BenBurch
Gatekeeper of The Left
So, the non-keyboard paper-white kindle; How can you enter text on it? Is it some menu you have to go through like an old cell phone or what?
Amazon is being sued (again). As are Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan over DRM and Kindle linking of ebook sales.
Digital rights management (DRM) is a class of controversial access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders, and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale.
Amazon is being sued (again). As are Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan over DRM and Kindle linking of ebook sales.
My kindle is starting to show some problems. At first it started forgetting which page was last read in a book, now it forgets which book was last read.
I'm not sure I could do that. I had to read a dead tree book the other week when I broke my Kindle and was waiting for a replacement (I was glad I took out the 3 year warranty, not something I usually do), and it felt very cumbersome.Have tried removing and readding my library but still the same. Will give amazon a try, but its a couple of years old now so prob time to retire it and go back to books.
I hate DRM, and sympathize with the plight of the Indie Book seller, but don't see much legal grounds for their suit. Provided that the buyer is made aware of the terms of the puchase,Amazon and the Publishers can pretty much do what they want as far as DRM goes. Lawsuits against games that have DRM have gone nowhere in court, and I suspect this will be the same.
And IMHO the Indie book sellers are engaged in a bit of Ludditism here.I suspect then really want to kill off E books altogether (if you get rid of DRM,you get rid of Copyright protection for E books,and that would kill off publishers being interested in E Books). Ain't gonna happen.
“It’s clear to us that this is what our customers want,” said senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden. “We see it in the success of SF publishers like Baen and Angry Robot that have preceded us in going DRM-free. To the best of our knowledge we’re the first division of a Big Six publishing conglomerate to go down this road, but we doubt very much that we’ll be the last.”
I hate DRM, and sympathize with the plight of the Indie Book seller, but don't see much legal grounds for their suit. Provided that the buyer is made aware of the terms of the puchase,Amazon and the Publishers can pretty much do what they want as far as DRM goes. Lawsuits against games that have DRM have gone nowhere in court, and I suspect this will be the same.
And IMHO the Indie book sellers are engaged in a bit of Ludditism here.I suspect then really want to kill off E books altogether (if you get rid of DRM,you get rid of Copyright protection for E books,and that would kill off publishers being interested in E Books). Ain't gonna happen.
Indeed. Baen also rejected DRM and freely distributes a lot of their titles, a system that has worked well for them. Eric Flint and Jim Baen both wrote on the subject.
Amazon is being sued (again). As are Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan over DRM and Kindle linking of ebook sales.
The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, contends that while Amazon and Random House, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan signed contracts with Amazon for the sale of e-books with DRM that was “specifically designed to limit the use of digital content” to various Kindle devices, the publishers have not entered into any agreements with independent bricks-and-mortar or independent collectives to sell e-books. “Consequently,” the complaint states, “the vast majority of readers who wish to read an e-book published by the Big Six will purchase the e-book from Amazon.”
I'm not sure I could do that. I had to read a dead tree book the other week when I broke my Kindle and was waiting for a replacement (I was glad I took out the 3 year warranty, not something I usually do), and it felt very cumbersome.
I was a bit wary before I bought a Kindle, because most of the books I read were either from the library or were cheap paperbacks (3 for a fiver). However, there seem to be plenty of special offers on Amazon, and I'm spending less per book that I used to on real ones. Every day on the UK Amazon site there's a book for 99p, and one day they had 10 Kurt Vonnegut books for the same price each. These are not books of questionable quality (though I've seen a few of those, in the free category), just temporarily reduced from the regular price.I'm not 100% but initially my decision to get a kindle was based on saving money buying real books and having a library to read with me (I work abroad and am the type to want to read the only book I didn't take). I've gone through the free classics I was interested in and the free books from Amazon are often part of a series or questionable quality! So the cost benefit argument isn't nearly as great as I initially predicted.
That said, was in PC world just now and can get a new kindle for about £45 (if I put it through my company) so I'll try paper books and then no doubt come back to a kindle!