I've only bought a few ebooks but even then, I've immediately went and pirated them too to feel like I have something, even though it's only a few hundred kilobytes. I know it's a digital book and I know someone worked really hard on it but when I buy an book from Amazon or some other site which works this way, I feel like I'm buying... nothing. I sometimes buy physical books with the intention of keeping them for when I'm in the mood to read them, sometimes this might be months or even years. But with a digital book delivered with a licence I've always got a niggle in the back of my mind thinking about a digital collection dissappearing or the service becoming obsolete. In regards to non-drm ebooks, the lack of tangibility peeves me slightly but isn't so much an issue as I actually have something I can keep. But licenced ebooks are fugazi, ethereal nothingness existing on the whims of a mega corporation.
Another memorable - and scarily relevant - example was Disney changing the content of some purchased video content. I think it was a Star Wars spinoff, where a user noticed something amiss and the fix was retroactively edited into already-purchased content. That is _exactly_ the type of rewriting the past that 1984 warned us about.
This could be - or is - an ultimate form of gaslighting. If it's not on your hard drive, you can never be sure that what you're seeing today is what you saw yesteryear.
This seems like an isolated case where an illegitimate provider committed fraud in the early days of the program. Amazon refunded and surely readers were able to purchase a valid copy not much later.
Are there any examples where legitimately purchased licenses were made unavailable?
If an illegitimate provider commits fraud with a physical book, a megacorporation does not hire extra-legal mercenaries to break into my house, steal my copy, and leave cash equal to its price in its place.
But this is treated differently just because Amazon manufactured the Kindle (but no longer owns it - they sold it to you, it's not theirs anymore). I suppose if Amazon had built apartments, would we expect them to keep master keys to all the doors, so they can confiscate any of our possessions whose licensing has expired?
>If an illegitimate provider commits fraud with a physical book, a megacorporation does not hire extra-legal mercenaries to break into my house, steal my copy, and leave cash equal to its price in its place.
Except when they do. Hasbro/Wizards of the coast will send Pinkertons (old school corporate "security" firms of the break some kneecaps variety) after you if are inadvertently sent one of their products early by their distributor. They will barge into your home threaten you and take your things and leave not giving you compensation.
In that case, we, too, are allowed to unilaterally determine when a corporation has wronged us, and seek out our own restitution, without involving the police or the courts.
A Mr Luigi Mangione tried that recently it started a multi-state manhunt and shows every sign of being a sham trial and having predetermined sentence. They started with media events where swat team with drawn assault rifles frog march him into court with the NYC mayor in the lead and since been found to have been hiding evidence from his legal defense.
That is sort of my point, once a corporation gets big enough the law that constrain us little people dont apply anymore. You and I get caught torrenting a price of media for personal use and the MPAA, RIAA will bankrupt you just to make an example of you, Publishers will drive defendants to suicide (r.i.p. Arron swartz), Facebook torrents over 80 terabyte of media to feed to their pet ai they are training for commercial uses and they might get a slap on the wrist because they had a low upload ratio?
Corporations do what they want in this country laws be damned because all they get is fines and they have more money than God and will make even more by breaking the law than fallowing it.
The point wasn't that they sold something they weren't supposed to, but that they felt it reasonable to "un-sell" something after someone has received it.
It showed everyone that electronic purchases can be yoinked away at the first whiff of controversy. Unlike all the copycat, fraudulent crap they continue to sell in physical form to this day.
Don't confuse an illegitimately purchased license with a legitimately purchased illegitimate license.
This is the trouble with "licenses" instead of "items". If I purchase a bootleg book from a physical shop it's not getting clawed back later. The supplier might get in trouble, the physical shop might as well, but nothing is happening to the physical good that I purchased.
Still, this is an extreme, seemingly one-off outlier. There's nothing shady or below board about their actions. They made a mistake and made all parties whole.
There are plenty other reasons to argue against DRM, but I'd argue the chance this one weakens the argument.
It's not about shady or below board. It's about the fact that they can, at their choice, remove books from people that have paid for them. Since they have this power, and can (effectively) use it without repercussions, it's now just a question of under what circumstances are the people in charge willing to use it.
It's the same as when government agencies are given broad, sweeping powers with the explanation of "it makes it easier to do the right thing, and they won't use it to do the wrong thing". Only, the person that gets to decide what it gets used for can change. Then suddenly, they _are_ willing to use it for the wrong thing.
Not really. They went overboard. They reached into devices owned by their customers and deleted books without permission. That was absolutely outside of normal. Imagine amazon selling you a physical book and later sneaking into your house to take it back when they find out the seller had pirated them.
They didn't make all parties whole. Purchasers were deprived of access until making another purchase for which they had to expend at least some effort and time. And let's not talk about inflation and interest that mean the the price paid at purchase is not the same as the amount of additional money the buyer would have had at the time of the refund had they never made the purchase. Just returning the purchase price is far from makign a buyer whole. If I rob a bank and get caught and don't get to simply say oops and walk away scott free after returning the money.
Sony has recently been caught up in a few things like this. The Discovery shows being the biggest example I’m aware of. It’s definitively not an isolated thing.
> Are there any examples where legitimately purchased licenses were made unavailable?
From customers point of view, these purchases were legitimate.
But the important point is that they did it in the past and only the right balance between bad PR and expected profits will prevent them from doing again.
Also, there are examples where a company arbitrarily changes its DRM - like when Microsoft launched its Zune media player, it wouldn't play their own "Plays For Sure" DRM music - they just dropped support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PlaysForSure
Naver Webtoons does that, though I'm sure it doesn't fall into the category of selling ebooks and is probably well crafted on the legal side.
You buy in-app credits, you use them to access series and episodes and download them (you download them in a way that you cannot easily save/copy them). Access is typically revoked a few months later or upon series end, and the expiration of your access rights is not announced.
These kinds of practices are why everyone is wary of DRM & Co.
I don't know, is it? I mean, it's often not the convenient choice, but there is still choice. The choice to "license" cough access to an ebook is a valid one, if made with awareness for what exactly that means. I think most people miss that though, because they think that they bought something instead of rented it. Hell, it's usually not even much cheaper than getting the dead-tree version.
I have a paper book being shipped to me right now, and I'll have to wait a week. The only electronic version was the Kindle though, and fuck that noise.
What you’re buying is the right to consume someone’s hard work in quasi-perpetuity[1]. It’s not a tangible object, but it’s not nothing, either. That’s the essence of “intellectual property.”
Most HNers are employed building things that their customers will never have tangible representations of. It’s how life is today.
[1] technological or business limitations make promises of true perpetuity impossible as a practical matter today.
The difference is most of those things aren't built with tangible, perpetual representations in mind.
For literally all of the time that the written word has existed, if you bought a physical copy it was yours for whatever version of perpetuity you'd like to use.
Of course libraries exist, as do rentals, but it's clearly understood what the deal is with such services.
The specific issue i see here is that this is changing retroactively and without recourse, the ability to download a copy of the item you purchased, which was the deal at the time of purchase.
If you buy anything from now on, however, knowing the details of the sale, that's on you.
It is also hopefully going to result in people going back to libraries. If Amazon is telling you that you can never own an ebook, why pay for it at all? Just borrow it from the local library for free.
I feel like the average person isn't going to think through the implications, or won't care, and will continue buying Kindle books. I wish more people were on the same page (heh) as us here when it comes to licensing vs. ownership, but I just don't believe that's the case.
I never got this. Software is stored, bytes are a physicality, just more easily distributeable. They even have some measurable weight theoretically, with a similar attributed value like an artwork or book - that is subjective and hard to interpret.
It’s not the mass that matters. It’s the medium. You only own the medium, not the content.
This was true of physical media (books, phonographs, etc.) and is true of downloaded media. You might own a paper copy of your favorite book, but you don’t own its words, and the law prohibits you from making a copy without the owner’s permission. You can transfer the medium to someone else, but you can’t preserve the content for yourself. If the book is destroyed in a fire, you must buy a new copy.
Similarly, you might own your Kindle, but you don’t own the content in it. You can read the content, but you can’t copy it.But there’s a minor advantage of a digital license: if your Kindle is destroyed in a fire, the publisher allows you to read-download the content to a new device.
> the law prohibits you from making a copy without the owner’s permission. You can transfer the medium to someone else, but you can’t preserve the content for yourself.
In theory, the law only applies to distribution. Also, fair use and fair dealing exist in multiple jurisdictions, which includes personal-only usage. A company would have a hard time achieving a legal judgement against you for the mere act of copying a book. Distributing it? Sure.
Copyright law explicitly allows for backups, at least in the US, which is where most of the companies exhibiting this anti-ownership behavior are located and thus bound by US law, especially when the consumer is also US.
Owning a license means nothing when the other party to the license can revoke it at any time without further consideration.
Also, the right of first sale exists for physical copies. This means for a physical book you are actually allowed to distribute the content as long as you do not retain a copy yourself.
As someone who holds an IP certificate and JD diploma from a respected law school, I can tell you that most of what you’re saying is utterly false. There are some exceptions carved out by the Library of Congress to the DMCA, but I would advise you to educate yourself before posting further on the subject. You’re right that violation doesn’t necessarily lead to prosecution and liability—people break the law all the time without being prosecuted for it—but nevertheless, you risk getting yourself into hot water if you violate another’s rights.
Quite honestly and frankly, I don't consider the DMCA to be just law. Regardless of that view, personal backups are absolutely allowed under copyright law. The DMCA only criminalizes the cracking of "effective" access control, as far as I know.
It's one thing to believe a law to be unjust. It's another to make false claims about what the law is.
> Regardless of that view, personal backups are absolutely allowed under copyright law
Under which section of the Copyright Act? Under which court ruling?
Keep in mind that "fair use" is a legal doctrine that is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, not an absolute shield a defendant can raise as an impenetrable defense. No court has ever held that a licensee can, without exception, make a copy of a protected work as a backup.
Where are you getting this bogus information from?
Personal backups are at least allowed for software, per 17 USC 117, and I'm not aware that the DMCA altered that, it only added the nonsense about "effective access control" which can legally be as weak as ROT13. Perhaps not for non-software media. Copyright has been broken for decades, however. It's tilted away from the average person and towards big moneyed copyright holders, who vacuum up every IP they can.
How are ebooks not “software”, in the sense that they’re bits that instruct a computer to display particular information, when interpreted by something that understands them? If ePub or the Kindle format were defined in hardware-the same way that certain video or audio codecs are-no one could realistically argue that they’re not software, since after all the CPU literally knows how to process them.
And-also-yes, the copyright scam is pretty much over. The marginal cost of another copy is zero, “for a limited time” means “forever minus a day”, and our culture is being stolen from us via inability to preserve it, use it later if we did acquire it “legitimately” but someone no longer feels like running their “permission to have that” servers later, and by being dynamically retconned such that “bad things” are dynamically edited out and, if you remember that they existed, you’re wrong (and getting gaslit over it).
It was basically a “social contract” that, while not everyone agreed with, they mostly admitted “existed”. Not so much now.
If you actually tried this in court, a judge would go “uh huh...anyway...” and move on. A judge is highly unlikely to create a novel interpretation of an ebook as a software program for exceptional purposes—even if it has instructions in it—because acting as a typical software program is not its primary purpose.
Personally, I'd love to see the jury that would convict someone when all they did was remove DRM for their own personal use/backup and never distributed it.
Oh, I don’t think that would actually happen. People violate the law all the time and nothing happens.
Regardless, people should be aware of what the law is. It’s a different choice to decide to violate the law and take one’s chances than it is to rest comfortably knowing that something is entirely within their rights.
Once the copyright expires, yes, the work falls into the public domain. But this fact is moot for the purpose of this discussion, because we're talking about (usually) relatively new copyrighted works that will be subject to protection for many, many years.
I don't mind temporary license if I trust in the business stability. Meaning either I have a minimum period guaranteed by law or the business is not changing the TOS for no reasons. I bought software on Apple's App Store and games on PlayStation Store and I'm fine that I only have a license tied to the existence of my account. But I have limited trust (no real reason) in Amazon regarding to Kindle.
I also think temporary licenses if they are marketed appropriately. This disclosure is a small step in the right direction, but I don't think it's enough yet.
Any words like "Buy", "Purchase", "Own", etc should be absolutely banned. They should be forced to to use verbs like "Rent". Saying you're purchasing a license is better than saying you're purchasing the book, but if it's not a perpetual license, they should be required to specify the duration (or, if indefinite but revocable, it should be so stated).
Things like:
- "Rent for 1 week"
- "$2.99 to borrow for a month"
- "Rent for as long as we decide to allow"
I also think if the marketing materials explicitly disagree with the terms within a clickwrap license agreement, the marketing materials should be binding.
I agree that words like "buy" are deceptive, but changing the language won't fix the underlying problem that it's getting harder and harder to actually buy certain things permanently.
Not necessarily. The clear language would help consumers determine what they are getting out of the transaction. Many could decide it is not worth it or would search for a better deal elsewhere (where they could buy the book, not just rent it). I'm sure Amazon would come up with new ways to combat this though.
Yeah, and so we should change the rules, not accept a weakening of the meaning of buy or make it more clear that you're renting. Companies already have an enforcement mechanism against copyright infringement. It's called the courts. They don't need DRM, they're just assholes. We need to place reasonable limitations on DRM use. They don't need to have DRM for the entire 50+ years of the copyright term. Putting a digital lock on something shouldn't mean YOU get to decide what the customer does with something and how they interact with it.
I think “purchase a license” is correct in the cases when the license is perpetual and transferable, such as with (I’m showing my age…) boxed-software.
…which is funny when large companies do it, because major software vendors expect they’ll only ever negotiate a non-perpetual, non-transferable license but in exchange they get major product updates for free so long as they pay-up (e.g. Microsoft’s “Software Assurance”) - whereas some companies find buying up liquidation-sales of ye olde boxed licenses is cheaper than SA (e.g. https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/valuelicensing_micros... ).
I think the word purchase should be allowed if you’re acquiring a perpetual, irrevocable, transferable license.
If a license meets those three elements, and there’s some actual mechanism for being able to self-backup the software/media/etc, then I would be happy to allow them to use the word purchase or buy.
Kindle has been around for over a decade. And Amazon is huge. Why the distrust?
Honest question. I'm trusting Steam with over 400 games. I don't read a lot of ebooks but I don't see why Amazon would redact something I've paid for.
Steal from one person (natural and otherwise) and you need to pay them back and get fined/locked up on top of it. Steal from thousands and can just give five bucks to each of them in a class action settlement.
"Locked to Amazon unless you jailbreak" is overselling it imo. You've always been able to (very easily) sideload DRM-free ebooks and read them on your kindle.
Since "reading ebooks" is ostensibly why you'd buy a Kindle in the first place, I'm not sure what more you need.
Kindles don't really support epub. If you copy an epub into your Kindle it cannot read it. If you use the "send to Kindle" app, it sends the epub to Amazon, which converts it to their proprietary format and ships it down to your Kindle.
What is it grandpa is capable of doing, if not plugging the kindle in the computer and dragging and dropping a file onto the "kindle" device that is now mounted in his file explorer?
Kindle department at Amazon got a new manager who doesn't care about books. So he started to cut costs to drive up margins, and this included the cancellation of Kindle Oasis refresh.
Now he's making sure customers are more locked-in into the Kindle ecosystem.
So the fear is that they'll start doing BS like showing ads and/or restricting features like family sharing.
If it makes financial sense in the future to pull shenanigans with book access or content, they will do so unreservedly and with haste.
They have done this already in small amounts, no reason to think they won't do it on a larger scale if it becomes worth their while.
Steam is an interesting example, technically some of the games are DRM free (as in you don't need steam to run them) but most of them rely on steam in some form for continued usage.
The main difference here is that steam has better PR and a history of not fucking everyone over for an extra % on profit margins.
Will that remain the case, probably not, especially after Gabe Newell dies, but they certainly have the general trust of people who use the platform.
Not to say they haven't had their share of fuck-ups over the years but none of them seemed to have "I'm a billionaire so i can do whatever the fuck i want" energy to them.
Software, especially on mobile platforms, feels a little more ephemeral anyway. An app left unmaintained won't support high DPI, won't support new screen sizes, won't have dark mode, doesn't support 64-bit CPUs, or even just gets deliberately turned shitty via updates because there was money to be squeezed. So if I buy an app and come back in 10 years I'm pleasantly surprised to ever find that it still exists and works.
That's very different from buying digital music (which I buy from Apple DRM free) and digital books, which should not change after I buy them, don't need compatibility updates, and really ought to work as long as I have the files, even if someone goes out of business and I can't redownload them.
Books really have much more in common with music than they do with software, and it's unfortunate that digital books and ebook readers escaped the "I bought hundreds of dollars of music and I should be able to play it on whatever MP3 player I want" arguments that freed us from music DRM lock-in.
I had an issue with calibre+dedrm not working as of early 2024 (possibly due to an update the the DRM used by Amazon). Have you had luck doing this recently?
I just tried it and it did NOT work for me. The Calibre page says it doesn't work on Macs and points to some paid software to remove DRM. Really disappointing.
As far as I understand, the "anti-circumvention" provisions of the DMCA don't make exceptions for fair use, so it's illegal to circumvent copyright protection even if a fair use defense would mean you're not infringing the copyright.
From Wikipedia[1] ("1201" here refers to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions):
Although section 1201(c) of the title stated that the section does not change the underlying substantive copyright infringement rights, remedies, or defenses, it did not make those defenses available in circumvention actions. The section does not include a fair use exemption from criminality nor a scienter requirement, so criminal liability could attach to even unintended circumvention for legitimate purposes.
The DMCA does include exemptions that allow you to circumvent copyright protection in some circumstances, but these are pre-defined by the government every 3 years. I don't think "backing up e-books that you own" is currently exempted, the only thing I can find in that Wikipedia article that could maybe fit is this:
Literary works, distributed electronically, that are protected by technological measures that either prevent the enabling of read-aloud functionality or interfere with screen readers or other applications or assistive technologies, or for research purposes at educational institutions;
In other words: if you have an e-book that doesn't provide accessibility functions, you can crack it in order to be able to read it.
Not sure exactly what you mean, but it’s definitely on the books[1]. There’s also a decent body of case law around copying things you have access to (say, Sony v Betamax).
Fair use comes from Berne Convention §10 (snipet):
“It shall be permissible to make quotations from a work which has already been lawfully made available to the public…”
I guess OpenAI and Google use that to be able to build search and training ML-models.
Almost all countries in the world is bounded by that.
Fair use is just a defense if you have to go to court for a copyright infringement claim. So after you spend many thousands of dollars, you can claim fair use as one of your defenses. (In fairness, certain types of fair use are fairly well established so no one will probably take you to court within those guardrails.)
NAL, not legal advice, just my current understanding:
> after you buy it
Generally, yes. What you do with that digital copy might be illegal, but the download was legal. Using a torrent to download (and seeding) might still be illegal even if only as a means to copying.
> after you buy it on kindle
That's a more interesting question. Given that they only grant you a license, you're in gray/black territory. When they previously gave you the impression that you were making a purchase you might have been in gray/light territory, but ignorance is rarely an excuse.
> legalities vs practicalities
Once I had one of those torrent honeypots catch a neighbor seeding. Comcast wasn't very careful with their timestamps or enforcement (or maybe the lawyer wasn't), and it happened close enough to an IP renewal that I caught the flak. If you don't get a lawyer involved, they'll blatantly ignore your right to counter DMCA claims and just infantalize you with a sermon about not stealing from intellectual property owners, placing you on a list of problem customers and eventually cancelling service (that last bit never materialized because it was my IP and my devices after the incident, so I never had too many strikes).
What happens, exactly, if you "legally" pirate a book after you buy it on kindle? Who knows, but it might have negative consequences on par with actual enforcement as if you'd broken the law.
I don't believe that's the case. The DMCA makes it illegal to circumvent DRM, and does not make exceptions for fair use.
There are exemptions granted to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions every three years, but in general, e-books have not been exempted.
If you're just stripping DRM from your own purchased e-books, or are downloading a pirated copy from somewhere, it's unlikely that you'll get in trouble. But it's almost certainly not actually legal to do so.
(Of course, remember that if you're torrenting, you're also uploading, and the chances of you getting in trouble are higher... even if you disable your client's upload functionality.)
Assume there's no DRM involved. Do books not have the same protections as music (e.g., home archival being a defense against the otherwise legitimate copy)? I.e., is it not true that the download is fine but that what you do with it could be illegal?
