Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

I Finally Bought a Kindle Book...

<< < (4/6) > >>

Carol Haynes:
A few questions, what happens in the future when you have invested in a large library and:


* Amazon goes bust (they have a tough time making profits - or they have in the recent past)
* Amazon sells out to another corporate entity that doesn't want the eBook market or has a very different policy/approach - a quick flick of the pen and all those T&Cs you agreed to can be changed, and you have probably signed that you agree to changes in T&Cs
* Kindle v.9 turns up that doesn't support the existing format (just like a lot of the digital mapping products in the UK where you have to pay to upgrade all your maps for the new software version, or VHS has become obsolete so everyone has to replace products with DVDs, whoops sorry replace again with BluRay ....)
* Amazon falls out with a major publisher and they withdraw their catalogue - the promised refunds on withdrawal of pulled products might be large enoygh to push Amazon over the edge ...

johnk:
Carol,

If these possibilities do concern you, then it is very easy to make non-DRM (.mobi) copies of your Kindle books using open-source programs.

I try not to buy DRM'd products, but mainly because of a general philosophical unease about the whole idea. Practical issues such as the ones you mention are easy to work around.

Carol Haynes:
My point is you shouldn't have to do that - when you buy a paperback it is yours to do what you like with. Kindle (and any other DRMed) books are legally restricted to the license. You can get round that if you want to break the law but why should you have to when you have paid for the product, but if you don't you could wake up any morning and find titles or even your whole library gone!

johnk:
It may be breaking the law to "un-DRM" your ebooks, but I see it as no different from music CD copying.

I have literally 1000s of music CDs going back to the first CD releases. Some of my earliest purchases have disintegrated with age and become unplayable -- in practical terms, the equivalent of your ebook "vanishing" from your ereader.

Now as I understand it, I didn't so much buy a CD as a "licence to listen". So I could theoretically go back to the music companies and ask for a free replacement CD so that I can continue to enjoy my licensed music. We all know how far I would get.

These days, most people are clever enough to make backup CDs of their purchases, to protect the originals, to use in the car etc.

Again as I understand it, this is protected under "fair use" law in the US. But it's illegal in Britain. However everyone does it. And the law is so discredited that the record companies have made it clear that they would not prosecute individuals in the UK for making copy CDs for personal use.

An update to UK law is on the way, and I'd be surprised if the plan to legalise "format shifting" does not apply to ebooks as well as music and films. I think stripping DRM from legally purchased products will become as common as copying CDs. And the DRM debate will gently fade away...

Yes, you shouldn't have to do it, but it makes for a simpler life just to work around the problem.

wraith808:
My point is you shouldn't have to do that - when you buy a paperback it is yours to do what you like with. Kindle (and any other DRMed) books are legally restricted to the license. You can get round that if you want to break the law but why should you have to when you have paid for the product, but if you don't you could wake up any morning and find titles or even your whole library gone!
-Carol Haynes (July 06, 2011, 08:10 PM)
--- End quote ---

I've been buying DRM'd books for years now (since my first windows phone back in 2000), and I've literally never seen that happen.  I had a couple of hiccups from the change from .lit to other formats (I had to download a different format because they stopped being supported in .lit because the publisher withdrew from that format), but even in the face of books being withdrawn from the market, I can still download them.  And even if I couldn't, I backed them up, and they work without connecting to the internet- both in activation and reading.  It's a pain that I have to remember the credit card number they were encrypted with years ago, but I have that old credit card number written down. 

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page