DRM, Rentals, DRM-stripping and Morality

[Phogg]

For me, a boycot comes in with new authors. I am not trying out authors I haven't read from DRM sources. Actually, whenever available I will get books from author sites directly.

[cfrizz]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I honestly think you're mistaken in your belief that the average reader actually CARES about DRM. I really don't think that they do, because it doesn't stop them from reading books on their Kindle, nook, Kobo, or whatever it is they may have. The typical user does not have half a dozen different readers; she has one, and buys from the store associated with her reading device.

True.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I think this is very true.

As much as I would like to see DRM eliminated, I don't think that the number of people who give a flying fig about ebook DRM is big enough to make the kind of monetary "noise" that would be necessary for publishers to take notice... even if you could get them all to boycott.

And while I'm absolutely certain that I could find new favorite authors from the plethora of DRM-free material available. That would—in no way—lessen my desire to keep reading my old favorite (drm-infested) authors. I see absolutely no benefit to depriving myself of the authors who've already earned automatic go-to-the-front-of-the-class passes on my TBR list... for any length of time.

Also true.

It really all comes down to ease of use and availability. This is why Amazon & Apple are so successful. So long as these companies keep producing easy to use devices, and books for said devices, they will continue to succeed.

If I find a product that works, I generally stick with it for years. When it is time to get a new one, the first place I head is for the maker of the device I already have to see what they offer. Why should I change, if it has served me so well for years, which means one of their new devices will more than likely do the same.

Case in point, I had an Iomega Zip Drive for years. When I started purchasing ebooks I quickly realized that my 100mb zip disks were not going to cut it. So I looked at what Iomega was offering in external HD & purchased the 1TB Iomega Prestige. Why? Because the Zip drive served me for well over 10+ years, and is now serving my friend. The company/devices have proven their worth, and have earned my repeat business.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

True.

Also true.

It really all comes down to ease of use and availability. This is why Amazon & Apple are so successful. So long as these companies keep producing easy to use devices, and books for said devices, they will continue to succeed.

If I find a product that works, I generally stick with it for years. When it is time to get a new one, the first place I head is for the maker of the device I already have to see what they offer. Why should I change, if it has served me so well for years, which means one of their new devices will more than likely do the same.

Case in point, I had an Iomega Zip Drive for years. When I started purchasing ebooks I quickly realized that my 100mb zip disks were not going to cut it. So I looked at what Iomega was offering in external HD & purchased the 1TB Iomega Prestige. Why? Because the Zip drive served me for well over 10+ years, and is now serving my friend. The company/devices have proven their worth, and have earned my repeat business.

I guess that is part of why Apple isn't doing much in the way of eBook sales either. iBooks is difficult to get books into (as a author/publisher, and can be potentially said of as an end user wanting to read as well), and you cannot currently get books out of iBooks. Also iBooks is not usable on anything other than a iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. Even if you use a Mac, you cannot read books you bought in iBooks on your iOS device. They are known for having some of the most user friendly devices and programs, yet ignored everything they're known for when making iBooks.

[monkeygirl351]

I strip all books that I own. I do strip drm from library books as I have a kindle, but I delete them after the lending period. Stripping and keeping library of rental books is a no no. I rarely buy expensive books and most of my amazon books are free or at the most 5-6 dollars. Lots of good stuff. If i want to read bestsellers, my library has an excellent selection and I belong to 4 different libraries up here so I can get pretty much all I need. I also buy books from Smashwords and various other sites because I can break the drm. I believe that this gives me a choice as to where to buy. I won't buy from Ibooks though as they can't be cracked.

[chilady1]

Originally Posted by monkeygirl351

I strip all books that I own. I do strip drm from library books as I have a kindle, but I delete them after the lending period. Stripping and keeping library of rental books is a no no. I rarely buy expensive books and most of my amazon books are free or at the most 5-6 dollars. Lots of good stuff. If i want to read bestsellers, my library has an excellent selection and I belong to 4 different libraries up here so I can get pretty much all I need. I also buy books from Smashwords and various other sites because I can break the drm. I believe that this gives me a choice as to where to buy. I won't buy from Ibooks though as they can't be cracked.

Ditto - couldn't have said this any better monkeygirl. I do exactly the same thing.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Is there a genuine distinction between getting a library book and renting a book? Is one relatively neutral, while the other is harmful?

Thoughts, please.

I think that these (all four of them) are increasingly illusory categories.

In a digital world, the only thing that matters is convenient access to a digital file for a useful period of time.

What content providers do is try to monetize that access through the use of convenience fees in relation to time. So in the case of ebooks, they "sell" access to someone for a large convenience fee involving no time limits or "rent" it to someone for a smaller fee involving time limits. Or "license" it to a library for a specified number of lendings.

But it's still all convenience and time. What we see proliferating around us, whether in the world of music, or video, or ebooks, or emagazines, or enews, are various configurations of the amount of the convenience fee relative to the time duration of consumer access to the digital object.

Last night I dropped a bundle on tickets to Met at the Movies. I want to go to seven of the movies over the next seven months. A ticket for the opening night is $22, and for the "encore" night about three weeks later is $18. The difference of $4 is the convenience fee for those who want to see the movie sooner rather than later at a less convenient time. I could buy a ticket on Fandango for a convenience fee of $2, saving me the time & trouble of going to the actual box office to buy the ticket. Suffice it to say that when I did the math, I decided to hop in the car and take about an hour to drive to the theatre & buy the tickets there.

If all I were buying were one ticket, it would make little sense to spend an hour to save a couple of bucks. But because I was buying all the tickets at once, in pairs, I was saving more like fifty bucks by trading some of my own time for sidestepping the convenience fees.

And that's the way I think about ebooks. I have very little interest in continuing to possess ebooks for longer than it takes to read them. But I am the kind of person who reads several books at a time, so it takes me days, weeks, or even months to finish any particular book.

I'm willing to pay a reasonable convenience fee to insure unconstrained access over time to the ebook. I am not, however, willing to allow the provider to constrain me from reading an ebook at my own pace on my preferred device. If the convenience fee for doing that is sufficiently large, I'll "drive to the theatre" by stripping the DRM. I'll trade my time for money.

Over in the music section of the digital marketplace, it's much more obvious that the negotiation between the provider and the consumer is really about convenience. There is no longer much nonsense about DRM - what we have is a variety of different approaches to convenience based on differing levels of fees. Movies are...well, moving...toward that type of market. Eventually, ebook providers will get there, I suspect.

It's not that I expect the providers to give ebooks away for free. If they want to negotiate in terms of time & convenience, by providing the content in a number of different accessible (i.e., non-DRM) forms which suit me, I'm perfectly willing to pay a reasonable convenience fee. I think most people are.

In the meantime, I treat ebooks like I do music or movies. I will not pay for "owning" or "renting" or "borrowing" ebooks. The providers are using those categories to try to maintain an analogy between the physical and digital marketplaces. This is a kind of misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of what they actually have to sell. If they insist on using those categories in an attempt to make me pay physical prices for digital objects, I'll maneuver my way around them as best I can.

[PG4003]

Very interesting post, I enjoyed reading it. Also makes a lot of sense.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Harmon

In the meantime, I treat ebooks like I do music or movies. I will not pay for "owning" or "renting" or "borrowing" ebooks. The providers are using those categories to try to maintain an analogy between the physical and digital marketplaces. This is a kind of misrepresentation (or misunderstanding) of what they actually have to sell. If they insist on using those categories in an attempt to make me pay physical prices for digital objects, I'll maneuver my way around them as best I can.

This is immoral. You are stealing, and using the physical/digital distinction to justify your theft. Stop it.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Phogg

There is zero problem with the library system or overdrive recognizing that you exist.
The libraries world wide went with epub as a universal standard before the first Kindle was ever sold.

Ummmm... No.

I was borrowing pdf and mobipockets before the Kindle came out, and after the Kindle came out, I was still borrowing pdf and mobipocket books.

Mobipocket, BTW, is the basis of the Kindle format/DRM.

[Sydney's Mom]

Well, I guess I will take a contrary view (when has that ever happened). I check-out library books, and remove the DRM. I do not upload those books anywhere, and even refused to give the Sookie Stackhouse books to my neice (but I would have told her how to get the books from her library).

Having just paid my property tax, I see I am paying over $800/year for the privilege of using the library. That is a lot of books. Luckily for the library, I do patronize it, and so I don't mind paying the tax. I still check out the odd pbook that hasn't been released digitally, but otherwise I am all digital. For a pbook, the longest wait time I have had is 3 weeks, as they pull from all the libraries in the DuPage system - usually in excess of 150 copies for a mildly popular book. However, if I want a digital book, there will be at most 3 copies for the entire system. I saw a book I had checked out in early August, which today has 28 holds on 2 copies. That could take a year. I have been waiting for a book where I was #8 for over 4 months (1 copy). I am currently #3. And I can only put holds on 5 ebooks at time (I can put an unlimited number of holds on pbooks - I have checked 15 out at once before I went on vacation).

All of the books I check out, ebooks or pbooks, are returned before the end of the borrowing period. I am not depriving anyone else of the use of the book, and I have not deprived the author of any revenue - if I hadn't borrowed the book, I would not have bought it.

I'm not saying this is morally right for you. But I judge morality based on harm/inconvenience/respect for others. So if you give me too much change, I tell you. I obey traffic rules (otherwise it inconveniences others). I wait my turn, and I return my library books on time. I do delete the books when I have read them (but this is mostly because I am running out of Dropbox space, although I will never reread a book - there are too many I want to read and will never have time to read). But I feel no moral obligation to read this book, which I currently have checked out, rather than a book I checked out and returned 6 months ago. Frankly, the library system is happier the more books I check out, as that looks better on their records.

Just answering the question. I have never downloaded a movie or song illegally, and the one time I downloaded an ebook illegally, I bought it as soon as it was available (it was a windowed Steven King book, and I still haven't read it). If I saw some harm to someone else by my stockpiling library books, I would reconsider. But frankly, I can't see it.

[Xanthe]

I just put the library books on my Aluratek Libre. There's no clock/calendar on it so the time never expires on the library books until I connect the device back into the system. No need to strip DRM and as far as the library is concerned my borrowed book goes back into circulation when my rental period "expires".

[Thasaidon]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

This is immoral. You are stealing, and using the physical/digital distinction to justify your theft. Stop it.

Making a bald assertion that something is immoral is in my opinion without value.

The reason why I think this is that you prevent any examination of the thinking behind your judgement. This thinking may flawed but we shall never know if you do not tell us.

My position is somewhat different to Harmon's but he told us enough to have an idea about the motives behind what he does.

"consider from the very bowels of God that you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell.

[CRussel]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Well, I guess I will take a contrary view (when has that ever happened). I check-out library books, and remove the DRM. I do not upload those books anywhere, and even refused to give the Sookie Stackhouse books to my neice (but I would have told her how to get the books from her library).

Having just paid my property tax, I see I am paying over $800/year for the privilege of using the library.
<snip>
All of the books I check out, ebooks or pbooks, are returned before the end of the borrowing period. I am not depriving anyone else of the use of the book, and I have not deprived the author of any revenue - if I hadn't borrowed the book, I would not have bought it.

This is a rational and reasonable position, and quite similar to mine. I've waited months to get a book from the library with the wait lists being what they are for most eBooks. When I finally get to the top of the queue and can check it out, I download it, remove the DRM to convert for my Kindle, and read it. If I happen to be reading something else, I may or may not get to reading it before the DRM expires the book. But I don't worry about that. And I don't give the eBook to anyone else, period.

The other thing I do is set my default check-out period to a week, instead of 3 weeks. I can't decide if that is good for the author and/or library or not, but it's certainly good for other patrons waiting to get their chance at the book.

[Hellmark]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

This is immoral. You are stealing, and using the physical/digital distinction to justify your theft. Stop it.

Depends on how you interpret it. You can have their viewpoint, and not do anything illegal. Someone has DRM, you simply don't buy it. Instead go and spend your money with someone who does not use DRM. Download creative commons books for free. Download public domain for free. Harmon never once said that they pirated, just that they wouldn't spend their money with companies that claimed you are buying, renting, or borrowing the ebooks because they feel that those terms are inaccurate.

You seem to be jumping to conclusions.

[taming]

Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom

Having just paid my property tax, I see I am paying over $800/year for the privilege of using the library. That is a lot of books.

Wow, you must have one great library in Chicago, or you must be paying for a whole lot of people who do not have to pay taxes there. The cost per resident per year in Toronto is $68.

See: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle2147704/

The Toronto Public Library runs on 19 cents per day per citizen. For this reasonable sum, 32 million items are borrowed each year. For context, the Toronto Police Service costs $1 per citizen per day, five times as much as the library. Waste management costs 37 cents. The Vancouver Public Library costs $80 per citizen per year; the Toronto Public Library comes in at $68. If I were running this city as a business, I would say the library looks like it is delivering excellent value.