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E-Book Lending Stands Up To Corporate Mongering
phmadore writes "Publishing Perspectives is talking today about the rise of e-book lending, which, one would hope, will lead to a rise in questioning exactly how far one's digital rights extend. Although the articles are mostly talking about the authorized lending programs through Kindle and Nook ('The mechanics are simple: ebook owners sign up and list books that they want to allow others to borrow. When someone borrows one of the ebooks you have listed, you earn a credit. Credits can also be purchased for as little as $1.99 from eBook Fling'), we have to ask ourselves why we are suddenly paying publishers more for less. In the case of iBooks, you can't even transfer your books to another device, let alone another user, but then at least the prices are somewhat controlled. In the case of sites like BooksOnBoard, you've got ridiculously out-of-control prices with a greatly decreased cost of delivery. It's not all bad, don't get me wrong; Kobo offers competitive prices that never leave me feeling ripped off or stuck with an inferior product. Still, I can't help but think: digital rights management, sure! Where are my rights, as a consumer, and who is managing them? I wouldn't mind selling the rights back to the publisher or store for in-store credit; I also wouldn't be terribly bothered if they got a reasonable cut off the resale of the product to someone else. What I won't like is if they never allow it or continue to make it impossible for me to sell what's rightfully mine."
If it's not available in any of those standards, then the eBook is as worthless as DRM-hampered MP3s purchased digitally. If you can't purchase your eBook in one of the aforementioned formats, do yourself a huge favor and go to your local bookstore, and purchase it in paperback. That way you can keep it indefinitely, sell it, trade it, lend it to friends, and so forth. It's about time for companies to stop proactively treating their customers like criminals and thieves. Vote with your wallet.
You don't have any rights, you're a consumer. You stopped having rights when you became one of them.
Not going to post the whole thing, but I like this quote:
"Fiction magazines are steadily losing readership, down 40% since 2000.
The survival of these magazines is essential if you'd like to see
lots of good SF and fantasy stories - one important way you can help
is by *subscribing* to them. It's never been easier to do, with a few
clicks of your button... and receive the traditional print format by
mail, or downloads to your Kindle or computer... you can now subscribe
from Overseas just as easily as from the United States, something
formerly difficult or impossible." - Gardner Dozois, editor, asimovs.com
Wow. He makes it sound like the short story is doomed. I would have thought, with the ease-of-use of Kindles, that these magazines would be gaining MORE readers not less. I still subscribe to the Paper, since it enables me to sell the whole 2011 bundle on ebay, come the end of the year (i.e. convert magazines to 10 dollars cash). If they gave me a discount for the E-version then I'd buy that instead.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
And that is why the Free Software Foundation insists on calling this technology "Digital Restrictions Management (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/what_is_drm): it points out that this is meant to keep YOU, the paying customer, from doing useful things with the stuff you buy.
Carousel is a lie!
That their out-of-print books from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, that are currently making them ZERO money, could be sold for $2-$5 as pdfs. There are hundreds of books that I would like to buy, but since they are out of print (and weren't cheap to begin with and had small print runs), they cost in the rage of $70+. This means that I simply don't buy them. This means that no one makes money of my desire to own these books. What a waste.
You aren't buying a book.
What you're buying is the temporary allowance to read that collection of words in that order, as the authour, or perhaps later editors, intended. You aren't buying a hardcover book or a mass-market paperback. What you're buying is your share of the time it took for the authour to write that book. It's not comparable to the older, dead-tree style of stenography and printing.
You could never photocopy a dead-tree book and loan that out. Likewise, why would you be allowed to make a digital copy of a book and send that out to your friends?
Look, it's Valentine's Day and I'm just getting a quick troll in before lunch.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Much like music before it, publishers can't decide if books are personal or intellectual property. If they are personal property, then you should be able to do with it what you want after you purchase it. Put it on any device. Share your ONE copy as you want. Sell it when you are done etc. If a book is intellectual property and you only have a license to the content, then the form of the content takes should be provided to the license holder at cost. Say I buy a license to Rush, 2112, a favorite album of mine. I should be able to get an MP3 version for the cost of transmitting it to me. I should be able to get a CD, LP, cassette, 8 track or whatever new format is available whenever and as often as I want one for the cost reproduction and delivery. If books are intellectual property, then I should be able to get a nook, kindle, mobi, pdf, word doc, and any other digital version for the pennies it would cost to deliver it to me and printed versions should be made available at printing cost + shipping once I've purchased a license. The caveat for IP is that I cannot share it with anyone ever.
As it is now, they want the best of both worlds. They sell me a license to the content and give me no credit for that license if I want to put that content on some other device I own. Buying a printed version in the IP world should essentially mean I get free digital versions of that product for life. Same with music. I promise you that if you sold Harper Collins a piece of software and they lost the hard drive it was on, they'd insist that you let them install it on another computer. Why are we not treated the same way?
It is called Google.
They cost as much or sometimes more than the printed copy, are badly edited/proofread and the software for reading them has issues with formatting, they are DRM'ed, and the rules for lending and/or reselling them (when that is even possible) are restrictive and draconian..
Fact is, e-books are an outrageous scam, by any measure. Far more so than the music and movie industry, the book industry figured out how to fleece its customers more, so much more.
That said, they do save paper. I own a kindle, but I am still trying to figure out how much money I want to give amazon. I am petitioning my favorite authors to directly publish, hopefully cheaper..
In the case of iBooks, you can't even transfer your books to another device, let alone another user, but then at least the prices are somewhat controlled.
Where did this notion come from?
I was under the impression that:
Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own.1 Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store. Note: Samples downloaded from the iBookstore will not sync to your computer. They remain on your device and can be removed using iBooks.
From here.
Tell the moon dogs, tell the March hare
From Apple's iBooks FAQ:
Can I copy my books onto other computers or devices?
Books downloaded from the iBookstore can be placed on up to five computers you own that you’ve authorized with your iTunes Store account. You can sync your books to all iPads, iPhones, and iPod touches you own.1 Audiobooks, PDF files, and ePub files you've added to iTunes will appear in Books under Library. To sync Books to your device, connect it to your computer using the cable it came with. In iTunes, select your device then click the Books tab. Choose the books you would like to read on your device then press Sync. Books will sync to iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch even if iBooks is not installed; to read synced books, download iBooks from the App Store.
Note: Samples downloaded from the iBookstore will not sync to your computer. They remain on your device and can be removed using iBooks. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4059
A recent insight that came to me is that when paying money to access any content encrusted with DRM, you should never think of the transaction as a sale, but merely as a rental. You have not purchased anything you can own, merely gotten the temporary (long or short term) use of it, and under limited circumstances (use on particular devices, or in particular programs).
Consider the reasonableness of what you are paying according that formula. For my part, I might be willing to pay 2 or 3 dollars to rent a book that I might otherwise purchase for 10 dollars in hard copy, but I have no interest in paying that same price or more to rent a book that I could pay to own it (whether that ownership be in hardcopy, or unencumbered electronic file that I may use when, where and how I see fit).
The FSF "Defective by Design" campaign has promoted the idea of reading DRM as "Digital Restrictions Management", but I propose you could also call it "Digital Rental Management". Once consumers begin to understand the nature of transactions involving DRM (that they are not making a purchase in traditional sense, and that having paid their money, they own nothing as a result) then I think they will be begin to demand pricing in line with what is actually being offered to them.
I've always claimed that Jim Baen (R.I.P.) and Baen books got it right. They realized WAY back that DRM is a losing proposition. (The most cogent comment was that publishers have faced "free" competition for years. They are called libraries. If people WANT to read free - they will. So why bother with the expense of DRM?)
They set up the Baen Free library as "free sampler" of their ebooks - in various formats, all without DRM.
And then they discovered that the as authors put stuff into the free library - the value of their OTHER back catalog books increased - due to additional exposure.
So now Baen sells their ebook - in various formats, all without DRM.
I'm also confused how BoB calls itself "the Largest Independent eBookstore" as they're clearly hosting major publishers' works.
An independant grocery store still sells campbell's soup and coca-cola. Independant just means its privately owned ... not part of a major chain. "Mom-n-Pop" small/medium business type of thing.
But even were there no technical issues, the DRM makes it a non-starter for me. I've had /.ers beat me up about my opinion on this subject. Still, it doesn't fix the "rub". When the distributors can reach out and remove books remotely (as Amazon has already done), or restrict what one can do with them, or charge for lending, or provide no mechanism to buy anonymously, etc, I'm just not interested.
PS: if you tell me that the distributors promise not to delete books remotely again, you are then telling me that you trust large corporations to keep their word.
While mentioning the FSF, it's also worth pointing out Richard Stallman's old "science fiction" story, _The Right to Read_
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's worth checking in with it every few years to see how close we've gotten to that particular dystopia.
I've been griping about DRM for years, and it's not exclusive to ebook content. The digital distribution models currently in place are very consumer unfriendly.
We frequently pay as much for digital only as for physically distributed goods, but lack the ability to transfer ownership, are sometimes tied to certain hardware (which may be obsoleted), usually lack the ability to loan the media (or can only do so in limited or cumbersome ways), and sometimes are even tied to a specific device.
Many folks I talk to think I'm overreacting, but yet they never seem to think about the implications are if we did truly go fully digital. I have many books, CDs, records, and even some magazines that are decades old. The oldest physical media that I own is over 100 years old. Sure, these items could be lost and damaged, but as long as they are taken care of, I can still continue to enjoy these (or transfer ownership) of these as long as I please. This is not likely to be possible for current digital media.
It also makes me concerned about the impact on libraries from the transition to digital media.
Once again the media publishers are usurping the rights of the individual. Back in the day (like about yesterday) if you bought a book in hard copy you could read it, lend it, burn it, use it for handling the final paperwork after taking a bio-break, whatever you wanted.
BUT, now that it's in a DIGITAL format, you have NO RIGHTS WHATSOEVER! Which brings to mind a question. HEre I will display my ignorance since I still buy books made of dead trees. Is there a EULA attached to these literary marvels? Does that EULA state that you have been granted a non-exclusive license to the book with all restrictions regarding what you can do with the title after you purchase it spelled out? If not, understand that IANAL, but it would seem to me the publishers are not only interfering with your rights as the "owner" of the title but are in outright violation of the law.
Is there anyone with a legal background that could elaborate on this point. Or am I just going off in some fantasy world where the rights of the individual still mean something?
Unix has always been User Friendly
You can get a hardback AND get a digital copy of not only that book, but most of the other books by the same author, if you buy from Baen. Not for all of their authors, and not for all of their books, but certainly for Weber, Ringo, Flint and Steve White - see http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ for a full listing of the CDs.
They also have a very extensive free library with eBooks. Their eBooks are published free of DRM and in different formats. Seriously, I can't recommend them enough, in the face of what the larger publishers are doing. If you buy from anywhere - make it from them. Oh, did you know they also have a CD published with a selection from the Gutenberg site (as a coproduction with the site)? Really, great publishers in that respect.
Therefore, by the (faulty) logic you're using, you're just a cow with a keyboard - osu-neko (2604)
Look for the Baen hard covers that include a CD. They don't charge any more for them and you get a digital copy of that book and many more on the CD. Now if only other publishers followed the example. Oh, and Baen doesn't believe in DRM for any of their books.
http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/
If that's true, then the cost of an eBook should be far less than the cost of a physical book, since I'm not buying a stack of paper and cost of printing/shipping/storing/retailing that paper. My share of the author's time (assuming he sells millions of books) should be a pittance.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
The Lend-Me system form Barnes and Noble, and Kindle's equivalent are designed to make an eBook more like a paper book, namely, you have a copy that is yours to keep, lend, trade, re-sell. When you lend your copy, you don't have it to read, just like a real book. If you sell your copy, it does not remain on your device, just like a real book.
It uses the Adobe Digital Editions DRM scheme, which attempts to objectify a digital file, (giving it properties as if it were a physical object).
Its a reasonable solution, which if done correctly would have served both user and publishers well, allowing unlimited serial lending, gifting, selling and book banking of ebooks.
Unfortunately, the restrictions imposed by the publishing industry prevent these systems from being used to their fullest potential, and actually work against their best interests. (To say nothing of the interests of the customers).
They limit lending to once per book. Even after the borrower returns it, you can never lend it again.
They limit lending to 14 days. I've got lots to read, 14 days is not enough.
They prohibit gifting or resale.
Had they used this as it was originally designed, unlimited serial lending, request return of lent books, permanent transfer to a new owner (sale/gift) it would have actually increased the value of ebooks, justifying higher prices.
Instead, the lock-down just encourages stripping of DRM, and once that is done, the book is in the wind.
Thieves will always be Thieves. There will always be traffic in stolen digital items, just as there are in stolen physical items. Black markets will always exist, just as illegal knock offs of physical items will always be sold.
But the restrictions imposed by publishers mean there can be no LEGITIMATE market in digital items. You can never legally trade or sell your possessions. Someday this will have to be decided in court. In the mean time publishers aren't trying too hard to punish DRM stripping because they know that the imposition of such rights-robbing DRM is probably illegal and they do not WANT this decided in court.
Amazon makes a market in used books. Why not make a market in used ebooks?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
A book is personal property that contains intellectual property. Possession of it as personal property implies a license to access it as intellectual property. You have a right to sell it as personal property, and with that the same license you had, but not to sell the intellectual property, that is the right to create more licenses.
When you copy it electronically, you are diluting its value as intellectual property, and eliminating its value as personal property (the copy has 0 value, since you can give it away and still have exactly what you had before; meanwhile the intellectual property owner can no longer command the same price for new, licensed copies).
eBooks with DRM create a situation where the book is no longer personal property. The nook you're holding is, but the content is not. Each copy has 0 value, and the license to access it holds all the value.
And that is a contract you agree to when you purchase access to the book. If the contract states that you can subsequently transfer that copy to another, then you should value it higher and expect pay more. If it states that you can transfer a copy and keep one for yourself, then you should value it still higher and expect pay much more. If it states you can make all the copies you want, then you should value it very high and pay a lot for it, if your license is exclusive, but pay almost nothing for it if your license is not exclusive, and nothing if the intellectual property is essentially being unprotected by its original holder.
I don't see any legal conflict here. They will structure their license as they rightfully see fit, and you will either buy the book or not depending on the price.
>>>They just aren't particularly [good]
Fixed. :-) They are typical fan rubbish, whereas the stuff found in magazines are professionally-reviewed and therefore I only see the the cream of the crop, not the badly-spelled, poorly-written shit that most fanfiction equals.
And yes I know that's harsh.
But it's my honest opinion.
Fanfiction is 99.9999% shit.
I want professional quality work.
>>>ebooks which get reviewed like any other book
Yeah but Gardner Dozois was specifically discussing short fiction, not books. Personally I prefer short stories or novelettes to full-sized, padded books.
Information wants to be expensive AND wants to be free. So you have Value vs. Cheap distribution fighting each other.
Now you might think, "But hey, that's significantly less rights than I had when I was buying a thing, and that thing might even have been significantly less expensive!" Actually you are thinking that. So how is it you'll pay as much or more for a not-thing that you can't treat in any way like a thing? It's because you have a set idea as to what a book actually costs. Publishers are exploiting this familiarity to sell you a book-like-not-thing.
So here we have it. There are some advantages though; it looks like anyone with access to some simple tools can publish their own text. Another publishing scam is to charge hopeful new authors to publish a book, so perhaps this E-book phenomena will put the brakes on that practice. Perhaps at some point in the future, control over new content will have been wrested from the publishing industry altogether, and then you might see prices fall. In the mean time, a number of "Classics" which we were forced to read in High School and College have fallen out of copyright, and you can get a lot of those for free on The Net. You could play in that space while you wait for the industry to settle down.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Really good article this past week on Japan's ebook industry.
In Cramped Japan, the iPad Is the Home Library
Families save space by paying startups to digitize their books
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_08/b4216033233882.htm
For $1 a book, I would be digitizing darn near all my books.
In "The Book Bag," Somerset Maugham describes traveling with a misshapen bag of books so large that it "made strong porters quail [and] looked like a humpbacked gnome somewhat the worse for liquor."
This 78-year-old story is not yet in the public domain, nor is it available on iBooks or Kindle. You can read it on Google Books, however.
http://www.google.com/webhp?q=maugham+%22the+book+bag%22&hl=en&tab=pw#q=maugham+%22the+book+bag%22&hl=en&safe=off&site=webhp&prmd=ivns&ei=jZxZTbirMoSesQOAouibDA&start=20&sa=N&fp=1f4964f2685564e2
Except for Penguin's graciousness in allowing the full preview to be visible, this volume of Maugham's great collection of stories would be one of innumerable books unavailable in electronic form either free OR for sale.
Once upon a time people bought books, records, and watched movies at a theater. Sometimes people even went twice. Publishers made money off the one sale. When someone liked the book/record/movie, they told people how good it was. Those people then bought the book/record/movie. During that time the publishers still made enough money to be hugely profitable industries. So why is it now, if a publisher of a book or movie or song doesn't make money 7 different times off the same person for the same piece of art they cry, "We are loosing money!". Why are they suing their customers? Why are they trying to put laws in place to imprison people?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
A book is personal property that contains intellectual property.
That's not really accurate, and in fact, you contradict yourself later in the same paragraph with the more accurate statement:
the intellectual property, that is the right to create more licenses.
"Intellectual property" is really a nonsensical term, full of inaccuracies, and slanted toward a particular point of view. Personally, I try not to use it. But if any sense can be made out of it at all, it must be that as an intangible creative work is not property at all, and as a tangible object in which that creative work is fixed is ordinary personal property, the "intellectual property" is the copyright which pertains to the creative work.
A paperback book is a material object in which a creative work (the actual story) is fixed. It doesn't also contain the copyright to the work; that right is held separately, and it is the right to prohibit other people from doing certain things in regard to the intangible work.
Possession of it as personal property implies a license to access it as intellectual property.
Nope. If you go to the bookstore and buy a copy of, say, Rocket Science for Dummies, there's no license involved, implicit or otherwise. This is because a copyright is only a right to prohibit other people from doing certain, specific things. Anything that doesn't fall within the bounds of the copyright, the copyright holder has no right to prohibit. And a license is merely a promise by the rights holder not to sue you if you do the things which he could prohibit, but which are covered by the license.
Copyright includes the right to prohibit other people from making copies, from making derivative works, from distributing the work, etc. But it does not include a right to prohibit other people from reading or accessing a work. Therefore, since the copyright holder cannot prohibit someone from reading his book by virtue of his copyright, he cannot license people to read it. Such a license would be meaningless.
You have a right to sell it as personal property, and with that the same license you had
The GPL is not really how things work most of the time. Copyright holders have a right to prohibit the distribution of their work. When they sell a copy of that work for the first time, however, they lose most or all of their rights over further distribution of that particular copy. (There are of course a lot of little details; if you buy a book or a video from the store, you can rent them, but if you buy a music CD or a computer program, you can't)
Buying a copy of a book is no different from buying a brick. There is no license. They're just ordinary personal property, and the person who owns them can dispose of them however they like. The copyright holder isn't involved. For this to be different, either copyright law would have to be changed a lot, or else there might have to be an unusual contract that had to be agreed to in order to just buy the thing in the first place. It wouldn't be an implied contract in an ordinary consumer transaction. It would basically have to be an express contract, and you'd know one if you saw one. Software is the only field where this practice is common (for no good reason) and EULAs are made quite visible. And even then, there is an unsettled dispute as to whether or not they're even enforceable. Personally, I blame the software industry for confusing people into thinking that licenses are more important or more common than they really are.
I've never bothered to buy an e-book, but I would expect that there is some manner of contract that must be agreed to first.
And there's a reason for that. One of the rights the copyright holder has is the right to prohibit other people from making copies of a work, i.e. from fixing an intangible work into a tangible object. You cannot download a tangible object -- at least not yet -- so whenever you download anyt
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.