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CNET blogger defends DRM, citing the Kindle’s success
August 21, 2008 | 8:51 am
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By David Rothman
"I’d be happier if I could read Kindle books on my iPhone 3G or my Mac, or if I could print individual pages or copy text into an e-mail," admits CNET blogger Peter Glaskowsky in a pro-DRM post.
"But I figure that I get 99 percent of the potential enjoyment from just reading a book," says Glaskowsky, who cites the K machine’s success in justifying DRM.
Yes, Peter. But what happens when better machines come out than the Kindle? And should ownership of e-books be tied to survival of a particular company or at least its interest in books? Check some pretty smart comments from your readers, including one who writes: "Your Kindle will one day die, and so will your DRM ‘protected" library.’" Exactly! The Kindle has many virtues, and in fact I might buy one this week for $259 to help serve the many loyal TeleBlog readers who are Kindle fans. But you bet the DRM is scary. I’ll only be renting Kindle-format books.
DRM "commercially practical"
Peter G., who pegged his post to strong interest in e-books at Worldcon, goes on to write that "DRM is commercially practical and acceptable to many consumers." While he says that the anger over DRMed music "seems to be dying down," many victims of the mess at the MSC and Yahoo music services might disagree with him.
About Baen Books’ antipathy to DRM, he writes: "Baen’s a smallish publisher, and what it’s doing here isn’t necessarily transferable to the major publishing houses, but it’s good to see someone offering an alternative to Amazon’s Kindle Store and Sony’s eBook Store."
Oh, come on, Peter. These lessons are transferable to large publishers as well. If their precious books are so popular, then no DRM system can product them against a mix of OCRing and P2P. The more valuable the property, the more attractive it is as pirate bait.
Furthermore, the DRM will detract from the value of legal copies for people eager to use them on a variety of machines—and drive some of them to the use of pirated copies.
Related: Glaskowsky Web site.
(Via MobileRead.)
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Comments:
Not related to the main point of the article, but you know you can put non-DRM’d stuff on the Kindle, too. In theory, you could buy a Kindle and never buy a single DRM’d book for it.
In relation to the main point, I might also add that in regard to Baen’s lessons not transferring to larger publishing houses, Tor/Macmillan is not exactly tiny and they were happy to give away a couple dozen e-books with no DRM at all. And they’ll be going in with Baen on un-drm’d commercial e-books, too…whenever they get around to it.
Kindle’s success (whatever that is, all we have currently is secondhand rumors on number of units) does not prove DRM is good. Customers do not realize the “gotcha” until they want to move their purchases to another device. Then they realize what the issue is. Kindle was just released 8 months ago. Most customers have not thought about upgrading to other devices yet. A year or two from now is when the backlash will start to kick in. Many kindle customers, new to ebooks, are not even aware of the issue yet.
Chris, that’s an excellent point about the Kindle being able to read nonDRMed books. But keep in mind that I already have gizmos around that can do that. The big thing is, “What about books available only in DRMed Kindle format?” Bad news. But I am thinking of times when I might want to catch up with a book in a hurry, and that’s the only alternative. I’m not happy about this situation. As both a reader and writer, I want e-book formats to be completely separated from content, as as I know you do.
Thanks,
David
Steve P.: Or they might well be aware of the issue in theory but not realize it is going to affect them. I knew that the DRM could be a problem if I had to change devices, but I never expected to be using anything but Palm-compatible PDAs when I invested heavily in Peanut/Palm/eReader titles. Then I ended up with a Nokia 770 as my main hand-held device—and you guys wouldn’t let me re-download them in some other format that I might have been better able to use. I ended up having to use a buggy, somewhat ugly Palm emulator to read the books on my hand-held.
(But I’m getting a stylish cardboard box today, so soon everything will be hunky-dory again.)
Yahoo drm music; MSN drm music – relatively small fries as e-music goes and remember the noise…
iTunes is still around and people still love their iPods – plus you can burn the music, though that was true for Yahoo too and people still got angry -
So I guess if Kindle becomes a tens of millions units gadget sold, maybe there won’t be that much noise when people cannot read their books anymore – just buy another Kindle…
Good point, Liviu, but who says Amazon will always have the leading tech? And many consumers may just prefer other machines—becoming angry when they can’t transfer their libraries. Furthermore, Apple is a very special case. The company understand ergonomics and style better than Amazon does. Keep in mind, too, that even Steve Jobs has spoken out against DRM.
Thanks,
David
Peter Glaskowsky displays the same sort of arrogance in his arguments that produced the economic, military and privacy messes in this country by govt officials who think they know what’s best for us.
Glaskowsky isn’t listening to anyone’s needs but his own.
I’d like to see some full disclosure by that alleged (fifth-) columnist. Relatives members of the RIAA? Or is the guy simply a shill for corporate interests? Then again, Occam’s Razor suggests brain damage.
“becoming angry when they can’t transfer their libraries.”
I’m not sure there would be a lot of outrage about that.
How many of us have bought the same album on vinyl, then 8-track, then cassette, then CD, then perhaps even SACD or DVD?
Some of the older folks may have even needed to add wax cylinders, then 78′s to the front of my list above
How many of us have bought movies on VHS then DVD? In my case it was Beta, then VHS, then DVD.
Even a DRMless ePub file created today may not be readable in a couple of decades due to changes in the spec and how some features may become deprecated (just like with early versions of HTML) and no longer supported in future devices.
I think most people get that technology changes. Many folks may grumble but I doubt most will have apoplectic fits about this.
My guess is that most folks DON’T read MOST of the books they buy more than once.
When I buy titles for my Kindle I am aware that at some point in the future I may no longer be able to read them. Call that a rental service – that’s fine with me.
When I borrow a book from a library I am not expecting any long-term ownership rights to that book. I’m aware it’s a short term lease. What’s the difference?
“Furthermore, Apple is a very special case. The company understand ergonomics and style better than Amazon does.”
I’ve owned Macs of various flavors for more than 20 years. I currently own a half dozen iPods of various models. Yet, I am not an Apple fanboy. Too many of Jobs’ creations are more examples of form over function.
Remember the Cube?
Ever tried to replace the battery in an iPod or iPhone? Steve Jobs reportedly didn’t like the way a battery cover intruded on his designs so that ability was omitted.
Personally I don’t view my gizmos as fashion accessories so I’ll take function over form every day of the week.
The best mp3 player ever made was my late lamented Rio Karma. Sure, I’ll concede that the hardware doesn’t have the visual pizazz of an iPod (any model) but it’s operational performance and features far surpassed what is even available on current iPods for music playback. Can any ipod play FLAC or Vorbis files?
Is the design of the Kindle perfect? Of course not and I understand that since it departs from the shiny black and chrome aesthetic of the iPhone many folks just don’t like the looks of the Kindle.
Unlike Jobs’ creations which want you to accept his aesthetic the Kindle just plain disappears from view when you use it. Isn’t that more to the point of the device?
“Keep in mind, too, that even Steve Jobs has spoken out against DRM.”
So has Bezos. Who actually offered DRM free music first amazon or iTunes?
I believe most of us agree that DRM sucks but that does not mean that we are going to be rid of it any time soon nor that DRM’ed “things” can’t/won’t be a success in the marketplace.
If the Kindle is a success and clearly shows that there is a growing market for ebooks that’s a good thing for all of us isn’t it? Wouldn’t that send the message that people ARE willing to buy these books without paper and the larger the market the more titles, the more devices, etc.
“Peter G., who pegged his post to strong interest in e-books at Worldcon, goes on to write that “DRM is commercially practical and acceptable to many consumers.” While he says that the anger over DRMed music “seems to be dying down,” many victims of the mess at the MSC and Yahoo music services might disagree with him.”
Talk about clueless. That’s hilarious given that Amazon itself has made a lot of money off of people’s hatred of DRM in music. “Play anywhere, DRM-free” is good enough for MP3s at Amazon … why not for books??
I have a Kindle. I don’t have any DRM-infected books on it. Fictonwise/Baen FTW.
HeavyG’s post above seemed to rehash a lot of the superficial pro-DRM arguments:
“Even a DRMless ePub file created today may not be readable in a couple of decades due to changes in the spec and how some features may become deprecated (just like with early versions of HTML) and no longer supported in future devices.”
First, the number of deprecated tags that simply do not work in more modern browsers is extremely small. Browsers generally support deprecated HTML and/or allow you to enable support for it (for those who really want the blink tag to work in their modern browser).
Second, it is fairly easy to automate conversion of HTML X.X to HTML Y.Y. Computers are really good at that. Similar thing is possible with non-DRMed e-book.
I have a book I bought from Baen that is in HTML that I have converted to different formats to work on the following devices: Pocket PC, Palm Treo, Blackberry, Kindle. I changed platforms several times, but was able to easily convert my books into what format was needed instead of having to buy the book over and over again.
That said, if you are the type who never reads or references a book more than once and don’t mind the file dying when the hardware does, then DRM is for you.
>>>My guess is that most folks DON’T read MOST of the books they buy more than once.
I don’t give a damn what you think “most” people do. When I’m paying, I want full access and transferability between devices. And I’ve read many books more than 2x and all the ones I’d buy again in e format I’d also read again, just to make sure all the damn words are there and not all typoed up.
>>>When I buy titles for my Kindle I am aware that at some point in the future I may no longer be able to read them. Call that a rental service – that’s fine with me.
>>>When I borrow a book from a library I am not expecting any long-term ownership rights to that book. I’m aware it’s a short term lease. What’s the difference?
Duh. The borrowed library books are FREE.
I’d like to second the “Duh! Te borrowed library books are FREE.” No. I DON’T expect the library to provide any “long-term ownership rights. That’s because the library lets me read the book for free. That’s why the correct term for the place HeavyG referred to is actually “lending library.” We do commonly shorten this term to library but that’s really a more generic term than HeavyG was using. I DO expect long-term ownership rights when I buy a book at Barnes & Nobel. I bet HeavyG expects that as well. He may choose to discard an already-read book in some fashion but he’d be postin’ to every forum from here to China if he HAD to give up the book and was NOT ALLOWED to read or reread it at some point in the future.
Wait for the first court case to pop up where a legal decision requires all copies of a book to be pulped due to, say, libel or slander. Howls when Apple’s Kill Switch kicks in and POOF! the book you were reading is all gone.