Are Fair Use Rights coming to an end?

[HarleyB]

I had a nervous few moments today. Last week I had issues with a few books that didn't play well with the Calilbre plugins. They were freebies so I didn't really care.
But today a book I had preordered was released. I had thought it wasn't due for a few more days and was considering cancelling it and waiting for it to show up at Kobo but I was too late - it was already there. Luckily the plug ins worked.
I have to say the doubt about whether or not I could back it up and read on my device of choice means that I don't know if I will purchase from Amazon again.
While it was nice to know for the last 3 months that the book was coming (Kobo don't advertise prereleases) I could have bought it from Kobo for essentially the same price today anyway.
I think my best option is to use Amazon to find what's coming and then buy it from somewhere else.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Do you believe him? If that was the case, why not use regular Adobe Epub?

Amazon sell a lot of ebooks. They don't want to have to pay Adobe $0.22 for each one sold. Using they own DRM system is a lot cheaper. Even if the next Kindle supports ePub, they'll still use their own DRM system.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Amazon sell a lot of ebooks. They don't want to have to pay Adobe $0.22 for each one sold. Using they own DRM system is a lot cheaper. Even if the next Kindle supports ePub, they'll still use their own DRM system.

I am sure Amazon could get a discount, given the fact that they are the biggest sellers. Besides, perhaps the DRM fee is paid by the publisher? That would make sense if DRM is demanded by publishers.

And if Amazon believed that switching to ADE would help them sell a lot more books, they would jump ship in a flash. But they like the situation just the way it is.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

I am sure Amazon could get a discount, given the fact that they are the biggest sellers. Besides, perhaps the DRM fee is paid by the publisher? That would make sense if DRM is demanded by publishers.

And if Amazon believed that switching to ADE would help them sell a lot more books, they would jump ship in a flash. But they like the situation just the way it is.

It doesn't matter who pays the DRM fee, it's money that goes away from the reseller and publisher.

But in practice, it's the reseller/distributor that pays it. (One of my ebooks sells through Lightning Source as an ePub with DRM*. Lightning Source takes 25% of the RRP, I get 75%. The $0.22 to Adobe gets paid by Lightning Source or the reseller.)

Even if Amazon had a team of ten working full-time on their DRM scheme, that's still no more than $2 million per year.

One of my ebooks in the kindle store sells around 100 copies a month. It's sales rank is around 18,000. Therefore I know that Amazon are currently selling far more than 20 million ebooks a year.

Even skewing the figures greatly (suppose Amazon get a discount from Adobe down to $0.10 per ebook), I think you can see that there's no way it would make financial sense for Amazon to adopt Adobe's DRM scheme.





*Yes, it's sad. For this title, that includes some specific fonts, I'm required by the font licence to apply DRM. If IDPF and Adobe had got together on font mangling a bit sooner, I could have just done the font mangling, but currently that's not possible with LS distribution. I do offer a non-DRM version with font mangling applied to anyone who's bought the DRMed version.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It doesn't matter who pays the DRM fee, it's money that goes away from the reseller and publisher.

But in practice, it's the reseller/distributor that pays it. (One of my ebooks sells through Lightning Source as an ePub with DRM*. Lightning Source takes 25% of the RRP, I get 75%. The $0.22 to Adobe gets paid by Lightning Source or the reseller.)

Even if Amazon had a team of ten working full-time on their DRM scheme, that's still no more than $2 million per year.

One of my ebooks in the kindle store sells around 100 copies a month. It's sales rank is around 18,000. Therefore I know that Amazon are currently selling far more than 20 million ebooks a year.

Even skewing the figures greatly (suppose Amazon get a discount from Adobe down to $0.10 per ebook), I think you can see that there's no way it would make financial sense for Amazon to adopt Adobe's DRM scheme.

[/SIZE]

Your figures are obviously convincing. But they don't take the original premise into account that Amazon could sell a lot more books if they used ADE, because users of other devices could buy at the Kindle store. (This was brought up by others, I don't necessarily subscribe to that, even though I personally would not buy from them at this point if I couldn't format shift).

Still I see some strength in my argument that Amazon actually prefers to have an "Amazon only" DRM (and uses it to make sure their books are read on their devices or software only), given the fact that they are the only ones that continuously try to make cracking their DRM more difficult. So there is a financial incentive AND a strategic plan involved.

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by Ravensknight

Making it harder and harder [until it is almost impossible] to get rid of their drm so you can do what you want with your books.

I dont mean to be a party pooper but does one not agree to the terms of purchasing ebooks from amazon? Clearly it states you are licensed to read the content.

Im not supporting drm but ebooks are currently licensed, not purchased. By stripping drm from amazons ebooks is a license violation.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by Solicitous

I dont mean to be a party pooper but does one not agree to the terms of purchasing ebooks from amazon? Clearly it states you are licensed to read the content.

Im not supporting drm but ebooks are currently licensed, not purchased. By stripping drm from amazons ebooks is a license violation.

The courts haven't ruled on that. Can you sign away your fair use right to read the books on any device you own? As long as you only use one copy at a time and don't pass it on?

[Solicitous]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

The courts haven't ruled on that. Can you sign away your fair use right to read the books on any device you own? As long as you only use one copy at a time and don't pass it on?

Probably depends on the country. I know here is Australia there is a right we have as consumer with telecommunications that faults will be responded and rectified to within a certain period of time. Legislation allows us to waive that right if we do so (some ISPs are offering landline rental and claim to keep the costs low we must agree to waive that right).

Not ebooks, but as a consumer we do have the right to waive some of our rights (or not seek damages).

[charmian]

Wait, I had heard that Barnes and Noble and Apple don't pay Adobe $0.22 per book because they use a different DRM system. Is that true?

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by charmian

Wait, I had heard that Barnes and Noble and Apple don't pay Adobe $0.22 per book because they use a different DRM system. Is that true?

Apple use their own system.

B&N use an Adobe system. They got Adobe to add a second authentication method for them, but as far as I know they still pay Adobe.

Eventually ebook readers should be able to read both B&N DRMed ePubs and the original Adobe DRMed ePubs. (i.e. authentication through ADE or by using a Name/number combination).

[speedlever]

Originally Posted by kc24zz

It happened to me today. Running 1.4.1- with updating off. They stopped Kindle for pc, downloaded something named Kindle for pc2 and required me to register. Now none of the tools work.

Since I mostly purchased backlist titles from amazon, it's the authors who lose in this. I will not purchase anything I can't backup.

Well that's interesting.

Yesterday I d/l K4PC (1.6.0) and installed it. I had previously checked my computer for another installation of K4PC and didn't find anything. When I attempted to d/l a sample ebook from Amazon, I couldn't find it. Weird.

So I finally called Kindle support and they pointed out to me that I needed to send it to K4PC 2. Both K4PC and K4PC 2 were showing available as destinations in my send to directory (which I hadn't noticed.) I had just assumed I only had the one K4PC app.

The Kindle support guy and I both just assumed that I must have a prior installation of K4PC on my laptop (which wasn't running at the time.) Later, I checked my laptop, and nope, I don't have K4PC on there either. I do have the Kindle app on my iPad, but that shouldn't count.

So I wonder if this K4PC 2 thing might indicate more than we thought?

Hijacking my own thread here, K4PC 2 shows I have 59 total items with 7 downloaded and 52 archived. Do I have to click on each one to d/l or is there a way to have all the archived items d/l at one shot? Then I can archive them myself.

[charmian]

Oh, only the Nook can read the second authentication system?

As long as e-ink readers are created and sold by bookstores, I don't think DRM tied to a specific store will die.

[JoeD]

Isn't it silly how much money is been wasted on DRM based book sales to protect the books from the people that would buy them whether it had DRM or not, yet it's not stopping the pirates pirating.

Next share holder meeting they have, they should propose a way to increase profit by 22c per book by doing scrapping DRM.

With doubt over whether books will work on my reader in the future, I'm going to stop buying from Amazon. Granted I've only bought a few eBooks from them anyway since it's only recently I found out it was possible to get the books onto my reader with a few scripts (and believe me, actually buying DRM books rather than sticking with my DRM free only stance was a huge hurdle to overcome). But it looks like I'm once more back to buying only DRM free books, only way to be certain the books will be readable

Chances are whatever DRM changes they make, someone will bypass them. If the end user is supposed to read the content, then there will never ever be a DRM system that will work. You've only to look at the game industry who have tried just about everything, the only system that had moderate success was by not shipping most of the content and making it available online and that ended up annoying potential customers.

[carld]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Do you believe him? If that was the case, why not use regular Adobe Epub?

What does one have to do with the other?

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by charmian

Oh, only the Nook can read the second authentication system?

No, Adobe added this to their reader SDK (though it's fairly recent, I think). Any reader that uses Adobe DRM can use the B&N DRM as well. It's up to the manufacturer whether they want to include it or not. For readers produced before Adobe added B&N, the manufacturers could update the SDK and their firmware.

Originally Posted by charmian

As long as e-ink readers are created and sold by bookstores, I don't think DRM tied to a specific store will die.

Yep. Most of the readers that will read multiple DRM systems are produced independant of ebook stores, or are tablet apps.