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Monday, June 22, 2009

Tech / Books DRM-Free Is Essential

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 1:29 PM

This is why a DRM-free e-reader is essential, and why I'm a little nervous about the Kindle: Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing reports that even though Amazon claims your Kindle purchases stay in a digital hub for you to download again and again to your Kindle or iPhone, certain books have a limit to the number of times you can download those books before you have to re-purchase them. And Amazon isn't telling what that magical secret number is:

...we found out the hard way that Amazon can revoke your Kindle's ability to read your ebooks aloud after you've bought them. Now we discover that there is a secret counter that limits your refreshes of your Kindle library (say, across multiple Kindle devices as you upgrade, or replace lost, broken or defective units).

It may be that the market would be willing to pay Kindle book prices for books with these restrictions (and whichever other ones are lurking in the shadows), but it's just not fair or right for a company that prides itself on being customer-centered to refuse to tell you what you're buying when you buy its ebooks.

Doctorow also notes that Amazon simply refuses to return e-mails asking about their policies or e-mails of a critical nature.

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And for this you pay full price?!? Asinine.

Here's the ethical solution: buy the real book, then torrent the text from somewhere & read it on your iPhone, etc.

And here's the real solution: torrent the fucking book already.

Fuck Kindle and it's DRM bullshit.

Posted by Yosemite Sam on June 22, 2009 at 1:42 PM

Physical books have their limits too. Have you seen what the average paperback looks like after 10 readings?

Posted by ALEX37V on June 22, 2009 at 1:48 PM

The Kindle has the ability to read DRM'd books just like the iPod can play DRM'd music. Both devices can handle non-DRM media. It's your choice which to put on your device. As long as you understand that anything with DRM is merely a rental, I don't see a problem.

Posted by mpd on June 22, 2009 at 1:51 PM

Yosemite Sam for the win @1.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on June 22, 2009 at 2:27 PM

ironically, Boing Boing was one of the first periodicals formatted for the Kindle because allegedly, it's one of a certain Amazon bigwig's favorite websites...

Posted by michael strangeways