

Amazon Kindle book lending quietly goes live - eng
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_200549320_receive?nodeId=200549320

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JunkDNA
I have recently observed that buying and using ebooks is like being put into a
time machine and being forced to re-live the early days of digital music
downloads. Do we seriously have to re-learn all those lessons in every single
industry that starts to shift to digital content?

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anonymoushn
I have found pirating and using ebooks to be perfectly reasonable as there are
no hurdles to jump over and there is no possibility that your books will
disappear from your Kindle without your permission. In fact, as far as Amazon
is concerned, I've never put anything on my Kindle. My main problem is that
many books I want to read cannot be found in this form for as much as a year
after they are published.

~~~
w1ntermute
Anyone know why it takes so long? Shouldn't it be possible to crack the DRM on
Kindle (or other) ebooks and pirate them? I thought the reason it was so hard
to pirate books in the past was because they had to be scanned (and preferably
OCRed).

~~~
CWuestefeld
Kindle was cracked at least a year ago.

I haven't actually used it, but from what I read it's not a crypto flaw
allowing the data to be extracted, but more analogous to the "analog hole".
The existence of on-screen readers allows software to be written that walks
through the book a page at a time, and rips the content in that way.

~~~
pangram
It's a bit cleaner than that -- it gets the decryption key from the reader
with the Windows debugging APIs, and then removes the DRM. You're left with
the original ebook.

~~~
w1ntermute
Ah, that's good to hear. Using the analog hole leaves you with a pretty poor
copy of most digital files.

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BBonifield
It's really too bad that Amazon dropped the ball on this. You get to loan a
book once, and the recipient only gets two weeks to read it. What a ridiculous
implementation of such a great concept.

One of the major things that's kept me away from eBooks is that I can't share
them with friends. In the office, we often pass a book around from person to
person when we like it, and online lending should be just as simple and
straightforward. Instead, we get a restrictive and janky process. Well played
Amazon.

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allwein
I'm toying with the idea of getting another Kindle just to user borrowed books
from friends.

1\. Give them my "Lending Kindle"

2\. Have them register it against their account

3\. Download the book(s) I want to borrow

4\. Turn off wireless

5\. They can deregister my Kindle right away and I take my good old time
reading the books I borrowed.

~~~
spicyj
In fact, you don't need to turn off wireless. You can even deregister from the
device's Settings menu and it'll keep your downloaded books. (Even if those
span multiple accounts!)

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kmfrk
_If_ it really is the case that you can only let an acquaintance read the book
once - for a total of 14 days - it's not _lending_ ; it's a friggin' _coupon_.

It reminds me of StarCraft 2's Guest Passes that let players have StarCraft 2
for x amount of days or play it y amount of hours, whichever is exhausted
first. Except that there is a finite number of people you can give the passes.

They should really reframe the feature so it doesn't become a parody of
lending. Think of all the jokes that are bound to follow from this.

Lending is one of _the_ biggest advantages of owning physical media. This
obviously does not solve that problem. Come to think of it, it almost
exacerbates it. I had sort of forgot about the problem, but now it's out
there, and I know Amazon is likely to be a bad place to get books from if I
want to hang on to a sliver of hope that lending will be possible.

In my mind, they should have put the "lending" feature on ice and see if
anything better came along; it makes them look bad and their competitors
better by comparison. iBooks already supports highlighting and highlight sync,
which is one of my most important features, believe it or not.

 __ __*

Added: I was just reminded of the time we had to use Adobe Flash in college.
The university couldn't care less about the students, so we were just told to
_get it_. This, to the righteous paragon that is yours truly, meant getting
the trial. Unfortunately for my like-minded friends and I, the trial period
barely lasted the entire duration of the course, and woe unto the good student
who installed it early to test it out and play around with it. At the very
least, it was going to expire before the oral exams.

In Amazon's case, this means that textbooks will be rendered completely
useless in terms of lending. It would have been an interesting market, but I'm
sure the textbook mafia doesn't mind. Used books is supposedly its biggest
threat according to another Hacker News thread.

Should Apple manage to twist the arm of the publishers, I wonder how the
synced highlighting would work, seeing that your copy is removed after the
lending duration, should they use the same model. They obviously can't prevent
you from lending textbooks and allow other book categories, so the road is
fraught with challenges. None of these have been solved very well by Amazon,
though.

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rit
A lot of people are speculating if Amazon came up with these terms or not.

From everything I can find (esp. this article -
[http://gizmodo.com/5388168/dont-get-too-excited-about-the-
no...](http://gizmodo.com/5388168/dont-get-too-excited-about-the-nooks-
lending-feature)) the restrictions on Kindle lending are _identical_ to the
ones the Nook has (at least when it rolled out).

The B&N site for Nook currently states:

Exclusive LendMe™ Technology NOOK's exclusive LendMe™ technology lets you
share favorite books with friends. LendMe™ books can be lent for up to 14
days. Just choose the book you want to share and send it to your friend's
NOOK, computer, or handheld device enabled with NOOK software.

It sounds like the publishers are the ones setting the terms.

~~~
c2
Doesn't matter to customers though - most will not do this research themselves
(as evidenced by comments in this thread).

Companies like Amazon basically are caught between a rock and a hard place.
Either implement the sub-par experience which is what publishers let them (the
Nook experience) and have customers complain about your draconian DRM - or
don't implement it and have customers complain about not having the features
of the Nook.

Considering the Kindle is the market leader in this space, I'm not sure it was
the right choice to follow Nook into this space with a sub-par experience. Now
the feature and it's limitations are more highly visible, and DRM is front and
center on people's minds again.

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shantanubala
And as usual, people outside of the United States get a sub-par experience.

"At this time, Kindle book lending can only be initiated by customers residing
in the United States. If a loan is initiated to a customer outside the United
States, the borrower may not be able to accept the loan if the title is not
available in their country due to publisher geographical rights."

I'm confident ebooks will become DRM-free in the near future, and when that
happens we won't have to worry about all of these nonsensical limitations.

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sleight42
(1) Can someone, perhaps an Amazon employee, clarify if "loan once" means
exactly what it says? Can we only loan a kindle book to one person one time
only? The book cannot be loaned again to anyone? Or cannot be loaned again to
the same person?

(2) As an early adopter of Kindle, It's particularly sad that, as I peruse my
Kindle collection, the vast majority of our books are not loanable. I can't
say that I'm surprised. But I am annoyed by it. This is perhaps a large factor
in the soft launch of the loaning feature.

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fletchowns
Is Amazon really to blame for the less than ideal lending system? Or is it the
book publishers that are responsible for the rules of the lending system?

~~~
allwein
Considering that it's the exact same identical terms as the B&N Nook lending
feature, I think that it's the book publishers who are responsible.

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rit
The sad part of the only lend once restriction that seems to be prevalent is
that the most likely side effect of the 14 day loan is using it to get your
friends or family hooked on a series.

I just sent my sister a trial loan for the first book in a series I enjoyed
and think she will, and I don't really forsee her calling or emailing me to
ask for the second book. If she likes it she'll just buy it herself and keep
reading.

Being able to loan the book out repeatedly for a good series is likely to
generate a LOT of sales for the publishers. But most of them likely don't or
won't see that.

~~~
allwein
At some point, Kindles are going to get cheap enough (~$50) that I'm not going
to mind lending one out indiscriminately. I'll just load one up with the ebook
I want to lend and then let my friend borrow it for however long it takes him
to read it.

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parfe
I think the concept of lending someone an ebook is ridiculous and is a serious
detriment to an increasingly digital society.

I want to be able to give my books away. Same as I can with a physical book.
But the idiotic idea that I'm somehow licensing the digital version prevents
that. When I'm done with an ebook it has zero value to me. These publishers
are saving money selling ebooks and then taking away what rights consumers
used to have.

If I license content for my kindle I am not a book owner.

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coffeedrinker
Wow, a lot of comments about taking and reading without actually paying. I
expect that at slashdot, but I guess I expected more from Hacker News readers.

Some of us write books and do expect to be remunerated for them. If you do not
like the system, or the price, then do not purchase them. If you want to read
something, then give a little back to the author. What makes you think that
your work deserves pay and someone else's doesn't?

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dave1619
Can you really loan out a book just once in its lifetime? Or just once every
14 days?

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rit
It looks like it depends on the book. The publishers get to set that
restriction. If I recall, the same obnoxious restriction was enabled on Nook
lending as well.

Hopefully this will lighten as time goes by and the publishers stop being so
short sighted. I think they're worried about the loopholes involved such as
the turning off wireless with another poster already confirmed works.

~~~
allwein
Can you point out somewhere that it says the number of lends is set by the
publisher? I only saw that the publisher's were in charge of whether it was
lendable or not, and not the individual terms of the lend.

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rdl
I've just purchased multiple Kindle devices over the years and loan a physical
device to someone who wants something to read at my house, on a trip, etc. I
usually travel with an iPhone 4, iPad, Kindle DX, and MBP17, so it's pretty
easy to loan the iPad or the DX to someone for a day or two. (especially
useful when on a diving trip, since a lot of people don't seem to bring
computers at all, wtf?)

I really wish iOS had a "guest mode" so I could easily restrict access to my
personal information, browser cookies, etc. As it is, the DX is my preferred
device to loan, or "I'll make you an account on my laptop."

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rdl
There is of course the classic GNU/FSF essay:
<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

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allwein
I think that it's ridiculous that the lent book is unavailable to the original
purchaser while it's loaned out. That completely defeats the purpose of an
e-book.

Edit: Do the downvoters disagree on the benefits of having a book in
electronic form? Or do they think that the restrictions are not
unreasonable/ridiculous?

~~~
anamax
How would you suggest that book sellers handle lending.

Note the word "sellers" - they don't make any money from lending, just from
selling.

They're really scared that they'll sell one copy and everyone will read that
copy (or copies of it).

Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Note - "they should make less money" isn't an answer.

They should make more money isn't a very good answer, either.

eBooks are massively cheaper to distribute, yet we see a minimal discount. Add
in the fact that they're limiting lending to once per book when I can lend a
physical book infinitely many times and you're looking at higher profits for
eBooks than normal books.

~~~
jonhendry
"eBooks are massively cheaper to distribute, yet we see a minimal discount. "

Because distribution is a small amount of the cost of production.

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brockhaywood
Given that i have read this on just about every tech site, did it really go
live, quietly?

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lwhi
I think the idea of 'buying' an ebook is a ridiculous concept in itself.

I think it would be more sensible to employ a model where books are provided
via a rental service.

Charge for the service, not the IP.

~~~
diego_moita
If your ebook reader is a Sony, Nook, Literati or Kobo you can lend ebooks
from hundreds of North American public libraries: <http://www.overdrive.com>

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username3
Amazon, please make a digital bookshelf or digital public library so people
can borrow e-books without asking me and I can take them back whenever I want.

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rmc
Piracy is good for the customer.

A pirated ebook has none of this restrictions. It's simply a better product.

~~~
phamilton
Restrictions like requiring payment?

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aelaguiz
I wish I had read a bit more before I went on a lending spree :( I wonder if I
can de-lend a book ...

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VB6_Forever
Amazon already has the infrastructure in place to allow people to sell
physical books secondhand

And now you can lend a kindle book and it becomes unavailable to you for the
duration of the loan.

So everything is in place to allow a secondhand market for kindle books.

Although isn't Audible an Amazon company (shudder)

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diego_moita
As a Sony eReader owner I find all of this pathetic: all my ebooks are either
(unlocked) epub or pdf. "Sharing" is an irrelevant concept for me.

But I must confess that, as a programmer, I feel envy for the Kindle owners
that can program & hack their devices.

