Slashdot Mirror
Lulu Introduces DRM
An anonymous reader writes "Print-on-demand publisher Lulu recently announced that they're offering 'eBooks.' Since they've always offered downloadable books as PDFs, that takes some decoding to figure out what part is new: it turns out that it means now they're handling more formats, they've significantly increased the share they take out of the purchase price ... and for an additional fee, they now offer DRM. I have a few items published through Lulu myself; nothing forces me to buy the DRM, but I'm considering taking my business elsewhere on principle. This isn't what I expected from the people who, when I first signed up with them, were solidly endorsing Creative Commons."
Amusing to see what happens when "information wants to be free" collides with "your bills are past due".
As you say, you don't have to use the DRM at all. I don't see any benefit in punishing anyone that simply supports that as an option for authors that don't know any better (or think they do). If people want the rope for whatever reason, just shake your head and let them buy it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So... a publishing company is giving authors the *Option* of using DRM? I'm sorry, but I don't see a problem with that. If the Authors are silly enough to want that, then it's in Lulu's best interest to offer their clients what they want.
This move has nothing to do with DRM. Lulu figures that by adding a new option for authors that says it will "protect" their book from theft online, for a "small fee" that they will get an increase in profit, for no real added cost to themselves. In reality, if you are publishing through Lulu, I think DRM and book theft is the last thing you need to worry about.
If you want to know why someone does something, follow the money.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
It's like threatening to not let a dealership sell your line of cars because they offer LoJack as an option on other models.
DRM is not the devil. It is a tool. The sooner we stop crying about buzz words and instead actually do something about how they are used, the better off we will all be.
If you are going to figuratively cut your throat every time you come into contact with something you do not like you will have a lonely life ahead of you.
The moment DRM is made mandatory then I would think about your principles an option that is voluntary is fine.
Note to self: Never use Lulu.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
for no real added cost to themselves
Actually for Lulu the costs are very real and add up quickly:
1) Assume they need a DRM server, that must have 99.9% availability.
2) Need to test DRM to ensure it actually works
3) Need support staff to deal with authors and developers not understanding why they cannot access content.
I'm assuming they put a lot of thought into this, there must be a pretty compelling business case or else they would not incur this burden.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know why she's leaving or where she's gonna go
I guess she's got her reasons, but i just don't wanna know
'cuz for twenty-four years i've been living next door to Lulu
Lulu, who the fuck is Lulu? ...... many "fucks" following .....
For the un-enlightened
As has been said many times in this thread already, you don't HAVE to use DRM. I guess there are a lot of people who publish on Lulu who don't want a free-to-spread PDF of their work roaming around the world, diminishing the profits from their hard work. Now they have an extra option to offer people their work and get paid for it. Most people don't care about DRM at all, so what is the problem?
-- Cheers!
how do these articles make it on slashdot...? /me shakes head
Maybe they would like to say: "Look, you can put DRM on your books to try to protect your copies, you don't need to go elsewhere. But be aware that that make some legitimate users unhappy -- as it did with music -- and they will opt to non-DRM ... making you lose money."
If they wouldn't offer the option, they wouldn't be able to let publishers try out.
OTOH, I have no clue about ebook publishing ;-)
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Is there a DRM that DOES WORK?
The Kindle DRM works about as well as any can (for eBooks).
By that I mean, from the users point of view it doesn't get in the way, and from the authors point of view it's hard enough to strip that it appears to offer some protection.
Also from the policy side, Kindle books are actually very user friendly - if you purchased a book but decide you want to "return" it, you can. Yes there was that whole mess with 1984, but even there at least the people got refunds. Personally I am still very reluctant to buy any book with DRM whereas I have and will buy PDF's without much of a qualm. I still mentally consider any DRM purchase merely a rental, no matter how long the digital version might be owned by me I live knowing it could go away any time for a variety of technical reasons.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And, while I'm asking this kind of question, does anyone know of a good place to get hard-copies of books from GutenPrint?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> Kindle books are actually very user friendly
I doubt this (well, maybe the first one is doable, I don't have any Kindles, myself).
All of this functionality might be expected by a reasonable consumer who isn't already thinking about why the publisher wouldn't want him to be able to do it.
Thanks to Cory Doctorow from whom most of these examples/ideas have been lifted.
I think it's more optimistic to reverse that. If you want to know why someone follows the money, see why they want to do something. Money is used as a mechanism, but it doesn't take any worth away from the pursuits and items that need that mechanism.
I realise that may not fully apply with some of the more 'greedy' / short-term profit companies though.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
If slavery was only offered as an option then why not deal with the company that offered it eh? It's not as though they would be forcing you to use slave produced work...
The point is, it does matter what they offer, and it is doesn't only come down to the option which you choose. If you believe in something strongly enough, you will not deal with any company which supports the thing you object to.
The majority of people who use creative commons and open source are just in it for the free goods (as in costs nothing), but there are a few who are in it on point of principle. It's the latter group who made it happen and will ensure it continues to be available. The former group are just leaches benefiting off the effort of others. You obviously belong to the former group
DRM is a tool to create artificial scarcity. Scarcity, virtual or real makes the scarce item more valuable, or so is thought. Only one (1) person needs to crack the 'scarcity' and the whole (economic) system comes tumbling down. Let DRM be implemented, and let it be cracked, it will lead to yet another market-crash. However, if the DRM can not or isn't cracked it will lead to the loss of the item, destroying the information locked by its DRM inside forever. An information black-out will be the result in our history.
Its a very strange thing that DRM is hailed upon by the biggest players in the 'free market'. All for profit and profit for all as they say. Money seems to be more valuable than anything else. This to me is a very freightning attitude. But reacting upon angst is even more freighting. We need to look at the root cause of the issue here, authors/creators feeling they're not duly compensated for their work. If we solve this issue there is no need for DRM.
A lot of research is being done in the field of new media and especially its distribution, but these reports don't seem to hit home (the publishers/law makers/etc).
Need an example on how stuff can change? Watch this lecture,1st part is a dull intro to bittorrent, after that it really gets interesting: pt1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxCoCTc3T5Q pt2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIqG7WgqQ-w
I'm with the people who don't think DRM is necessarily evil. Remember: Lulu is a *print-on-demand* outfit. You want a non-DRM'd version of a book? buy the print version and do whatever you want with it. I don't see why we should force writers to give their work in a format that can be duplicated too easily. If you write technical manuals, software guides, that sort of thing... you're in a market where piracy is very, very strong, to the point you may never make any money on your book, while it may be pirated by thousands or tens of thousands of users. Just look a the book section on Pirate Bay. Yes, I would have preferred if there was some global DRM scheme which was vendor-agnostic and internationally maintained by some non-affiliated organization, so we'd have some assurances our DRM'd media isn't going to just go away one day. But all the arguments I hear against DRM are about the specific implementation, not the idea in general. The idea is... well... necessary if you want people to bother writing professionally.
I think the whole "religious war" charge by the left wing is a bunch of crap. If you look at nearly every war that has ever been, religion at best was used as an excuse but the real reasons were always about money, and about preserving one's way of life, and those are plenty good reasons to fight a war.
I mean, the irony of things is that if there is no God, what's really the moral crime of invading another nation and taking it over. What's the difference between killing a fetus that I can't see or dropping a cluster bomb on a house from 50,000 feet. Either way, I'm just blowing people away without even giving a shit. In fact, what if I enjoy killing fetuses or dropping cluster bombs... what if I'm really good at walking a woman through an abortion so that I can make her feel good about giving me a couple of hundred bucks, or just guiding my aircraft to right on target so that I can waste some fricking muzzies.
Why on earth should I care? When I'm dead, I'm going to be dirt. The end, that's it. So there's no fricking point. As long as someone doesn't kill me, its ok... but I can do whatever I want, so long as I can get away with it.
This is my sig.
If piracy was as rare as murder
Pastafarianism posits a link between piracy and global warming. But this BBC article states that something has held off warming, at least for the next decade. Might piracy of Atlantic Records have helped Atlantic currents in this?
I have cheap paperbacks I bought in the '70s, with copyright dates in the '60s, that I can still read. They're not in great condition compared to even older quality bound hardbacks, but they're still completely readable.
I have digital books I got in the '80s (mostly fanfics, of course) and the '90s, I can still read.
I've got a CD somewhere with some DRMed books I got about seven or eight years ago, they were free downloads that came with a PDA, used part of the credit card number I use to download them as the PIN... the gimmick was that once they had your card on file you'd be more inclined to buy more ebooks. I wouldn't have the faintest idea what credit card number was on my now-twice-renewed card I bought them on. So even if the publisher was still in operation (I don't know if they were) there's no way I could hope to get them reactivated. I've got another DRMed eBook that I bought, because it was the only way to get the annotated version of A Fire Upon the Deep, and I think I could reactivate it if I wanted to.
I've also got three or four programs I got on that PDA that I'm now running on an emulator of that PDA because the company that sold them is out of business, but I happened to have activated them on that emulator. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to use them any more.
DRM isn't like a lojack, DRM is like buying a book printed on nitrocellulose. It's like buying a car that disables the engine after five years, and you can't resell or even loan to a friend.
What do these things have to do with user friendly?
I suppose you might be right for some definitions of "user friendliness", but I was just "going with the flow" by using the same term as the post to which I replied. It's obvious he wasn't talking about user interface friendliness.
I'd posit that people buying digital media have no expectation of being able to do these things in the first place.
Why (except that they would be thinking about the interests of the publisher)?
Ok, then, so the problem is what again?
They are giving people choice. That is good. When they start mandating, then we can talk.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
timothy, you are a fucking idiot.
Does the DRM lockout blind peoples screen readers?
Here is why I'm likely to boycott Lulu, and recommend against them whenever asked. I've already cleaned up my storefront to only indicate this removal of support.
First I offer http://www.flora.ca/own for what I consider DRM to be, given there isn't a universal meaning for this acronym. It is also an explanation for less technical people about how DRM works, rather than the unscientific "magic" that some people believe it to be.
I believe that authors imposing technology brands on audiences (DRM on content) is even less legitimate/moral than audiences imposing prices on authors (IE: copyright infringement). I don't condone either, but consider DRM to be worse.
I consider the activity of locking technology such that the owner does not have the key (DRM on hardware/software) to be a direct attack on property rights. I consider this a form of "theft" that should be made clearly illegal -- not encouraged (through locks on content), legalised or legally protected.
In the case of Lulu the blog article was clearly encouraging authors to put DRM on their content, making false (but common) claims that DRM would reduce infringement. DRM on content then imposes/encourages specific brands of technology, specifically technology that is locked down against the interests of their owners.
Lulu is and should also be held to a higher standard. This is a company founded by Bob Young who knows better when it comes to the harms of DRM. If this were an old-economy publisher adding DRM-free digital distribution to an existing DRM-only system, this would be seen as a step in a positive direction. In this case this is a theoretically new-economy publisher adding and promoting DRM in addition to a long-standing DRM-free system, clearly a step in a negative direction.
Digital Copyright Canada forum
Waaah! Waaah! Somebody call the Waaahmbulance!
To me (as a consumer) its simple. DRM is ALWAYS a bad thing for the consumer. I will not buy from anyone that uses or supports DRM unless I cannot find DRM free versions. If I do end up with DRMed versions, I try to find a way to get rid of the DRM (converting to a different format etc...). AND I ALWAYS complain about the DRM to the entity which I got the DRMed product from.
If socialism makes a mistake, the whole nation suffers. If a company makes a mistake in the free market, life goes on.
Exactly. That's why when all those investment banks gambled massively, and lost, the whole nation shrugged it's shoulders and life went on. No recession, no need for the government to bail them out. I'd hate to live in some sort of socialist country, where the bad decisions of those companies could adversely affect the nation as a whole.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
If we followed that philosophy, we would not be making a stand against DRM.
And if every seller supports some form of DRM? A much stronger statement is made in not buying DRM products. Also if you are with a publisher that supports DRM, tell them you will never make use of the feature and find it distasteful. An author that is making money for them carries more weight still than consumers...
If you want to defeat anything, the best path to success is from the inside.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Exactly. That's why when all those investment banks gambled massively, and lost, the whole nation shrugged it's shoulders and life went on.
Well, the socialists deliberately derailed the economy so that they can get elected, and it worked. Kudos to you for a job well done!
Let's map it out. You will bring down the free market economy. We will bring down the government, to even the score, and the anarchists will win.
This is my sig.
In this case, the free market should do fine.
The free market only has problems when:
1) People are allowed to do unethical things
2) Monopolies or oligopolies are created
3) There's a moral hazard
So, does this mean that the government never does unethical things, has no problem with being a monopoly of power, and has no moral hazards?
Like, I guess the question is that, socialists never really answer is, how does having a big government suddenly make people ethical. Seems to me that if you created a big government as the source of all power then every unethical person would immediately seek out a job within it. Indeed, that is exactly what has happened and in fact will always happen.
This is my sig.
> That is pathetic, and it makes you a pathetic person.
I'm intensely curious about what you believe about people who judge others' worth based upon their beliefs about consumer products, DRM, or copyright law?
LOL
I've been using lulu for several years now. As with most long-term relationships, there are some things I like and others that drive me crazy. In general, however, their positive attitude toward free information is one of the big pluses. They were founded by a former Red Hat guy. They have always offered CC licenses as an explicit option in the menus when you set up your book in their web interface. Also, if you set your own royalty to zero, they do not take their usual cut. (This is what I do, because I'm a college professor, and I feel that taking a royalty raises uncomfortable conflict of interest issues, since I'm using my books in my own classes.) After reading TFA, I updated one of my books to see what the deal was. I have always had my books set so that people can buy printed copies (with zero royalty to me) or just download them for free in PDF format. When I updated my book I got a page like this:
If you look way down at the bottom under "Give My Download Away For Free," you'll see that they are not going to charge money unless I do. Here is the book, as updated today. You can still download it without paying any money.
I do feel that DRM is evil. I'm not happy that lulu is supporting it. However, their over-all support for free information seems to me to be a lot better than you'd expect from Random Corporation, Inc.
For the record, here are the things I like and dislike about lulu:
Likes: They are the only POD or vanity publisher I know of that will let you set up and sell your book with zero initial cost. They handle all of the shipping and order processing, which was a huge hassle for me when I was doing it myself. They are relatively friendly toward free information.
Dislikes: They have a business model sort of similar to Paypal, i.e., it is absolutely impossible to get a Lulu employee to talk to you on the phone, and very difficult to communicate with one in any other way, either. I have had repeated technical issues with them before, where the printer they subcontracted out to couldn't output a book that had outputted successfully for a long time before with other subcontractors; lulu wasn't willing/able to help me figure out a workaround, although I eventually figured it out myself. College bookstores have reported problems to me where lulu sent them bogus bills ($700 for books that FedEx tracking showed were shipped to someone's house in a different state), and made it an incredible hassle to straighten out the problem.
Find free books.
Socialists deliberately derailed? Please take your medication before posting.
> I wasn't judging. I was simply stating a fact.
I'm even more curious now. How can the statement "You are pathetic" be a fact? There are objective criteria for being pathetic?
Our discussion begins to remind me of Phillip K. Dick's novel "Eye in the Sky" where the protagonist finds out exactly how bizarre are the belief frameworks of other people who seem, on the exterior, totally normal. Either that, or this.
Firstly, who said I was a socialist?
And secondly: Well, the socialists deliberately derailed the economy so that they can get elected
Could you possibly explain, just what the hell you're talking about?
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
Best conspiracy theory I've heard in a while.
Coast to Coast AM wouldn't even touch that one.
Wow, that really added to the discussion. As for your opinion, it's a heap of shit, so shove it back where it belongs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Coast to Coast AM wouldn't even touch that one.
Just being ahead of the curve.
This is my sig.
And secondly: Well, the socialists deliberately derailed the economy so that they can get elected
Well, the left has been bitching about corporations now for how many years, arguing the gov't should run the economy? So, they get into power, and a bunch of corporations suddenly go belly up, and now, socialists really don't want to take over the economy? It's absurd.
Face it, every time the left passes a regulation that might harm economic activity in the private sector, it doesn't matter to the left, because, they will wind up taking over that sector anyway.
This is my sig.