Christian Science Monitor labels Kindle a ‘Trojan horse’

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

DRM was legally removed from MS Reader files under the DMCA exemptions. The exemption does not say I have to be disabled. So now that I have these legally DRM free files, I should be able to sell them. Also, what about eBooks purchased from Baen, or multi-format or DRM free giveaways?

Yes it does and yes you do. Go look at section 1201 of the DMCA.

[dmaul1114]

It's a tough issue. As much as I dislike DRM, like rcuadro above I understand that there are much more rampant piracy and "giving away" issues with electronic media so it can't be as loose as physical media.

With ebooks though, I really don't care. I just buy books I'll only read once. Anything I want to always have around I'll buy a nice hardback edition of anyway.

I care more for music (still buy cds even though I rip them and mainly listen to mp3s), won't stop buying DVDs/Blu Rays for movies when video downloads become more prominent etc. etc. I care more for those as I'll listen to albums and watch movies over and over. Where as few books I'll ever read more than once.

[fugazied]

Originally Posted by snipenekkid

While I agree 10000%, something that needs to be given a bit of thought and can take a bit to wrap your head around is that there never has been true property ownership in the US. Even "owning" a home and land is an illusion. Try not paying the tithe to the PTB which we call taxes and you will find out just how much property you actually own.

That's a very good point actually. Consider all of the homes that have been taken by the US government to make way for highways and other infrastructure.

But anyway, there are issues with the copyright protection on Kindle works. I wish they didn't exist at all, but this is a publisher created problem, Amazon are just facilitating the demands of those publishers.

In this day and age you can get almost anything from illegal sources, copyright laws have already failed. Usually all the copy protection mechanisms do is annoy legitimate consumers of the material who PAID for it.

You can look at the games industry for 1000's of examples where the game was cracked immediately, and the copy protection element of the games were just a pain in the butt for people who paid for the software.

[Daithi]

I just try do what I feel is right. I don't download pirated books (or music or movies), as I believe stealing the fruits of someone else's labor is wrong. However, I routinely strip the DRM from the books I purchases. I don't give these DRM free files to anyone but simply keep them for myself. If a new reader becomes available that I prefer over my current reader then I want the option to upgrade, and in this case I have no problem "stealing" the content for which I only purchased a license.

[Robotech_Master]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

[*]MobileRead site policy is to support legal acquisition of eBooks and to forbid discussion of techniques for "pirating" ebooks along with forbidding discussion of tools and sites for same. (I think I got that right...)

Which is a bit funny to say given that, up until Amazon made its DMCA threat, Mobileread was the go-to site for discussing where to get and how to use MobiDeDRM, Kindlefix, KindlePID, eReader2HTML (in fact, I seem to recall someone here referring to "our eReader2HTML script" with "our" referring to the forum as a whole, though I may be misremembering), and so on.

[MsAstoria]

I don't know, to me this is not such a monumental issue. I'm fine with my few purchases from Amazon as most of my e-books are from here and Feedbooks. I do like to download and read the free samples before I buy, and I mainly have the Kindle for the Whispernet service over the Sony PRS-505 which I had previously. The onboard dictionary gives me the freedom to look up definitions in book text which I have discovered is nice! So many of our free books have terminology in them that I was unfamiliar with. Afterall, I wasn't around in the early 1900's and a number of authors are English and use terms "foreign" to me.
If you want to "keep" books and share books with friends, or sell them, then buy paperbooks or hardbacks. I look at Amazon or Sony stores as "rentals", much like Flix or downloaded movies from my satellite TV service. I can always go out and buy DVD's if I want a hard copy to save or pass on.

[cliffs1]

Wow! She says millions of Americans per day or reading on kindles. Doesn't Amazon wish!!

[CCDMan]

Meh. This only applies for books I want to actually own and use more than once. For that 5-10 percent, I can still buy paper.

As far as passing the books on - I do that now more than before and share with two other family members, one has a Kindle and the other an iPod touch. I seldom did that with paper.

[thibaulthalpern]

I agree what Professor Walshe wrote in that article. I think the way it should be is digital editions without DRM. Academic journal articles are already this way. A university (or yourself) can subscribe to an electronic version of a journal and the publisher provides PDF versions of the full articles of the journal. These PDF versions are not DRM'd--at least not the ones I encounter which are in the humanities and social sciences. These PDF versions are downloadable and freely transferrable to your other computers and devices.

The way the rest of the digital book industry is going, I'm not pleased at all. If anyone wants to see a total replacement of paper (referring to discussion on another thread in this sub-forum) then we'll have to solve this problem of access which DRM prevents. Until then, it won't go anywhere far.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by EowynCarter

Luckily DRM (at least the mobi pocket ones) can be removed On that point, DRM are totally useless on preventing illegal diffusion. They just mess up with customers who don't know how to take them off.

Well, as far as I can tell, no one has been able to yet remove Sony's DRM from their digital bookstore. So, it's not as simple as what you say.

[Sonist]

Originally Posted by MsAstoria

...
If you want to "keep" books and share books with friends, or sell them, then buy paperbooks or hardbacks. I look at Amazon or Sony stores as "rentals", much like Flix or downloaded movies from my satellite TV service. I can always go out and buy DVD's if I want a hard copy to save or pass on.

You are a dream consumer for those who are behind the DMCA. They really, really, really want all of us to think exactly like you. Repeat after me: "You do not own that book you just bought, you do not own that book you just bough...."

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by NormHart

If I am correctly reading Ms. Walshe's comments her article is more about the control of books and the implications of DMR and proprietary access. It singles out Kindle due to it's recent high visibility but applies to any ereader that has proprietary access and DMR content IMO.

Not really. It doesn't apply to any other digital reader out there because it is only the Kindle reader (which includes the Kindle store, because it is one ecosystem) that is setting this restriction.

The iLiad, Sony PRS, and all other digital readers do not have this restriction tied to them. Yes, some of those readers can read DRM versions of digital books but that doesn't mean it's because those readers are restricting access to the digital books. It's the other way around. The digital books are restricting access to itself. In the Kindle reader case, it is restricting access to both book and reader.

[thibaulthalpern]

Originally Posted by Sonist

You are a dream consumer for those who are behind the DMCA. They really, really, really want all of us to think exactly like you. Repeat after me: "You do not own that book you just bought, you do not own that book you just bough...."

You got it!

I notice quite few posts by other people who say, "well, I only read a digital book once so I don't care if it is DRM or not." Well, try thinking in terms of principle and not in terms of your own regular practice.

Some of us may never buy a DRM digital book because some of us (like myself) borrow digital library books from the public library or read our own academic PDFs (which are DRM free) on our readers, but on principle I can still say I don't like DRM digital books.

Or put it this way: you don't live in 1980s South Africa and so apartheid does not directly affect you. Should you say, "I don't care because that form of racialised society doesn't affect me because I don't live in it?"

Hmm....

[Shaggy]

Originally Posted by thibaulthalpern

Well, as far as I can tell, no one has been able to yet remove Sony's DRM from their digital bookstore. So, it's not as simple as what you say.

"Yet" is the operative word. DRM is fundamentally flawed. There is no such thing as DRM which can't be removed, it's just a question of whether or not anyone has figured it out yet. Given enough knowledge and time, any DRM system can be removed.

[trehberg]

In my opinion, DRM is simply the evolution of copyright. Copyrights are DRM on the honor system. We are allowed to buy a book, but there are restrictions on how we can disseminate the contents. I don't object to the protection of the author's rights, and I don't have a strong objection to DRM for the same reason. As far as not being able to sell or give away the ebook when I finish it, this is the evolutionary aspect. Were this to be possible, with modern technology, copies would proliferate across the internet in a matter of minutes. Essentially, only one copy would ever be sold and then millions of pirated copies would be available. I believe the best solution would be to produce an ebook reader, Kindle or otherwise, inexpensive enough for the masses, and then have fee-based virtual libraries that allow access to the ebooks for a nominal fee on a temporary basis. Leave it to the Library of Congress, universities and other formal institutions to store paper copies if necessary. Personally, I believe that ebooks, with a universal format, would outlast paper books anyway, since they don't decay or burn as easily and can be archived in hundreds of separate locations.