Why are DRM ebooks evil and why should I avoid them like the plague?

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by queentess

http://www.amazon.com/John-Fitton/e/..._athr_dp_pel_1

Why does Amazon hate me?

Now that I have a link that works, I'm looking with some interest at the items actually for sale. They consist of five calendars, four of which are created from scans of pre-existing material (Victorian erotica, Victorian erotic postcards, Victorian fairies, and vintage cars) and one of material (pony photographs) from unspecified sources. So it appears that at least 80% of John's "toil" consists of scanning other people's work and dropping it into stock calendar forms (on the plus side, as I'm also an amateur photographer, I'm seeing a possible new market here ... I didn't know people bought illustrated calendars for their Kindles). Frankly, given the post I replied to earlier, I was expecting something involving literary effort, not just a few scans of out-of-copyright pictures.

There is also exactly one of those five items (the Victorian fairies) which has a review. The reviewer complains about the size, the scanning quality, and the lack of important dates. John's reply amounts to ... well, I'm not going to be as critical as I would consider appropriate, as I try to be more civilized than that, so go read it for yourself. Just one hint: "it's all the Kindle's fault" doesn't fix anything.

[Caltsar]

I don't think DRM is completely evil in itself, but the current implementations are pretty horrible... with ADE being the closest to sane DRM you can get (support by multiple manufactures built in being a major plus).

That said, I try to buy my books DRM free if I can, and often pay extra for that. The less business I give to sellers and publishers pushing out DRMed copies, the faster that DRM will go away, or at least be changed to something sane and usable.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by buxton-arts

I understand the issues of 'I've bought it so why cant I (and all my family and friends and people using upload sites) read it on anything' ... but maybe you should see it as 'I've bought it (usually alot cheaper than the paper option) to read it on my Kindle'
The extreme view is 'why isnt everything $0.0 cost'
[...]
ps - Amazon 'lend' books

I just finished reading Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I loved it. I think my brother will love it. But I bought it for Kindle, and my brother has an older Sony model, so I can't lend it to him, I can only say "hey, check out this book". He's not going to go spend $9 on unknown (to him) author, he's just going to not read it or (best case scenario) get it from the library IF they ever get that ebook and IF it's ever available for checkout (it's very popular - it will probably be years before it's available for him).

So what happened? The author is out money because my brother would have likely bought the sequels. (Heck, if he really likes something, he'll usually buy a copy for himself before returning my copy.) And if my brother and I both approve of a book, my dad also jumps on the bandwagon and starts buying books. But DRM prevents all of this from happening. It's made the reading experience quite sterile and lonely because I can't share books with my family.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by rogerVA

How will DRM books be noted as such on sites like Amazon?
And how do I tell if books on my Kindle 3 are DRM?

I suspect that if your Kindle is registered with Amazon, then all the books are DRM'ed (I'm surprised no-one with a Kindle has answered this question for you - as I don't have one and may be incorrect)

And is there a guide here for stripping the DRM from your books?

Yes, but we're asked not to point to it.

Google "removing DRM" - or "Apprentice Alf" and there'll be more than a few links to help (even if some do come back to Mobileread )

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by buxton-arts

Whilst DRM can be a pain it does decrease the dissemination of 'hacked' publications and free circulation which decreases an authors income - and hence willingness to write and publish.

The problem with DRM is that it doesn't do any of the things it's supposed to do regarding preventing piracy. About all it does is help promote vendor lock-in.

[GeoffC]

DRM doesn't, currently , bother me - though it's been a long while since I bought any books that were so infected.

My original reader is going strong.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I suspect that if your Kindle is registered with Amazon, then all the books are DRM'ed (I'm surprised no-one with a Kindle has answered this question for you - as I don't have one and may be incorrect)

I don't know any way to tell if the book is DRM'ed from Amazon. I suspect /most/ are, but Amazon doesn't require DRM from certain publishers on certain days of the month if the sun shines just right. (IE - it's a mystery to me, but I know Amazon doesn't require DRM on everything.)

[dadioflex]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

One thing to remember, your reader will be in a landfill in less than 5 years, the same as all current PMP players.

Lithium Ion battery will fail within 5 years, and since the Kindles (and most other E-book readers, and all current PMP players), have non-replaceable lithium Ion batteries, all will be junk within 5 years. (although you may be able to use them from a wall plug charger.)

Plan accordingly.

True, the Kindle battery isn't supposed to be user-replaceable. But it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TA4CtfvzrjQ

Not for the faint-hearted.

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by queentess

I don't know any way to tell if the book is DRM'ed from Amazon. I suspect /most/ are, but Amazon doesn't require DRM from certain publishers on certain days of the month if the sun shines just right. (IE - it's a mystery to me, but I know Amazon doesn't require DRM on everything.)

OK - nice to know ....

There appeared to be nothing on the Amazon web site to answer the question. An easy check would be to see if the book can be read in the Calibre viewer on the PC (for instance).

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by queentess

I don't know any way to tell if the book is DRM'ed from Amazon. I suspect /most/ are, but Amazon doesn't require DRM from certain publishers on certain days of the month if the sun shines just right. (IE - it's a mystery to me, but I know Amazon doesn't require DRM on everything.)

When the Mood is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars..?

[stonetools]

Hoo boy, the OP has set the cat among the pigeons here.
On this forum, DRM is intrinsically evil. 99 percent of the folks here believe that and preach that and if you dispute it, expect to be called an industry shill, a tool of the publishing industry, a moron, etc.
If you are an average user with the Kindle, I would suggest that you not worry about DRM. Buy good ebooks, enjoy reading them on your device, and live a nice life.

You have been told above that you can't lend ebooks. That is false. Amazon has recently allowed limited lending privileges for many titles. Several websites and Facebook pages have sprung up enabling the anonymous lending of thousands of titles. Those websites may not exist for long but even without them, you can lend some ebooks.

You have been told that you can't share your ebook with dear old dad. Well, wrong again. Your Kindle Licensing Agreement allows you to share your library among 5 machines. Simply set up your account on dad's machine, and you're good to go. You may have to move your bondage literature collection to the Archives to avoid shocking dad , but hey..

You have been told that you can't take your Kindle books with you if you move to a new dedicated ereader. Two simple solutions here:

1.Don't buy a dedicated ereader that can't read your Kindle books. Your choices here are broad. You can buy a general purpose tablet (eg. Ipad), a PSP (eg Ipod touch), or a smartphone (eg Blackberry)You then install the Kindle Reading app, and you're all set.
2. Just continue reading your Kindle books on your old device (which presumably didn't vanish in a puff of smoke when you decided to move to a new device. If it did so vanish, used Kindles are pretty cheap these days on CL or Ebay.

Follow these steps and it's 90 per cent likely that you will live a life untroubled by DRM. Cheers,

[rogue_librarian]

Originally Posted by stonetools

You have been told above that you can't lend ebooks. That is false. Amazon has recently allowed limited lending privileges for many titles.

Please tell me that you, too, are kidding? Lending, really? Once per book, 14 days, at the publisher's discretion? Almost (but not entirely) completely unlike lending.

Your Kindle Licensing Agreement allows you to share your library among 5 machines. Simply set up your account on dad's machine, and you're good to go.

Yeah, it's like handing over the library key (of five existing copies, for what it's worth) because you want to somebody to read the one book. Makes perfect sense, I suppose.

Follow these steps and it's 90 per cent likely that you will live a life untroubled by DRM.

I very much doubt that. People just don't see, much less encounter, the implications yet. But they will in the not too distant future, you better believe it. And it will be those "but I just want it to work" average joes who will be the most affected.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Why does Amazon hate me?

I don't know; you're a teddy bear stuffed with rainbows and gumdrops.

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Now that I have a link that works, I'm looking with some interest at the items actually for sale. They consist of five calendars, four of which are created from scans of pre-existing material (Victorian erotica, Victorian erotic postcards, Victorian fairies, and vintage cars) and one of material (pony photographs) from unspecified sources. So it appears that at least 80% of John's "toil" consists of scanning other people's work and dropping it into stock calendar forms (on the plus side, as I'm also an amateur photographer, I'm seeing a possible new market here ... I didn't know people bought illustrated calendars for their Kindles). Frankly, given the post I replied to earlier, I was expecting something involving literary effort, not just a few scans of out-of-copyright pictures.

I was also curious about the reaction to "DRM keeps people from pirating" versus the claim of being an "author". I guess you can author a Kindle calendar, it just wasn't my go-to assumption.

[queentess]

I'm going to start with the eyeroll. Ok, with that out of the way

Originally Posted by stonetools

Hoo boy, the OP has set the cat among the pigeons here.
On this forum, DRM is intrinsically evil. 99 percent of the folks here believe that and preach that and if you dispute it, expect to be called an industry shill, a tool of the publishing industry, a moron, etc.
If you are an average user with the Kindle, I would suggest that you not worry about DRM. Buy good ebooks, enjoy reading them on your device, and live a nice life.

Boy howdy! In direct contradiction to this, several people have already noted that it's not 'evil', but that the way it works is not ideal.

Originally Posted by stonetools

You have been told above that you can't lend ebooks. That is false. Amazon has recently allowed limited lending privileges for many titles. Several websites and Facebook pages have sprung up enabling the anonymous lending of thousands of titles. Those websites may not exist for long but even without them, you can lend some ebooks.

Ok, one retailer allows this (so does B&N, so two). If the publisher allows it (many don't), if you're on the same device (I'm not), for 14 days (I dunno about you, but not long enough for me to read a 1,000 page book), one time (so I can lend it to my brother, but not my dad). This is not lending. It's "Lending".

Originally Posted by stonetools

You have been told that you can't share your ebook with dear old dad. Well, wrong again. Your Kindle Licensing Agreement allows you to share your library among 5 machines. Simply set up your account on dad's machine, and you're good to go. You may have to move your bondage literature collection to the Archives to avoid shocking dad , but hey..

If I want to open up my account to purchases from the individuals I add to my account. If they have a Kindle. If that's where I purchased the book.

Originally Posted by stonetools

You have been told that you can't take your Kindle books with you if you move to a new dedicated ereader. Two simple solutions here:

1.Don't buy a dedicated ereader that can't read your Kindle books. Your choices here are broad. You can buy a general purpose tablet (eg. Ipad), a PSP (eg Ipod touch), or a smartphone (eg Blackberry)You then install the Kindle Reading app, and you're all set.
2. Just continue reading your Kindle books on your old device (which presumably didn't vanish in a puff of smoke when you decided to move to a new device. If it did so vanish, used Kindles are pretty cheap these days on CL or Ebay.

What happens when the whole reader dies, and they're no longer selling Kindles? Oh, right, I lose everything.

3. Remove the DRM.

What's with all the "you've been told" scary language, like anti-DRM people are lying? Just because we don't agree with you doesn't mean we're evil. I'm a consumer, I want to protect my purchases. I don't understand what's so wrong about that?

[Worldwalker]

Let's leave whether or not DRM benefits the vendors out of the equation entirely. Let's just look at whether it benefits the end user -- that would be us. It is quite clear that DRM's effect on an end-user is either neutral (don't notice it) or harmful (can't use your book). There is no way, none, in which DRM is beneficial to the end user. And we're users here, not Big 6 publishers, not device manufacturers, not online superstores. So the question is whether DRM benefits us in any way, or not. Same answer: it's either neutral or harmful.

So when someone says that DRM is beneficial, and at worst neutral, we can rest fairly well assured that their interests are not the same as ours, because for us it's either neutral or harmful, never beneficial. To whose advantage is it to convince people to accept DRM, not to object to paying high prices for temporary book rentals, and to be thankful that the publishers are so generous as to let us give them money? Well ... not in a user's interest, certainly.

If the best DRM can be to a user is neutral, someone with the user's interests in mind would not be supporting it. So whose interests might such a person have in mind? Not the authors', either; device lock-in (the only effective use of DRM) doesn't benefit authors in any way, and by reducing re-reading of their books, and reducing the money buyers have available (having just had to re-buy those parts of their library they can't part with) to buy more books by those authors, it may be harmful. So such a person would not be supporting the authors' interests, either. And we can lump agents in with authors for the sake of discussion; their interests generally coincide.

So ... going back to the beginning ... this leaves us with the publishers who see profits in repeated sales of the same book, and in charging higher than paperback prices for less than paperback utility (and no returns, no physical stock, etc.), and the companies that sell both reading devices and books to be read on those devices, who benefit massively from device lock-in.

Or, in simpler terms: If you have to buy another Kindle because all your books only work on the Kindle, do you benefit? Does the author benefit? Or does Amazon benefit?

When someone's apparent entire purpose in MobileRead is to extoll the "benefits" of DRM, who is that person working for?

... not us ...