White House will propose new digital copyright laws

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I think that people would be more confused by the flatly wrong statement that you can only buy Kindle books at Amazon than by the perfectly correct statement that you can buy books for Kindle lots of places other than at Amazon. The fact that you can buy books many places doesn't mean that you can buy books *everywhere.*

Would you be happier with the statement that Amazon is the only MAJOR bookstore where you can buy books for Kindle?

[tubemonkey]

Other than library books, I don't feel constrained in getting the books I want for my Kindle.

[avantman42]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Excellent discussion of DRM and how it works but I need to go to a lower level then that discussion. I need to understand the schemes that they use to restrict the electronic book. To say that B&N bought fictionwise to get control of the ereader format is at too general a level I need to understand how DRM technology acomplishes what it does.

For example what I think I know about DRM, and this illustrates the level of of knowledge that I am attempting to obtain, is DRM makes use of an older technology more frequently called PKI or Public Key Encrpyion where the whole file is encrypted and a password is applied to the file. In order to read a PKI file one will need a key, called the private key, to know how to decrypt the file. Sometimes the key is in the form of a password that will unlock the content in the file. DRM removal works by recovering the password from the file via means that I do not understand as yet and using that to decrypt the file.

Your best bet is to either talk to the people who write the tools to strip DRM, or have a look at the code of those tools.

[The Old Man]

This discussion reminds me of the line from "The Blind Men and the Elephant",
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
except I would change it to:
Though each was partly in the wrong,
And all were in the right!

...and it demonstrates the absurd, confusing and quasi-legality question of the current DRM eBook situation.

I suppose if I published books I would think DRM wonderful.
I suppose if I wrote books I would think DRM questionable.
As I buy and read books I think DRM punitive. But, hey, what do I know and why care what I think? I'm only a customer.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Would you be happier with the statement that Amazon is the only MAJOR bookstore where you can buy books for Kindle?

You really hate Amazon, don't you?

I'm perfectly happy with my accurate statement posted above.