My favorite fantasy author, Brandon Sanderson, has long been against DRM and has written a few times about the topic. (https://www.brandonsanderson.com/some-faqs-you-might-enjoy/ for one instance.) Whenever I buy his books from anywhere (usually via Amazon, (or direct in the case of his Kickstarter books!) but I should start going direct through Tor for his other ones…) I get them DRM-free.
I hope more authors and publishers start releasing their stuff DRM-free too. As it stands, I have a jailbroken Kindle that I run KOReader on; I use a Calibre plugin to bust the DRM off of any book I buy for my Kindle, then port the ebook over to my device.
Of course, I wouldn't have to do any of that if publishers would just sell the darn things without DRM.
Calibre won’t do it out of the box, but you can install third party software to do the de-DRMing, and Calibre will use it if present.
At least that is how it worked years ago. I think the Calibre web site (if not the app itself) had pointers. Sorry I can’t be more specific – I don’t have access to my laptop at the moment.
I found Calibre clumsy to use. I ended up with a program called Epubor, which so far has worked flawlessly. I'm a strong supporter of software freedom, and think it's ironic that one of the few non-free programs I have actually enhances my freedom to read.
How do you know something is DRM free if you buy from Amazon? I'm avid reader and have not bothered to care, but it's still at the back of my mind since library is growing. Don't want to lose it on a whim.
Has rankings, plus a reasonably good discovery engine. More sales on the platform will influence the former and could influence the latter, leading to even more sales.
Buying direct puts more money into the author's pocket per sale but has zero ability to influence other sales.
Sadly, the DRM-free versions of his books seem to only be available on US stores. I tried to buy The Stormlight Archive from Australia but could only find DRM'ed copies, probably because of international publishing deals.
Still, I wish more authors would follow. DRM is a plague.
Not in publishing publishers have different contracts in North America and the Commonwealth and won't seel under one contract in the other region. Publishers have forced Amazon et al to enforce this.
It is not the author who decised on DRM or not - it is the publisher. E<G all TOR or Baen books are DRM free.
Unfortunnately in the paper world there are separate North American and CommonWealth contracts. Many publishers do only one thus many books have different publishers in the two regions.
These two contracts could have one with DRM and one without.
Can you still jailbreak the latest and greatest kindles? "Apparently", it was possible to break the DRM using the PC Kindle reader but that stopped working some time ago.
If you have your DRM Keys from earlier from an older Kindle or PC-Installation - the keys can still be used to strip DRM from any new downloads from Amazon.
The only exception is a few new KFX files, which are still unsupported by deDRM.
A friend told me that you can easily crack Kobo DRM when you download the book through the Adobe reader software. Likewise with Internet Archive downloaded books. Unfortunately, many books aren't available on Kobo.
KOReader is one of my favourite pieces of software, makes the ereader experience so good.
Especially for pdfs where you can swap to landscape, reduce margins etc.
Has a cool feature to highlight and create a QR code you can scan if you want to share snippets.
Used it on my old kindle and currently on my kobo ereader.
As far as his epic fantasy stuff goes, I started with Mistborn (starts slow, but finishing the 1st trilogy is mind-blowing) & my friend began with Elantris (release order, in my opinion, his writing gets better every book--there are now 50 & I've read/loved nearly all of them). Alternatively, Way of Kings could be a good starting point as well (my personal favorite).
And of course there's a ton of non epic fantasy (Skyward & Steelheart skew younger).
It’s fine if you don’t like the Church if Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—but a smear on this level is another thing. Such an amalgam of falsehoods, misrepresentations, and bad whole-to-part fallacies.
Brandon Sanderson is a kind, altruistic man. For instance, he teaches a creative writing class at BYU and all the money he would earn from that he donates to scholarships. (If I’m not mistaken.) I happen to enjoy his writing too!
You’re clearly upset about some things he’s associated with: that’s OK, but you’ve really crossed over into unreasonable, fallacious territory. It’s not fair to smear and misrepresent so much.
He’s a good man trying his best, and his work has brought me much enjoyment.
I don't know anything about the guy but the church has been on the news a few times. Just looked up the wikipedia page [1] that has some info on the older stuff.
DRM is a bad idea with worse implementations. It's presented as a way to enable legitimate customers to enjoy works while preventing pirates from getting them, right? In practice, the opposite is true - rule-following buyers have restricted access to the things they buy, and rule-breakers still get to do what they want.
The silly thing about DRM for media is that, fundamentally, anyone can break it with manual effort, just by transcribing the words, or recording the video/music.
Besides, anyone who doesn't break DRM runs the risk that the vendor will take away access to the books they already paid for. It's happened before.
I know, I've particpated on both sides. I can download from youtube right now with youtube-dl or jdownloader. But anything I upload to youtube, will (potentially) be copyright struck into deletion.
Who cares what people record for personal use. Copyright strike any books uploaded to windows machines from usb sticks and ethernet cables, with the same copyright strike system.
Then nobody will care when you time-shift or format-shift media you already 'own'.
There is a clear bias in protecting cloud software/some games and hollywood products. That bias has always protected the 'economic interests' and left the average joe flat on his bum.
If we live in a world where private conversations cannot exist, thanks to global survelliance, then your windows PC and copies of media, are subject to the same (bs) overseers. I didn't ask for this massive overwatch system, but now it's here....
Of-course, it's the tech industry that forces publishers to set absurd prices for electronic copies of books which in turn leads readers to try "alternative" methods of book acquisition.
And it's not the "tech industry" in the first place, it's fucking Adobe.
Standard Ebooks is seriously impressive. One of my favorite sources of books in the public domain.
I’d also add in addition to this excellent list of DRM-free ebooks, it’s always worth looking into borrowing a book from the library via Libby/Overdrive.
I have some of their military history books in printed books and was happy to discover recently that they are selling DRM-free EPUBs. They also cover many other historical topics (like the section on technology history) and sell some books from other publishers too.
Problem with this is it means you are giving money to providers that sell with DRM, that restricts the rights of those not technical enough to circumvent it.
> Problem with this is it means you are giving money to providers that sell with DRM
Indeed. And also do not underestimate the cost of adding DRM to media. Don't know about ebooks, but for streaming media I would estimate about half the engineering time spent designing, building and maintaining video work flows is somehow related to CENC, CBCS, Widevine, Playready, Fairplay and the whole ecosystem of third party consultancy around this.
For larger platforms these investments are worthwhile, but I don't think it's a coincidence that smaller audio shops and podcasts generally avoid DRM for streaming audio (where margins are smaller than Live/On demand video streaming).
Yes but this also takes money away from the author, who put in a ton of work to make that book. It's not as simple as claiming the piracy is 'ethical' just because it circumvents the publisher
I buy books and music by writing the author and asking them how to pay directly. This ofcourse only works with very small authors so I'm not buying much any more. Reading and watching movies I do from the local library.
Do you think that the editor, cover art designer, potentially illustrator etc. don’t deserve to get paid?
I know at least one author that refuses “out-of-band payments” for that reason.
And this is to say nothing about advance payments where the publisher is taking the risk of a book not selling, and the author gets paid regardless, which can be a big thing for small authors too.
I think the idea is that by hurting sales of DRM-ed books relative to DRM-free books, and by increasing the piracy problem only for DRM-ed books, you make it more attractive for publishers to sell DRM-free books, and for authors to apply pressure to their publishers in that direction. Of course, you have to put your money where your mouth is by actually buying books from DRM-free publishers (like Baen and Tor).
No, because the book was still bought in the first place. In all your examples someone still bought a book which helped ensure the creators of it got paid.
Using piracy from the beginning ensures nobody gets paid.
Yes, but these secondary markets have been fine because they still require a large primary market.
A library can only lend as many copies as it purchases. Someone selling their copy can only sell the copy they purchased. These secondaries are constrained by the primary.
Your talking about one person buying a single copy and then distributing it for free in perpetuity. This secondary is not constrained by the primary.
Then let's just call it "acquiring the book in a way that you don't know if the people involved in creating the book would consent to, but have a lot of evidence to suspect that they actually don't".
Piracy vs. not buying it vs. not downloading it are morally equivalent. The actual ethical stance here is whether or not you're paying for DRM; once you've committed to not doing that, whether or not you choose to pirate it at that point is morally neutral because the effect on the author (and publisher et al.) is the same.
From the author's perspective the latter is better (possible word of mouth sales and authoes generally like the idea of people reading and enjoying their writing), so not sure how that works out ethically.
A lot of the bands I follow openly support people pirating their music at shows, because those people are ticket and merch buying fans.
Some bands have been scolded and threatened by their publishers for said public voice, and instead choose silence as they could be sued by their producers/publishers.
Creators I have contacted about DRM almost never reply. Likely for similar contractual reasons. They can only legally respond with scolding or silence.
I did have one artist I contacted reply once. They were Christian and all but said I would go to hell for sharing copies of someone elses work.
I asked how they felt about Jesus replicating and freely sharing someone else's bread and fish. They never replied again.
That's the crucial difference between choosing what you think is right and using an external source, you have access to your thoughts while they don't.
Libraries get the books from distributors and have licenses for lending them. I’d say that is perfectly ethical.
In my country, you have a legal right to share copies to close friends. I think that’s ethical, but I don’t think it’s ethical when people mass download someone’s work without paying them when they were charging for it.
How is it more ethical if you don't pay for the product and no money goes to the author? Writers always say that preorders and direct purchases really matter. Of course DRM is bad, but why is piracy ethical in this case?
Piracy gives the same amount to the author as borrowing from a friend or from the library. It is just more efficient.
I 100% always pay for books available without DRM such as from No Starch Press. I encourage any authors reading to consider similarly ethical publishers.
Does the author pay every person they got all their ideas from ? We are talking about very complex one to many relationships that are practically unaccountable.
And the editor, illustrator and promoters as well.
And don't forget to send a larger chunk money to other new prospective authors that you don't know and that haven't even sold a single copy of their book (or maybe not even finished it yet)!
I actually bought a bunch of DVDs of my kids' favorite films to burn and have on my NAS.
And woah! I completely underestimated how much user hostile anti-piracy tech has grown in the past 20 years .
Couldn't even play my DVD, that I bought, with my money, on my computer. Had to install a bunch of libraries to deal with all the file chunking and mangling they do now, just to play a video, not even burning it, just play.
What extra odd things could they have done to DVDs that would make them harder to rip? I assume they wouldn't want to break compatibility with existing players.
Mainstream DVDs have pretty much always been a collection of .TS files on the disc, best ripped with specialized software. Things like VLC pull in those libraries upon install anyway. Also, I think you mean "rip" rather than "burn", if you mean to copy data from the disc to your machine.
Today I learned a fair deal, burn!=rip, and that DVDs have always had chunked .ts files. Definitely had to bring in a bunch of new libs on Debian (still on 'bullseye') to make it work, nothing automagic happened.
Agreed that torrenting/pirating is practical and simple, but since both downloading pirated books and stripping their DRM are both illegal anyhow, why not learn the minor skills required? After all, somebody somewhere has to post those DRM-stripped books online, so it's at least useful to work on learning the actual trick of doing it instead of depending on others' efforts.
I'd participate in something that made that more convenient. I imagine dedicating $30 /mo for "contributions to content creators". Then I move bits around on my terms, and at the end of the month, that money is allocated among creators based on how often their content was hashed by my reader.
But the author is only one of the many people who are involved in the production of a book. Editing. Typesetting. Cover design. Cover art. Marketing. Arguably, all of those things are important and contribute to an author's success.
And when those people give me a low friction way to pay them without supporting DRM, I will gladly do so. Of note, none of those people get paid when you buy a secondhand copy of a paper book. Piracy is no different here.
> none of those people get paid when you buy a secondhand copy
Yes, which is why nobody is saying "buy second-hand books to support your favorite author".
Also, it's probably a small effect, but I'd guess that the existence of a secondary market contributes to at least some primary sales (since the buyers know they will probably be able to resell a book if they need to, making them more likely to buy a primary copy if they want to read it right now).
Somebody paid for a second-hand copy, nobody paid for a pirated copy.
"the existence of a secondary market contributes to at least some primary sales"
Incidentally, many favorite books that I pirated when I was broke and had very little room, I later bought paper copies of.
I also pirate most music, but if I really like a band I discovered via piracy, I will buy their vinyl or see them in concert.
The ability to freely share content scondhand, be it a paper book or in digital form, creates new fans. Some of those fans have money to give back, or will share with people that do.
I think all authors and other content producers should have sort of a tip jar where we can send them money without someone else taking a big cut. A lot of superfluous charges are put still put for money transfer today so even something like patreon can cost 8-10% of what they recieve. How can they charge such a large percentage on money transfer that is mostly bits.
> How can they charge such a large percentage on money transfer that is mostly bits.
Because they provide a platform (making content more visible), payment processing (which can be 3% or more for some payment methods), customer support etc.
If content producers don't need any of that, they can always have a self-hosted website with their own donation button (or physical mailing address for checks and banknotes, cryptocurrency address etc).
> I think all authors and other content producers should have sort of a tip jar
That tip jar would cut out everybody else involved in the production of a book and in getting you to even find out about it existing.
Every author has the option to self-publish and set their own price (including a "pay-as-you-wish" option), but on the other hand, if they prefer the (relatively) lower risk of going with a traditional publisher, you should also respect that decision and not sidestep that by unilaterally deciding that "oh, I'd prefer you would have made this DRM-free and pay-as-you-wish, here's a check for $20!".
I think many people are stuck in the cash mindset so it seems okay to them that they pay 2-3% in fees for an electric transfer. Where transporting $100 million and $1 would cost the same I don't understand the percentage fees. This includes credit card processor fees etc. A lot of you I feel sort of have Stockholm syndrome when it comes to stuff like this specially in the US. A lot of this stuff requires government intervention I think as it is impossible for any startup to bring about disruption. In Asian countries where credit cards were not that prevalent new processing systems have brought down the prices to 0.5%-1% which I still think is too high.
The way to solve that is to have the "tip jar" be a smart contract which redistributes inbound money transparently. I don't have a problem with funding the supporting parties, I just don't want the pie to be divvied up behind closed doors where my decision to contribute might end up working against my interests.
If somebody puts together a different tip jar which supports and even wider variety of people, or does so in a more equitable way, I want to be free to choose that one instead.
Let content compete for legitimacy based on how integrated into the wider community it's associated tip jar is.
I don't care if they think I should read it in a couch or a hammock or a bathtub, why should I care whether they think I should print it on a page or project it on my ceiling or peer at it through a cloud of malware?
There are people who want to turn the world into a skinner box. I'm not going to fund their project just because I appreciate an author who has made a deal with them at some point. The author did not make that deal on my behalf.
If I can't pay an author without also paying my enemies, then I'm not going to pay the author. But I'd really rather pay the author.
Was looking at this the other night but didn't have enough skin in the game to reliably blindly-trust external tools to do this for me - I expect that something designed to circumvent encryption is going to come with a very high malware risk.
legal reasons? Seriously, has the DRM mafia cowed people so much? What the hell is wrong with sharing public software tools with others?
Here's one option you might try (no connection to it but it seems to be one of the most recently usable, trustworthy versions) https://github.com/noDRM/DeDRM_tools
There are workarounds for this change now. I don’t remember the details, but there is a way to strip drm from 2023 books. It’s a relatively recent development I think. Did not even require a physical kindle. (I think for a while the only method did require one)
The workaround for a while was to have an old version of the Kindle for PC software on your computer and download the flies from there. You would get older versions that had crackable DRM.
They’ve pretty much closed this loophole. IIRC now you need an older physical Kindle that doesn’t support KFX files and you can download files for that device.
It’s still a crappy workaround because the older file format doesn’t have any of the latest typography features.
Cory Doctorow writes on this subject, on how important owning digital media, open platforms, etc. I also have a few comments: All of the recent ebooks I have written are DRM free. While I do buy Amazon Kindle and Audible books sometimes, I try really hard to find DRM versions of what I want to read. As someone else here mentioned, it is good to have a personal library that is still readable in 10 years.
For audio books, I find Libro.fm to be awesome: DRM free, great prices, and nice app and infrastructure.
From your comment, I looked to your username. I'm a happy owner of Loving Common Lisp; and for technical material it's particularly nice to be DRM free.
I've switched almost entirely to ebooks for fiction, but I will only buy books that fit the following criteria:
1. DRM-free
2. No more expensive than the cheapest suggested retail price
3. Available in a generic format (EPUB, preferably)
So far, I've had excellent luck with Baen books, and decent luck with Tor books and miserable luck with just about every other publisher. Still, jokes on them, I will just pirate if I can't find a version that fits my criteria.
Baen used to give away huge portions of their catalog in the CDs included with their hardbacks. Buying the latest in the series meant a good chance the rest of the series was on the CD. Even now they're the kings of available formats, even if they're not quite as high quality as other ebook providers. And their prices are so cheap (most books are $10 new, less as they age) I have to wonder how they and the authors make money.
With new books, selling an ebook means saving all of the production costs of a physical book. If you're buying from Baen directly, they also save all the merchandising costs, too.
With old books, they're competing with used books which are most often very inexpensive, so may as well get you an ebook for free or low cost and if you like it, hopefully you're buy the author's future books when they're new.
You think that because of your beliefs you should be able both to enjoy somebody’s work and not pay them? Boycott them if you want - that’s absolutely fair. But enjoying their work anyway, and just not paying, is unprincipled and cheap. And arguing that it’s their fault that you’re stiffing them is awfully convenient.
By this logic, buying paperback books second hand is also unprincipled and cheap, no?
Which is a nice segue into a related topic, that by instituting DRM, publishers have removed the possibility for consumers to buy a book, read it once, and, knowing they will not want to read it again, decide to resell it for some of the value so they can buy more books.
None of this makes piracy ethical. But the whole system is rife with unethical practices, participating in almost any way is a quandary. The choice of simply not consuming literature and technical knowledge with the benefits of modern technology is not a perfect solution, for the individual nor society, either.
Yeah that’s an interesting angle. I don’t think buying secondhand books is cheap, because you are paying _someone_. Good question as to the morality of it re: author incomes. Paying no one and still getting whatever you want is what’s cheap.
At least somebody bought that book first. And before you say something like, "Wull, somebody had to buy a DRM book and strip the DRM out," think about the economies of scale we're talking about. The last thing is, buying used books is legal, which does put a dent in the "unprincipled" part of your argument.
Do you really mean to imply absolute adherence to the law, even unenforced laws, is a requirement to be a principled person? Does that mean all laws in all countries or are the laws of your country the most principled ones?
In some US cities it is literally illegal to feed the homeless. In every US city it is illegal to go on mile over the speed limit. In some countries it is illegal to not turn in your neighbors for being gay.
Nope I'm not implying that, but you certainly inferred it. Legality is one marker you can use when deciding ethics, especially in a democratic country. Also we're talking about the permissive side of the law (reselling used books), not the restrictive side (not being allowed to feed homeless people).
Maybe: "In some US cities it is literally legal to apply eminent domain to kick people out of their houses to enlarge a freeway" would be a better slippery slope, but that's still a totally different power dynamic.
So yeah I dunno. Try to come up with a better analogy, but definitely keep to your slippery slope. It'll convince somebody.
Easy. DRM restricts freedom and privacy in ways I find intolerable and will not financially support. Borrowing, piracy, and buying first or secondhand paper books does not have these problems.
Sure, because only the most trivial forms of utilitarian are act-by-act. A rule-utilitarianism could easily require us to pay one another for things, even things we could just take, to maximise overall utility. If you think it needs to be act-by-act, you prove it. But start with why consequentialism is a better ethical system than any other.
Yeah those filthy rich authors with all their choices just going straight for the DRM so they can control what you read! Stick it to 'em, greedy bastards.
I will often buy books on kobo because it's really easy to do so and it supports the authors, but I always download a corresponding DRM free epub eventually because I want a personal library that will still work in 10 years.
When I see something like Kindle or Audible, the first thing I do is check to see if I can strip off the DRM. If I'm buying it, I have the right to use it anyway I see fit (short of copying and redistributing...obviously).
I still check the DRM-free places first, because they deserve the sale, even if the price is higher. If I can't, I'll buy it and strip the DRM off (super simple, with the right software). If that won't work, I'll check the darknet. If there's a decent copy there, then I'll buy the useless DRM work (so the author gets paid), and use the darknet copy for my library.
Technically, this probably breaks several US laws. But I don't think any lawyer wants to try a case where I paid for the books/audiobooks, then removed their DRM. Kinda hard to show damages, or bad intent.
Libro.fm can also have drm free audio books. I ditched my kindle for a pocketbook era (yay speakers) and am just so done with any storefront that doesn't let me own things I buy.
This is me, as well. I was a Kindle user for years, always stripped the DRM. Now I use Kobo and still have those books...the ones I bought. I just changed the bookshelf, you might say.
It’s really annoying buying an eBook and have to pass it trough Adobe app, to get an EPUB. To then discover that I need to register my e-reader with Adobe to read it… wtf? I just use calibre with plugins and remove the DRM.
But at this point it gets faster downloading a pirated ebook than buying one. Why publishers don’t actively fight the book piracy and offer a better way to read eBook? The eBook market is large. And kindle is not an alternative solution since uses a proprietary format. I’m a proud user of Kobo for that reason
DRM on ebooks really shouldn't be a thing. It's easy enough to remove (fortunately), defeating the point of of it entirely. At the same time it's super annoying for legitimate customers, so much that I often ignore ebooks that use any kind of DRM.
This, exactly this!
Spending money on DRM is supporting DRM, even when stripping it afterwards.
Not too long ago I heard about some fantasy series that I really wanted to read. It wasn't available as DRMfree e-book, so I got the paper books second hand. Reading them reminded me again how much nicer e-books are, especially when travelling.
I have since gotten recommendations for two more fantasy series which appear very interesting. Again, no DRMfree e-book available. This time I decided I will just not read them.
Imagine how quickly we could get rid of all DRM if everybody simply stopped buying DRM! The world would be so much better! To me it feels like a moral obligation to not support any kind of DRM.
Luckily there are plenty of authors and distributors who support DRMfree books, games, audio. Let's make the world a better place, for ourselves and for the next generations, by simply refusing DRM!
> Thanks to O'Reilly for being clueful enough to sell non-DRM versions.
Did O’Reilly start selling ebooks again? Directly? Several years ago it stopped doing that and pushed the Safari or O’Reilly subscription as the only way to read its catalog of books. I provided feedback at that time, but the policies didn’t change. But I have seen some O’Reilly books in Humble Bundle sales once in a while.
There was also a time when O’Reilly and Apress would have a “deal of the day” every single day, selling ebooks at a much lower price than retail..all DRM free. I haven’t seen those in years.
Surprisingly, some time ago all large publishers (or rather, their trade union) have agreed to drop DRM in favor of "invisible watermarking" for all of the German-language books they sell – except for one. Take a wild guess which one...
In any case, this is really great when buying books: Since it's all just DRM-free ePubs, I can read them on whatever hardware I want, including a Kindle.
The formatting and UI is a bit off compared to "native" Kindle books (which are also just ePub at this point!) because Amazon refuses to activate their nicer/newer renderer for "personal documents", but not being locked into a given ecosystem for books I already bought vastly outweighs that.
I get most of the books I read from the public library. Sometimes I want to buy and gift books to friends. Only a few publishers (Tor, and other sci-fi publishers, as noted in this article) have determined that it's better to not bother with digital rights management.
I haven't yet found as a DRM-free epub the book I want to gift, and I may end up not buying it at all because of that.
In addition to whatever discussion this URL might bring about, here's an Ask: What can I do, in addition to not buy books (quietly speaking with my wallet?), to promote DRM-free epub sales?
In all honesty, this is why I have no problem removing DRM from media. If it has a lock on it, someone can take away the key. Screw that. As if an individual author cares whether you removed the DRM.
I'm pretty sure most (maybe a vast majority) of authors don't like DRM and don't want it. DRM is a publisher's thing, not an author's. It's the same with libraries; authors love them, publisher's hate them.
Books only require the efforts of one person for a relatively short period of time and only a shoestring budget and as a result there's an unfathomable number of books to choose from, and the technology required to manufacture books is so simple that any number of large companies deciding to opt out of paper books is not going to stop them from being made. Even if major publishers and stores stop selling physical books, these factors mean that nothing short of literally outlawing paper books could make them a thing of the past.
Yes, and I know that it's far more difficult than you might initially expect. I wasn't trying to portray the process as easy or trivial in terms of the effort required, my point was more about the fact that the barriers to entry are sufficiently low that you don't need millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars, an entire team (or dozens of teams) of workers to handle different tasks, or even decades of work to make a top-tier book happen. You only really need the author themself [0], so there's little risk of there not being a wide variety of literature to choose from even if megacorporations decide to lock their offerings behind DRM-infested ecosystems.
[0]: Editors are very useful, but you could feasibly avoid utilizing them, and they're also not so expensive as to be out of the range of what an individual person could afford to hire, so my point stands even if you take them into consideration.
Books are likely going to be around for a lot longer, as they have a long history of being shelf decorations. Plus, people like them for the format, not in spite of the format. e.g. if you could get the same DVD quality video copied onto a USB stick, it would be more appealing than a disc nowadays.
Pushing back on drm from the seller and/or publisher end feels like a lost cause at this point. There are tools that allow you to strip drm and convert to epub. If you buy another copy of the book it seems perfectly ethical to do this as a workaround.
The only thing wrong with this is that piracy means the author gets no benefit. I have pirated very few books; but I buy and strip DRM, getting the best of both worlds.
The author chose to publish with DRM. They could choose not to, as others have done. They could choose a publisher that doesn't add DRM. They could argue with their publisher that DRM is hurting their sales because so many people are pirating their books instead of buying them because of the DRM.
> I won't let my books be sold with DRM, which means that Audible won't carry my audiobooks. My agent tells me that this decision has cost me enough money to pay off my mortgage and put my kid through college.
Big authors like Sanderson and Doctorow can pull it off, small and new authors, if they want to build an audience, really can't.
You can usually send the author money directly. It may not be "click a button" convenient but lately rarely is doing the "right thing" so easy, annoyingly. But it's not so bad.
I recently read Adrian Tchaikovsky. If I wanted to send him money, I google his name, end up at his website, and at the bottom is a contact page: https://adriantchaikovsky.com/contact.html there's his agent's address at the bottom, where I can easily mail cash. This works for most authors.
In the past I've emailed small creators, such as authors or music producers, and simply asked them for their cashapp, paypal, or venmo, and sent them money that way. Many small producers already have this info on their website or instagram for this exact reason.
I was thinking the same thing. Either you go Amazon or you don't get it for some book. It is pretty dismal experience to be honest. Of course there are "other places" you can find them and not deal with any of the hassle. Search and download an ebook in about a minute.
Man I just bought a book on Amazon after a long time.
It is illustrated as a comic (but not considered a comic) and due to the shitty experience with the Kindle desktop app and Kindle web app I am unable to actually zoom and read it properly as I would with any PDF or CBZ.
Basically removing the DRM and converting it is the only way I'd be able to enjoy it and to do that I'd need the whole calibre+dedrm machinery which I'm not even sure works on my box.
I don't really get how a DRM free library works. Based on the article at least it seems like being DRM-free means people can keep the book as long as they want? What's the difference between that, and just letting anyone download the book for free online?
DRM for books will of course always be easily bypassible - it's just text and images, not exactly hard to copy. But I don't see how a "library" can work without some limit on how long you can be using a piece of content.
If there is no limitation, why would anyone pay for the ebook though when they can just get it for free from the library indefinitely? I just don't get how this works from the authors side, are they supposed to just give away their book to everyone for free? Or is the idea that the library compensates them enough to cover the costs of them writing the book.
> While pricing for unlimited-user, DRM-free e-books is higher than the cost of traditional 1-user versions protected by DRM technology, DRM-free materials are also seeing more usage—and so the cost per use is ultimately lower.
I read that as: for some works, the libraries are buying "unlimited-user" licences that basically allows them to give away copies of the book to borrowers (not "borrowers" any more, I guess?).
DRM is terrible for so many reasons, one I don't see me mentioned a lot is that it's part of a massive antitrust issue with media and proprietary formats in general.
Kindle formats for example are locked into .ksx format, which you can strip out into a DRM free epub, but most people can't or don't know how to. This means:
- They have to buy amazon ereaders if they want to read their books
- No other company can reliably build ereaders for an exclusively proprietary format like ksx
My dream job is building a DRM-free eBook store with all of the major publishers onboard. If anyone on HN is building that, please email me. I have so many ideas about how that could revitalize the books industry.
Aside: I think if publishers want to protect their books from being shared for free, watermarking [0] is a better solution than DRM. It brings back the same dynamics we have with sharing physical books (common with friends, less so with strangers), and also is a lot more obvious to non-technical people.
All ebooks I have ever bought were instigated by stealing the first book from Pirate Bay.
It must be bigger phenomenon than authors understand.
Palahniuk knows this and made a video how to steal more of his books.
Lars Wilderäng seems to understand it too, because he just jokes about it in X. He probably made those torrents himself as they are from trilogies and people are compelled to buy rest of the books, like I did.
I tend to always go for DRM-free ebooks as much as possible, the few ones I have bought that are under DRM are because their authors decided not to provide it otherwise besides paper format, so I got to respect their decision as I didn't want to get a couple of dead trees for technology stuff, always outdated after a couple of years.
No, "easily breakable" DRMs don't really improve the situation:
The laws in many countries make it specifically illegal to break/circumvent DRM (even if making a copy, e.g. for personal use or viewing it on an unsupported device, would otherwise would be legal!), which is pretty messed up.
If you buy DRMed content because you know it's easily breakable, you are sending the signal that you are fine with DRM for purchased (not rented) goods, which is probably not what you want since it reinforces this unfortunate status quo.
If you want to actually support "asserting ownership" of digital goods, support DRM-free content.
DRM reduces casual piracy during the critical first wave of sales, or at least that's the thinking. If DRM were illegal or impossible then fewer works may get published. Ergo there would be less to choose from.
Is there any evidence that DRM actually leads to more works getting published long term or is this just a oft repeated anecdote? It's trying to force the logic of commodities into a medium where it does not naturally exist.
There has actually been several studies with proofs that DRM does nothing, but this is an emotional issue ("My feelings tell me that evil thieves need to be stopped even if I crap on users!") and proofs don't matter.
Can someone help me move away from Audible? I have about 20 titles that I've downloaded over the years and enjoy downloading and re-listening to. What's the best audiobook solution I can use so that I can cancel my subscription?
FWIW, you keep all audible purchases even if you cancel your subscription (regardless if they were bought with credits or cash). So you can cancel and continue using the Audible app as you have been. You need to use all your credits before you cancel though, IIRC.
That said, it's very easy to remove Audible DRM. Each of your purchases is encrypted with the same short series of bytes. You can fetch them by uploading any purchase to this site [0] (also open source). Then, FFmpeg supports the `-activation_bytes` arg for this exact purpose:
> You need to use all your credits before you cancel though, IIRC.
I know this is correct because I found out the hard way. Couldn't keep up with listening so cancelled the sub. Came back when I had time but the credits were gone (think about 7). Was pretty mad but found out they do mention this somewhere. Threw 5 euros at Libation, downloaded my library and never looked back.
Move away as in find another audiobook vendor? Or simply retain access to your existing collection?
Audiobooks from Audible can be downloaded via the UI. They will have DRM, but it's possible to remove.
If you have audiobook files without DRM you can listen to them via any app that plays audio, but there's also at least one OSS project that aims to fill audiobook UI niche [1].
I have been using Libro.fm. Also, you can put your Audible membership on hold, and still have access to books you have paid money for, but not the free members books.
Despite its many flaws, I use Plex as the single place for all my video and audio content. If you pay for the lifetime pass, you get access to an app called Plexamp which is designed for playing back audio.
Cancel your subscription, download all your books from audible, put them on a NAS, run Plex, and use Plexamp for access.
I still buy things via Audible, I just immediately download them and load them into my Plex server.
I have not tried it but is there some reason you can't simply record from an headphone jack? I thought there was some Linux app that would just do this.
I'm with you 100% on never buying anything with DRM, but I wouldn't think for one second that it's going to influence any business. We are in the tiniest minority. We're in a world full of DRM precisely because it's so lucrative compared to the alternative.
I wish we could vote with our votes… I know it will never happen, but I would love it if our government tried to strike a different balance between the rights of buyers and sellers of ebooks.
DRM should be allowed, but it must expire when the copyright does, it must accommodate transferring titles from one person to another, it must provide a way for accessibility devices to access the book, it must not lock readers into a single ecosystem, etc…
I love how people just skim over the situation and are like no DRM no DRM! without asking why DRM exists. It exists because of me. To eliminate DRM you have to deal with people like me who very much exist. A discussion is worth more than lying to yourself and voting me down. Plenty and I mean plenty of people responding and reading this thread is Exactly like me.
I think it ought to be illegal to advertise such an arrangement as a sale or a purchase rather than a rental or some other similar term. It would at least make clearer than a lot of so-called purchases are actually revocable and non-transferable licenses, though it might not do much to actually curb the practice.
regardless, kindle books can be cracked. not the easiest thing ever, but it's doable. cracking ADE books is much, much easier. i crack all my ebooks because otherwise i can't read them in my ereader
Reminder that Tor Publishing group (https://www.tor.com/) publishes some of the best sci-fi and fantasy books on the planet, and all of their ebooks are DRM-free. They are one of the only major non-indie publishers to do so. I recommend patronizing them, whenever possible.
Failing that, I mostly get things from my local library (via Libby). Conveniently, those all have weak DRM, so one could still build a personal library that way.
> Failing that, I mostly get things from my local library (via Libby). Conveniently, those all have weak DRM, so one could still build a personal library that way.
Doesn't this motivate publishers to only let books be shared from public libraries using strong DRM?
If it's a big enough problem, then maybe. Honestly it just seems like a cat and mouse game - there'll always be dedicated people willing to crack any new DRM scheme that comes out.
I would guess that the DRM mostly does its job though, but it's hard to say for sure!
1) All of the heavy lifting is done sneakily by the word "purchasing." Of course "purchasing" something feels like you ought to own it, but did you "purchase" X or did you just pay for limited access to it? That's the entire debate, but this quote baits you into thinking of everything in terms of purchasing / panders to people that already do.
2) This quote amounts to "if paying cannot get you full ownership of X then getting a full copy of X for free is not stealing (so go ahead)." How about you always pay the creator and then pirate only for the additional ownership rights? I'm sure the quote reads that way to some people, but clearly it was crafted to also appeal to the "I just want stuff for free" crowd.
I think you misread my comment. When I talk about "piracy" here, I mean "removing DRM from a thing I paid for (or otherwise had free access to)". Being able to buy a DRM-free copy of something is far and away my preferred method of getting something. Unfortunately, those opportunities are few and far between, but I take them when offered. Failing that, I'll buy something and pop the DRM.
In each of these cases, the creators are getting paid. I'm just getting an actual durable file out of the deal, not DRM garbage that I'll hopefully still be able to use later.
Apologies. I was simply attacking the quote. I did not mean to comment on your other words. Reading my comment now I see how "how about you" can sound like I am talking to you. I meant it like, the modified quote was being said by a very pro-piracy strawman and I was talking to him, "how about you."
Case in point: I bought one of my favorite books from Amazon as a kindle e-book about 10 years ago. It was Ring, by Stephen Baxer. Somehow Amazon screwed up and replaced the English version with a German copy. It's now impossible to buy or download in English -- only German is available. I complained to Amazon customer support and they issued me a refund... but I can't find any way to get them to fix it, and no way to read the book in English. Wish I had downloaded a DRM-free copy.
That'd be such a massive time waste if everyone did that tindividually, if you were capable of convincing people to expend that much effort, it'd be way easier to ask them change all the copyright laws
I hope more authors and publishers start releasing their stuff DRM-free too. As it stands, I have a jailbroken Kindle that I run KOReader on; I use a Calibre plugin to bust the DRM off of any book I buy for my Kindle, then port the ebook over to my device.
Of course, I wouldn't have to do any of that if publishers would just sell the darn things without DRM.