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/
I'm first.... first time ever!
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.
Abraham Lincoln a Republican President freed the Black Slaves of America along with the rest of the Republicans that fought for the North. The Democrats were for continuing the blacks as slaves even the Democrats that lived in the Northern states. It was the Confederacy that susceeded from the Union and started the Civil War when Lincoln won the election because they knew Lincoln would push Congress to abolish Slavery in the USA. Lincoln was the first Republican President. The Republicans have always been against slavery and for human rights for all races and still are.
Theodore Roosevelt a Republican bought the Panama Canal zone from the French and built the Panama Canal. Teddy also started the National Park system of the USA and the first National Park in the whole world, was Yellow Stone National Park. Teddy gave Yellow Stone Park to all citizens of the USA. Now many countries all over the world have started National Parks. Republicans were the first party for the environment starting with Teddy. Teddy also delivered the "Square Deal and regulation of industry". Which helped the working classes. BTW it was crazy and stupid Jimmy Carter a Democrat President that gave away the Panama Canal zone for nothing.
Thomas Woodrow Wilson a Democrat President led America into WWI. Warren G. Harding a Republican President led us from WWI into "nomalcy". President Harding led the country away from Wilsons socialistic views and returned it to the Capitalistic systems and freedom we all love, with the greatest landslide Presidential election victory in USA history.
Franklin D. Roosevelt a Democrat President led the USA into WWII. Dwight D. Eisenhower a Republican President as General and Commander of all the Armed forces of the USA led the USA to victory over Germany and Japan so America could keep the freedom we now have. Roosevelt died before WWII ended but Eisenhower won the war anyways.
Harry S. Truman a Democrat President was vice-President under FDR and took over the Presidency when FDR died in office. Truman gave away most of Eastern Europe to Russia at the end of WWII. The USA won the war but Truman was too soft and inexperienced (sounds like Obama doesn't it, that's what happens facing Communist countries like Russia with soft Presidents), so Truman faced an international crisis at the end of WWII, he couldn't handle it and he lost most of Eastern Europe to Russia in negotiations, which started the cold war with Russia. Then just a few years later Truman led the USA into the Korean War. "The war remained a frustrating stalemate for two years, with over 30,000 Americans killed, until a peace agreement restored borders and ended the conflict.[127] In the interim, the difficulties in Korea and the popular outcry against Truman's sacking of MacArthur helped to make the president so unpopular that Democrats started turning to other candidates." wikipedia.org
Lyndon B. Johnson a Democrat President led the USA into the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon a Republican President led the USA out of Vietnam and ended the Draft. Nixon also opened the doors to trading with China.
Reagan and George Bush both Republican Presidents won the cold war against Russia and freed Eastern Europe, that truman gave away to Russia, without firing a shot. They built the "big stick" which included the Military Machine we have today including the Stealth Bombers and fighters, again so we Americans can all be free instead of bowing to a Communist Dictator like Castro or Stalin. Reagan and George Bush also improved the economy to great and new heigths that was totally destroyed under Jimmy Carter's, a Democrat President,with Carter's extremely high taxes and the running of the printing presses that caused run away inflation. (This is why many see Barack Hussein Obama as another Jimmy Carter, it has already been tried in the USA and failed miserably. This is not change nor nothing new. It is just a return to the failed policies of Jimmy Carter)
George Bush also won the Gulf war against Iraq and Sadam Hussein. Freeing Kuwa
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.
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.
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.
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.