
Kindle's DRM Rears Its Ugly Head and It Is Ugly - _pius
http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/19/kindles-drm-rears-its-ugly-head-and-it-is-ugly/
======
chrisbolt
More details: [http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/21/kindlegate-confusion-
abo...](http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/21/kindlegate-confusion-abounds-
regarding-kindle-download-policy/)

The bottom line:

* You are able to redownload your books an unlimited number of times to any specific device.

* Any one time the books can be on a finite number of devices, decided by the publisher for each book. For most books this is 5 or 6 devices.

* If you hit the limit, Amazon can reset it much like iTunes lets you deauthorize all computers when you hit your limit.

~~~
TrevorJ
This runs pretty much counter to the experience this guy is recounting in the
original article.

------
Create

        When someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this.
    
    

Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002

    
    
        You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content.
    
    

Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007

[http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-
re...](http://diveintomark.org/archives/2007/11/19/the-future-of-reading)

<http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html>

~~~
danw
Well at least he's trying to persuade the industry to change and become more
open. They're already selling some kindle books at a loss because publishers
want to charge Amazon the same price for an ebook as a physical one.

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cabalamat
The whole point of DRM is to restrict what the customer can do with digital
ciontent they've bought. It therefore follows that if you're in the habit of
buying DRM-crippled products, sooner or later you're likely to get biten.

The solution to this is very simple: Just say no to DRM.

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hexis
I'm a fairly happy Kindle owner, but the DRM is the biggest source of my
dissatisfaction. I'd like to share my books with my wife (who has her own
Kindle and Amazon account), but the DRM doesn't allow that. I'd like to read
my books on my other devices (laptop, etc) but the DRM doesn't allow that. Of
course, I knew those limitations when I got the Kindle and the books, but they
are still limitations that bug me.

What my Kindle experience, in contrast to the DRM-free MP3's I buy from
Amazon.com, etc., is teaching me is that even having the burden of learning
the particular policies of a particular DRM scheme might be too much work for
me. With my MP3's, I share them with my wife, burn them to CD's for the car,
listen to them on all my devices, etc and so forth. I do not put them on file-
sharing networks of any kind and never would. The same would be true of books.

So, ultimately, the device limits mentioned in the blog post is not even that
big of a deal. Ultimately the problem is in the fact that DRMed ownership is a
sort of negotiated ownership, and that by its nature makes it harder work and
probably unsatisfying.

~~~
dgallagher
This is a complete hunch, but I bet in a few years time the DRM on books is
going to go away much like the DRM on music has recently with iTunes/Amazon
MP3's. Amazon needs a hook to get publishers to trust the device. If it gains
mass appeal you'll probably see the DRM fade away.

~~~
rbanffy
It's much harder. E-books don't have a huge analog loophole.

~~~
khafra
Like a photocopier/scanner?

~~~
JoelSutherland
No, not like a photocopier/scanner. A song with DRM can be played and
rerecorded in real time. So ~4 minutes a song. This can also happen without
human intervention.

A book can be scanned in hours at best, with a human involved the whole time.
(I am sure there is specialty hardware that can do this, but that isn't quite
the same a a commodity PC)

~~~
0x44
[http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-
Scanner-...](http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-High-Speed-Book-Scanner-from-
Trash-and-Cheap-C/)

According to the author of the above instructable, it takes about 20 minutes
to scan a book.

~~~
ramchip
Still requires a lot more hardware and work than for music, but I must admit
I've been surprised by the (obviously hand-scanned) books you can find
sometimes on the net. Sometimes people are willing to go the extra mile...

~~~
0x44
In 1998, a CD-ROM drive cost around $100, and ripping a CD took around twenty
minutes. That was CD-ripping's nascency. We're only dipping our toes in the
book-digitizing nascency, and it takes around twenty minutes to rip a book and
$300 for the platen and a couple digital cameras.

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anatoly
In light of this, but also generally, it seems prudent to always strip DRM off
your Kindle books and store them locally.

~~~
DannoHung
I was not aware that the DRM for Kindle had been cracked, although I am not at
all surprised.

~~~
jrockway
It is. Google for it.

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scscsc
Basically, after _everyone_ on Earth buys all available _books_ , the only way
to make extra money on books is:

a) to create new books b) to create new people

Option b) would not work very well for a number of reasons and option a),
well, it's too difficult. Therefore go ahead and invent very smart option

c) make everyone repay for the same content over and over

~~~
Tichy
d) create and sell cool new ebook reader gadgets

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kenver
Once again, and this story is yet another example, poorly implemented DRM
frustrates and alienates legitimate users, and doesn't do anything to stop a
determined pirate who will almost always find a way to overcome the DRM.

The best DRM I've ever experienced is Steam, it takes away your ability to
resell games, but gives you quite a lot of features in return. In fact until
it was pointed out to me on HN some time ago, I didn't even notice that it was
a form of DRM because it never gets in my way.

~~~
jemmons
It's also an example of people who don't bother to search for the whole truth
before complaining about (what turns out to be) an imagined slight... But
yeah.

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dgallagher
A Kindle owner myself, I've run into a few issues with the DRM being a
problem, and a few other glitches. Amazon has resolved all of them, however,
through firmware updates and changes on their back-end servers.

1) Bought a book which synced to my iPhone, but gave me an issue when reading
it on the Kindle. Had to do a hard-reset of the Kindle and it fixed the
problem. Happened a few months ago once when I got it. Issue hasn't occurred
since then.

2) The auto-bookmark thing, letting you sync across devices, has been a little
wonky in the past. Its gotten better as of last month.

Point is, it's still a semi-beta product with a few little hiccups here and
there, but Amazon is doing a good job IMHO of improving it and getting
everything to the point where it transparently works.

------
jm4
It's not so much a DRM issue as it is a bonehead policy and decision-making on
the part of Amazon. I own a Kindle and I've never seen any notice anywhere
saying I can only download my purchased items a limited number of times. I was
led to believe I could re-download items whenever I needed to. The fact that
this number varies by book is only more infuriating.

If they want to limit the number of downloads that's fine. I understand if
they don't want people using gobs of bandwidth downloading things over and
over again. But let us know so we know that it's critical to back these things
up! It's a good idea to back up purchases regardless, but it's easy to forget
about when you're under the impression your books are safe and accessible at
any time from Amazon. This policy of not disclosing (or at the very least not
making conspicuous enough) the terms of a purchase needs to change.

[EDIT]

Looks like a false alarm. Just a misinformed customer service agent.

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jemmons
This article contains inaccurate information! Ignore it and read the author's
followup at [http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/21/kindlegate-confusion-
abo...](http://www.geardiary.com/2009/06/21/kindlegate-confusion-abounds-
regarding-kindle-download-policy/)

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quoderat
Any DRM-crippled device is for chumps.

~~~
zimbabwe
Not if it provides a useful service that's worth the DRM. The Kindle's worth
it, as is something like Steam. I proudly use both.

~~~
khill
That's fine but then people shouldn't complain when the DRM bites you in the
ass. I realize you're not complaining but that seems to be the crux of this
article (and the number of comments agreeing with it).

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devin
I don't know what the surprise is. These are pretty widely known limitations
of the Kindle.

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mjuyhjui
It's your own fault for not having your lawyer check the EULA for every book
you buy on Amazon. sure it adds a couple of $100 to each book but it's the
only way to be sure (well that or taking off and nuking Amazon from orbit)

