Slashdot Mirror
Penguin Yanking Kindle Books From Libraries
New submitter moniker writes "Penguin Group is removing Kindle ebooks from libraries using Overdrive citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content."
This seems more like a grab for money from book sales than anything technical. Has there really been security leaks coming from online readers?
No, it's not.
The content gives you something to sell, exactly what you do with it is the business model.
Content is a thing that exists, whether you have a business model or not. Business model is the system or method you use to make money from a product or service, in this case the product/service is e-reader content.
...citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
"Penguin Group is removing Kindle ebooks from libraries using Overdrive citing 'security concerns' as a weak excuse, while most likely taking a shot at Amazon. One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content."
(Emphasis mine)
I try not to criticise submissions, but what the hell? I don't care what was done by whom, I thought Slashdot was above such flagrant editorialism.
For shame.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
How is it that we're still not clear on the idea that the content (creating it, using a publisher to find a market for it, charging for it, and making money from that process) is the business model. People who create content for the pleasure of doing so give their work away all the time. There's plenty where that came from. Mechanisms to prevent people from ripping off content don't matter to people who don't have an interest in the content-selling business model.
Creative people who deliberately join up with a publisher, label, studio or other partner to handle their business affairs while they go about continuing to write, record, film and whatnot - they have decided to embrace a particular business model: not doing it for free. Whether or not every or any DRM tool is ideal or practical is beside the point. The issue is that there are people who create things (books, games, movies, music) for a living if they can find an audience, and charging for copies of what they create is the business model. If they can't find anyone to buy it, that's too bad for them. They need to work harder or choose better partners. But if people simply rip them off because it's fairly easy to do so, that's not a comment on the creative people, it's a comment on the people who like to make little entertainment slaves out them.
The submitter's silly implication - that DRM is ever used for any reason other than because being ripped off isn't part of the business model - is, well, silly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Who cares? There is plenty of content, including new material, from more user-friendly publishers out there. Let Penguin learn from what I hope is an expensive lesson.
This is why I refuse to ever buy ANYTHING with drm, music, software or ebooks.
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The dastard! He plans to bring illiteracy to Gotham!
When was DRM not about protecting business models? The book and movie industries apparently think they are different from the music industry who has (mostly) learned that if they sell content in a form people want and at a reasonable price, people will buy it. Charge too much or make it too hard to get and people will find other ways to get it. I bought a lot of CD's through the original mp3.com, then after the music industry shut it down, I stopped buying music and have never bought a single DRM protected song... but have picked up a few mp3 albums after non-DRM music started becoming available. But sadly, it's still often cheaper to buy a used (or sometimes new) physical CD and rip it myself than to purchase an electronic album.
the real world marketplace works differently than the artificially supported one that runs acadamia
Ironically, music, movie, software, and book distribution are all artificially supported markets, propped up by increasingly draconian copyright laws, and academia is becoming more and more profit-oriented.
Palm trees and 8
or does anyone else find it frustrating that /.ers are in favor of unlimited property rights except when they go digital? Seriously. If you just suggest that maybe, just maybe, that we as a society shouldn't allow Apple Computer to sit on 85 billion dollars then you're drowned out in a chorus of "It's THEIR money, let them spend it however they want!". But make it digital, and you've got the same people decrying the evil of buying the White Album for the 15th time.
I guess what I'm ticked off about is, I'm watching our civilization regress to pre-Renaissance levels of wealth inequality and all anybody cares about is the Beatles...
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> The content gives you something to sell, exactly what you do with it is the business model.
Except for the fact that the pay-for-content copyright-based business model is often the best business model when measured in revenue (especially for high-development-cost content). Sure, you can give your content away for free and attach ads, but then you're often making pennies on the dollar. That's why ad-based content has the cheapest development costs - because the profits can't support expensive development costs. (Interesting aside: the original Battlestar Galactica TV show was cancelled despite being very popular because the profits couldn't cover the expensive costs of creating the show. Star Wars succeeded because they were charging money for tickets.)
In that context "protecting the business model" really means "protecting a good business model".
...set the tone and scope of a posting when the subject is laden with conflict of interest. In this case it's DRM.
IMO Penguin's smokescreen deserved that backhanded comment and I do not consider it out of place on Slashdot.
If you can sell it, it's property. You can sell copyright, so it's property. You own what you can sell. You can disagree over whether it's a valid property right, whether it's good for society. But if you can sell it, it's a property right.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
they have decided to embrace a particular business model: not doing it for free.
You are soft-pedaling a profit motive that prefers to monopolize markets. We have seen for-profit publishers associations attack people who create and use public domain, GPL and creative commons works - even attacking the very idea of the public domain in legislation and insisting that the tech sector is “mobilizing to promote ‘Copyleft’ in order to undermine our ‘Copyright.’”.
Bodies like MPAA, RIAA, Sound Exchange, ASCAP, GEMA have taken an increasingly hostile stance toward any author who is not under contract with established publishing corps even when the content is being offered for free. People who publish under CC and public domain are being DOS'ed with undeserved DMCA and 'three strikes' notices.
It is your mamby-pamby presentation of for-profit publishing that is idiotic.
The summary declares, without any evidence whatsoever, that Penguin's motives are not what they say, and furthermore that this is "One more example of DRM being about protecting business models, not content." If the examples are evidentially supported to the same degree as this one, then exactly how sure can we be about the trend? How much evidence do we have, in total, towards the hypothesis that companies do not use DRM to protect their content?
I'm not trying to take the companies' side here. It just frightens me that the standard of evidence required to become slashdot fact is so very low. Once you believe something to be fact, it will influence your beliefs, and what you believe to be fact in the future. If one starts accepting facts with such a low standard of evidence, the bullshit can snowball until the most tenuous of hypotheses can seem so sure that one will defend it against anything but the most blatant of contradictions. I've seen it many times, and I've had it happen to me before.
Here's another topic to think about. Everyone knows that the government is simply eating out of Big Corporation's wallet, right? How do they know this? Think back to all the times you think you've seen examples of this, and really consider the following questions: "Is this the only explanation that this at all likely? Can you find some kind of contradiction in the version of events that they offer? Did you even listen to their version of the events?". While seemingly disproportionate mistrust of government is vital to democracy, it doesn't hurt to fact check once and a while!
Thank you for reading. I hope you take some of this on board.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
It's a digital file! You're not lending anything! You're making a copy. all the data is being copied. You're just arbitrarily blocking access to someone.
We complain about "intellectual property" being confused with "property" but this is doing exactly the same thing. It's completely arbitrary, and the suggestion you should be able to lend electronic data makes as much sense as eternal copyright.
We don't need the same rights but we do need new rights. Ones that aren't available with physical media.
I have no particular problems with people protecting their investment however they wish and with DRM. My main concern is with the totally obnoxious and excessive duration of copyright and there should be provision for removing DRM when copyright ends. It should last no more than the 20 years of inventions which also are a big investment, often much larger, on the part of the people who make them. People are I think conflating the problems in their minds and it sours the whole business.
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