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

[TommyCooper]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

The point is, people will willingly put up with surveillance and monitoring, if they see it as convenient to do so. Your last question is a lot harder, of course...

Steve, I think you are missing my point somewhat. You believe that somehow there is, predominantly, a conscious choice being made to access this convenience by consumers, and you use the word 'willingy'. Furthermore, this choice comes with a price, 'surveillance and monitoring', which we should accept because it is a price we have to pay to make us safer.

I, in my cynical way, do not believe that choice or willingness is a factor. Most people are stuck with what they've got because of all sorts of social, physical and economic factors. Try living with a disability in a poor neighbourhood on a small pension and see how many choices you have.The only people who have, relatively, any real choices are those with that degree of economic independence which allows them to make those choices. Even they are slowy finding that they have very little in the way of surveillance-free movement and access to any of those necessities and luxuries they wish to purchase.

Moreover, surveillance and monitoring are fine ideas if they are only being used for 'security' purposes. What happens when they are used for social control and control of freedom of expression? What about all the data being collected from you, and me, from all of this surveillance and monitoring? Surveillance and monitoring becomes a vast data stream, out of your, or my, personal control. It is used, without our knowledge, by governments and business without our veto or say-so.

There have been several high profile cases in the UK recently where the data [of various levels of sensitivity] from millions of people has been mislaid [and those are just the cases published]. Perhaps you would like to wake-up one day and find that your 'identity' has been stolen, or you have been wrongly catagorized as a troublemaker or terrorist, or you have been refused healthcare because this data stream is 'faulty' through mischief, incompetence or criminality.

It's not just about surveillance and monitoring. In the end it's about the control of 'our' personal data and the lack thereof for you and me.

Tommy

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Hey, I'm just talking about selling e-books and not getting ripped off. We don't have to start a revolution to accomplish that.

Yeah, I know they're watching me. But as long as the only thing they're doing with that information is trying to sell me viagra, I can deal. If you're convinced that laws and surveillance are being intentionally used by corrupt government officials to oppress you... you have a much more serious problem than worrying about e-books, and it might be a good idea to deal with that first.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Pirates steal software and music too. But you don't see software running to add DRM or music running to add more DRM.

Certainly Microsoft has run to add DRM to their OS and Software products. Their licensing has become even more restrictive than in the past. DVD's certainly use DRM. The trend of no DRM on music is the exception and is an experiment that perhaps will be extended at some point but don't hold your breath.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Certainly Microsoft has run to add DRM to their OS and Software products. Their licensing has become even more restrictive than in the past. DVD's certainly use DRM.

And they're not alone... Adobe DRM has become more restricted than ever in recent years. In both cases, they went with soft DRM while they built market share... then tightened the noose when everyone was committed to using them, guaranteeing the fewest drop-outs.

[Alisa]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I was a member of one of those generations. Sure, we recorded songs off the radio, or copied tapes of friends' tapes (well, actually I never did, but I could've). However, we also bought albums, for 2 reasons: Because our friends didn't always have the stuff we liked, or we found something they would like and bought it first; and most importantly, because tapes of tapes, and radio recordings, weren't as good in quality as the albums.

I think one of the keys here is scale. Because copying an album back then depended on actually knowing someone in real life that had it, there was a better chance you would end up having to buy it if you wanted a decent copy. With the Internet it's pretty much a guarantee that you will be able to find a fairly high-quality copy somewhere for free. Yes, back then people did copy but it was a much smaller scale which I think is why the record companies didn't make such a big deal about it. Most people had a mixture of stuff they'd bought and stuff they'd taped from a friend. Until CDs, the copies we're typically pretty bad so if it was an album you REALLY cared about, you bought it. Amongst my friends, the cassette tape was for mixes or for listening to an album to see if you liked it enough to buy it. Now I know people who have huge collections of music and didn't pay for a single song. The younger they are, the more likely that is to be true.

[WillAdams]

ob. discl. I am not a lawyer.

AIUI, copying a song off the radio onto a cassette tape is considered fair use, especially since there's a blank media tax imposed on the sale of audio cassettes intended for music --- this is also why CD-Rs which are marketed for music are more expensive, they have a ``private copying levy'' tax built into the price.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/1004.html

MP3 players (and presumably ebook readers) are considered computer peripherals, so don't have such pricing regulation built into them.

Rather than seeing everyone presumed guilty and fined in advance, I'd liefer people behaved honestly and only licensed things properly --- boycott authors / companies whose DRM policies you don't agree with.

William

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Well, they should enjoy it while they can, because I don't expect it to last. If the days of rampant free music sharing don't come to an end soon, the music industry will (at least, in the pop genres favored by the music sharers). If the music industry wants to live, they'll find a way to monitor web traffic to identify songs passed on the web, and their senders and receivers (likely through ISP cooperation), and Jammie Thomas will have lots of friends. Or they will have to write off the pop genres as loss-leaders, and make their money from pop ad subsidization and more responsible audiences in other genres. I just don't see how the two worlds can co-exist as-is for long... something's gonna give.

E-books may see the same somethings give, but it's not exactly like the music industry, and what works for one may not work for the other. Still, I don't see why an ID and tracking system would not work for e-books (after all, it would allow e-books to be yours... it would just make sure they stayed yours and yours alone).

I also think ad subsidization would work to provide income, allowing some works to truly be free. (If you're not sure publishers would be willing to work at the ID and tracking system, you better believe advertisers would... it makes ad targeting easier.)

@Will: As much as I appreciate your sentiment, spend some time on this forum and it will become increasingly clear to you that online honesty isn't as widespread as we might like it to be...

Edit: That came out wrong... I didn't mean it to sound like the people on this forum are dishonest. But the opinions expressed do make it clear that there are a lot of dishonest people online in general.

[bwaldron]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

And they're not alone... Adobe DRM has become more restricted than ever in recent years. In both cases, they went with soft DRM while they built market share... then tightened the noose when everyone was committed to using them, guaranteeing the fewest drop-outs.

And lost me as a paying customer of many years, due to problems/hassles with their activation scheme.

[MaggieScratch]

Originally Posted by Alisa

I think one of the keys here is scale. Because copying an album back then depended on actually knowing someone in real life that had it, there was a better chance you would end up having to buy it if you wanted a decent copy. With the Internet it's pretty much a guarantee that you will be able to find a fairly high-quality copy somewhere for free.

My roommate's dual-cassette player with high speed dubbing was the Napster of my dorm in 1983... I wouldn't have purchased the cassettes (or albums) because I was a broke college student selling my plasma twice a week for my spending money. I could buy a lot more blank cassettes and borrow from friends. If that outlet was not available, I dare say I would have done without. I will add that since then I've replaced many of those dubbed cassettes with purchased CDs.

There will always be darknet downloaders. I wonder whether there ever will be enough to justify treating honest consumers like criminals. I say that as a published author who hopes to publish more. I'd like to see a solution that combines the best of both--protection of copyright and freedom of use.

[nekokami]

Steve, are your books actually being pirated on the darknet? Because I have the strong impression that most of what's being passed around there are books that aren't available as ebooks at all, and if they are, they're those that have had DRM on them that's been broken. My impression is that Baen books, for example, aren't that popular on the darknet, because they have very low "gift economy" value. You have a Baen-style model, so I'd expect your books not to be pirated that much anyway.

Although we get a few folks around here who seem to be quite unabashed pirates, I think most folks are either trying to replace existing print content that they've already paid for (and we've discussed the whole "license of content" vs. "payment for container" issue ad nauseum-- my contention is still that one should only have to pay for the content license once, and once one has done that, if the container itself has no cost or low cost, one shouldn't be paying full price again for container PLUS content license), or people are trying to get by who are on low incomes, and such people tend to spend a lot on content once their income situation improves, becoming important supporters of content providers. No studies have been able to show that music piracy, for example, is actually harming the music industry, and I rather doubt ebook piracy is harming the book industry. Yes, it happens, yes, it's morally objectionable, but I just don't think it's a large enough effect on the market that the sky is falling over it.

Now, if you or anyone else has some evidence that piracy is hitting your pocketbook directly, I'd be happy to hear it. Until then, we can all spout theories and rationales about how much effect piracy is having on ebooks and authors, but we're all just guessing.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Certainly Microsoft has run to add DRM to their OS and Software products. Their licensing has become even more restrictive than in the past. DVD's certainly use DRM. The trend of no DRM on music is the exception and is an experiment that perhaps will be extended at some point but don't hold your breath.

yes, DVDs use DRM. But, I can take a DVD and play it in my player, my parents player and so on. It's not like the DRM in eBooks and the different formats. The tower of eBable is what cases all the hassle and it's why a lot of people stay away from eBooks.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

yes, DVDs use DRM. But, I can take a DVD and play it in my player, my parents player and so on. It's not like the DRM in eBooks and the different formats. The tower of eBable is what cases all the hassle and it's why a lot of people stay away from eBooks.

So do you think selling eBooks on a Secure SD card would be ok with everyone? Perhaps one multiformat book per card.

[Taylor514ce]

Nope, though I wouldn't mind carrying around a single SD with my encryption key, used to unlock the unique copies of the books I purchase on whatever device I happen to be using.

[Kajti]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Steve, are your books actually being pirated on the darknet?

No. At least I've never seen any show up in searches on the various p2p apps I use, and I think I've only seen one on usenet in the last year or so. It may be there's a secret cabal who pass around his books, and my invitation to it got lost, but it really does seem that Steve obsesses endlessly over something that's far from a plague. (And the posted book was in imp format, at that, which is limited and all but unconvertable.)

Originally Posted by nekokami

My impression is that Baen books, for example, aren't that popular on the darknet

True, although you can find some of them. I depend on finding the Grantville Gazette volumes that way. With Steve's books, the problem seems more obscurity than being copied willy-nilly.

Originally Posted by nekokami

we can all spout theories and rationales about how much effect piracy is having on ebooks and authors, but we're all just guessing

And it will go on, and on, and on. It's a mania for some. Moralists ever will lecture. Why let mundane reality get in the way?

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by Kajti

SNIP
I depend on finding the Grantville Gazette volumes that way.
SNIP

Rather than the inexpensive purchase options? Including various ways to get a reduced price if you're from a 3rd world country or truly can't afford them otherwise?

You are aware that they'll just give a free subscription to any school or library, right?

There really shouldn't be any need to get the Gazzettes from the darknet. What is Baen doing wrong that you don't want to pay them?

Xenophon
(Who knows some of the Gazzette authors and wants to see them get the royalties their work deserves)