already paid for.

Some country (can't remember which) already does that for music. The result is that only well known musicians on large record labels ever get anything. What would be better would be a system where everything that is downloaded is recorded, and only the creator of the downloaded item is paid for that download. They would get a small amount each time one of their products is downloaded, with the money coming from a tax on internet connection, or from advertising revenue from the download sites.