

When it comes to DRM, Amazon is a bottom feeding Hell Beast - shandsaker
http://www.attendly.com/when-it-comes-to-drm-amazon-is-a-bottom-feeding-hell-beast/

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nicholassmith
Apple was in a position where they could make demands on publishers, so they
demanded to strip off DRM and away they went. It was nice gesture, although
you're still using iTunes media files but still, they exerted their power for
The Greater Good (we can argue about why Apple would do that, but it was good
for us all).

If anyone can exert pressure on book publishers to ditch DRM, it's Amazon, but
why would they? Aside from The Greater Good they've got themselves a nice
little vendor lock in, and unlike Apple who was making money hand over fist
with the iPod and using the iTunes store to help get consumers to start
building digital libraries, Amazon isn't making staggering amounts of money on
the Kindle and they _really_ need people to stick on the platform.

Seems like a few publishers have seen sense regarding DRM (Tor and Angry Robot
are the first two who spring to mind), so maybe they'll eventually wise up and
start dropping the DRM requirement.

~~~
Tloewald
AAC is not a proprietary format ("iTunes media files" — it is to MP4 what MP3
is to MPEG). Other media players can and do support AAC if it has no DRM.

Amazon not only uses DRM but it uses a non-standard ebook format and its
hardware does not support vanilla ePub (out of the box, you can download third
party viewers to the Fire devices).

To go back to a comparison to Apple: iPods do play WAV and MP3 out of the box,
and so does iTunes. The only non-standard media format Apple pushed (Apple
lossless) it has mad free and open. Apple's book reader supports ePub out of
the box. (Apple does push its own enhancements to ePub for interactive
textbooks, but it has done these in the "correct" way.)

~~~
dschep
> AAC is not a proprietary format ("iTunes media files" — it is to MP4 what
> MP3 is to MPEG). Other media players can and do support AAC if it has no
> DRM.

Both AAC & MP3 are patent encumbered and require licenses for implementation.

~~~
Tloewald
You are of course correct, but (a) that's not what the GP was implying since
most non iTunes music players and all significant non-iTunes stores support
MP3, (b) it doesn't matter to most users, and (c) Ogg Vorbis is only
unencumbered to the extent that is too insignificant to represent a useful
lawsuit target.

~~~
pgeorgi
As for (c), AOL did legal research before publishing the Vorbis decoder for
WinAmp, and Microsoft used Vorbis for various game titles (I'd guess they also
did some legal research).

Of course, anyone can sue over anything, and keep you engaged in court for a
long time, even without a good reason. MP3licensing (or MPEG-LA for the newer
stuff) doesn't indemnify licensees, as can be seen every year when Sisvel lets
German customs confiscate media players on Cebit over MP3 patents not part of
the pool.

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fieryscribe
Amazon didn't insist on having DRM, although it worked out to their advantage.
The publishers did:
[http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120210/01364817725/how-
pu...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120210/01364817725/how-publishers-
repeated-same-mistake-as-record-labels-drm-obsession-gave-amazon-dominant-
position.shtml)

~~~
pja
Yeah, as Charlie Stross pointed out on his blog some time ago, the publishers
effectively demanded that Amazon have a monopoly on the eBook reading public &
only now are they (slowly) realising that this might not have been a great
idea. Bezos must have been laughing all the way home from those meetings...

~~~
cstross
It's worth noting that _some_ of the publishers have woken up and taken
corrective action.

Holtzbrinck, a giant German family owned publishing conglomerate you probably
haven't heard of, actually owns Macmillan, who you might have heard of, who
own Tor, who you probably _have_ heard of if you're part of the regular HN
demographic. A few months ago they came to the same conclusion, and have
dropped mandatory DRM on genre fiction titles. I believe they're also open to
arguments both for and against DRM on other publishing categories, rather than
maintaining the doctrinaire "DRM on everything" policy of some of the other
Big Six.

The long term effect of this policy is ... well, it remains to be seen.
Because publishers traditionally sold to wholesalers who sold to bookstores,
they don't routinely sell direct to the public. A move by any of the big
publishers to set up a direct-sales channel for ebooks, rivaling Amazon or
Barnes and Noble, would probably be seen as hostile or monopolistic by the
bookseller trade, and might even generate anti-trust lawsuits! But I'd be
unsurprised to see one of the Big Six (now Five) follow the example of smaller
direct-sales publishers sooner rather than later -- like
<http://www.webscription.net/> for example.

~~~
pja
It would certainly be seen as hostile by Amazon!

~~~
jerf
But this does seem like the sort of role that the Internet tends to
disintermediate. If I can get ebooks straight from the publisher in
standardized formats that aren't DRM-encumbered, thus allowing me to use any
reader I choose, what value is Amazon bringing me that Google is not already
bringing me? Nonzero, I think, but not enough to sustain their business on.

Heck, even the publisher stands in risk of being disintermediated here, let
alone Amazon functioning as essentially a _fourth_ party in the relationship.

Whereas I find they bring me a lot of value as an intermediary of physical
goods. Sometimes I try to order something straight from, say, a food vendor,
but always end up choking on the fact the food vendor wants to charge me $15
shipping on my $30 order, because the food vendor's idea of shipping is the
local Fedex drop point and Amazon's idea of shipping appears to involve some
sort of teleportation technology.

~~~
cstross
_Heck, even the publisher stands in risk of being disintermediated here_

Only if you don't know what a publisher does. See also:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/02/cmap-2-h...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2010/02/cmap-2-how-books-are-made.html)

~~~
jerf
That's why I said only "at risk of" and not that it was certain. But, as is
the way of the internet, it's not hard to imagine in ten years that the many
things you say go into the publisher's set of responsibilities could
themselves be dispersed to more than one entity. Publishers previously had an
effectively-physical moat around that set of tasks, because they had control
over the book and essentially force you to consume all the services from them
to get to the physical book. Now they're going to have to ensure they are
bringing value throughout the process.

Which in your domain, they probably will. But this is one way of viewing the
ever-growing academic revolt against Elsevier. They do a couple of their
duties OK, but the whole bundle they are providing is increasingly less
compelling vs. what they are trying to charge.

~~~
cstross
Alas, "publishing" is actually about a dozen different business models flying
in loose formation. Generalizing from, say, trade fiction publishing to peer-
reviewed academic journals to text books to newspapers is, shall we say, not
going to work terribly well.

~~~
jerf
I didn't. If you find it not unlikely that _some_ publishers may themselves be
disintermediated in whole or in part, that's all the support I need for the
point I made. I never said that all publishers are doomed. I only said that
given that publishers are themselves going to be facing this sort of pressure,
even if some survive it quite well, how much more so would Amazon, trying to
be a fourth party in the already-pressured three-way reader/publisher/author
relationship.

~~~
pja
Dude, just drop it already.

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Pfhreak
Is it possible to have the DRM discussion without becoming hyperbolic? I mean,
I'm not thrilled about DRM, but "Bottom feeding hell beast" is probably a
little over the top.

Furthermore, it seems weird that his primary stated use case (copying a
section of a book and sharing with his friends) is totally supported on the
kindle. There are all sorts of social features built into the device.

Yes, we get it, DRM is a non-starter for most technical people, but we need to
have a constructive dialog around the issue.

~~~
jerf
I would observe the hyperbole is usually coming from the consumer side, where
it is histrionic. The consumer always has the option to simply not consume,
one I use quite frequently when the DRM deal is not in my favor.

This is an author, realizing he's being enticed into the car trunk with pretty
candy, and that he got taken awfully far in before he noticed. I think a bit
of hyperbole is a bit more justified, so as to warn the others.

------
funkwyrm
It seems everything the author is concerned about would be solved it there
were a centrally/open-source managed, non-profit, DRM out there. The DRM which
would be analogous to SSH.

So one thing I've never understood: Is this really not technically possible or
is the problem that the people who have the knowhow to create that are
ideologically opposed?

~~~
wmf
There is open DRM (e.g. OMA) but companies that are using DRM as an excuse for
lock-in will never adopt it.

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SquareWheel
One place Amazon appears to be noticing the benefit to reduced or eliminating
DRM is in game sales. On Reddit in the /r/gamedeals subreddit, we often
discuss if a game has DRM before concluding if it's a good purchase or not.
The Amazon rep Tony often hangs around there to answer questions or posts
deals himself, and he sees that DRM-free games do sell more. He now says if a
game is DRM free or not when posting deals.

I understand they have also had a few experiments into working with publishers
to sell games without DRM to measure the effect.

So, just an anecdote from a small part of Amazon, but that information may
propagate to the books section eventually. We can only hope, because nothing
puts me off purchasing media like digital rights management.

------
damian2000
Seen a few posts of this nature from John Birmingham. So how does he explain
all his books being available on Amazon then, for download to Kindle?

He even has his own Author's page: [http://www.amazon.com/John-
Birmingham/e/B001IOBFQA/ref=sr_tc...](http://www.amazon.com/John-
Birmingham/e/B001IOBFQA/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1352768892&sr=1-2-ent)

His latest book, "Angels of Vengeance", published in April 2012, is available
for Kindle, paperback, hardcover and audiobook.

