Sony Reader Lives on with Rowling!

[charleski]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Most companies don't store customer CC# information indefinitely because they aren't intending to use it to track you down years and years from now if the copy you bought gets pirated.

A verified name and address is far more useful to them for this purpose. It's easy to filter out and disallow chargecards that aren't associated with verified personal information.

My other concern is that they will keep my CC# in a database forever, which presents hacking concerns of a different variety. To my knowledge, Kobo does neither of these things.

Kobo certainly does keep your credit card number on-file. As does Amazon, as does Apple, as do a lot of online retailers.

If your concern about security is genuine then your only option is not to shop online at all. But frankly, I think this is nothing more than a straw-man.

DRM is obnoxious because it endangers the property rights of the purchaser - you're restricted from enjoying your purchase in the manner of your choice, you can't (responsibly) lend it to others, and when the central servers go down you're deprived of it entirely. Watermarking has none of these problems and when used on film screeners has proven success in restricting the flow of material to file-sharing sites. Ditching DRM and moving to watermarked open-format ebooks would benefit both producers and consumers immensely.

[ilovejedd]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

But saying that a watermark is just like any other serial number on an appliance is not correct...

Well, we don't even know what form the watermark will take. They could very well generate and embed individual "serial numbers" for each ebook tied to their database containing your name and address.

[EowynCarter]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Because it's treating me like I am a crook just like DRM does.

Exaclty.
It's more the fact the me, as person having bought the e-book, is considered a potential criminal.

If you buy a CD, or perhaps a new blender at a store, and it has a radio tag that has to be deactivated at the register so alarms don't go off as you leave...does that upset you?

The tag is deactivated at payment. Watermark stay forever. And it denature the book.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Exaclty.
It's more the fact the me, as person having bought the e-book, is considered a potential criminal.

Only in the sense that, say, the fact that your car has a number plate also means that you're considered a potential criminal. Do you object to number plates being used to identify the owners of cars which commit traffic offences?

[stonetools]

Way back when I thought there could be rational discussion of this topic, I argued that one way of showing whether going no DRM would work for major publishers would be if a bestselling major author were to offer their books DRM free,and that such an offering would proceed without major loss of expected revenue or profit. It seems that such an experiment is about to happen.
Now Ms. Rowling's approach isn't considered DRM free for the purest of the anti-DRM purists, but it's good enough for most people. Ms. Rowling has used her unique clout to exert maximum control over how her ebooks are offered to the public (apparently getting even Amazon into line). Since she is running everything through her website, she can pull the plug right away if things go wrong.We therefore have a pretty good control experiment on whether a bestselling author can profitably offer her ebooks DRM free to the general public( or, to be more precise, with minimal, "social" DRM).
If this experiment succeeds, then we will see the major publishers and authors begin to experiment with DRM free offerings (or at least with social DRM). If it doesn't succeed, then the major publishers and authors will stand pat and the burden of proof will remain with those who argue that DRM free can work for everyone.
OK, back off the Topic that Cannot be Rationally Discussed....

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by charleski

A verified name and address is far more useful to them for this purpose. It's easy to filter out and disallow chargecards that aren't associated with verified personal information.

Kobo certainly does keep your credit card number on-file. As does Amazon, as does Apple, as do a lot of online retailers.

If your concern about security is genuine then your only option is not to shop online at all. But frankly, I think this is nothing more than a straw-man.

DRM is obnoxious because it endangers the property rights of the purchaser - you're restricted from enjoying your purchase in the manner of your choice, you can't (responsibly) lend it to others, and when the central servers go down you're deprived of it entirely. Watermarking has none of these problems and when used on film screeners has proven success in restricting the flow of material to file-sharing sites. Ditching DRM and moving to watermarked open-format ebooks would benefit both producers and consumers immensely.

I would like evidence that Kobo keeps my credit card on file for decades if I don't click the "remember my card information" button at checkout. Everything I have read is that most big business do not do this because it is a nightmare situation when (NOT if) their databases are hacked. That's why it's such a big deal when someone like Sony doesn't follow this best practice and then they announce they probably lost 77 million CC#s in the most recent hack.

Big business are also subject to government audits to check their firewalls. Small businesses regularly skate under the radar. I am more confident that, say, Amazon.com is doing the legally-mandated regular checks on their firewalls than I am for this brand new "Pottermore" company who knows so little about the technology they're getting into that they can make a statement like "all devices read ePubs".

DWs *are* DRM and this meme that they're not is already annoying. I've yet to hear a definition for "digital rights management" that doesn't cover watermarking. It's not the sort of DRM that will lock you out of using the book on multiple devices, but it is still DRM.

I've already explained why I don't want to provide my CC# to a company to be either (a) stored forever or (b) embedded in a file that will live on multiple unsecure devices. You call that paranoid, I call it good practice. Can we agree to disagree?

As for the rest, I'm not comfortable signing up to be considered at fault by Pottermore and the FBI and whoever else if a digital file I buy somehow leaves my possession. I store my eBooks on my laptop, on my 4 eReaders, on my phone, and on a Dropbox account that is technically "public" but requires a direct link -- in theory -- in order to get to. But then, last week alone, Dropbox had an error that meant that ANY password was accepted in order to access someone's account. So, hell, my entire library could be on a torrent site right now because someone accessed my Dropbox account and I wouldn't know.*

In other words, for about four hours, there was NO security in place at Dropbox. As long as somebody entered an email address belonging to one of some 25 million Dropbox customers (as of the company's April press release), the password field would have accepted any series of characters to allow a login to access the account. Less than 1% means that up to 250,000 people were on the Dropbox system during the period in which there was essentially no barrier to browsing and/ or downloading any user's personal files and information.

* Thank god I was "paranoid" to use a strong email at Dropbox instead of my publicly-posted Amazon/Blog/MobileReads email. Sometimes it pays to be a raving nut.

There are several points of potential access where someone could steal a ebook from me, and I've accepted that risk. (Heck, someone could steal a book from my house or from my bookbag on the bus -- I've accepted that too.) I've taken the appropriate safeguards I feel are necessary, but I'm not going to keep all my eBooks on a single reader that never leaves a safe deposit box in order to keep them safe for Rowling. If someone does access my files and share them with other people, I'm not going to be held responsible for that because the Pottermore folks embedded DRM tracking into my eBook file.

And the thing is, if someone HAD accessed my Dropbox account and pulled my library, I wouldn't be able to prove that I didn't load my books onto the torrent site where the Pottermore folks eventually found it. Heck, I haven't seen the TOS yet (obviously) but they'd probably argue that merely loading it onto Dropbox so that my phone can download my library remotely is a TOS violation.

So, yeah, call me paranoid, but these are the security concepts that are drilled into me daily as part of my current job. I'm not going to be treated like a potential criminal with DRM-trace embedded data that will hold me at fault if my file gets stolen -- not when there's currently no way to prove my innocence in a situation like that.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

So, yeah, call me paranoid, but

Paranoid.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Paranoid.

What can I say? I'm paid to be.

[Phogg]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Those numbers aren't tied to my name. A watermark that has the properties so it can track me, is.

But, in the DRM scheme of things, it's a huge step forward, as, in theory, you should be able to read it on as many devices as you own. Because, that's naturally the biggest drawback of all other DRM schemes: you're tied to a fixed number of readers. And if you want to borrow the book out to your brother/sister/father/mother or even a colleague (which is perfectly normal for any other pbook), you can't.

Absolutely the VIN on your car is tied to your name through the registration and anyone who runs an insurance history of the car will see when you owned it long after you sold it.

If you fill out the waranty paperwork on your appliances or what have you, those create a paper trail.

And we havent even touched what happens if you purchase prescribed medications.

Compared to other things already in your life, a watermark is pretty innocuous.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

What can I say? I'm paid to be.

Never a coffee-break, though?

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Absolutely the VIN on your car is tied to your name through the registration and anyone who runs an insurance history of the car will see when you owned it long after you sold it.

If you fill out the waranty paperwork on your appliances or what have you, those create a paper trail.

And we havent even touched what happens if you purchase prescribed medications.

Compared to other things already in your life, a watermark is pretty innocuous.

True, but for me at least, this is less about "living off the grid" and more about not signing up to be responsible to anything that might happen to a single computer file carried across multiple unsecure devices.

The watermark represents potential litigation down the line if something happens to that file. Computer files are stolen all the time, but it's very very very difficult to prove that YOU didn't do whatever illegal thing was done with the file (i.e., loaded it up to a torrent site).

The point of these watermarks -- according to the press release -- is to prevent piracy. It's not a fuzzy "oh, look, this book is Ana's book!" stamp to personalize it. It's supposedly so that if that book goes up on torrent, they can track you down and exact punishment.

Until there's a way to prove our innocence in a case like that, I'm skeptical about submitting to TOS that essentially says that I will take responsibility for the entire life of a computer file.

If a crime is committed with my car, I can pretty easily prove that I wasn't in it at the time of the crime, because I always have an alibi in the form of Husband, friends, computer activity logs showing me at home. If a crime is committed with my computer file, I can't easily prove I didn't do it.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Never a coffee-break, though?

LOL. If it helps set the scene, Husband (who works at the same company as I) won't even use Dropbox because someone could, potentially, brute-force your eLibrary file name. In my "library in the cloud" tutorial instructions, I actually encourage people to use GUIDs on their Dropbox folder names.

The Dropbox fiasco I linked to was a bit of a "told you so" moment at our house, because a GUID protection is worthless if all someone needs is your email address. *sigh* Maybe I should update my Dropbox instructions to include using a GUID-based email address, too.

So I'm actually the lesser paranoid one.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

But the idea about watermarking is, that you can actually lend a copy to a friend/family member. But you'll always be responsible what happens to that copy as it can be traced back to you. And I'm fine with that, personally. But saying that a watermark is just like any other serial number on an appliance is not correct...

It depends on how the watermark is done. If it is a unique number for every ebook sold, and no other info, how would it be different than a serial number? I'd see that is most likely what will happen, since Sony will probably sell readers preloaded with the books. They couldn't embed your CC info, name, etc on something preloaded, and it would be silly to have multiple sets of marks.

Originally Posted by ilovejedd

Well, we don't even know what form the watermark will take. They could very well generate and embed individual "serial numbers" for each ebook tied to their database containing your name and address.

As I said above, I see that is most likely what will happen.

Originally Posted by Phogg

Absolutely the VIN on your car is tied to your name through the registration and anyone who runs an insurance history of the car will see when you owned it long after you sold it.

If you fill out the waranty paperwork on your appliances or what have you, those create a paper trail.

And we havent even touched what happens if you purchase prescribed medications.

Compared to other things already in your life, a watermark is pretty innocuous.

I personally have no problem with something like that. we do it enough as is.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

...

If you truly believed your arguments you would not shop online at all. There is no way for you to be sure that any company with which you do business is handling your information in a completely secure manner. Both big companies and small ones get hacked. If you think ticking a check-box on a website is enough to provide peace-of-mind then you aren't nearly paranoid enough.

Your entire rant has been nothing more than a strawman argument. If you truly held these concerns you would not buy anything over the Internet, and you certainly wouldn't be using an insecure cloud service to store personal files.

This is all irrelevant. Getting the publishing industry to move from locked-down DRM (which doesn't stop their stuff getting pirated) to open-format Watermarking (which might at least slow down the flow) would be a major advance for everyone involved, no matter what nonsense 'dog-ate-my-homework' scenarios you concoct.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Its a "device" in the same way the VIN number on your car or the serial number on your refrigerator is a "device."

Do you feel a compulsion to file those numbers off?

The VIN on my car or the serial number on my fridge do not brand me as a potential criminal. The watermark says I might be a criminal so here's a lock for you to keep them in place and we'll hold the key.

[JSWolf]

If the only format we get a PDF, then I'll just get ePub copies on the net and NOT pay for them. But I don't think Rowling is that stupid to only release the eBooks as PDF. Besides, ePub with ADE can give you a very nice reading experience especially if it has the same fonts embedded as were used in the books.