DRM poll: How do you deal with it.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

A movie costs me the same as a book and I dont expect to be able to walk in to any theater in the future and watch the movie again without paying. I am pretty sure that a lot of people will not agree with me on that but I just cannot work up enough energy to care about this issue.

That's exactly the way that I feel about it too, Martin.

[Lemurion]

Most of the time I have no problem with MobiDRM. However I do have two books I bought from one seller that I'm not going to be able to get onto my Palm because of the DRM. (It had to be activated from within the reader and only allowed one PID which meant I could only activate on the computer that downloaded it.) That kind of thing is what soured me on DRM.

This is not to complain about the retailer; they've been more than good. It's purely an issue resulting from the requirement for DRM.

I'll accept it when I must - but I really don't like it. Among other things it forces people to stick to the same device (or at least format) if they buy ahead of reading.

[DDHarriman]

But if you buy the DVD of the movie – I’m not here into the theatre feeling on seeing movies etc, as I think is a personal option – you can see it all and all over again and not paying it again.

[DDHarriman]

How about migrating supports?

More precisely, migrating an owned pBook to an eBook as a solution against the DRM version and/or inexistence of an eBook version…

Anyone experienced, going into that road?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DDHarriman

How about migrating supports?

More precisely, migrating an owned pBook to an eBook as a solution against the DRM version and/or inexistence of an eBook version…

Anyone experienced, going into that road?

1. It's illegal in many countries, such as the UK, to scan even a book that you've bought.

2. It's a massive amount of work. If you place any reasonable value on your time, it's almost certainly not worth the effort.

[Redcard]

My choice is choice B. Buy the books with DRM and then remove them.

While I do not advocate theft by any stretch, we in the US are nearing a point in time where there is no legalistic difference between buying books and removing the DRM (a criminal act) and downloading them off of a torrent (a criminal act.) Those two acts are both covered as "infringements" under the DMCA.

My concern is that one day, people might see no ethical difference between the two.

[pdurrant]

Oddly enough, the same point was made over 165 years ago -- in a speech by Thomas Babington Macauley in the House of Commons, 5th February, 1841:

At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men.

[...]

Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly [...] and the whole nation will be in the plot.

[...]

Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.

Originally Posted by Redcard

My choice is choice B. Buy the books with DRM and then remove them.

While I do not advocate theft by any stretch, we in the US are nearing a point in time where there is no legalistic difference between buying books and removing the DRM (a criminal act) and downloading them off of a torrent (a criminal act.) Those two acts are both covered as "infringements" under the DMCA.

My concern is that one day, people might see no ethical difference between the two.

[DDHarriman]

In my country it is not.

One can migrate content protected by Copyright as stated in the “Código do Direito de Autor e dos Direitos Conexos” (https://ciist.ist.utl.pt/docs_da/cod...epublicado.pdf), point 2-a) of the 75th article who says in it’s end (roughly translated):
“(…)as well reproduction by all means done by individual person, for his own private use and without any direct or indirect commercial proposes.”

Of course it says in the next article (76) that a fair retribution must be paid to the owner of the Copyright, but that’s another story…

Instead, “freeing” of DRM is forbidden - articles 217 and following of the same document - where it states that it’s punished by law to break any protection set in a protected document, as is teaching how to do it, selling or buying tools to do it, etc… etc… etc…

So, and even being time consuming, how is the experience of the ones who deal with DRM and/or not finding content in electronic format, choose to migrate pBooks they own to eBooks and why they have chosen it?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The TV and motion picture industry are only recently having to deal with purely digital, high-quality copies of their products. Until recently, it has been easy for them to tie their products to venues (theaters, TV and copy-protected webcasts) or physical media (DVDs), which allows them to exercise some control over the dissemination of copywritten files. But as storage capacity grows, allowing high-quality digital files to be swapped media-free, this will be more and more of a problem for them.

Publishers would love to keep you tied to physical media for the same reason. Failing that, they fall back on venues... or, in this case, devices... to control dissemination.

Deal with the problem of dissemination... in other words, copy all you want for yourself, but you can't redistribute to someone else... and you'd solve about all of the publishers' problems (as well as those of the music and video industries).

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by HappyMartin

I buy mobi drm books, no problem. Have yet to re read a single e book in the year I have been using this technology. Lost one reader and changed my pid at Fictionwise to the Cybook and it was no difficult task. i have become quite lazy and only buy and download mobi pocket books. DRM and otherwise. I have spent enough time reading limited books over and over. I don't need to do that anymore.

That is your choice, and truth to tell, I doubt that any of us rereads most of the books that we encounter. That being said, many of us have favorite books that we like to reread every couple of years; they might be something we learn something new from every time we read or they might be just plain fun.

Further, what if you liked the book so much you wanted to share the book with your spouse or a friend? Most DRM mechanisms essentially prevent this (Though I think using an RSA style hash, it would be possible to set up a DRM scheme that would allow books to be shared...).

A movie costs me the same as a book and I dont expect to be able to walk in to any theater in the future and watch the movie again without paying. I am pretty sure that a lot of people will not agree with me on that but I just cannot work up enough energy to care about this issue.

Buying a ticket to a movie and buying a book are two totally different things. When I buy a ticket to a movie, I am essentially renting a seat in a particular theater for a particular period of time where they are showing the movie. In no way have I bought the movie (and even our terminology acknowledges this since we buy tickets for movies but we buy books).

Further, a key difference between a movie ticket and a DRM'd book is the following. I can buy a ticket to a movie anonymously; as long as I paid cash, there is no way for corporations to know I was at the movie and therefore bombard me with advertising based on that fact. Now granted, buying any ebook will probably require a user to disclose at least some personal information; but DRM requires that even more information be gathered and more importantly be retained by the seller of the eBook (since it will be needed to allow the book to be read on new devices or in the case of ereader, if a user changes their credit card). Now, even if the company that collects the information is benevolent (and I wouldn't bet on that), the fact that it stores that information makes it vulnerable to hackers. Not everyone would be comfortable having the list of books they have bought published somewhere on the internet, but DRM essentially makes this possible.

The only type of DRM I would avoid is one that would give me a time limit in which to finish a book, like a library.

Give them time.

--
Bill

[tompe]

More importantly than re-reading is that I want to buy a book now and read it anytime in the next 10 years or so. This is my standard procedure for paper books. And you need to buy it now because you cannot trust that the book will be in print later.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by tompe

More importantly than re-reading is that I want to buy a book now and read it anytime in the next 10 years or so. This is my standard procedure for paper books. And you need to buy it now because you cannot trust that the book will be in print later.

I agree, though in theory at least, ebooks should limit that risk somewhat. After all, disk storage is relatively cheap when you consider the fact that the average ebook averages under 2 MB and the average hard drive is now around a Terabyte.

That being said, publishers rights do lapse from time to time.

--
Bill

[Lemurion]

Most books see 80% of their sales in the first 3 months, and are removed from the shelves at the end of that period. So as Tompe said, it's best to buy it when you see it because you may not ever see it again.

This is also where DRM hurts. As of right now there's no guarantee that either the authorization servers will still be up or that the book will be available for re-download in ten years, and authorizing a new device for mobi requires that both conditions be met.

At least with eReader you can archive everything if you want to buy now but it doesn't end up at the top of your to-read pile for years.

I know I buy SF e-magazines more regularly than I read them - then read a lot in one fell swoop.

I try not to circumvent DRM these days, but it's an extra level of hassle that I'd prefer not to deal with.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

This is also where DRM hurts. As of right now there's no guarantee that either the authorization servers will still be up or that the book will be available for re-download in ten years, and authorizing a new device for mobi requires that both conditions be met.

There's no guarantee that you'll still have a paperback, either. What proportion of the paperbacks that you bought 10 years ago do you still have today?

Life is full of uncertainties. When I buy a book, either on paper OR electronically, I certainly don't buy it with the view that it's a "lifetime investment".

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by HarryT

There's no guarantee that you'll still have a paperback, either. What proportion of the paperbacks that you bought 10 years ago do you still have today?

Life is full of uncertainties. When I buy a book, either on paper OR electronically, I certainly don't buy it with the view that it's a "lifetime investment".

Obviously there is always a risk when one buys a product that it might be damaged or destroyed at some point in the future, but we rarely think that the risk of loosing the product comes from the seller of said product.

Yes, a paper book I buy might be lost or destroyed; for that matter if I am not careful to back data up, the same may be true of eBooks I buy. On the flip side though, DRM has given us a situation where books I buy and still have in my possession are no longer readable by me because of actions taken by the seller of said book.

And by the way, I would say that I have 90% of all the books I have ever purchased.

--
Bill