While this generally irks mostly customers — and not very many customers have even experienced this as yet, since the e-reader market is new — some publishers and authors feel this negatively impacts their customer relationship.

Now Amazon has made it easier — or at least made the choice more explicit — for small-scale publishers to decide what kind of relationship with their readers they would like to have:

Without a formal announcement, Amazon.com has started allowing authors to publish their ebooks for the Kindle without digital rights management (DRM), the technology that limits how consumers can use the ebooks they’ve bought.

via Amazon quietly lets publishers remove DRM from Kindle ebooks » Nieman Journalism Lab.

While this doesn’t impact the larger ecosystem, it’s a step that takes e-readers closer to where the behemoth of music sellers has already gone: last year Apple switched off DRM for music tracks purchased through iTunes.

Many publishers and authors fear the results of rampant copying and eagerly embrace DRM as a solution. I personally feel this is the wrong choice, and there is some limited data to back me up. Nonetheless, the real story here is that Amazon is making it easier for authors and publishers — at least small-scale ones — to choose, and putting that choice up front. At the very least, this forces a brief moment of thought, and hopefully it will generate additional data about whether DRM benefits or harms sales and customer relations.

The group is setting out to create a common digital standard that would let consumers buy or rent a digital video once and then play it on any device. It might sound technical, but it could be crucial to persuading consumers to buy all the splashy new Internet-connected gear that tech companies will demonstrate at C.E.S., like HDTVs and set-top boxes that can download TV shows and films.

via Hollywood and Technology Companies Work to Make Digital Video Portable — NYTimes.com. (For a more customer-focused discussion, see DECE’s Plans for Digital Movie Purchases May Confuse and Anger You — Downloads — Gizmodo.)

Of course, we already have common digital standards that allow exactly this. What we don’t have is a common system that implements shared restrictions (DRM) and allows Hollywood to specify what you can (or, more usually, can’t) do with the product you purchased on all your devices.

To a consumer — me, for example — buying media with DRM that limits what I can do through technological and contractual restrictions feels an awful lot like renting that media. Why should I spend extra to “buy” something that won’t let me use it to the maximum extent provided by law? Sure, I don’t expect to be able to make copies and sell them, but I do expect  to be able to fully utilize what I purchase: sell it, play it when and how I like, and so on.

This intuitive expectation by consumers has a legal concept associated with it: first sale. That doctrine, which applies to most of what a regular person has been purchasing for years, cuts off the ability of the original seller to determine what happens next in the stream of commerce. I can sell my new purchase, destroy it, rent it, take it apart, and so on. I can’t necessarily copy it (at least, not if patent protection exists, or copyright applies), but I can pretty much do what I want with it. This is why CD resale stores exist, why Netflix can mail you DVDs in a day, and why Craigslist (and newspaper classifieds) can exist. It is what customers have come to expect from the products they purchase.

But it isn’t what they get from movies purchased online (or from e-books, for that matter) or often from music either (although Apple and others have finally pushed back enough to remove DRM from most music — perhaps this is a lesson for Hollywood?). Instead, content owners (who may or may not be creators or producers) want to “license” your access to media, and to stick DRM on to limit what you can do with it — but they still want you to pay them the same amount as if you were purchasing something that gave you full first-sale rights. And then they wonder why consumers balk?

I don’t mind paying a small amount to “rent” (I know roughly what that means) limited-use media. But if I buy something, I want to own it, and I want full first-sale rights to it, not some technological restriction that artificially limits my use (and tends to break across manufacturers and over time).

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad.

Secret copyright treaty leaks. Its bad. Very bad. — Boing Boing.

Michael Geist has more:

Despite the efforts to combat leaks, information on the Internet chapter has begun to emerge (just as they did with the other elements of the treaty).

The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together.

He adds that the draft text is modeled on the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement, and focuses on five issues:

1. Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.
2. A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.
3. Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs).
4. Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements.
5. Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

For me, one key problem area is that #4 in Geist’s list apparently eliminates the fair use/fair dealing exception to anti-circumvention provisions (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.). Fair use is absolutely key to a proper balance between allowing reuse that encourages new innovation and rewarding existing innovation through temporary monopolies.

Geist points out, too, that the treaty does not stop there. It contains additional provisions “that include statutory damages, search and seizure powers for border guards, anti-camcording rules, and [requirements for] mandatory disclosure of personal information.”

This is not a direction that I support, because I think it actually limits innovation and development, rather than supporting them.

BizOp News asks the question:

Is the Kindle DX: Amazon’s 9.7″ Wireless Reading Device (Latest Generation) a disruptive device for the textbook market?

via The BizOp News | Due Diligence : Can Kindle Replace Text Books?

His main argument is that “Kindle threatens the established textbook market, because textbooks can be treated as software, and rental items. You only want the text for one course, you rent it.”

He believes, along with others, that Amazon will likely act to push legal textbook authors to publish ebooks — but they will be accompanied with licensing and DRM that will ensure their limited distribution and use and, presumably, undermine the used textbook market as well.

I believe the Kindle — and perhaps other devices like it — may indeed revolutionize the market. I am not convinced that all textbooks are amenable to an electronic model in terms of ease of use, but that may not stop the attempt by Amazon to push it.

To be honest, I suspect the entrenched nature of law and law schools will prevent Amazon’s complete success in any rapid fashion — I suspect a complete changeover to electronic books will simply run into too much resistance.

I also believe that “renting” textbooks stands a decent chance of generating a backlash against the current ebook licensing approach, as students (never ones to enjoy restrictions, especially ones that cost them money) discover they can’t pass on their textbooks to others by selling or giving them away.

Still, Amazon still has a chance to disrupt the market without such a backlash — if the purchase price paid by students for books justifies the more limited rights they will enjoy. If Amazon can pull it off, everyone will benefit — if they give in to publishers and keep prices artificially high — we will see a backlash and disruption of a different sort.

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I first heard about this on NPR, and it boggled my mind as to how the AP could ever think this would work. Techdirt, of course, has a nice write-up of the issue and the problems:

DRM has failed in almost every instance it’s been tried. Not only does it fail to actually prevent copying, it tends to piss off legitimate users and limit value rather than enhance it. And yet… people keep trying. But, honestly, I can’t think of anything as pointless as the latest move from the Associated Press which appears to be an attempt to DRM the news. That’s not what they call it, but that’s what it sounds like

via Associated Press Tries To DRM The News | Techdirt.

I get the frustration on the AP’s part. The world is changing, and they haven’t figured out to prevent that. They can try for legal changes, try DRM, or adapt. Adapting is hardest, but the only way to succeed long term.

Honestly, legal changes are the next best thing in terms of buying time to adapt. DRM-like approaches tend to frustrate and annoy even legitimate users. If your product is valuable, someone will go around your limitations. If they don’t — you’re dead, because the market just decided your product isn’t worth it.

How to adapt, though, is not clear.

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com apologizes for the 1984 Kindle fiasco:

This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos

Founder & CEO

Amazon.com

via An Apology from Amazon — kindle Discussion Forum.

I appreciate the apology. It’s good customer service. I’m not sure it makes me more comfortable with the law in this area, but it does improve the likelihood that I might someday purchase a Kindle myself.

Image via Wikipedia

Yet another example of the problems with DRM and the Kindle:

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.

via Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others — Pogue’s Posts Blog — NYTimes.com.

This also clearly illustrates the problem from the consumer perspective of “licensing” what was previously sold. With physical books — or even electronic sales — the “first-sale” doctrine applies, and the seller cannot unilaterly reverse the transaction and take back the item (even if they credit the consumer for the price). Nor can the seller in a traditional sales transaction prevent resale, etc. — which Amazon also prohibits.

Will consumers adjust to this new model, or will we rebel and insist on our traditional first-sale rights?

This certainly discourages me from buying a Kindle — or, especially, from purchasing my Kindle books through Amazon. Better to get them via Project Gutenberg, where they cannot be taken from me later on.

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You are able to redownload your books an unlimited number of times to any specific device.

Any one time the books can be on a finite number of devices. In most cases that means you can have the same book on six different devices.

Unfortunately the publishers decide how many licenses, that is devices, a book can be on at any one time. While most of the time that will be five or six different devices there will be times when it’s only one device.

At the present time there is no way to know how many devices can be licensed prior to buying the book.

According to the customer rep, there is a project to try to get that information available to the customer but it’s not yet available.

Finally, when you have reached a limit of six devices and you swap one older device for a new one, it does not automatically reset the number of licenses so you can add the new one. Amazon can release all of the licenses which will remove any given book from all of the devices and then allow you to re-download it that same number of times.

via KindleGate: Confusion Abounds Regarding Kindle Download Policy.

It sounds like Amazon’s trying to get the right balance for you — but this points out a general problem with DRM in the marketplace: it’s very confusing. This undercuts a general argument out there that “the marketplace has spoken” in terms of acceptance of DRM. If consumers have limited access to information, the market is inefficient, and cannot accurately measure consumer desires.

This kind of issue always makes me leery to purchase DRM protected media, and when I do, it encourages me to see if there is a way to remove the protection (so that I can freely use what I’ve purchased, not so I can share it with the world) — even if I never do so, it’s nice to know I can if the company fails or changes the rules on me.

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