
Microsoft's eBook Apocalypse Shows the Dark Side of DRM - fogetti
https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/
======
Tempest1981
Previous discussion: (434 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331)

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thejenk
It doesn't make sense to me that eBook retailers can claim they're selling
licences to view books, instead of the books themselves. If I were to look for
1984 for a kindle, I'd:

1\. Search Amazon for "1984 George Orwell" 2\. Select the first option
(paperback) 3\. See the "Format" selector 4\. Select the kindle edition 5\.
Click "Buy with one-click"

Notably, between 4 and 5, reading the entire page gives no indication that the
kindle format is fundamentally different from the paperback in regards to who
actually owns the copy after purchase.

There may be a notice buried in a EULA that you agree to when setting the
device up, but it may be hard to argue that it means they can tell you at the
time of purchase they're selling you a book while actually selling you a
licence.

~~~
inlined
Did you pick 1984 because ironically it was once wiped from all kindles?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html)

~~~
grimskin
I'd like to be devil's advocate here - in case of Orwell books, given that
publisher had no rights for them, the situation is similar to the selling of
stolen goods.

~~~
patrick5415
Sure, but if the local grocer realizes he sold me stolen eggs, he doesn’t get
to send his henchmen to my house in the middle of the night to steal them
back.

The amazon/Orwell fiasco was the moment I decided to never buy a kindle and
steer clear of anything with drm.

------
inlined
1\. How much cost is really involved in keeping up the DRM server in
maintenance mode on Azure?

2\. Maybe this will give the EFF enough case study to argue (successfully,
finally) that the DMCA allows corporations to create rules that violate other
existing laws such as the right of first sale.

~~~
ChrisLomont
The right sale doctrine doesn’t apply to products like these; these are
licenses to use. If they were first sale doctrine products, you could sell
your goods on secondary markets, which you cannot.

~~~
cortesoft
So does the first sale doctrine not have any teeth at all? What is to stop
companies from throwing a license on everything they sell, making the first
sale doctrine meaningless?

Could a bookseller add a license to a physical book, and suddenly you can't
sell it or lend it out?

~~~
darkpuma
> _" Could a bookseller add a license to a physical book, and suddenly you
> can't sell it or lend it out? "_

Probably. I mean, they're already selling physical items laden with DRM
(DVD/bluray), presumably in those cases they are selling you _" a license to
watch the disk."_ The ability to restrict first sale of DRM'd movies is
probably on their TODO list I'd wager, or their list of greatest regrets.

Incidentally, years ago, they did manage to invent a self-destructing DVD
obsensibly for rental-without-return purposes. _Technology Connections_ has a
good video about it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs)

~~~
zaroth
The actual answer appears to be that you can sell _add-on_ digital content
which is licensed only for sale with the physical item, and that’s OK. But you
cannot add license terms to the physical book itself, the book can be resold
freely. That’s recently been affirmed by the Supreme Court.

~~~
darkpuma
Hypothetically if they had the technology to create a paperback book that
self-destructs when anybody but you opens it, would that business model be
illegal? As far as I know, SCOTUS said companies can't use the legal system to
prevent resale of their books. But did they say that technical solutions are
also banned?

~~~
zaroth
If you buy a product which is designed for a single use, knowing that it’s a
single use product, and obviously this is something that would have to fail
gracefully and safely, I really don’t see a problem with that.

Obviously companies (and therefore customers) should be paying for the
ecological impact of their waste product.

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nathantotten
> Microsoft will refund customers in full for what they paid, plus an extra
> $25 if they made annotations or mark-ups.

Doesn’t seem all that nefarious. Get your money back, order the paperbacks. No
DRM issues again.

~~~
akerro
It's more a trust issue in a technology. Pirated ebooks don't have DRM and
never expire, can be opened on any device and you keep the money anyway.

~~~
pjmlp
Or never buy DRM books to start with.

I own a Kindle, however I only buy ebooks from stores that offer epub and PDF
as well. At max with watermarks.

~~~
bad_user
Any recommendations for such stores?

I know of [https://www.downpour.com](https://www.downpour.com) for audio books
and I get all my audio books from them since they are DRM-free.

Would love to know of such a service for ebooks, but for fiction.

~~~
gorbypark
It's not the same as buying DRM free, but stripping DRM from most eBook
formats is pretty trivial these days, afaik. Unless something has changed in
the last few years since I last bought a kindle edition of a book (which I
stripped of DRM so something like this couldn't happen).

~~~
jtbayly
It’s not trivial for Kindle anymore. I did it recently on a Mac, and it took a
fair bit of work, was complicated and confusing, and required finding an old
version of the Kindle reader program and somehow preventing it from checking
in with Amazon’s servers. My brother in law recently tried and failed after
having done it in the past.

~~~
darkpuma
It's still trivial AFAIK (I last did it one or two years ago) if you have an
old kindle device, and can therefore convince Amazon to send you the poorly
encrypted files meant for old kindles. I use a "Kindle Keyboard" e.g. the 3rd
gen. Amazon has stopped selling new-old-stock, but it seems you can still find
them on ebay for somewhere between $20-50.

Incidentally this model of Kindle also comes with text-to-speach, which is a
really nice feature which I believe is missing from all newer models (removed
to avoid cannibalizing audio book sales.)

------
topkai22
I think the real issue here is an improper definition of the word “buy” from a
truth in advertising perspective. I think if a company says you are “buying” a
digital good, then that good than access to that good should be required to be
perpetual, irrevocable, available offline, and enable the user to back up to
their choice of media.

This doesn't preclude the use of DRM in its entirety but is very close to the
experience of buying and owning physical media, which I think meets the common
perception of what "buying" means. For companies wanting to use the current
DRM paradigm, they should be required to use an alternate, accurate term such
as "license."

Of course this is becoming increasingly academic with the rise of subscription
services, where I think all parties are aware that content is impermanent and
the relationship is defined month to month.

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nxc18
This isn’t the first time for MS, and certainly not the first time the dark
side of DRM has shown itself.

MSN music: [https://www.cnet.com/news/defunct-msn-music-has-a-drm-
contro...](https://www.cnet.com/news/defunct-msn-music-has-a-drm-controversy-
on-its-hands/)

Zune’s servers shut down in 2017, but at least you could download free MP3
versions of everything. [https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/groove-
music/82201/buy...](https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/groove-
music/82201/buy-music-zune-2012-please-read)

~~~
Arwill
Seems like that they in a typical Microsoft style tried to link one product to
another. I can imagine that the boss of the Edge browser argued to make their
bookstore Edge-only, to promote the browser that way. And that move
effectively doomed the bookstore.

Its like you go to Microsoft site to search for a registry problem, and the
support person tells you to use Cortana to search. Because obviously his job
is not to solve your registry problem, it is to promote Cortana for Microsoft.

------
olliej
It’s not the dark side, it’s the designed in primary side.

The ability to view drm’d content is almost just an optional side benefit.

I still think legislation should require any product sold with a buy/purchase
button should be required to continue functioning even if the “product” is
shut down.

~~~
inlined
That’s what’s so infuriating about DRM. Lawyers may argue that we clicked OK
to some fine print somewhere, but the product is advertised as something you
buy, not something you lease. That’s why I feel like the right of first sale
should be legally protected.

~~~
olliej
Wait you don’t read a hundred pages of small legalese before you spend $1 on a
song? Are you crazy? Who would ever skip reading such a document?

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Havoc
That’s why is started decrypting and making backups of my ebooks.

Happy to play the corporate’s game but only to a point. And it’s clear that
one need a plan B cause corporates will go nuclear without hesitation. So I
don’t feel bad at all about bending the rules on this

~~~
remicmacs
Same here. Most of my ebooks are bought DRM-free. But some times I want a book
from a publisher that does not do DRM-free publishing. And EVERY TIME, it's a
hassle : I have to link my e-reader to a specific website account. This
account itself has to be linked to my email address, since there is no way to
register anywhere without email nowadays...

Anyway, that makes me REALLY annoyed, so I break the DRM protection every
time, just to avoid another hassle next time I reset my ereader, my Calibre
library, or any other event.

Granted that does not happen very often, but I'll do anything to avoid yet
another 2FA voodoo ritual across multiple online platforms just to claim
ownership on a 100 pages book. I mean, come on !

------
acd
The planet is on fire because we consume to much stuff. We should have the
right to repair things we own. Corporate lobbying is not in the general
democratic interest of the people and should be forbidden.

------
nyreed
I mean, honestly this was clear from the moment online stores with DRM'd media
started appearing. If it's not stored on your own device in a DRM free format,
it can disappear at any time.

It's less 'the dark side of DRM', and more simply that DRM requires actively
maintained infrastructure. When the business case isn't there to pay for that
anymore (or the company goes bust), then what else can one expect?

~~~
inlined
Engineering has the concept of “fail safe”. It literally means that the
failure mode is a safe mode. If the dns of the DRM server can no longer be
reached, a fail safe would allow the book to continue to be read.

~~~
cheerlessbog
Wouldn't it be easy to fool such a check?

~~~
hyperman1
Most DRM is trivially easy to fool: Just pirate. When you circumvent DRM, you
are pirating, except you paid for the privilege. You probably also have a
bigger risk of being caught, as you still run the DRM software.

~~~
guitarbill
well, you're still supporting the people behind the works, which - believe it
or not - i like to do.

and also, while the iso/tv/movie scene has strict quality rules, the ebook
"scene" seems more ad-hoc. pirated ebooks are sometimes OCR scans with tonnes
of spelling mistakes or weird formatting, or ancient editions.

in short, de-DRM can still be preferable.

~~~
inlined
Also, there are other ways to implement copy protection. Eg Apple moved from
DRM to fingerprinting downloads so torrented music could be traced to the
leaker.

------
xg15
> _And because of digital rights management—the mechanism by which platforms
> retain control over the digital goods they sell—you have no recourse_

I feel this is actually the relevant point - and just a sign of the things to
come.

What's done with systems like DRM - but what is also directly integrated into
many new products - is the ability of a producer to essentially keep full
control over a product _throughtout its whole lifetime_ \- in particular, even
after it was sold.

You can see this trend in a lot of different areas: IoT, connected cars, game
consoles and games that must always have an internet connection, subscription-
only software, etc.

I believe, consumer protections are not even remotely compared to this kind of
model.

------
Nasrudith
There is a non-dark side to DRM? Seriously, it just makes everything worse out
of a misguided sense of greed and scarcity while not stopping piracy.

The whole concept of DRM is certifiable. Asking to have something accessible
yet not accessible to the end client at the exact same time.

When it can be bypassed by capturing the output channel anyway on top of that.

------
rb808
When my grandfather died he left behind a huge library of books. Many were
junk, some were gold. I have a bunch of ebooks, I guess no one will ever see
them again.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Sounds like we need to go back to the deposit libraries that were part of
copyright in the early days.

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Lammy
When the article mentioned Walmart's 2008 "MP3 Store" shutdown I thought the
author was about to relate it to the eBook store closure via the fact that
they were both Microsoft DRM systems under the hood, but the author was only
comparing them ideologically. I wonder if he knew that the Walmart "MP3 store"
was actually a "PlaysForSure WMA store" originally and that the Microsoft
PlaysForSure shutdown is the reason for the cited 2008 shut down.

From
[https://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63/~/music-...](https://help.walmart.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63/~/music-
downloads) : "If you downloaded music from Walmart before February 2008, some
of your music files may be in the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format."

Walmart shifted to selling 256k non-DRM MP3s after that, and then that store
was _also_ killed in 2011: [https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2011/08/walma...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2011/08/walmart-pulling-the-plug-on-its-mp3-store-but-not-its-drm-
servers/)

I also can't think of the Walmart music store without thinking of this
dramatic reading of a timeless 2004 (!) rant about the usability of the
Walmart store in non-Microsoft browsers/players. The SWF probably won't play
for most of you, but the original post is screenshotted below it:
[https://www.somethingawful.com/flash-tub/letter-from-
interne...](https://www.somethingawful.com/flash-tub/letter-from-internet/)

------
jseliger
There are de-DRM tools for the Kindle; I bought almost no Kindle books prior
to finding them. Now I'm willing to buy some because it's relatively easy to
remove the DRM.

------
bad_user
For audio books I buy only from Downpour.com because they are DRM-free.

Any recommendations for a site selling DRM-FREE ebooks for fiction?

~~~
0815test
Fiction? What's wrong with just perusing gutenberg.org for that. If you really
care about _paying_ them for the e-books, they do take donations.

~~~
nitrogen
Some genres and themes have to be current to be enjoyable, and since the
authors are living it's worth supporting them. So Gutenberg is awesome, but
not sufficient for one's full literary diet.

------
pmlnr
I'm genuinely curious - what is the "light" side of DRM?

~~~
cheerlessbog
I can pay $10 a month to listen to any song anywhere. I assume it would cost
more if I could trivially download them and stop paying. For me that is
something positive.

But I'm well aware in this case that I'm not purchasing any long term
licenses.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think you may have it backwards -- it was trivial to download and listen to
music and movies (Napster, Popcorntime, etc.) -- which provided pressure to
produce low cost, high availability media sources. People in general want to
support artists/creators and be law-abiding. Once the media corps provided
easy, reasonable cost, ways to get enough of the media then people shied away
from the copyright infringement that had otherwise become the easiest way to
consume such media.

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shmerl
Don't buy DRMed goods. If you did for some reason, make sure to break DRM and
back up what you bought.

And there should be a stronger push to repeal corrupt DMCA-1201 and the like.

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gingeruser206
“Originally intended as an anti-piracy measure, DRM now functions mostly as a
__way to lock customers into a given ecosystem, rather than reading or viewing
or listening to their purchases wherever they want. __It’s a cycle that has
persisted for decades, and shows no signs of abating.”

This is precisely why I use Calibre with KyBook 3. You can import ePub and pdf
formats and no DRM of course.

------
kpwags
This is why people should be legally allowed to remove the DRM from the items
they purchase.

I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to remove the DRM from the books I buy
for my Kindle or the like. Assuming I don't share them with friends, family or
strangers (which is a different issue), the authors, publishers, & copyright
holders aren't losing sales.

------
Mikeb85
And this is why I only 'buy' eBooks if they're dirt cheap (<$5). Even then if
I really enjoy them I'll buy a physical copy.

~~~
darkpuma
DRM on old model kindles is trivial to crack, the key is apparently derived
from your kindle's serial number. For this reason, I transferred all of my
kindle ebooks to my oldest kindle, and was then able to strip DRM from the
entire library and convert to epub with Calibre+plugins.

I wager there will probably come a day when Amazon refuses to send newly
purchased ebooks to old models of kindles.

------
linuxhansl
Well, Dah...?

In discussions with friends I always say "Imagine all the old books would have
been e-books, and all the old DRM servers are gone. Now what?"

I have never (and will never) owned an e-book, unless it is a free of DRM.

------
Mountain_Skies
If nothing else, at least this might get tech companies to pause and think
before entering a market just because one of their competitors entered that
market.

------
rambo5
Always crack drm and save ebooks as pdf

------
kerng
Same happened with Zune to me, all the music turned useless at one point...

------
blueadept111
The dark side of physical books: sometimes you buy a book and then you lose
it.

~~~
behringer
Sometimes Barnes & Noble break and enter my house and take off with my
bookshelves.

Oh wait, nevermind, that's never actually happened.

~~~
13of40
A better analogy: Barnes and Noble sets up a reading room down the street
where you can pay a discounted amount to read books rather than buy them. One
day you stop by and the place is boarded up, but the guy outside apologizes
and explains that they had to close because it wasn't making enough money,
then he gives you a full refund plus $25.

~~~
guitarbill
i don't think this holds. ebooks are often the same price as paperbacks, and
you still have to buy them individually.

okay, they're refunding people, which is a decent enough move (still
inconvenient though). presumably, they didn't do it out of the kindness of
their own heart, but to avoid controversy/lawsuits, what with public opinion
slowly swinging away from DRM and towards right to repair.

~~~
Mindwipe
> ebooks are often the same price as paperbacks

Not really.

------
malodyets
Publishers need to ensure that selling a copy of a book to someone does not
mean that 10,000 copies are downloaded for free because that book was uploaded
to a free download site. That can't happen with physical books in the same way
— yes, you can scan pages and upload a PDF of the page images, but it's often
a much poorer reading experience (although there was a story here just last
week about bad actors selling photocopy duplicates on Amazon).

 __This is a hard problem for publishers. __Some publishers have decided to
sell ebooks without DRM — though the biggest example of this that I always
pointed to for years and years, O 'Reilly, stopped selling ebooks directly in
2017.[1] (It appears from that article that DRM/piracy concerns were not
primary for O'Reilly, but the unprofitability of their ebook store and the
rising profitability of their subscription business.)

[1] [https://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/why-oreilly-
media-n...](https://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/why-oreilly-media-no-
longer-selling-books-online-607871)

Most publishers don't believe that it is in their best interest to sell DRM-
free ebooks. (This includes all the publishers I have done business with,
which is a fairly representative sample). It's not that they're trying to get
rich, it's that they're trying to stay alive. Ebook sales have been declining
or at best have stabilized. Physical bookstores are declining. Publishers have
a fear-hate-dependency relationship with Amazon, so they would like to sell
ebooks directly, but very few have achieved any profitability there, and they
don't believe that selling digital files without some form of digital copy
protection is going to lead to more sales.

I have not been arguing here for DRM, I am simply telling you the reality of
the publishing business and how it is grappling with a very different
distribution environment than what we had 20+ years ago before there was such
a thing as ebooks.[2]

[2] I built my first commercially distributed ebooks in 2000 for the (old)
Microsoft Reader, Palm, and Rocket Ebook platforms. I've been in the
publishing industry since 1997.

Now I will argue for DRM — or at least, for finding a solution that works for
everyone.

I would like to think that DRM-free ebook distribution would work for
publishers, and I used to try to convince them that they should move in that
direction, but two things dampened my idealism: (1) my aforementioned
experience talking with western publishers about DRM-free distribution. (2) I
started talking with publishers in developing-world cultures. Many of these
publishers (especially in post-colonial contexts, where books were
traditionally donated by ministries and thus were free) have a very hard time
making ends meet, and they cannot envision getting their customers to pay for
digital files that don't have some kind of protection. There is too much
precedent in those places for both books and digital files to be free.

In short, very few publishers are going to embrace a solution that fails to
protect their content. If you buy a copy, they need to be able to ensure that
it remains a single copy.

But at the same time, few publishers think, "I love having my customers locked
into Amazon's platform. It's so good for my business that Amazon owns my
customers."

What we need is a system in which:

* publishers and distributors can sell ebooks to customers and ensure that those ebooks are protected as single copies

* customers can buy ebooks and ensure that they will always have access to those ebooks, on any platform that they own, no matter whose DRM servers go down (because no single entity owns the DRM / licensing platform)

* customers can loan / given their ebooks to others, either permanently or for a limited period of time

* bonus: publishers (and therefore authors!) get a royalty on the resale

* important: buyers' full purchase history is knowable only by the buyers themselves

I believe the technical infrastructure to make this sort of system possible
are just now being put into place. And I believe that someone will succeed in
designing, building, and selling it to the publishing industry in the next few
years.

And yes, I'm looking forward to it: I would like to see the publishing
industry much less dependent of a single all-powerful distributor, and more
able to sell directly to their customers without intermediaries and without
fear. And as a reader, I would like to be able to buy digital books (and
movies, for that matter) and know that I will always have access to those
copies, no matter what, without being dependent on a single distributor. Or
resell them if I so choose.

[edited to reformat because hacker news doesn't speak Markdown]

------
jccalhoun
When you buy things with DRM you get what you pay for: nothing. I only "buy"
drm'ed products that I know I can break the drm for like kindle books and even
then I rarely buy them.

