The intersection of DRM, fair use, and ereader device spying

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

OK, here's the thing. you say my buying eBook with DRM tells the publisher that DRM is OK to use. Now you say I can buy other then eBooks. So if I don't buy any eBooks, I'm then telling publishers that eBooks don't sell.

So what's the middle ground in this case? Do we tell publishers that eBooks don't sell or do we tell them DRM is OK?

This is really very simple. But it depends upon not having an emotional attachment to a particular technology, in this case, ebooks.

Step 1. Decide what you would like to read
Step 2. Does it exist in ebook format? If yes, go to Step 3, if not Go to Step 4a.
Step 3. Does the ebook have DRM? If Yes, go to Step 4a. If No, go the Step 4b.
Step 4a. Buy the paper version of the book. Enjoy the Read.
Step 4B. Buy the ebook version of the book. Enjoy the Read.

Downloadable Digital music was sold before Apple created iTunes. That music had DRM. Various music stores had varying degrees of success. None of them reached critical mass due to DRM and pricing. Apple came onto the scene, selling downloadable digital music that contained DRM. It was more successful than the competition, but still did not reach critical mass. Apple then negotiated with various studios to sell non-DRM music. THAT improved things significantly. Then Apple adjusted the pricing to reflect the electronic-only nature of the product. THEN iTunes skyrocketed.

It was because of the purchasing decisions made by consumers that forced, yes forced, the music industry to provide non-DRM music.

We as consumers are faced with the same issues, but this time with ebooks. They are overpriced and they are restricted by DRM.

Companies will claim that the cost to store and distribute downloadable digital books is comparable to physical media. Many accept that as truthful.
The result: There is no incentive to bring ebook prices down to where they should be.

Companies claim that DRM on ebooks is necessary to prevent piracy (yet the music industry has managed to make money without the need for DRM). Many accept DRM or are content to strip the DRM.
The result: There is no incentive to provide non-DRM ebooks.

The challenge is greater with ebooks. Consumers are more accepting of being controlled than they were 10 years ago. They love their gadgets (ebook readers) more now than those who loved their mp3 players back then.

With every new piece of consumer electronics that is released, there are those who are attracted to the technology itself, those who are attracted to the content delivered by that technology, and some to both. Whether it is MP3s, DVDs, or ebooks, this continues to be true.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

This is really very simple. But it depends upon not having an emotional attachment to a particular technology, in this case, ebooks.

Not all attachments to ebooks are emotional. For a lot of people with disabilities, it's ebooks or nothing; pbooks are too heavy or the print is too small for them.

Not that I disagree with the rest of your points, other than "...otherwise, buy the pbook." (I rarely bought pbooks even when I read them--I borrowed a lot, or got hand-me-downs from other people.) But I don't want the discussion to get derailed into "if the ebook as offered doesn't work for you, just get the pbook." That's not quite a "let them eat cake" response, but it's fairly close to "if you can't afford petrol, just ride a bike instead."

That works some situations but it doesn't fix the problems for those people for whom that's not a reasonable option.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

Downloadable Digital music was sold before Apple created iTunes. That music had DRM. Various music stores had varying degrees of success. None of them reached critical mass due to DRM and pricing. Apple came onto the scene, selling downloadable digital music that contained DRM. It was more successful than the competition, but still did not reach critical mass. Apple then negotiated with various studios to sell non-DRM music. THAT improved things significantly. Then Apple adjusted the pricing to reflect the electronic-only nature of the product. THEN iTunes skyrocketed.

Do you have any stats to back that up?
Apple had the muscle to get what they wanted from the publishers because iTunes was already the dominant sales platform.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by country0129

Does anyone know of an utility that would ferret out DRM protected books in a library directory on your computer?

I've imported all my *.AZW and comparable books into my Calibre library, and I can't use them across muliple platforms. I'd like to delete those specific book to have a residual of books DRM free in the library.

And, it's not as simple as opening each one to see, for I have over 12,000 books in the library. I've moved all the *.AZW books to a different directory, and I'd like to move those not DRM'd back to the Calibre directory.

A plugin? Another software producer? Anyone know?

There is probably a better way, but you put your AZW files in a seperate library and run a bulk convert on say 1000 at a time.

Then copy the error log to clipboard and paste it into notepad.
This would give you a list of all DRMMed books

Helen

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

This is really very simple. But it depends upon not having an emotional attachment to a particular technology, in this case, ebooks.

OK, let say everyone who buys eBooks takes your advise. Lets say 90% of the eBooks we buy now have DRM. So we do it your way and the publishers then say that eBooks are a flop since the sales of pBooks has just risen significantly while the sales of eBooks have dropped significantly. Al that does is get us screwed because now the publisher won't be removing DRM since eBooks don't sell well enough.

[Freeshadow]

not if the pbooks are bought used

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

OK, let say everyone who buys eBooks takes your advise. Lets say 90% of the eBooks we buy now have DRM. So we do it your way and the publishers then say that eBooks are a flop since the sales of pBooks has just risen significantly while the sales of eBooks have dropped significantly. Al that does is get us screwed because now the publisher won't be removing DRM since eBooks don't sell well enough.

Ten years ago, that might've been the case; now, ebook sales would shift to indie and self-pub books. There's now a solid market for ebooks and customers will buy from whatever's available. BPHs aren't going to walk away from that market, now that it exists.

It's a fairly moot point... there's not going to be any millions-of-customers movement to insist on the removal of DRM. But a solid and vocal opposition to DRM that keeps (1) telling new ebook customers that no, they don't *have* to stick to a single ereader or lose their books and (2) reminding authors that they're losing sales, can have some impact on the way the market works.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's a fairly moot point... there's not going to be any millions-of-customers movement to insist on the removal of DRM. But a solid and vocal opposition to DRM that keeps (1) telling new ebook customers that no, they don't *have* to stick to a single ereader or lose their books and (2) reminding authors that they're losing sales, can have some impact on the way the market works.

Yes, I know it's pointless, but I avoid buying DRM'd ebooks as much as possible. I support authors by buying new hardcover books (for a handful of my favorite authors) and I buy ebooks from those authors that have the rights and publish with reasonable prices for backlist books non-DRM via Smashwords or the like.

For the rest, I generally go with the library or used books.

Only way you can vote as a consumer is with your purchases. It's kind of like some people feel like a vote is wasted on a political party that can't win...if that's how you feel, keep voting lesser-evil (in this case, buying and stripping DRM). I understand that point of view also. I chose to not buy DRM ebooks.

I like shiny hardcovers for my favorite authors anyway - I know they'll still be readable in 30 years without a problem - it's a product I like plenty.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Ten years ago, that might've been the case; now, ebook sales would shift to indie and self-pub books.

No it wouldn't. Except at the margins, the medium doesn't determine the market. People aren't going to buy crappy books just because they have an e-reader. People aren't going to waste their time digging through a slush pile for gems just because they have an e-reader.

The e-reader exists so that people can read the books they want to read on an e-reader. If these books aren't available, they will return to paper in vast numbers.

[DarkScribe]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

Who held a gun to your head and forced you to buy DRM'ed ebooks?! You bought a DRM'ed book knowing that it was locked into that particular store. That's the agreement you entered into when you made that purchase. Why you feel entitled to modify the terms of that agreement after-the-fact is puzzling to me.



It IS that simple.

. . . . . . . . .

In a so-called free market, supply and demand help shape the products being sold. If people buy products in spite of the fact that those products don't suit their needs (ie. non-DRM ebooks) then there is no incentive for companies to do anything different.

By purchasing a DRM'ed ebook what you are saying is that the DRM issue has a lower priority than the ebook format. In these instances, the presence of DRM was not enough to prevent you from spending your money.

I dislike DRM'ed media. I'm not a criminal and I don't like being treated like one, and I'm certainly not going to pay for the "privilege" of being treated like one. So I don't buy DRM'ed media.

But unfortunately, many of the people who feel the same way about DRM, buy DRM'ed media anyways and then strip it away... which undermines the power of the consumer.

Having said that, I know that my opinion is in the minority.

When you buy from any online store there is no "Official" notification that the material is locked to your device. In most cases DRM is not something that the average non technically aware purchaser knows about. When I buy a novel, I am paying a fee for the novel, I am neither paying for, nor inviting technology to be added that limits my potential enjoyment of that novel. It is why there is no law against DRM removal, it is a marketing ploy, not a legal requirement.

I don't bother to remove it as I have no need, I don't use other devices. If I decided to switch to another reader, to use something other than a Kindle, I would not hesitate to strip all protection from my library. It is similar to my purchasing of music CDs. The first thing that I do is strip any protection - if it has protection - and load a high fidelity copy onto my media centre. I do not play CDs, I no longer have CD player as part of my music system.

[Quexos]

By all means we are. It's just that if we go their way, it will get worse and that is what the masses have a hard time understanding.

Originally Posted by wodin

Do you mean to imply that we're not?

[bigtext]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

The paranoia is strong with this one.

Did you read any of the articles linked? The original thread I referenced in my first post had an article from the Wall Street Journal. There was also one from NPR.

How paranoid is it to speculate on this when they are already tracking every single page turn and highlight and note?

Originally Posted by jgaiser

Your proof of the above statement is..?? A lot of "I think* in it. I'm more worried about Google's keeping a record of my searches (which by the way, they are) than the *maybe's* of what Amazon is doing.

If you want to point out where I said they are definitely tracking DRM state then I would appreciate it. And I will say I was wrong. I'm speculating that is is possible. I can't be sure how many databases they are using and if they have a separate one for side loaded or synched. Personally, I would say that creating multiple databases to store the same kinds of metadata information from side loaded vs downloaded online would be an inefficient design. Good programmers try to eliminate any type of code that duplicates itself so creating multiple databases with the same tables and columns is just plain inefficient.

Yes, Google is tracking all your searches. They use it for advertising. If you have an Android tablet with GPS enabled then they can track wherever you drive to and serve up ads for local restuarants. I'm not sure why a discussion about Amazon is so irrelevant on Mobile Reads. If I wanted to talk about google tracking I would be a on some search engine forum.

Originally Posted by jgaiser

As Elfwreck has tried to make you understand, the effort to monitor the *millions* of kindles out there is so great that Amazon is not reasonably going expend the time or bandwidth

I've had a back and forth with Elfwreck already and addressed most of his points. His points about legality and company motives and liability are interesting. I get the sense he isn't a a lawyer and is sort of guessing on this. His technical points are much less impressive and demonstrate to me that he doesn't have a programming background.

There is something ironic about you calling me out on my uncertainty about "I think" and so forth when it appears Elfwreck is doing the same thing. Yet when it comes to technical expertise you defer to Elfwreck who clearly doesn't have a programming background.

I found it humorous that you higlighted the word *millions*. This suggests to me that you do not understand the concept of scalability in software design. You could say "billion" or you could say "ten" or "a thousand". It makes no difference. Amazon is going to hire programmers who know how to write software that scales to any number of users. Furthermore when you say *millions* you are ignoring the fact that they are already doing this kind of data collection. Take for example, the opening of the Wall Street Journal article:

"It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them."

You call it "monitoring" and use the words "time" and "effort". This seems to imply that you think there is some human labor involved. The human labor comes from the user interacting with the device triggering events that then write data to databases. The software, designed by human labor, already exists and is in place. So you load something on your device or you read a book and the software on the device simply collects the information for these events. When the device connects via WiFi or maybe at certain time intervels if always connected, it will sync with the databases on Amazon's server. None of this requires a human being except for admins who simply need to make sure that a network is up and running. But they need to do this whether there are a thousand people connected right now or a million.

No "real time" checking up on what you are doing on your device is required. Just like you don't need to be around real time when someone sends you an email. The email sits in your inbox. If you want to read it when you get back to checking email then you can read it now. Or you can leave it unopened and read it five years or 20 years from now. It doesn't matter. Or take this forum. Let's say its around in 20 years with you. If someone finds out your user name then they can simply, if they want to, read what you wrote today (20 years after today). If Amazon is tracking encrypted state of a book then if they want to, five years from now or tommorrow, have someone write a query that pulls up the names and addresses of all users that have at least one book on their device that links to books published by Penguin (another table "join" here on ISBN or some other unique key). This query can be designed in less than five minutes and the results, depending on computing power, can be returned in even less time. So don't be confused by how easily accessible this information is. With a properly designed databse it is really, really simple to do. You should already have some clue about how powerful electronic databases can be from something like Google even though you've never written a line of SQL in your life.

As far as your comment on bandwidth goes. Well they are already sending information from the device to their servers. So why do they care if they add a field that theoretically requires just one bit of storage (is_encrypted_drm = 1 or 0) in addition to what they send now? It's like adding less than 1% more to the total byte size when you factor in things like title, author and probably publisher, isbn etc have to be stored\sent. And don't confuse metadata with the actual book its self. That is_encrypted_drm field adding 1 bit, even 1 byte an ebook is miniscule.

This is where a lack of understanding of the size of data and bits and bytes and so on leads you to draw a false conclusion "it would be too much of a burden on their network so they would never do it". Keep in mind also this is a company that streams video so they aren't exactly frugal when it comes to using up bandwidth.

[GreenMonkey]

As an I.T. guy, I'm with bigtext on this.

It wouldn't be hard to track at all, since it's apparent that Amazon and Kobo and the like are tracking things like who is highlighting what and how many pages people read.

There's no evidence to show they are doing so, however.

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by DarkScribe

When you buy from any online store there is no "Official" notification that the material is locked to your device.

Please read the "Terms and Conditions" that you agreed to when you created an account on that ebook store.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

As an I.T. guy, I'm with bigtext on this.

It wouldn't be hard to track at all, since it's apparent that Amazon and Kobo and the like are tracking things like who is highlighting what and how many pages people read.

They are tracking highlighting and pages read on books purchased at their stores. There's no indication that they're tracking those details for sideloaded books, and there's no *purpose* for them to do so--they have no way of collecting useful data about those books unless they've got someone assigned to read & analyze them.

Tracking the metadata of sideloaded books is useless; that info can be changed on the user end. Worse, the books themselves can be changed without touching the metadata--I have no qualms about opening up an ePub in Sigil and adding an extra chapter with my personal notes about the book, or making corrections, or removing broken links. I have an epub on my reader that's collecting a set of blog posts; I update it regularly, but the UUID stays the same.

I grant that not many people do this--but that possibility, combined with the ability to read text files and downloaded PDFs with who-knows-what in the metadata fields, means that tracking sideloaded data involves collecting huge masses of data they can't use--which has to be filtered out before they get to usable data.

"We'll just track data for the books with UUID's that match those sold in our stores" might get useful information, but it's not info they could use to make marketing pitches, because they can't be sure the metadata matches the contents. And "it's probably close enough" is a good way to either kick off a failed marketing campaign and lose a whole department's jobs, or get sued for fraud, if they make the statements in public.