I have started going back to real books for any book I might want to keep, loan, or give to a friend when I'm finished. It would be nice not to be screwed over by DRM yet again. I like my Kindle, but it doesn't help me read. It helps Amazon make money. The only thing it does is for me is to help me carry lots of books around easily.
Not buying eBooks from suppliers that infest them with DRM doesn't mean not buying eBooks. I love my Kobo reader with all my heart and it has massively increased my consumption of fiction. Just don't support and buy eBooks from suppliers that use DRM.
There are quite a few more, but I don't want to link them because I haven't personally used them. I'm also hoping DRM-Free eBook bundles catch on (https://www.humblebundle.com/).
If there are books that I "desperately" want to read and can't find them in DRM-Free form, I visit the local library. If the library doesn't have it, I will buy a print version. As long as it isn't a technical reference manual I will use frequently, I then donate it to the library when I'm done with it.
For all fans of fantasy and science fiction, the dragonmount.com is also a DRM free webshop for ebooks. (I have no affiliation with said site, btw. Just a happy customer).
While http://dragonmount.com is a Wheel of Time community they sell the entire range of DRM free TOR science fiction novels (among others). Definitely a good place to shop.
I just tried entering a bogus US address, and got as far as the page where you can choose a payment method (which includes PayPal, so presumably you don't need a US credit card). If you get access to the books as a download, I suppose that you actually would be able to buy a book in this manner... Has anyone tried doing this?
I somewhat agree. But, I personally vastly prefer the experience of reading on the Kindle to a physical book (instant dictionary definitions, easier on the subway because I can hold on in the subway and still turn pages, the ability to choose my preferred font size and text width which allows me to read faster, and so on). I would pay more to read a book on a Kindle and frequently do (one can often find good quality used paper books for less).
The one thing I don't buy on Kindle are the rare books I expect to want to keep a long time. For everything else, I'm willing to accept that I might somehow lose access or be unable to read it in several years.
This is straight Stallman: if you don't fundamentally control your computing environment, you don't own it, and you have no freedoms within it save those granted by the entity that does control that environment.
A Lessig might modify that slightly and say that your freedoms are actually balanced between four influences: Law, Norms, Market, Architecture. In the case of DRMd works on proprietary hardware, law and architecture are both opposed to the rights of the individual. Presumably Amazon responded to social norms and market pressures.
I prefer having more power on my side. It's a key reason I've avoided the e-reader game to date, despite some interest in going there.
I don't get what you mean in this context. I have complete control over what I put on my Kindle and what I don't. I don't use any DRM of any kind, ever, so that's a non-issue.
No, I don't have the power to program the thing myself, so Stallman wouldn't approve it, but then again he wouldn't approve of most computer operating systems or the vast majority of laptops sold either, so I don't see why e-readers are different....
Depends a little on what you run on the Kindle. It's perfectly possible to run 100% open source. Amazon isn't exactly making it super convenient, but they're doing very little to prevent it. Stock, of course, they retain the ability to do so but on the other hand A) sponsor the hardware and B) provide updates and very good support.
I consider it a pretty fair tradeoff. They're not stopping you from churning your own butter, so to speak, but do count on you deciding it's easier to just run their stock stuff. Like a lot of semi-locked hardware, it's not like they'd be such floozies about proliferating the hardware if they weren't making a lot of it back in book sales.
(Edit: It's never hooked up to the Internet, except when plugged into my computer, so I don't see how Amazon or anyone else is going to be able to touch it.)
Some people are refusing to pay Amazon (or other providers) for DRMd content - a boycott of anything with DRM.
Some people are not going to break any laws, even if those laws are mostly technical and not going to be enforced. And providing means to remove DRM is more problematic because the law is enforced a bit more rigorously there.
I am coming to a similar opinion with respect to the music and movie industries. For example, there are a few long since syndicated and no longer frequently broadcast TV shows that I and my family would gladly pay for. But there is no option to do so. We have purchased a few others, to be greatly disappointed when we found all the music changed, in cases where the music was closely tied into the plot.
Every item I purchase from these content owners contributes to the efforts they are making including to privatize and balkanize the Internet. Therefore, I will no longer spend my money in a fashion that contributes to this.
A fellow in... France, I believe, wrote a very pointed and eloquent article/post on precisely this point, some months back.
It is not. Section 1201 of the DMCA specifiys:
"No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
There is an exception to users whose ability to make legal use of the protected material is impeded, but only after the Librarian of Congress rules that the given type of user of the given type of work qualifies for the above exception.
The exception mentioned above also, explicitly, does not apply to the following provision:
"No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--
`(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;
`(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or
`(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."
