Slashdot Mirror
Analyzing Amazon's E-Book Loan Agreement
conel writes "The Economist has a knowledgeable mainstream take on the restrictions publishers are forcing on e-books. From the article: 'They wish you to engage in two separate hallucinations. First, that their limited license to read a work on a device or within software of their choosing is equivalent to the purchase of a physical item. Second, that the vast majority of e-books are persistent objects rather than disposable culture. ... Just as with music, DRM will be cracked. As more people possess portable reading devices, the demand and availability for pirated content will also rise. (Many popular e-books can now be found easily on file-sharing sites, something that was not the case even a few months ago, as Adrian Hon recently pointed out.)"
Are you kidding? The ability to lend a book once for 14 days if the publisher allows it? How is that a good thing?
It's so ridiculously restricted it's essentially useless.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Ebook piracy has been around since before ebooks were commercially available. Even many years ago there existed a usenet board I used to frequent where a constant stream of books were distributed - painstakeingly scanned, OCRed and (hopefully) proof-read by enthusiasts. The selection was surprisingly comprehensive.
It's been a long time since I was witness to the ebook piracy scene, but from what rumors I have heard the real action there now resides on a few DC++ hubs.
I don't find anything wrong with the lend program. I realize Slashdot has a certain "information should be free" ethos, but it doesn't make much sense to build in the ability to give unlimited copies to everyone and think that it won't undermine the business. While the publishers "wish you to engage in two separate hallucinations", it seems like lots of other people want us to engage in another hallucination: that giving out unlimited copies won't turn into a financial problem for booksellers. For example, how many students are really going to buy their own digital copies of their textbooks, as opposed to passing around one copy for everyone? (Not that I really agree with the current economic model of expensive, often-updated textbooks, but I also can't agree with the pirates desire for unlimited free copies for everyone - as if that has no economic consequences, either.)
- It's often more expensive than a hard copy
- Its purchase does not affect the cost of getting a hard copy later (nor vice versa!)
- It is intangible and can (and will) be remote-deleted for the flimsiest of excuses.
Why are we supposed to buy this again instead of getting something made of paper?
We need to start treating digital copies like books. We don't own the content, but we should own the copy we purchased, and we should be able to do with them what we want.
Obviously there are some natural limitations that apply to books that would need to artificially applied to ebooks, but we can already apply them, as this piddly excuse for a loan policy proves.
The concept is easy: a function in the software that ties an ebook to the device and only allows transfer to another device if it successfully ties it to another device, and then disables the ebook on the original device. That would make ebooks behave exactly like regular books. Then you wouldn't need a stupid loan policy, you'd just give your friend your copy of the ebook, just like you would a physical book.
I seriously do not understand why this has not been done yet, or why they insist on these stupid "loan" functions. Just move the ebook off the old machine and onto the new! Leave it up to the owner of the book to get their copy back, just like physical books. We've been able to "move" (copy then delete) digital media for ages.
Seriously, it's not that hard. Why the hell are they making it so complicated?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
I was moments away from ordering a Kindle - I had added it to my Amazon shopping cart and had started to add some e-book titles. Then I noticed the used book prices. Every one of the 5 e-books I had picked out were priced at $9.99, while used books with shipping came out to prices ranging from $4.50 to $9.99 including shipping.
While I understand that people that travel a lot may prefer an e-book for the convenience, I do 90% of my reading in my living room. Why would I pay $139 for a device plus a premium price on each book just to have a fancy gadget? I'm not one to run out and buy the latest bestseller and I have enough books on hand to not find it hard to wait a couple weeks for a used book to arrive.
I could even resell the books after I'm done and make the effective cost even cheaper (printing a priority mail label takes a couple minutes, so there's hardly any inconvenience). Though in reality, I donate my books to a local charity.
I don't expect the publisers to allow e-book resales, but unless they cut their book prices significantly, they are going to have a hard time competing against paper.
I avoid eBook piracy by simply by reading the classics
Baen Books has been posting e-books, several formats available, for several years now. And, curiously enough, it's the authors that make the choice. I have a solid library of their titles that are loaded on all my machines to read during down-time (waiting on something) and all of them, including ones that I initially wouldn't have bought in book form normally, are here in the pulp as well. So, it's a good deal for the author, give me a book that may have me buy the series, rather than miss a potential sale.
A rather radical thing that I recently encountered was a hardback Baen Book ("Rats, Bats, & Vats") that had a CD with several dozen titles from Baen on it that encouraged you to make a copy and give them out.
As for the e-book community, yes, they are alive and well in the newsgroups last time I looked (August I believe) and you can get what you want in almost any format. Then again, that's been true of anything that can be presented in electronic form pretty much since newsgroups (NNTP) came to be. Just as with the cracking community (hell Apple should know what with rooting the iPhone) you'll always see them out there. Keep the price point low enouigh and frankly most people won't go to the effort of finding, downloading, etc., since you never going to know what you get (unusable/, malware, and lawsuit, oh my!).
And before anyone professes that this is incorrect, go back and take microeconomics again, specifically opportunity costs. The beautiful thing about iTunes, iPhone Apps, NetFlix, downloadable software, and e-book marketplaces is that they have been an ecometrician's wet dream for statistical market behavior. I don't think that this was the intent of the providers of music, apps, and video, but there you have it. Saved us a ton of research grant money. Thank you!
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
A "few months ago" I wouldn't have thought about pirating a book. I could get my favorite books for under $10 and I was reading them like crazy. Then here comes iPad and the bullshit deal Apple setup with the publishers to let THEM set the price and break Amazon's lock on E-books. Publishers, led by Macmillan, put the hurt on Amazon, and now they too are forced to let Publishers set book prices. Damn near overnight my buying of books came to a screeching halt as nothing I was interested in reading could be had for what I felt was a reasonable price. Some of the books I looked up were CHEAPER in hard copy! Books that have been out 6-7 YEARS for $12++?!
So I too looked towards Torrent sites and elsewhere and sure enough there was tons of books available. I haven't bought a single book from Amazon, hard or soft copy, since this change in pricing went into effect. the sad thing is that E-books are so small no one ever just shares one, it's ineffective. Instead you see huge collections thrown together in order to make the file size decent.
Thankfully some authors are getting a clue! Hopefully more will follow this guy's lead -> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
You are exactly right. Its almost insulting that the offer it, probably doing so only to deflect regulator attention for violating consumer's rights.
Its the same deal offered by the publishers to Barnes & Noble for Nook users. (Not Amazon's doing, in other words).
They have found a way to end run the First Sale Doctrine, by controlling right after the purchase. Non infringing resale is essentially impossible, and even loans or gifts are not possible.
The problem is no consumer group exists which can fight all the way to the Supreme Court, which is probably what it will take.
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Are you kidding? The ability to lend a book once for 14 days if the publisher allows it? How is that a good thing?
It's so ridiculously restricted it's essentially useless.
And only once. Never ever again to the same kindle device. As if loaning it twice somehow is worse than once. I can see an automatic return after 14 days (I'd love that with real books; too many loaners gone for good), but the only once thing makes it heinous.
Why is lending or gifting what is supposedly yours a bizarre new right?
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I think they need those protections, because pirating can hurt the book market a lot.
See, that's where you messed up. You're doing the same kind of 'thinking' an audience does when they observe a magician's act. It's a trick.
Creators were making little to no money from media sales long before wide-spread pirating came along. This has been true ever since the dawn of industrialized mass-reproduction of media. Publishers, editors, printers, binders, distributors all get paid, but the authors frequently get swindled. It's an old, old story and so-called piracy, (I prefer the word, "sharing") has little to do with it.
Nothing has changed except that greedy people are frustrated when others share.
Interestingly, when people embrace sharing, authors and musicians get paid. -Because money is shared as well! Those who hate sharing and want to build a system of forced payment will, when not forced themselves, fight to not share with authors and creators.
See how it works? Don't be tricked.
-FL
Your statement that ebooks are licensed not owned is not borne out by the terms of sale.
Go check out the book seller web sites.
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I just published "Chasing the Runner's High: My Sixty Million-Step Program". If you buy the eBook from my site, there is no copy protection. There's no point. All Digital Rights Managment schemes do is make it harder for honest readers to buy a book and enjoy it. DRM doesn't stop piracy. If a book is popular enough for it to matter, someone will break the copy protection and make the book available for free.
The book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The license allows you to share unmodified copies of the book, as long as you don't use if for commercial purposes. If the book is read by thousands of people who got their copy from a friend, that's a win. I'm better off than if they never read it. Some of those people will end up buying paper copies, buying copies for their local libraries, or just paying what they think the eBook was worth.
You can also name your own price for eBook editions of my book when you buy from my site. I believe that if you can pay what you think a book is worth, you're more likely to buy. A sale for a little money is better than no sale at all (as long as you pay more than the 50 cents it costs to process your order).
Most people will be fair. The ones who aren't fair probably aren't going to pay anyhow.
Note: the eBook is available from other sites. Some people only shop from (for example) the Kindle store or the iBookstore, and so I need to be listed there. Those versions have fixed prices and may have DRM, but wherever it's possible, I've asked the vendor to sell it without DRM.
They technically have a right to control your license to read the ebook.
If you are going to be "technical" get it correct. No one has a right to control what we read. They may have a right to control whether an ebook is accessible on a particular reading device. Once I have access (regardless of the means) I have the legal ability to read the document. The license is a license to copy and/or access. It is NOT a license to read.
Remember ebooks are licenced, not owned.
If you are talking about the data in the book, the same is true for physical books. The only thing you actually own is the medium, not the copyrighted contents. Since they cannot be separated on a physical book, the first sale doctrine matters. Things get less clear once the data and the physical means for displaying it are separable.
Especially since you can usually re-download them if you lose it...
Only if the publisher is feeling magnanimous.
A friend of mine some time ago downloaded book four of harry potter as an e-book off some website, and read it. He then proceeded to download and read book five, only to find out that the story was completely inconsistent with the plot of book four... It turns out the book he had read was a fan-made harry potter spin-off, probably written before book four actually came out, but it was good enough that, while a few parts seemed strange, he did not notice it was a fake until he saw the inconsistencies to the following tome...