Kindle and DRM

[abradaxis]

Very interesting, and very obtuse. My question went from the practical to the theoretical in about five posts. I guess my answer to whether there's a real liability or not to removing the drm off books loaded onto a Kindle will be answered about a decade after we discover if there's really dark matter in the universe. But I do appreciate all the time that people have spent in response to my posting. Thanks one and all for your observations.

[montalex]

Originally Posted by abradaxis

Very interesting, and very obtuse. My question went from the practical to the theoretical in about five posts. I guess my answer to whether there's a real liability or not to removing the drm off books loaded onto a Kindle will be answered about a decade after we discover if there's really dark matter in the universe. But I do appreciate all the time that people have spent in response to my posting. Thanks one and all for your observations.

That would be abstruse. I hope...

[crich70]

Not only that but even if they were to use computer programs to spot cases where DRM has been removed I have to wonder if it would be cost effective. Computer use = money spent just like if they were to hire physical bodies to do it. I mean there would be the money to set up the computers, write the programs, the man hours to write the program, and I don't think they could ever catch up either. I mean so many 1000's of Kindles have been sold, and are being sold daily, and even if they could/can look into your Kindle to see if books are there with DRM stripped from them they still can't do that if your Kindle isn't online I wouldn't think.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

What Amazon has the ability to do, What they have the right to do, and what they actually do do, are three different discussion topics. While they may have the ability to check if your ebooks have had the DRM removed, it's not in their best interest to do so. They're not the DRM police. They sell ereaders and ebooks. The minute they sell someone down the river for removing DRM, is the minute they pack up shop and call it quits... because their business is done for at that point. They don't want that, they want to sell you books.

Can they see if you have books that have had DRM removed? Probably.

Do they have the right to check? Probably, depending on how you interpret the TOS.

Will they check to see if you're removing DRM? No. Because they're not the ones requiring DRM in the first place.

[chyron8472]

Neither Amazon nor anyone who sells books through them is going to bother you about deDRMing your ebooks for personal use.

First, if they did, it would be terrible PR for them to have to deal with. Second, how many (tens of) thousands of Kindles have they sold and how many (hundreds of thousands or) millions of ebooks have they sold by now? It's not a feasible task to expect that they would have servers dedicated to examining every ebook on every Kindle at all times that they are corrected to the net.

Frankly, Amazon doesn't care. They want to sell you books. As soon as it starts hurting their profit margin, then they might care but not before. Besides that, having wifi/3g access on your Kindle is a service designed to better organize your notes/marks, keep the same book on the same page between devices, allow you quick access to your Archived ebooks, and make it easier to buy books from Amazon's Store; it's not a leash with which they will monitor your DRM breaking activities.

As soon as you break the DRM on an ebook, syncing your notes and last page read between devices doesn't work anymore, as well the ebook in question will immediately appear in your Archived Items as soon as you next connect your Kindle to the net. Seeing how removing DRM from a file effectively disables a number of Kindle services for that particular file, I'm not sure if Amazon is too bent out of shape about it really.

Also, if an ebook is DRMless, how is Amazon to know specifically that you bought said ebook from them rather than buying it elsewhere and had it converted to mobi?

Honestly, the fact that breaking the DRM on a book makes it appear in my Archived Items always suggested to me that the Kindle only looks to update ebooks that are encrypted and ignores those that are not.

[Paulinafrica]

Originally Posted by chyron8472

As soon as you break the DRM on an ebook, syncing your notes and last page read between devices doesn't work anymore.

AFAIK, through a little bit of fiddling with the ASIN and record 501, you can dupe Kindle/Amazon/Whispersync into believing that your non-DRM books should be synced, I talk under correction but I believe that you can do this through Calibre automatically as well.
Cheers
Paul

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by chyron8472

Frankly, Amazon doesn't care. They want to sell you books. As soon as it starts hurting their profit margin, then they might care but not before.

Any action or warning shots to deter others won't come from Amazon it will come from one of the publishers or a publisher/writer's association. Don't forget these are the type of corportions that lobbied to have DRM removal made a criminal offence. It wouldn't make sense to spend that much money "lobbying" if they had no intention of ever enforcing their new law.

[chyron8472]

That's still assuming it's enforceable at all in the first place.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by chyron8472

That's still assuming it's enforceable at all in the first place.

All laws are enforceable. It would just come down to how cost effective it would be and what they thought they would gain from doing it. Publishers must see some hidden value in DRM that we can't see, otherwise they wouldn't use it.

I would also guess that Amazon included the DRM status check in the Kindle firmware for the benefit of those publishers, since I can't see what use that information would be to Amazon for marketing purposes. Everything else they log (except maybe GPS position) could be used for profiling purposes to target future recommendations. DRM status would be irrelevant for that purpose.

[Sydney's Mom]

Amazon has my credit card information, too, and imagine the press if they gave that out. That is why no one ever honors one of those subpoenas (like one from a publisher looking for non-DRM books). It would be a public relations nightmare, and would also be an unreasonable search and seizure. Everyone with a computer would absolutely freak out. I sure would

[crich70]

I'm not sure I agree that all laws are enforceable. I mean I think that a law has to be considered reasonable for them to be enforceable. And some laws aren't enforced because they are only considered reasonable under certain circumstances. I mean technically there are laws against spitting on the sidewalk for example, but how often do you see it being enforced? The reason (I think) that that law is seldom enforced is that it was made law back when influenza was a potentially fatal problem (back around WWI) and they were worried about it being passed on. Likewise I think the publishers would have to prove that their claims were reasonable for DRM laws to be enforceable. I expect their arguments to eventually implode myself. If I buy something I expect to be able to use it as I see fit. Publishers don't like it then it's their problem.

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

All laws are enforceable. It would just come down to how cost effective it would be and what they thought they would gain from doing it. Publishers must see some hidden value in DRM that we can't see, otherwise they wouldn't use it.

I would also guess that Amazon included the DRM status check in the Kindle firmware for the benefit of those publishers, since I can't see what use that information would be to Amazon for marketing purposes. Everything else they log (except maybe GPS position) could be used for profiling purposes to target future recommendations. DRM status would be irrelevant for that purpose.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by crich70

I'm not sure I agree that all laws are enforceable. I mean I think that a law has to be considered reasonable for them to be enforceable. And some laws aren't enforced because they are only considered reasonable under certain circumstances. I mean technically there are laws against spitting on the sidewalk for example, but how often do you see it being enforced? The reason (I think) that that law is seldom enforced is that it was made law back when influenza was a potentially fatal problem (back around WWI) and they were worried about it being passed on. Likewise I think the publishers would have to prove that their claims were reasonable for DRM laws to be enforceable. I expect their arguments to eventually implode myself. If I buy something I expect to be able to use it as I see fit. Publishers don't like it then it's their problem.

You might be right about the origin of spitting laws, but I do know someone who was arrested for it in the 80s. Mind you, if it wasn't for that they would have found something else to arrest him for. I also know someone who was arrested for taking too long to cross a pedestrian crossing (it came as a surprise that was even a crime). And someone else who was arrested for having the slogan "don't die for me Argentina" on a T-shirt during the Falklands war (behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace).

They're all stupid laws if you ask me. In the UK it was also illegal to watch the film Zombie Flesheaters for about 10 years, and it's still technically illegal to watch either Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 or New York Ripper but I haven't heard of anyone being prosecuted for either of those for over 15 years now. But when that law was new they certainly were.

Removing DRM from digital files is a fairly recent crime. I doubt it was cheap for the entertainment industry to get that law passed, so it wouldn't really make sense if they never had any plans of enforceing it. Time will tell, I guess.

[Tome Keeper]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

Removing DRM from digital files is a fairly recent crime. I doubt it was cheap for the entertainment industry to get that law passed, so it wouldn't really make sense if they never had any plans of enforceing it. Time will tell, I guess.

Slightly off topic but wasn't there something going through parliament to allow for removal of DRM for back up purposes a while ago? Did it fall through?

I can see removing DRM being enforced in the context of mass-piracy of books but I can't see Amazon giving away DRM information for individuals in general.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by intheendofdays

Slightly off topic but wasn't there something going through parliament to allow for removal of DRM for back up purposes a while ago? Did it fall through?

There was talk of making it legal to format-shift, like copying a CD onto an mp3 player, but for some mysterious reason it failed to happen.

Originally Posted by intheendofdays

I can see removing DRM being enforced in the context of mass-piracy of books but I can't see Amazon giving away DRM information for individuals in general.

If a publisher asked for that information I can't see Amazon refusing to provide it. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if having that capability written into the firmware of the Kindle wasn't a condition of them allowing Amazon to sell their ebooks when they were first approached with the idea.

The real question would be whether the publishers would do that. I'm not really convinced that the big publishers think particularly rationally about DRM and piracy, so nothing they did would surprise me.

[Tome Keeper]

Originally Posted by mr ploppy

The real question would be whether the publishers would do that. I'm not really convinced that the big publishers think particularly rationally about DRM and piracy, so nothing they did would surprise me.

That's what I meant, I realise I didn't put it into words well. I think it would be more cost effective and make a bigger impact if publishers went for the 'big players' on the darknet rather than the middle aged housewife who just wants to read a mobi on a kindle or something.

[mr ploppy]

Originally Posted by intheendofdays

That's what I meant, I realise I didn't put it into words well. I think it would be more cost effective and make a bigger impact if publishers went for the 'big players' on the darknet rather than the middle aged housewife who just wants to read a mobi on a kindle or something.

I don't know that there are any big players in ebook piracy. There's NERDS I suppose, but mostly it's just individuals sharing things they think deserves to be more widely read. There's no real prestige in "releasing" an ebook like there is with games or comics, probably because of the older demographic.