To stay with the real world analogy: you also can't back up your book. You have that one copy and once it breaks, you are out of luck and have to buy a new one.
I compare the ebook readers as a physical object with the books (also physical objects). If I can read books on that device even when my credit card has expired or other things have disabled my account, then IMHO the parity to the real world exists: I have that one physical object which represents the content on it. If I lose it and don't have my account any more, well, too bad.
Of course, by centralizing many books to one physical object, you risk losing much more content as you lose that physical object. But the advantage is that, in case it breaks, it can be repaired (which might be impossible with a physical book)
Now. I know for a fact that this is how Kindle works: even if your account is gone, your books stay on your Kindle and you can continue to read them. I would assume it works the same for B&N in this case.
Being able to infinitely redownload the books is a nice convenience that goes far beyond what a physical book would allow.
Also, I haven't tried it, but these DRMed books are just files after all. It might be possible to back them up and later read them on the same device (again the physical book analogy) even if the account has been terminated.
Digital storage is far more unreliable ... when we'll have content that survived in digital form for thousands of years (or heck, I would be happy with 20 years), then we'll be able to compare apples to apples.
Also, even though I have a child at home, I never had a book that "broke" - as there's nothing that some glue can't fix. The only real danger for the preservation of books in physical form is fire.
> by centralizing many books to one physical object, you risk losing much more content as you lose that physical object
No, you got it wrong. The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen.
And making this whole thing defective by disallowing people to backup their books however they want is the most evil and stupid thing I've ever seen. DRM is defective by design and no matter how much you try painting this crow, it's still a crow.
If we are talking about valuable books, then content can be recovered at least partially from a wet book, depending on how good the printing ink and paper were and how long that book stayed under water.
Fire is more dangerous than floods and historically we've lost more books by fire than from anything else, although I'm pretty sure there are effective methods to recover content partially from books that are only partially burned.
The durability of physical books is amazing and the only thing going for digital content is that the cost of copies is zero, which means you can easily make backups in multiple places of this world instantly and retrieve those backups with whatever device you happen to have in front of you. Unfortunately that's exactly what DRM is trying to prevent.
"The far bigger danger is that the eBook reader is a device running on integrated circuits and battery, which will break in only a couple of years and those B&N servers will not be online forever (I would be quite surprised if they are still online in 10 years), it's only a question of when that will happen."
But you knew this when you bought the e-book. If companies were selling DRM-protected e-books but labeling them as DRM-free, that would be fraud. But (AFAIK) they're not.
I personally know about it, that's why I rarely buy DRM-protected content in general and I only do so for content I only want to watch / read / hear once or twice. Good movies, good books, good music - these are things for which I want to keep a personal library and so I stay away from DRM.
Unfortunately from what I've seen, the public has no idea what DRM is, as the technical details are hard to understand. When buying a DRM-protected copy of something, that copy is not yours, you don't own your copy in any way, your only right is time-limited access to that copy, you know like renting with a public library subscription (it's actually even worse, since when renting something you usually have a contract that guarantees availability for a specific time period, whereas with DRM you never know for how long it will last).
And I disagree with your point on advertising - because buying something DRM-protected is really renting, customers should be informed of this.
Jeff Bezos has said in interviews that he doesn't believe in books, only reading. Reading changes you, and you don't need to have an artifact. That was his argument for the Kindle.
Not so. AFAIK none of the major ebook retailers go out of their way to mention this, and they target their marketing towards consumers who are not savvy enough to know to ask. They will only inform you of the DRM when you run into one of the limitations it imposes.
EDIT: Actually, I should clarify. One ebook retailer does make this explicit — Google. But I wasn't counting them because they don't "own" a market segment and you'd probably be pretty savvy to be buying from them anyway.
Good point. Not sure if it's still applicable, but wasn't it such that you couldn't carry your iTunes library over international borders?
If it's DRM'd then I'd expect to pay far less for it. I've got a Kindle, and I won't buy any books for it - because I feel so uneasy about where I stand on this. Which is a shame really. Add to that, that paper copies are somehow cheaper a lot of the time, and that I can pass /sell them on, after reading. Prevents me from becoming spineless.
I don't know about B&N but you can easily go though the Amazon checkout process without any mention of DRM. Most people only learn about it when DRM prevents them from doing something they would otherwise assume they could do like read there book on a nook.
But wouldn't it be so much nicer if there was no DRM on e-books. That's a law worth lobbying.
And for the record. Norwegian law states that you can freely distribute anything you own to a few friends and also make backups of it. DRM is technically illegal in Norway, but no one has brought a case to court over it yet.
IANAL but I would imagine that DRM per se isn't illegal but any anti-circumvention clause in the EULA would not be enforceable in a court provided that copies were made for the purposes of backup.
Not so fast. Anti-circumvention laws are everywhere, we aren't talking about EULAs here.
The DMCA act in the USA prohibits DRM removal, under all circumstances, even if we are talking about your own content for which you own the copyright.
In Canada bill C-61 also made DRM circumvention illegal. In Europe too. It is unclear to me how these fare to the DMCA, because it might be that only providing the tools and information for doing that is illegal. But in Europe, even if we are talking only about the tools being illegal, if you end up removing the DRM protections from some content, it can be argued that's changing the format, which is a different thing but also illegal.
It is worth pointing out that pieces of software, like CloneCD [1], are illegal even in Europe, even though this software only makes exact copies and does not change the format (it does not remove DRM).
And the US, being the 800-pound gorilla that it is, is constantly pushing others for copyright reforms similar to the DMCA.
Also, whenever you're talking about "fair use", you're always in a gray and dangerous area, as fair use clauses are intentionally ambiguous, so sentences are passed based on subjective reasoning based on context and in the US on precedents. If fair use is your defense, then more often than not you're screwed if you can't afford competent lawyers.
I meant specifically norway (though admittedly I don't know what the law actually is there) but the GP suggests that the law allows one to make backup copies of your files.
Norway is not an EU member state, so normal european laws will not necessarily apply there.
Here in the UK I'm not aware of any specific laws that would make owning software like CloneCD illegal, though it could be used in ways that might be considered illegal.
Well, the situation might be different within members of EU, as EU directives are more like agreements for achieving an end-result, without specifying exactly how the law must be implemented locally. So for instance fair-use clauses might or might not hold.
What I don't like is that the US has so much leverage that they are able to efficiently push dumb and evil reforms (e.g. ACTA) and the representatives of many countries simply sign agreements without blinking or thinking about it.
You don't have to go so far as to outlaw DRM. Books are usually exempt from sale taxes and VAT, right? Make it so only e-books without DRM protection have the same exemption.
I don't think most consumers have really thought the whole thing through. Anecdotally I would say most people don't back up files without DRM, e.g. digital photos. I'm sure for everybody reading this comment it seems really obvious that you would want to back up your photos. If the average consumer doesn't understand the very real possibility of total data loss and losing all of those photos, why would they even consider the downsides of purchasing and downloading e-books onto a single device?
Granted I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, but I think it's entirely silly to expect people to know things that are very firmly technical knowledge and not common sense. The person you replied to might have known that their eBook reader is prone to failure but what about the vast majority of consumers?
The difference is, my bookshelf space at home is something I can choose - the internal space on my locked down device is not - so to carry on buying new books, I have to remove old content. This is saying I cannot get my content back (content I PAID for) without a CC on file.
The real world analogy does not work here - as I can carry on storing the books I want, and am fully aware that when I choose to remove a book, then I no longer have it - the expectation with a digital purchase, is that they hold my virtual bookself. If they don't then they need to make that clear, and provide ways for me to take on that responsibility.
No. Unlimited (non-abuse-level) downloads are part of the original understanding. There are services that give you a single copy of a file but they are rare.
I'm sure that maintaining your account is part of the original understanding too.
Just for the record, I think that anti-circumvention laws are absurd, and that EULAs aren't worth the RAM they consume. But I also think it's childish to buy a DRM-protected e-book from a company, terminate your account with that company, and then expect them to let you download another copy of the e-book for free.
I can photocopy or scan every page. It may not be easy, but it's doable, and the publisher does not have technology that actively prevents me from doing this.
Unless I am mistaken, that would/could be legally considered circumventing DRM, and would therefore be technically illegal despite fair use (which would permit you to photocopy the print book legally).
I'm not sure there's a difference in photocopying an entire book and doing the same to a DRM book. Do you know specifically that there is a difference?
EDIT: Specifically, it is against the law to break DRM (unless for few cases outlined by library of Congress), and the law as written makes no exceptions for fair use. The courts have also held in positive that it was Congress intend to make breaking DRM a crime even if there is a fair use case.
... Except that's wrong. It's not fair use to photocopy an entire book and it never has been. Let's not lose sight of the actual laws in our blind rage against DRM.
Making private complete copies is legal in most countries, in particular European ones. Private copying levy stems from this concept. Photocopy an entire book for private use only is thus perfectly legal if you are in one of those countries which allows it.
Not all of Europe. It certainly isn't allowed in the UK but we don't have a levy on recordable media. It isn't even legal to rip music to listen to on a computer or an mp3 player. Not that this law is widely followed (or to my knowledge enforced).
There is discussion to create a global EU levy, but I didn't know UK did not already have it. To my knowledge, France, UK, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway has it, as well some of the baltic states.
Where is it illegal to make a photocopy of your OWN book ? As far as I know, you are in your right to make a copy of something that you own for private use.
Wrong. Photocopying for personal use is legal under fair use provisions. The only reason why it's not legal to do so with DRM-encumbered ebooks is because of the DMCA.
The DMCA forbids circumventing an encryption system. Photocopying the words on an ebood screen would not seem, to me, to be circumvention since the content was decrypted entirely as designed to put those words on the screen.
It might be copyright infringement, but would almost certainly be covered by fair use assuming it was not then distributed to others.
I've never heard of a DMCA case prosecuted against someone who photocopied the screen of a ebook reader. If you know of one, I'd be interested to read it.
> I've never heard of a DMCA case prosecuted against someone who photocopied the screen of a ebook reader.
In practical terms, the DMCA doesn't result in prosecutions of people who break DRM for personal use. It results in the prosecution of people who produce/distribute software that breaks DRM to allow consumers to copy media for personal use, because there is no practical way to find people who are breaking DRM for personal purposes.
I can't speak as to photocopying the screen of an ebook reader since that has never happened (to my knowledge), but here's a similar case:
Blu-ray discs are encrypted with AACS[0]. If someone were to make a program that, in real time, takes screencaps of a movie being played back by a legal Blu-ray disc player and records the audio output from the player, then recombines that fully unencrypted data into a video file also without DRM, that person would most definitely get hit with a lawsuit on the basis of the DMCA.
I'm not sure what DRM your publisher is using that actively prevents you from backing things up if you're willing to exert a modest amount of effort (probably less than photocopying an entire paper book).
Yes. A new version of that book, not a new version of every book in your library.
>Of course, by centralizing many books to one physical object, you risk losing much more content as you lose that physical object. But the advantage is that, in case it breaks, it can be repaired (which might be impossible with a physical book)
Which is irrelevant if the company doesn't allow you to redownload the data, as in this story.
I compare the ebook readers as a physical object with the books (also physical objects). If I can read books on that device even when my credit card has expired or other things have disabled my account, then IMHO the parity to the real world exists: I have that one physical object which represents the content on it. If I lose it and don't have my account any more, well, too bad.
Of course, by centralizing many books to one physical object, you risk losing much more content as you lose that physical object. But the advantage is that, in case it breaks, it can be repaired (which might be impossible with a physical book)
Now. I know for a fact that this is how Kindle works: even if your account is gone, your books stay on your Kindle and you can continue to read them. I would assume it works the same for B&N in this case.
Being able to infinitely redownload the books is a nice convenience that goes far beyond what a physical book would allow.
Also, I haven't tried it, but these DRMed books are just files after all. It might be possible to back them up and later read them on the same device (again the physical book analogy) even if the account has been terminated.