Slashdot Mirror
WHSmith Putting DRM In EBooks Without Permission From the Authors
sgroyle (author Simon Royle) writes with an excerpt from an article he wrote about discovering that publisher WHSmith has been adding DRM to books without their authors' permission, and against their intent: "DRM had, without my knowledge, been added to my book. I quickly checked my other books; same thing. Then I checked the books of authors who, because of their vocal and public opposition, I know are against DRM – Konrath, Howey, and Doctorow, to name a few – same result. ALL books on WHSmith have DRM in them. Rather than assume WHSmith where at fault, I checked with my distributor, Draft2Digital. They send my books to Kobo, who in turn send my books to WHSmith. D2D assured me the DRM was not being added by them and were distressed to hear that this was the case. Kobo haven't replied to any of the messages in this thread: 'WHSmith putting DRM in books distributed via Kobo'. I'm not holding my breath." Update: 03/22 21:02 GMT by T : Problem resolved. Hanno Liem of the Kobo team wrote with good news that the DRM notices that were appended were done so in error, and since corrected: "The original site has been updated – it was just a bug on our site, and was resolved within a day I think. We're all slashdot readers here at Kobo Operations, and this is kinda painful :p" Thanks, Hanno.
I would have thought a writer would proof read submissions and avoid an error like "WHSmith where at fault"...
@ http://ebookoid.com/
Not even close... Third...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
there is http://www.gutenberg.org/
and its excellent feeder http://pgdp.net/
I'm guessing the authors signed some kind of publication contract that authorized WHSmith to make and distribute ebook versions in the first place. Does adding DRM to the ebooks comply with the terms of the contract? Without seeing the contract they signed, I have no real way of knowing what they gave WHSmith permission to do.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Did the author, or the distributors make it clear that they cannot put DRM on the books when supplying to WHSmiths or Kobo?
Sure WHSmiths may suck for including DRM on all their books but, providing they didn't break any agreements or contract terms, it's frankly the author or the publisher to blame for blindly making their books available to them without checking.
You can't sell your books to a company that only sells DRM encoded books then act outraged when your books feature DRM.
I just posted on the original site but I doubt it will pass moderation so:
Not being funny, but why go public without just complaining to your agent/publisher/whatever first? I mean, as far as I can see, this is a contract dispute. Someone, somewhere has a contract with you that says whether or not they can add DRM to your book. Youâ(TM)ve signed it, or not. It might say either way is permitted or nothing at all about DRM. But presumably that person has signed something with another person who has signed something and, eventually, thereâ(TM)s a line in there somewhere that says they can or canâ(TM)t do this. Whoever signed that line and didnâ(TM)t pass it back down the contracts is in breach of something. I highly doubt that WHSmith does not have a contract that says âoeWe will add DRMâ in some manner, itâ(TM)s just a question of who signed it and gave away more rights to the work than they were allowed to.
And given that itâ(TM)s your copyright (presumably), then bundling that content in any way you donâ(TM)t like is a copyright violation. Thatâ(TM)s NOT the format you provided it to them in, and no different to them selling it with a modified front cover, or with the words in Chapter 2 altered. So just contact your agent/publisher and get them to have a word â" there should be no walls of silence on that chain, because youâ(TM)re all contracted to do your jobs. Itâ(TM)s not like an end-consumer where you have to hope to get through to the right person at customer services.
Whatâ(TM)s happened is no different to not selling the electronic rights to someone and then finding that your publisher has published it electronically (actually happened to a friend of mine who writes childrenâ(TM)s books â" hell, theyâ(TM)ve even had a book that they sent to their agent published without their knowledge, and they only found out when they found it in a second-hand bookshop, complete with their name and cover!). And itâ(TM)s a contract dispute. And you either signed a contract that allowed it, or not. As such, you just get your agent/publisher to look into it, give it a month to sort out, and then just issue a nasty legal letter to pull it. Posting online about it and in forum posts just seems amateur and likely to backfire in terms of NDA clauses etc. in contracts along the way.
And I reckon youâ(TM)ll find that one of the contracts you signed either says they can do this or, somewhere along the way, someone has a gap between the contracts they receive and the contracts they sign that allows this to slip through until â" as youâ(TM)ve done â" someone objects.
Stop messing about with open letters, hearsay, and forum posts and ask your publisher for an explanation in a nice recorded-delivery letter from your local legal representative.
If this is true, and if the author did not assign copyright to the publisher (so that the publisher is now the copyright holder), and if they didn't tell the publisher to do this in some fine print that they didn't read, and if .. probably something else I didn't think of .. ;-) Er, my point is that if this happened without "the authority of the copyright owner" (to exactly quote DMCA) then the publisher just spoiled that DRM scheme. It's not prohibited for people to remove that DRM, and better yet, it's legal to manufacture, sell, traffick in, offer to the public etc, tools that are primarily intended to crack that DRM, marketed as being for removing that DRM, etc
Pretty neat, huh? Whenever DRM exists without the authority of the copyright holder, beating it isn't "circumvention" under DMCA. If the DRM scheme happens to be a widely used one, then could open up competition for e-readers, removing the legal barrier to innovation, reader sales, usage of the reader, etc.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Putting aside the fact that everyone here hates DRM (me included), is what WHSmith did unreasonable? I assume it's their standard practise to add this protection to what they sell. While we might object on a number of ground (efficacy being one of them) I'm sure they see DRM as a sensible thing to do to protect the material they sell from piracy. Would you expect a retailer to check this "anti-theft" measure to be ok with the publisher first? Do they normally check before they fit those RFID type tags to products to stop them being stolen from a store? I know there is a difference in the end product for the consumer between these two, but probably WHSmith don't realise that (and actually neither will most of their customers). While I agree they shouldn't do it if the publisher doesn't want it, I doubt that was ever communicated to them and I wouldn't expect them to check that first. Should they check you aren't a raging environmentalist before they offer the customer a carrier bag to take your book home in?
This is a bogus complaint. First, WHSmith can't add DRM. Their ebookstore is provided by and run by Kobo. Second, that label has been changed in less than a day. The ebooks no longer say that they have DRM, and that suggests this was just a website bug: http://www.whsmith.co.uk/EProducts/Bangkok-Burn-Bangkok-Series-1+eBook+KB00106286902
Just read through the forum that is linked to on the blog. It appears that it is a glitch on the WHSmith website. Everything is listed as having DRM, even if it doesn't have DRM. When you click the link it goes to Kobo to make the purchase, and the book is listed as DRM free.
Herp derp
There was a post on the Kobo boards where someone contacted Kobo about this. Apparently there was a known problem on the WHSmith website where it would show the books as having DRM. When they'd go to Kobo to actually DL the books it would be DRM free. Just looked at the books on WHSmith's website and getting a different format availability than the OP's blog - Format Availability: epub. Apparently they've fixed the bug.
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
Just because you think there is DRM, doesn't mean there is DRM. For example, on the App Store, paid-for ePub books always _look_ as if they have DRM to a naive person, even when they don't.
.zip files. If you have DRM, then there is a file describing the DRM, and a file containing a list of which files are encrypted (so a book could have an unencrypted title page, contents, and sample chapter). On paid-for App Store books without DRM, the DRM-related files are there, but the list of encrypted files is empty, and everything is readable just fine.
ePub books are basically
A tool that just checks for the presence of the DRM-related files will of course give a false positive. And if you ever make an ePub reader, don't give up just because it says there is DRM; check whether the actually files inside are encrypted or not.
I did. They sent me here.
Richard Nixon a Republican President led the USA out of Vietnam
led us out? He kept us in the war for 5 more years, killing 50,000 US soldiers. To protect a small piece of jungle, on the other side of the world.
Also, because of his policies, we lost that war. Embarrassingly so.
If the DRM is unwanted by the authors, then the authors should issue a C&D against WHSmith. WHSMith must either remove DRM from your works before distributing, or, if that approach is incompatible with their preferred distribution model, WHSmith must forfeit their license to create digital copies completely. In the latter case, WHSmith would be entitled a refund of any fees that they paid for such a license. The authors would then have to find an alternative distributor who would not want to put DRM in, or else look into self-publication.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I apparently need more coffee, as I read the topic as "Will Smith Putting DRM in EBooks Without Permission From The Authors", which would have been a strange sort of awesome.
I'm a kobo customer, but also against DRM. I also read a lot of sci-fi, and one of the more prominent figures in the sci-fi genre against DRM is BAEN publishing.
A lot of the BAEN authors are present in the Kobo store, and very few, if any, have DRMed books.
My $0.02 of opinion on the matter is that Kobo's not the one pushing for DRM, but the external party is.
Not even close
I don't know if I should blame the poster, Slashdot, IE8, or all three, but after the tenth Ã(TM)s, I gave up reading.
Maybe it is a DRM side effect.
And you get a different license to CHANGE a work than to PRINT it.
They don't even need "publishers" any more. However, it's comfortable for them, and if they lose control over their work when they send it into the publishing house, this is just part of the bargain.
Authors generally don't control (with paper books) the selection of printer, what is typed on that page with the ISBN number and associated junk, what boxes they are shipped to the stores in, and so forth. If the author desired control over every part of the publication process, he would self-publish be it on paper or electronically.