Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Locked Up: Why Your Books Are No Longer Yours

[Taylor514ce]

Thanks for the link. From their FAQ:

Originally Posted by wowio

Does WOWIO use any kind of digital rights management (DRM)?
Since anyone can defeat the most "sophisticated" DRM with the print screen button, we believe that technology-based DRM is essentially a fraud. Our approach takes the market incentive out of misbehaving, rewards people for doing the right thing, and tries to stay out of the way of honest users. To help keep everyone honest, however, readers must authenticate their identity and agree to a licensing agreement when they set up their account. Then, each ebook is serialized with the reader's authenticated name and a unique serial number, as well as other less visible markers. WOWIO will immediately terminate the account of anyone caught illegally distributing ebooks, and will prosecute serious offenders.

Ok. They'll get my business.

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I remember trying to find things online before Google, using Archie, Fetch, etc. I'm not so sure they haven't earned what they make. One can exclude one's content from Google Search, after all. More people seem to be trying to draw added Google attention to their content than the other way around, it seems to me. And indexing and searching content has costs, and involves work. Arguing that Google shouldn't get paid if they help someone find your content seems a lot like arguing against paying book publishers for the work they do. But perhaps there are issues here I'm not aware of... I'm always willing to learn something new.

The issue is that they are driving their business through outright theft of content. They aren't indexing it, they are copying it wholesale then indexing their copy.

I understand the need for a search engine. Either search engine users, or those wanting to be indexed, should pay. To fund it all through an advertising engine driven by stolen content is absolutely wrong, and Google should be the target of a massive class action lawsuit.

I don't want to even talk about the SEO snake oil salesman industry Google has created to further drive their schemes. I might get all emphatic and use short, declarative sentences. No one wants that.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

The issue is that they are driving their business through outright theft of content. They aren't indexing it, they are copying it wholesale then indexing their copy.

Are they no longer respecting exclusions in robots.txt? It's been awhile since I looked at my logfiles, but I don't recall them crawling the parts of my sites I've told them not to.

But there are certainly reasons to be concerned about Google.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

For your old books at least the old number will work forever. I am not sure about the new ones you buy. The number is stored in the file itself.

Dale

Along with your name.

[Taylor514ce]

Yes, they respect robots.txt, as well as the no-cache directive. I shouldn't have to put a sign on my door that says "please don't enter my house" or explicitly tag all my belongings "don't steal". My sites' contents are already protected by copyright. Google ignores that. They've already been sued, but the clueless judge ruled they operated under fair use and added value to the content.

Let book authors meditate on that.

Historical Link, and an excerpt:

"Google, for its part, says the project benefits authors and publishers by raising awareness of their books..."

Hmmm, haven't I heard that argument before? Oh yes, from people here claiming illegal pirated copies of books are good because it makes authors more visible/prominent, increasing the chances that people might eventually make legitimate purchases.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by radleyp

bwaldron, you highlight the point I was trying to make in our discussion in another thread, that if you switch reading devices from, say, the Cybook, to your TH55, the book you are reading must be available in both formats. I did lots of reading in ereader on both my Palm devices and, later, my MotoQ: I have some 50+ books in ereader format. None are readable on the Kindle. Moreover, if you do switch, you have to coordinate the two devices. Of course, you could be reading different things on each: I, however, cannot switch from one to the other because of, say, lighting conditions, leave off what I was reading on the Kindle and start with other matter on the MotoQ. So how do you manage? Like you, I don't want to have to buy the book twice but, just so you know, when I was presented with the Kindle in December, I was reading The Best and the Brightest, a DRM'ed book, in ereader on my MotoQ. I could not simply stop, so I bought it again for the Kindle. So I hope you turn publishers' heads in the right direction, and make them issue multi-eformatted books.

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20407

That should do to help you keep on reading your eReader eBooks.

[igorsk]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Sorry - I wouldn't touch a dime from Google. In fact, the way I see it, they already owe me for the complete contents of my various web sites that they've taken, without my permission, and stored on their servers. They then serve up portions of my site (even allowing their users to see complete pages without visiting my site), and monetize my content to drive their own advertising engine. I never gave them permission, never received payment, and don't see a dime of the advertising revenue driven by my content.

Ever heard of robots.txt?

[Taylor514ce]

Originally Posted by igorsk

Ever heard of robots.txt?

Yes. I've been a web developer (read: CGI programmer, C++ developer, HTML, JavaScript, ASP, ASP.NET/C#, CSS, XML/XHTML, you know: a programmer) since the web's inception. I know about robots.txt. Giving me a "hang this sign on your door and I promise I won't steal from you" option doesn't make theft or copyright violations defensible.

[Jadon]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

The advertising model is worthy of consideration. It's how this forum operates.

How many people see the ads? Adblock is one of the most popular Firefox extensions, and all modern browsers make it relatively easy to block ad clutter.

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

But the normal banner ads I leave intact and occasionally click-through.

I really doubt this is the norm. I think most people who know more than the bare minimum about computers block most ads as a default.

[Taylor514ce]

Trust me, browsing without AdBlock is the norm, by a huge, huge ratio.

[moz]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

I know about robots.txt. Giving me a "hang this sign on your door and ...

Putting something on the web is much more akin to printing it and displaying out the front of your house. If you don't want all comers to read it, don't put it there for them to see. Your objection to search engines reading it is more like objecting to the local library taking photos of your house and telling people where the house is.

Can you suggest ways that search engines could work that don't involve reading the content of your website with promiscuous copying and caching? From the sound of it you'd prefer that all 20-odd major search engines downloaded everything on your site every day, just in case anything has changed. The alternative, of having a single file that controls that seems obvious to me - whatever is used has to work for the 80% of users who want their site to be searchable but don't want to do anything in particular to make that happen, as well as the other 20% who want the search but also want to be right up the rankings.

[Taylor514ce]

There are valid reasons for wanting to have a site, and not wanting to have portions of that site monetized and served up out of a 3rd party's server.

I don't understand your library/photo/house analogy, so can't really respond.

I won't address competitive rankings, SEO, and monetization schemes as they are part of the very "Google economy" that currently rules the web and which I find so objectionable, which is what I think you mean by the 20% who "want to be right up the rankings".

As I suggested upstream in the thread, I understand the need for search engines, and the technology involved. The mechanism isn't the issue - the business practice is the issue.

As a search engine user, I would be willing to pay for my searches, and as a web site owner/operator, I would be willing to pay to have indexed those sites/pages I wanted to appear in search results. A search engine could indeed make revenue by selling me an indexer program to run on my own server. There are several technological approaches besides swamping my site with automated content scrapers, mass copying my site to their server, and indexing it for key words to drive advertisements.

I'm not here to convince everyone that Google is evil. But I find it interesting that they operate exactly like the "darknet e-book pirates", with many of the same justifications. They take content because they can, serve it up to all comers, and in fact have found a way to make money doing so. Those of you who, rightly, would never download a pirated book, ask yourselves what you're doing when you "View cached copy" on a Google search results page.

[Kajti]

pilotbob — I bet you feel differently about people coming into your house and taking your stuff.

If you wish to equate physical and nonphysical things, no one can prevent you. Many people have been known to find a difference between an act where something tangible is taken from a person, and one where copying means otherwise.

nekokami — I will say that I think the attitude Kajti displays is a) atypical, b) immature and c) morally indefensible.

a) I very much doubt it's as uncommon as your optimistic viewpoint wishes to see it, b) quite possibly, c) quite possibly. Unless a reliable survey where a representative sample of ebook readers felt safe to give anonymous answers were conducted, there's no way to know whether you're more common or I am. Self-selected and self-censoring forums like this don't strike me as representative.

Xenophon — So which is it? The legitimately free stuff? Or the non-free stuff? Have you earned my harsh words, or were you just careless in your description?

I'm cheap, lazy, arrogant. I read some old classic or public domain stuff, some new Creative Commons stuff, but mostly OCR'd copywronged novels I download. Mostly science fiction, with some nonfiction, mystery, and fantasy as leavening. But if merely acknowledging the elephant in the room makes people uncomfortable, I'll let this nym die, and if I post again, it will be as a nicely-censored persona that says all the acceptable things, no matter how far from reality....

[tompe]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Newspapers are paid for principally by advertising. Subscription fees cover delivery costs only.

Modify the example to borrow a book from a friend then so my point is kept. And the point was that things that on the surface sounds reasonable often is not correct when analyzed.

For example if you think an utilitaristic moral system is the most reasonable then it might be optimal if a certain percentage people download books from darknet and then talks enthusiastically about the book to their friends who buy them since this could increase the total utility.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Kajti

But if merely acknowledging the elephant in the room makes people uncomfortable, I'll let this nym die, and if I post again, it will be as a nicely-censored persona that says all the acceptable things, no matter how far from reality....

I think you are right about this. And I guess that a lot of people here that do not download books illegally downloads TV series illegally since it seems to be extremely common to download current series that has not been broadcast were people live.