The wonders of DRM in ebooks

[Thue]

Stuff like this is the reason why I haven't switched to ebooks yet.

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

[Krill]

Ha.

[Winston]

How incredibly ironic.

[Dinner]

That's why I download DRM free content.

[Space05us]

I bet the kindle smells like plastic anyway.

[Az]

ohohohohohohahahahahahahahahaha

[Sirotnikov]

Next thing we know, hospital nurses will be sneaking into our homes, stealing our children, and leaving us used condoms

[Thue]

It turns out that the person who published the books did not have the copyright for them, though Amazon apparently did not tell the buyers that when Amazon removed the books from their Kindles. It is still a very dubious practice, IMO.

George Orwell died in 1950, so the copyright of life+70years still holds. Good thing we have that copyright here 60 years later, otherwise I am sure George Orwell would not have been motivated to write his books </sarcasm>.

[actually the copyright was much shorter when the books were written, but the copyright was retroactively extended on existing works, to motivate dead people like George Orwell to write more books I guess]

[alva]

And it's extented again (at least for music it is).

[Space05us]

And it's extented again (at least for music it is).

Michael Jackson is dead, **** him, I wouldn't respect his property rights in life anyway, ****ing freak. He was alright when he was a kid, he was intelligent and had potential. Then he got a rare skin disease and instead of becoming a role model for other people suffering from the same disease he sold old to become a whitey. And the nose job, wtf? Where's the reasoning there?

If you can't deal with the cards fate has dealt you then go off in a ****ing corner and shoot yourself, don't pretend you have the ace.

Weasel.

[Felch]

Copyrights will probably be extended indefinitely. There are people with a vested interest in retaining rights (like Disney) to old and well known properties.

It's part of the reason why I don't give a damn about copyright. Respect is a two way street.

[Ben Kenobi]

There are people with a vested interest in retaining rights (like Disney) to old and well known properties.

Everytime the question comes up Disney *****es about losing the rights to steamboat willy.

It's a major headache for anyone doing history.

[Thue]

From a 1842 copyright debate. Sums up my opinion pretty well.

I will only say this, that if the measure before us should pass, and should produce one-tenth part of the evil which it is calculated to produce, and which I fully expect it to produce, there will soon be a remedy, though of a very objectionable kind. Just as the absurd acts which prohibited the sale of game were virtually repealed by the poacher, just as many absurd revenue acts have been virtually repealed by the smuggler, so will this law be virtually repealed by piratical booksellers. At present the holder of copyright has the public feeling on his side. Those who invade copyright are regarded as knaves who take the bread out of the mouths of deserving men. Everybody is well pleased to see them restrained by the law, and compelled to refund their ill-gotten gains. No tradesman of good repute will have anything to do with such disgraceful transactions. Pass this law: and that feeling is at an end. Men very different from the present race of piratical booksellers will soon infringe this intolerable monopoly. Great masses of capital will be constantly employed in the violation of the law. Every art will be employed to evade legal pursuit; and the whole nation will be in the plot. On which side indeed should the public sympathy be when the question is whether some book as popular as Robinson Crusoe, or the Pilgrim's Progress, shall be in every cottage, or whether it shall be confined to the libraries of the rich for the advantage of the great-grandson of a bookseller who, a hundred years before, drove a hard bargain for the copyright with the author when in great distress? Remember too that, when once it ceases to be considered as wrong and discreditable to invade literary property, no person can say where the invasion will stop. The public seldom makes nice distinctions. The wholesome copyright which now exists will share in the disgrace and danger of the new copyright which you are about to create. And you will find that, in attempting to impose unreasonable restraints on the reprinting of the works of the dead, you have, to a great extent, annulled those restraints which now prevent men from pillaging and defrauding the living.

[Maniac]

Wow. Did people always speak stylish like that in the 19th century?

[SpencerH]

Education, its a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, our officials are merely mindless zombies without the wit or training to draft such expressive text.