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‘UK retailers to record labels: DRM is killing us’: Now what happens when Amazon customers wise up about Kindle’s ‘protection’?
November 23, 2007 | 12:11 am
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By David Rothman
“In response to declining music sales in the UK, the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) has called for the music industry to put an end to DRM. The organization—which represents retailers who sell music and DVDs—blames draconian digital copy protection technologies for the slow growth of the digital music market.” – Ars Technica.
The TeleRead take: Steve Levy’s fawning Newsweek story on the Kindle downplayed the hassles of DRM, but to his credit, even he complained about it in a Live Talk session later on. And Levy wrote among other things in a sidebar: “Though the copy protection doesn’t affect book-reading, it is limiting, and annoying. You can’t print out a passage, e-mail it to a friend or copy it into a document. You can’t lend a book to someone, or sell it after you’re finished.” Worse, as I see it, your book is tied to your Kindle and its e-mail account, even if you can share the account with family members. What about your other machines, present and future? Oh, and yes, copy protection does affect book reading since you may not enjoy access to the text in the future if tech changes or a company goes out of business or backs off from e-books. That’s no small effect. Perhaps it’s time for Jeff Bezos to experiment with social DRM.
Related: Kindle stories via Google News and Topix and Kindle owner’s defense of the machine over rivals (illustrated), as well as Dr. Ellen Hage on the Kindle’s aesthetics or lack thereof.
Meanwhile…a few more details from an April story in Ars Technica—very possibly applicable to e-books: “Speaking of Apple, Enders Analysis has some harsh words for the iPod-iTunes ecosystem. The report’s authors believe that Apple’s dominance of the digital music industry is hurting the market’s evolution. Apple’s insistence on a single, fixed price for all content hurts potential long-tail sales of older, back-catalog music. In addition, they’re not impressed with the iPod-iTunes cycle, saying that Apple’s reliance on iPod sales and resulting music pricing model may be squeezing both other players and music-only stores out of the market.
“Of course, the recent move by EMI to liberate its catalog from the shackles of DRM will change the iTunes-iPod equation, as any player capable of playing AAC files will be able to play non-DRMed tracks purchased at the iTunes Store.”
Bottom line if you extrapolate: The Kindle is a step backwards.
Technorati Tags: Amazon , Amazon Kindle , Newsweek , Steve Levy
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Comments:
Omar notes that he can’t read the books he bought from Sony on his Kindle, and vice versa — can’t read those AZW files on his Sony reader.
So I don’t understand why people would buy from either vendor. But then I’ve never understood why people by DRMed music from the iTunes store either.
Yes, some of my favourite PBooks are well over 100 years old – I wonder how many DRM’d books could be read in 100 years!! Amazing how a fragile paper book can survive years of mishandling, a severe climate and various insect pests, but a DRM’d book can be eliminated in one hardware update.
Having to tranfer data to new media might be a pain; I have had to transfer photos from floppies to CD’s to DVD’s, but at least I can do that, they didn’t just disappear.
Doubt there are very many people with hundred year old books. If so, they were likely expensive hardbacks, so they should last longer.
There would be countless examples of books falling apart in a fraction of that time, though.
New DRM format a bad idea, certainly.
I have never bought a Mobipocket ebook but if I had I would feel pretty bad if I could not read it on a dedicated reader device even from the same company.
That’s just sick!
Keep in mind that a lot, maybe most, of the ebooks available in Mobipocket format are not DRMed. The same for eReader and Sony Reader. Just go to Fictionwise and you will see that most of their books are free of restrictions. Most of my library is in Mobipocket format I am now switching over to Sony format which I can do for free at Fictionwise. All I have to do is re-download the books in the new format. I have 283 books in my library and all of them are available in 12 different formats and can be re-downloaded in a new format any time I like.
We have many discussions about DRM on this site, but I think it is important for newer ebook converts to realize that there is a vast library of current, not Gutenberg-type classics, books that are available in non-DRM format.
The thing that worries me about Mobipocket non-DRM, at this point in time, is that it looks as if Amazon is thinking about phasing it out – at least that’s what the Kindle, and the new Kindle format, implies to me.
DRM or no DRM, there is an additional factor to consider with music: sampling rate. iTunes does it at 128k, IIRC. I rip higher than that and so do many people. In fact, the DRM-free tracks at iTunes are 256k, which is actually higher than I rip myself. What accounts for the higher sampling is not just being able to reprice them (they’ve since all become 99 cents again), but the prevalence of broadband connections to accommodate the d/ling of larger files. Apple chose the original 128k as being good enough for sound as well as fast enough for d/ling — as well as taking into consideration iPod storage capacity. Now imagine iTunes going to *all* 256 sampling. Would people have to re-buy the music?!
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/04/02itunes.html
At least with ebooks, you don’t have to worry about sampling! The biggest hassles are finding DRM-strippers and the possible annoyance of having to reformat the liberated text to a different file format. If epub is adopted widely, then only the DRM issue remains…
Paul: Hmmm… you have better luck at Fictionwise than I do. I have 46 books in my Bookshelf. All freebies. Of the first 25 (all I’ve bothered to check), only *3* can be had in Sony LRF format!
Mike Cane, are you talking about bitrate? A sampling rate of 128,000 Hz is quite high, and sampling rates this high are typically only used by recording studios (and perhaps scientists). Very few human ears (typically children) can hear sounds over 22 kHz.
And if it is bitrate you’re talking about, you should also mention the type of encoding (file format), since better compressors can pack higher quality sound in the same amount of bits.
[...] ‘UK retailers to record labels: DRM is killing us’: Now what happens when Amazon custome… A warning shot fired across the bows of the Kindle as the DRM backlash warms up. Big calls for the .epub to made available on the Amazon device. (tags: kindle drm music) [...]
>>>And if it is bitrate you’re talking about, you should also mention the type of encoding (file format), since better compressors can pack higher quality sound in the same amount of bits.
Yes, bitrate. Thanks for clarifying that for everyone. You can tell I’m not an audio person… (nor should you ever ask me to sing!).