
Ebooks Purchased from Microsoft Deleted April 2019 as DRM Servers Shutdown - skmurphy
https://gizmodo.com/ebooks-purchased-from-microsoft-will-be-deleted-this-mo-1836005672
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Ajedi32
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20297331)

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skmurphy
Summarizes [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396/books-in-
mi...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4497396/books-in-microsoft-
store-faq)

The books category is closing

Starting April 2, 2019, the books category in Microsoft Store will be closing.
Unfortunately, this means that starting July 2019 your ebooks will no longer
be available to read, but you'll get a full refund for all book purchases. See
below for details.

While you can no longer purchase or acquire additional books from the
Microsoft Store, you can continue to read your books until July 2019 when
refunds will be processed. Will I be able to buy, rent or pre-order books
after April 2, 2019?

No. On April 2, 2019, you can no longer buy, rent or pre-order books. You can
continue to use Microsoft Edge to read books you've acquired until early July
2019. What happens to books I've pre-ordered with delivery after April 2,
2019?

Your pre-order will be cancelled, and you will not be charged for the
purchase. We recommend you pre-order at another digital book store. How do I
get my refund?

Refund processing for eligible customers start rolling out automatically in
early July 2019 to your original payment method. If your original payment
method is no longer valid and on file with us, you will receive a credit back
to your Microsoft account for use online in Microsoft Store.

~~~
jonhohle
This seems about as good as can be expected for shuttering a digital store.
There have been plenty of others that have not closed with such generous terms
(any Plays For Sure™ store, Nintendo Virtual Console, etc.).

For years I've thought that there needs to be precedent for the right of first
sale extending to digital purchases, which would help in these situations. As
a licensee of a digital work, format shifting should be supported whenever a
DRM'd marketplace like this needs to close. Consumers should be provided
decryption keys as necessary when a company terminates required DRM servers.
Perhaps they can be held in escrow and publicly released for some pre-
determined period that overlaps with the final days of the service.

I'm glad these customers have been "made whole" (minus inflation), but it's
really not Microsoft's place to be able to claw back an item a person has in
their possession. It doesn't apply to physical books, why should it apply just
because the medium has changed?

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elliekelly
Digital rights management is the only application I can think of that stands
to benefit from blockchain. (Other than money laundering, of course.)

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niftich
A blockchain would work but is not necessary, and such a scheme would just
pushes the storage and computational burden of the bookkeeping onto other
users of the same chain. It still wouldn't help you if no provider were
willing to honor your entitlement, which is what's going on here. You could
achieve the same effect, and have a very similar set of failure modes, with
digital signatures and emailing product keys or QR codes or whatnot into
people's emails.

A few months ago, news broke that UltraViolet [1] would shut down. It was a
meta-DRM scheme that, for all practical purposes, was equivalent to a mapping
of 'Email Address' -> 'Set of Entitlements'. Various motion picture
rightsholders and digital media-serving providers integrated with it, so your
rights could be imported and exported into their central list and grow over
time. Although the service cost money to run, its decommissioning and the
aftermath of your entitlements is a question of political will, and not a
question of any technical reality. Vudu is one of the very few providers
through whom you can bridge your rights over to its competitor-turned-
replacement, Disney's Movies Anywhere.

If there were the political will to do so, the damn hashmap of rights could've
transferred directly, but it didn't. Altering the storage scheme would've
altered the basic economics of UltraViolet's hosting, but it's not an armor
against studio after studio withdrawing from issuing and honoring such rights,
as it actually happened.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraViolet_(system)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraViolet_\(system\))

~~~
elliekelly
I guess I was imagining something decentralized where you wouldn’t need a
“provider” beyond the author, the chain, and maybe some sort of “smart
contract.”

My blockchain knowledge pretty much starts and ends with the legal aspects of
cryptocurrency but I guess I was imagining a system where Ernest Hemingway,
for example, could upload his latest novel (or maybe a hash?) to the chain and
sell access tokens. So any time a user tries to access the file it can only be
read if they have an access token for that novel’s ISBN.

Once the book is on blockchain it’s theoretically there forever, right? (Not
sure how this works exactly - does at least one other machine on the chain
need to be running?) But I don’t think it could be removed as easily as
shutting down a server like Microsoft did. Or be censored/restricted by a
government.

I suppose you’re right that there would still need to be an iBooks/Kindle type
centralized reader/token wallet app or else it would be a total pain for
users.

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magduf
Hopefully people will finally learn their lesson about buying DRMed stuff....

but I doubt it.

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elliekelly
And even once they’ve “learned their lesson” what do you propose they purchase
instead? The non-DRM alternatives are often no where near as convenient, if
they’re available at all.

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DavideNL
Well having your book collection suddenly deleted is not convenient either...

So, the alternatives: 1\. Buying a real/paper book 2\. Pirating/illegal
downloading

The best option seems doing both, you support the author by buying the real
book, and download a pirated copy for convenience.

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calibas
Who wants a future where you library suddenly disappears because the service
wasn't profitable enough for the company? Does anybody actually think that's a
good idea?

