[HN Gopher] How Ebooks Have Poisoned Electronic Ink
___________________________________________________________________
How Ebooks Have Poisoned Electronic Ink
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 85 points
Date : 2022-02-23 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (schmud.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (schmud.de)
| blowski wrote:
| Seems like the author is saying Amazon has poisoned ebooks,
| rather than ebooks poisoning books in general.
| swayvil wrote:
| Yes it does. Funny how the real meaning of the article is
| totally different like that.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > Reading Ethically
|
| > So how do I use my Kindle?
|
| I suggest the author starts by not buying Amazon hardware and
| expecting good ethics.
| ebiester wrote:
| That's explicitly what the author is asking for at the end -
| a reader that respects the ethics of the author.
| dheera wrote:
| I use a Boox tablet, it can open up the open source
| formats, and since it runs Android it can also just run the
| official Kindle app and basically be a Kindle at the same
| time.
| f1refly wrote:
| That's pretty much every reader not made by amazon. My kobo
| takes any epub without complaining.
| Finnucane wrote:
| What's funny is that now Amazon asks publishers to send
| files as epubs. When we send them a file, they're getting
| the same file that all the other vendors get. Amazon,
| however, will still sell that file with their proprietary
| wrapper.
| JadeNB wrote:
| I'm surprised not to see any mention of Tor
| (https://publishing.tor.com/) among the ethical e-book
| distribution platforms.
| dwheeler wrote:
| I often just buy the physical book. It's easy to do, and it's not
| possible to take the book from me later.
|
| I think it should be illegal for sellers to say you can "buy" a
| book when you have not bought it. It's fraud. Call it a rental or
| something else more honest. If I bought it, then it cannot be
| taken away, I can give it to someone else as long as I don't
| retain it, I can use it as many times as I want, and no one
| monitors my use without my express consent. It's not that rental
| and leasing is necessarily wrong, but it should be clear to
| customers that that is what is happening.
| eggsome wrote:
| I was bitten by this.
|
| While staying in the US I setup an Amazon account in 2010, and
| ordered a Kindle2 with 3G connectivity. It was fantastic! I could
| purchase books anywhere in the world - no WiFi!
|
| At some point however the renewal of my US credit card did not
| get delivered to my Australian address and I kind of forgot about
| it for a while.
|
| Last month I sorted out my credit card issues and went to buy a
| book, but could not - my Amazon account was locked. Support staff
| refused to fix it, apparently if you haven't logged in for over a
| year then they won't send you a password reset (I still control
| the associated email address!). The only option they presented to
| me was re-creating the account with the same email address. I
| lost all of my books and all of my wishlists :(
| 30367286 wrote:
| The author seems to have missed KoReader (http://koreader.rocks)
| and Plato (https://github.com/baskerville/plato), both of which
| are not user-hostile and work on Kobo and ReMarkable.
| tokamak-teapot wrote:
| Yep, using KoReader on a kobo here. It's wonderful.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I think it's more a comment on the general ecosystem and the
| vendors.
|
| You could have completely FOSS hardware and FOSS software, but
| if all of the books you want to read are owned by publishers
| that refuse to sell them without DRM, what's the point? You'll
| basically be limited to self-published, DRM free stuff and
| Public Domain books.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Libgen.
|
| If you mean _legally_ obtaining the books you want to read,
| there 's also the use case of home-made/unofficial copies;
| there are e-books floating around of books that are no longer
| in print (digital or dead tree versions). You'll pry my
| Animorphs ebooks from my cold, dead hands!
|
| There are also certain use cases where stripping DRM is
| allowed by law, and in those cases, yes, you would want FOSS
| hardware and software.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| What's wrong with Public Domain books? The whole Western
| literary canon is in the public domain. You could spend as
| much time as you wanted purely on those books without ever
| needing to read anything proprietary or encumbered.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Nah, you keep a VM around to strip DRM from your legally
| purchased content and then toss it on the Kobo.
|
| I've got a Win10 VM that exists to strip DRM from Adobe
| Digital Editions or whatever the current name for that
| abomination is. Similar VMs exist to strip Amazon DRM.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Dude, I know. But it's a pain in the ass.
|
| In fact I got so tired of trying to make the Kindle for PC
| app play nice under WINE after it inexplicably broke that I
| just _bought_ an old Kindle off eBay for about 20 bucks,
| and am using the hardware key from that to both download
| the books from Amazon in .azw form, and decrypt them with
| DeDRM /Calibre.
|
| But it's still a pain in the ass. And you know what's even
| worse? Now that it's tied to a physical hardware key,
| Amazon knows that this particular Kindle is older than
| dirt, and so it won't even give me the option of
| downloading some of my newer books like graphic novels or
| cookbooks, because it detects that those wouldn't work on
| it. So I can't get those to break the DRM from them.
|
| Things are only marginally better in the Kobo world,
| insofar as nothing downloaded directly to my Kobo has yet
| posed a problem for DeDRM and OBOK. But lord help us if
| they ever update the ADE encryption used for the on-device
| books.
| throwaway705132 wrote:
| I used to have a means for stripping Digital Editions and
| B&N DRM, but they're now lost to time.
|
| Fortunately, the Kindle version can be simplified greatly
| and doesn't quite require the complexity of the other
| means.
| dont__panic wrote:
| KOReader is my weapon of choice on my Boox Nova 3. This article
| does a good job of explaining the sins of Onyx Boox, but
| unfortunately there isn't much competition in the Android e-ink
| space and this was the best hardware I could get.
| sydd wrote:
| Same. I just made a new Google account for it, I'm afraid to
| give my real details. But AFAIK its bootloader is unlocked,
| so one can root it and remove the chinese spyware/viruses
| black_puppydog wrote:
| OMG thank you for posting this! The last thing I knew about
| open firmwares for e-readers was OpenInkpot, and that seems to
| be dead for a _long_ time.
|
| Now I can finally revive my kobo without having it nag me for
| full internet access all the time. The only way it would let me
| transfer my local files there without some full online sync
| detour was opening its browser and downloading them from a
| python3 -m http.server :D
| jjkaczor wrote:
| I have owned several Kobo's over the last 10-years, WiFi is
| always off and I never get nagged.
|
| Have always side-loaded books via direct USB mounting - or
| Calibre.
| Syonyk wrote:
| What?
|
| You should be able to mount the Kobo as a USB device and
| stuff ebooks into the root filesystem. What weird version of
| them doesn't support that?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Hmmm... my Nia never registered as a mass storage device...
| maybe I'm holding it wrong? :D
| Ftuuky wrote:
| I was not aware of those, they look just lie what I needed for
| my Kobo. Which one would you recommend?
| kragen wrote:
| The really interesting thing about e-ink for me is having a low-
| power, high-resolution computer screen; an old Nokia 84x48 LCD
| uses about 3 mW, a megapixel-class Amazon Swindle uses 100-300 mW
| during active use, and a modern megapixel-class cellphone screen
| uses about 1000 mW. Unfortunately, you just _can 't get_ high-
| resolution, low-power e-ink screens unless you're an ebook
| manufacturer; not only are the manufacturers uninterested in
| talking to hobbyists (or distributors like Digi-Key!) rumor has
| it they stop talking to you even about volume buys if they find
| out you're not making an e-book device.
|
| So I thought this article was going to be about that!
|
| Last year I learned that there's a kind of LCD that has even
| lower power consumption (during active use) by virtue of printing
| a whole flip-flop onto the glass at each pixel, called the "Sharp
| Memory LCD": https://www.adafruit.com/product/4694 not cheap at
| US$45 but _available_ , and 400x240, a high enough resolution for
| everyday computing tasks. There are a variety of sizes available,
| but this particular display advertises "50 mW static, <175 mW
| dynamic", that is, 0.05-0.175 mW, which is a really substantial
| improvement over 100-300 or even 3. And it's transflective so you
| can read it in the sunlight. At last, something you could
| plausibly build a battery-free portable computer with! And, as a
| bonus, it updates fast enough to play video games on.
|
| Pulling once on a pullstring to wind up your computer yields
| potentially about 25 J. At 300 mW that yields a minute and a half
| of usage. At 3 mW, two and a half hours of usage. At 0.2 mW, 34
| hours of usage. So below 1 mW you're into solar-calculator
| territory; I disassembled one of those solar garden lights with
| an LED and a rechargeable battery in it and measured its 38 mm
| square panel at 8 mW.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| This functionality is part of some devices (or rather the
| softwre loaded on them), as with the Onyx BOOX Max Lumi series,
| which provides a 13.3" 220 dpi 1650x2200 16-shade greyscale
| display.
|
| I've not used it in that that mode, though I've certainly used
| it with Termux as a terminal driver. There are also
| freestanding displays sold. At larger sizes there is a
| considerable price premium.
|
| The Max Lumi runs $800--$900 itself.
| kragen wrote:
| What's the _power consumption_ of the Max Lumi? That 's the
| crucial thing here!
|
| I'd be satisfied with 80x24 characters (400 x 192 pixels
| without grayscale). It's not optimal, but it's adequate for
| reading, including hypertext browsing of Kiwix, and writing,
| including text and code. The Nokia 84x48 pixel screen is
| inadequate.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I think those memory LCDs are what Pebble used to use for their
| watches. My Pebble Time Round still holds up to this day, shows
| me notifications promptly, lets me control music, and the
| hardware hasn't failed yet. Great screen and a great product.
| kragen wrote:
| Nice! It's really sad what happened to Pebble. Do you know
| how much power the watch uses?
| dont__panic wrote:
| The battery is 56mah, and the battery life is estimated at
| around 2 days. So just over 1mah per hour, I guess?
|
| Crazy to think that average current Android phones use
| batteries that are around 100 times the size of the battery
| on this watch!
| kragen wrote:
| So that's probably about 5 mW? It could probably achieve
| that power level with traditional passive-matrix LCDs
| like the Nokia LCD I mentioned. Hard for me to imagine
| it's using that much power on computation and Wi-Fi, but
| that's possible too.
| disintegore wrote:
| A few years ago I bought a Kobo device. Not sure what it's
| called. I fired it up and it immediately asked me to create an
| account, with no option to skip the process. I thought to myself
| "screw that" and plugged it in so I could flash something like
| okreader instead. KDE automatically recognized it as a storage
| device, so I decided to take a look.
|
| Turned out that the root folder contained a sqlite database. I
| opened it up, looked at the schema and inserted a new user
| manually. It worked just fine. No problems since.
|
| I have no idea if the new devices are any different but given the
| overall quality of the thing I wouldn't be surprised if they made
| it so trivial to bypass their online service integration on
| purpose.
| maurits wrote:
| This is the single reason I got a Kobo. And I will never ever
| let it connect to wifi.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| I didn't mind creating a Kobo account - I have never actually
| purchased anything from the Kobo store.
|
| I have ALWAYS side-loaded all my books using Calibre.
|
| However - about once or twice a year, I do turn on WiFi and
| download OS/system updates - which actually made the device
| faster and more reliable, so...
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Biggest speed difference I've seen for my Kobo was adding a
| faster class 10 Micro SD. The one they ship with is fairly
| lousy. Plus now I get 128 GB instead of 8 GB.
| trulyme wrote:
| When you say you turn on wifi, do you change the wifi
| password on access point after it? Some TVs have been known
| to remember and use wifi credentials even when disabled,
| iirc. I never let any device on my network unless it is
| properly blocked from phoning home.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| You don't even need Calibre. Just connect to your
| computer's USB port, it'll show up as a mass storage; copy
| your ebooks over and you're done.
| blowski wrote:
| Kobo devices work really well with Calibre for exactly this
| reason. I've got a Libre H2O, it works great. My son has the
| Clara.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" I have no idea if the new devices are any different"_
|
| They changed that last month (as a software update, so it's
| retroactive to existing devices):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30037152 ( _" Kobo unveils
| Sideload Mode to their e-readers "_)
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| I guess you meant they decided to ease the open up and access
| by mere mortal, not hacker.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| They absolutely have left that door ajar on purpose. Presumably
| they calculate that by being the de facto go-to reader for the
| people who want to install their own software, they can both
| sell more devices and don't need to splash a lot of money up
| the security wall playing cat and mouse with motivated hardware
| hackers (who would become pretty motivated if they found there
| were no open platforms). It's not as if people who would
| install koreader would just roll over and start throwing money
| down on Kobo store books. They'd just never buy a Kobo at all.
|
| I have a Clara HD and it's a fun little Linux device (no
| android nonsense, just a good old shell), Koreader is pretty
| great (a few rendering bugs aside) and I can even ssh into the
| thing _and_ pull files down from my computer with WebDAV though
| the koreader UI.
| Fargren wrote:
| What do you mean by install their own software? What are
| people installing on their Kobos? I bought mine just because
| Kindle doesn't have ePub support[0]. Now I'm curious what
| else I could do with it.
|
| [0]I know about Calibre. I'm not willing to jump through any
| hoops for ePubs. This should be basic functionality on any
| ereader.
| neuralRiot wrote:
| I have a Boox and i just drop the epubs on the sd card.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > I bought mine just because Kindle doesn't have ePub
| support[0].
|
| > [0]I know about Calibre.
|
| Amazon actually provides their own tool to produce a Kindle
| document from an ePub. The assumption seems to be that
| you'll naturally produce Kindle ebooks by writing ePubs and
| converting them. But the tool doesn't work!
|
| I wanted to have line numbers floating to the left of the
| main text. ePubs are just HTML, and it's easy to do this.
| It works fine in ePub readers. But while I tried multiple
| different ways of accomplishing this in an ePub, _none_ of
| them made it through the conversion to Kindle.
| nvllsvm wrote:
| Alternative reader applications like koreader and plato
| open up more customization than the default reading app
| allows for.
|
| https://github.com/koreader/koreader
| https://github.com/baskerville/plato
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Kobos let you install custom book-reading software without
| too much hassle. KOReader[0] is the most popular one. I
| like it because it allows for a ton of customization, can
| properly render pretty much any EPUB you throw at it (much
| better than stock), and can reflow PDFs (using K2pdfopt[1]
| under the hood). But there are some other alternatives,
| including Plato[2] (simple, easy to use, fewer features)
| and PBChess[3] (closed source, play chess on your Kobo).
|
| The MobileRead forums[4] are quite active, you'll find a
| lot more there.
|
| [0] https://github.com/koreader/koreader [1]
| https://www.willus.com/k2pdfopt/ [2]
| https://github.com/baskerville/plato [3]
| http://pbchess.vlasovsoft.net/en/ [4]
| https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=223
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| How does one checkout books from the library with a Clara HD?
| Our library uses the Libby app - does that work on the Clara?
| urthor wrote:
| Any customer who actually cared enough to bother to
| circumvent, is too savvy to be taken advantage of.
|
| It's a filter for idiots.
|
| One of the unfortunate things you'll realize about the (FMCG)
| advertising industry, is that most of the results from
| advertisements is made from the _impressionable_ customers.
|
| Impressionable people are the money makers, but they're not
| the savviest. Hence you're essentially building business
| models that are targeted at the lowest common denominator.
|
| You don't even want the clever customers, they make you less
| money.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _You don 't even want the clever customers, they make you
| less money._
|
| Some research has been done on "Why are the various scam
| emails so absolutely horrible, wouldn't they get way more
| hits if they actually had a native language speaker check
| them first?"
|
| They concluded that the awfulness of it is a useful filter
| for the most gullible of the gullible. You can only string
| along so many people.
|
| > _Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as
| comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the
| attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low
| density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding
| need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that
| repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most
| promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false
| positive ratio in his favor._
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-
| content/uploads/...
| Syonyk wrote:
| I love my Kobos. I've effectively sold quite a few based on how
| well they work (most of my social circle reads on Kobo now).
|
| In addition to "Ok, fine, you can do that thing you're doing
| anyway" with the recent updates, the SQlite approach works fine
| and has remained so for... oh, years, at least.
|
| The stock PDF reader is fine for ebooks, but sucks for
| reference PDFs. However, it's trivial to install koreader, and
| that _is_ good for reference PDFs. I replaced an iPad and
| GoodReader with a Kobo Elipsa and koreader for reference docs,
| and it 's great. Plus, insane battery life with the backlight
| off.
|
| And if you want to install some goofball bit of software, well,
| drop it in the right directory and don't go whining to Kobo if
| you break things. it's an insanely hacker-friendly device
| that's also a solid e-reader.
|
| I've been following the Pine Note work with some interest, but,
| really, all I'd want to do with it is stuff koreader on it and
| use it like a Kobo.
| newsbinator wrote:
| > I wouldn't be surprised if they made it so trivial to bypass
| their online service integration on purpose.
|
| I'd be surprised if it was on purpose. More likely they know
| 9,999 people out of 10,000 are going to create a trackable
| account, and the simplest thing is to ignore the "hacker"
| outliers, who would probably not be particularly profitable
| anyway.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Not getting into an arms race against hackers is a sound
| business decision, unless you have a very good profit motive
| to keep them out.
|
| Maybe the devices are loss leaders and you can't afford to
| have many users not following up with purchases from you. Or
| maybe you are at risk of being sued over some shady licensing
| deal if you don't lock down. Or someone like Microsoft bribes
| you to lock out competitors. Or maybe you're just a control-
| freak asshole company.
|
| Or a mix, like Sony.
| rchaud wrote:
| I have a Kobo Mini from 2012, a uniquely small 5" reader that
| fits in my pocket. It never asked me to set up an account, even
| after a 2017 firmware upgrade that gave it a bunch of new
| features like Pocket integration.
| readreadread wrote:
| skybrian wrote:
| It's weird how this article calls buying an ebook from Amazon
| "unethical." If you're okay with their restrictions I don't see
| it as harming anyone?
| gumby wrote:
| The short-sighted e-ink patent forest has killed e-ink.
|
| The e-reader problems described in the article remain. But e-ink
| itself is being foolishly held back by the patent owners.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _So how do I use my Kindle? No WiFi, no signing into
| amazon.com, load all books over USB. To acquire books ethically,
| I first look at an author's homepage. Direct purchase is the best
| option. No need for a middleman. For example, the author Cory
| Doctorow offers direct distribution._
|
| So, basically, turned into a crappy Kobo. They're far better for
| this sort of use, the hardware is solid, you can hack it however
| you care, and it chews on just about everything.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I sometimes wonder whether the invention of the public lending
| library could happen today. Had the concept not been given a
| prior place in our minds, the very idea seems otherwise
| inconceivable in contemporary society dominated by corporations.
|
| The lack of consumer-oriented legislation is the proximal cause
| for devices phoning home, spying on you, locking you out of the
| goods you've purchased (that is, dictating how you can and cannot
| use the good) and which resist the user's need to repair or
| extend.
|
| The author's solution is to apply duct tape and glue to arrive at
| "ethical reading" (really, it sounds more like ethical vending).
| However, I think it is a problem which consumers can't buy
| themselves out of; pro-consumer legislation is required.
|
| Being choosy about where you buy your ebooks is fine, but we
| didn't get better automotive safety standards by just being
| choosy about the kind of cars we buy in the first place. It was a
| political -- not a consumer -- process that brought about change.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| > I sometimes wonder whether the invention of the public
| lending library could happen today.
|
| Not a chance. You can see this with the US Postal Service
| today, with some people arguing that it should continued to be
| stripped because it isn't profitable. It isn't supposed to be
| profitable!
|
| I think the closest we could ever get would be an "old Netflix"
| approach, where you have to pay a monthly membership fee based
| on the number of books you want at once that turns a profit.
|
| As for eBooks, I generally find a spot to buy them online (with
| or without DRM) and either rip the DRM out or pirate them after
| purchasing. Voila, it's just like a normal book now!
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > You can see this with the US Postal Service today, with
| some people arguing that it should continued to be stripped
| because it isn't profitable. It isn't supposed to be
| profitable!
|
| That seems unlikely. Why do you think it's given a formal
| legal monopoly on the service it provides?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Because that makes most sense to offset the fact that it
| also must serve everyone. Problem for postal service really
| isn't profitable areas, just look at delivery services. It
| is the unprofitable hard to reach ones. If single company
| was mandated to serve these too while others where allowed
| to pick the easy ones or even exploit the single one it
| would have hard time surviving.
| bradstewart wrote:
| While USPS technically has a monopoly on your mailbox, you
| can send someone a letter via UPS or FedEx--for
| significantly more money.
| kibwen wrote:
| And if you send something to a remote area, UPS and FedEx
| will themselves delegate to USPS precisely because it's
| not profitable to develop the infrastructure to service
| remote populations.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| > It isn't supposed to be profitable!
|
| It's supposed to break even. It's supposed to be a service
| that provides value. If it isn't providing value, it loses
| its reason to exist.
|
| You can argue that the consumer captures a lot of surplus
| value from the postal service. But it doesn't exist just to
| please people who like public programs.
|
| The same with libraries.
| [deleted]
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" I sometimes wonder whether the invention of the public
| lending library could happen today. Had the concept not been
| given a prior place in our minds, the very idea seems otherwise
| inconceivable in contemporary society dominated by
| corporations."_
|
| It's interesting to compare today's corporate information
| hoarding to the information-sharing philanthropy of Andrew
| Carnegie at the turn of the 20th Century, whose money was used
| to build 3,500 libraries.[1]
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_library
| mabub24 wrote:
| Wealthy individuals during and around the gilded age had a
| view of charity that was in some senses very similar to
| modern charity by the super-wealthy, but also quite
| different. Like today's wealthy, they often used charity as a
| mechanism for social climbing, and as a dick-measuring
| contest. They also used it to try and fend off criticism that
| is usually directed at them when income inequality gets very
| high.
|
| However, they were also often guided by a strict idea of
| _noblesse obliger_ , which we would consider patronizing and
| archaic today, but which was considered an extremely serious
| task for them. It was fundamentally their role in society, as
| they saw it. They were also quite a bit more religiously
| motivated. This extended to the idea of public service and
| holding public office (of course they also held those
| positions as a way to help themselves to the pot, but the two
| ideas were often present at the same time). They saw charity
| as an act of duty before as an act of kindness in many
| instances.
|
| The modern super wealthy no longer think of themselves as
| constrained by a notion of "duty", for better and for worse.
| musicale wrote:
| Google actually went and scanned every book they could get
| their hands on - including the libraries of multiple
| universities - as part of the Google Books project. It could
| have been a modern library of Alexandria (I also seem to
| recall that universities had hoped to make their collections
| available to their students and faculty at the very least.) I
| believe the Library of Congress has also been scanned, so we
| could in theory make any book in the collection available to
| anyone in the world nearly instantly at almost zero cost.
|
| Copyright law seems to have locked these amazing digital
| libraries up so that they are currently available publicly as
| a search feature with small excerpts (and even that would
| have been shut down had Google not prevailed in court against
| the Authors' Guild claim of copyright infringement.)
|
| At the very least, it would be nice to have access to the
| books in the Library of Congress that are out of print, out
| of copyright, and/or not being sold or rented by the
| copyright holder, but I don't think we do.
| aaron_m04 wrote:
| > However, I think it is a problem which consumers can't buy
| themselves out of; pro-consumer legislation is required.
|
| You're right, but it's very hard for me to believe even halfway
| decent legislation will be passed. It's clear that the
| political process is not working for the common people, at
| least not in the US.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Then we're even more in agreement. Political corruption is at
| the root of so many of our problems today.
|
| Every time I see a mutual-aid solution for a societal problem
| or a duct-tape-and-glue coping mechanism (like the one
| espoused in this article), I like to remind myself of the
| fundamental problem.
| rapind wrote:
| > The lack of consumer-oriented legislation is the proximal
| cause for devices phoning home, spying on you, locking you out
| of the goods you've purchased (that is, dictating how you can
| and cannot use the good) and which resist the user's need to
| repair or extend.
|
| I wholeheartedly agree, and it snowballs. The way I see it is:
|
| 1. One time purchases are the least lucrative.
|
| 2. Subscription fees, and therefore control of device, are more
| lucrative than one time purchases.
|
| 3. Advertising (tracking, privacy invasion) is more lucrative
| even than subscription fees.
|
| 4. Both subscription and advertising combined is more lucrative
| than on their own.
|
| 5. There are a bunch of other upsell type models depending on
| the industry. This includes accessories, warranties, in-app
| purchases, etc. Hard to generically categorize these, but they
| are almost always more lucrative than one time purchases.
|
| It's easy to see where an unfettered market will gravitate over
| time.
|
| This could be solved via regulation if (big if) we had enough
| uncaptured legislators (and voters that held their feet to the
| fire), however we now have large swaths of the economy who's
| business models are complete non-starters if sufficiently
| regulated. So we'll at best end up with some inn-effective
| watered down regulation that has the appearance of doing
| something, and probably not for a while still.
|
| It's a slow moving disaster that everyone sees, but only a
| minority care enough about or even want to try and fix. You
| know, like artificially low interest rates.
| speeder wrote:
| I am a fan of a particular book series that is right now mostly
| self-published by the author.
|
| One of the few places selling his books legally to Brazillians
| was a site named "Fictionwise". I bought a lot of copies there, I
| would have bought physical copies if they existed, but that
| wasn't an option.
|
| The one day, Barnes and Noble bought Fictionwise, and just
| batantly said if you don't live in US you can't use the site
| anymore, and you won't be able to download the books you paid
| for, unless you are from US.
|
| Lesson hard learned, never again I bought an e-book. My kindle is
| just collecting dust.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Surely the lesson is to only pay for epubs and open platforms
| so it doesn't _matter_ if the vendor decides to stop serving
| you? Most of the ebooks I 've paid for were through Humble
| Bundle, and if HB closed shop tomorrow I'd still have my books
| locally.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I've currently got a B&N reader (essentially a Lenovo M10 HD)
| which I don't like all that much as an ereader - a bit heavy,
| battery life isn't good. I had a Kindle in the past and really
| didn't like that closed ecosystem. I'd like to get an epaper
| reader and was looking into Onyx Boox - but after reading this
| article that's off the table. What's left? Kobo?
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| Amazon has removed 1984, Onyx infringes on on GPL.
|
| Use Kobo or Pocketbook and be happy.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| It's funny how piracy solves pretty much all of the problems,
| while being the free variant.
| throwaway705132 wrote:
| > You don't own the book. You cannot lend the book. Renting
| Kindle-compatible eBooks from the library is arduous and
| limited by artificial constraints; you literally need to return
| a book before another person can rent it.
|
| The first thing I do when I buy or borrow a book from Amazon is
| strip the DRM. I don't share the DRM-free file with anyone -
| it's just for me - but it lets me read when and where I want.
| criddell wrote:
| The latest Kindle DRM still isn't reliably broken. It's a
| cat-and-mouse game now.
|
| If you don't care about typography improvements that come in
| the newest version, there are ways you can download the file
| in an older format that is thoroughly broken.
|
| I don't understand why some publishers ever agreed to let
| Amazon apply their DRM to book files. It locks their readers
| to Amazon and thus gives Amazon a tremendous amount of power
| over publishers. They should have at least demanded Amazon
| license their DRM to other bookstores and e-readers or, even
| better, never bothered with DRM.
|
| There are publishers on Amazon who do not use DRM. Tor is a
| big one, but there are others.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I know this post is talking about the ebooks themselves (format,
| DRM, retailers, etc.), but I'm continually frustrated by the lack
| of different e-ink format devices. I would love to get a large,
| low-power device that I can hang on my wall. There was so much
| promise for both the ebook format and device, but it seems to
| have fallen flat.
| politelemon wrote:
| While there is a lopsided focus on Amazon's ecosystem, I also
| want to point out that the epub market, and even public
| libraries' lending programs are DRM-laden. In many cases you have
| to install Adobe Digital Editions DRM.
|
| Further, author points out a lawsuit filed against Amazon from
| 2021, but I believe they're missing a crucial piece of history.
| The ebook ecosystem was originally poisoned by Apple who was
| found guilty of collusion; unfortunately by the time the
| challenges and ruling was complete, the damage had been done and
| publishers had decided to entrench themselves. We are seeing the
| repercussions of it today.
|
| What could have been a thriving, open ecosystem was ruined by
| corporate greed, and there is plenty of blame to go around.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > The biggest growth market in audio is podcasting, which is even
| more open than the music ecosystem.
|
| And an ecosystem that spotify and others (most recently the
| BBC...) have been trying to wall off like everything else.
|
| I had a very long, and surprisingly frustrating discussion with
| two non-technical friends about what a "podcast" really is, and
| the notion of an "open standard" doesn't figure into the average
| person's understanding of that word _at all_. I say
| "surprisingly" because of how visceral my reaction to this was.
| Spotify's move to wall off podcasts was the main driver for me to
| cancel my 10-year subscription. I'm bracing for the day the BBC
| News Quiz will become irrelevant because from what I gather it
| will be released as a real podcast only 30 days after the fact
| (if at all, we'll see?) and then what's the point?
| dont__panic wrote:
| I similarly killed my Spotify subscription largely because of
| their disgusting behavior of exclusifying podcasts.
|
| I think this is largely a PR thing: there are obvious benefits
| to open standards once you understand the pros and cons. But
| most people don't want to learn anything about how podcasts are
| distributed, or how messages are sent, and with corporations
| pushing people to proprietary solutions, most folks will
| just... do what the corporations tell them to do (see Google
| Chrome's adoption as well -- sure, it was a fast, sexy browser
| at first, and word of mouth helped the rep... but let's be
| honest, the real reason Chrome became the most used browser in
| the world is because grandma and mom and uncle bob all got
| annoyed to death on the Google Search, Google Maps, and GMail
| web pages that "the best experience is on Chrome").
|
| I've tried to explain to friends and family why I prefer open
| standards, like RSS, and they smile and nod but I know damn
| well they don't get it and think it's weird that I care so
| much. These are the same people who don't seem upset or annoyed
| that the Spotify subscription they _pay for_ constantly shoves
| podcasts in their face even if they don 't listen to podcasts
| and have no intention of ever listening to them. So I guess the
| answer is that most people just do not know enough, do not want
| to know more, and do not care enough to bother.
|
| Open standards are amazing, and the internet is going to
| fragment and fall apart if we keep drifting from them. Or, at
| the very least, turn your online experience into a dystopian
| nightmare where you can't control anything, even things you
| bought, in your own home, on the internet connection you pay
| for. We really need a good PR campaign to keep open standards
| alive and improving. Because they're really better than
| proprietary solutions that milk you for every last dollar and
| drop of attention. We just have to show the aforementioned
| grandma and mom and uncle bob.
| rr808 wrote:
| I really thought e-ink was going to be great but keep getting
| disappointed. I really prefer tablets with their color IPS
| screens now, some combination of the color with fast CPUs is much
| more appealing. PDFs look great as well as epubs. Reading outside
| in the park or on the beach really doesn't happen anyway thank
| goodness.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have an older Paperwhite and I rarely use it. If I'm
| traveling I probably will have my tablet with me anyway and if
| I'm hanging out waiting for someone I already have my iPhone
| with me and that's good enough for a short read.
| dole wrote:
| I feel like this is another major factor on the poor
| implementation and adoption of eBooks that doesn't get bitched
| about enough; the infernal eInk display patents. I shudder to
| think what kind of display world AND publishing world we'd have
| today if they hadn't sat on it for this long...
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| A 10 inch tablet is definitely streets ahead for PDFs, which
| are usually authored for A4ish paper anyway. Shrinking that
| down to 6 inches is pretty horrible, even with a hiDPI eink
| screen, and if you zoom and pan, the update speed is dreadful.
|
| However, I do far prefer reflowable text on an ereader. I just
| had to give up on the idea of one device fulfilling both use
| cases: you can't have a 100g, one handed, two week battery
| device that you can read in a sunbeam as well as a device that
| can handily render a PDF and allow smooth zoom, pan and
| searching.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Yes. And the smooth scrolling is a whole experience in its own.
| open-source-ux wrote:
| " _I really thought e-ink was going to be great but keep
| getting disappointed_ "
|
| That's interesting, I'm the opposite to you. I much prefer to
| reading books using an e-ink screen.
|
| I have a Kobo Clara HD e-ink reader. It has a 300 PPI screen
| which is very comfortable to read from. I can read for long
| periods without getting fatigued. I can't do that using IPS
| colour monitors or tablets, even the high-resolution screens.
| With an e-ink screen I can _read properly_ , not skim-read like
| I do on a monitor or tablet.
|
| My thoughts on whether an e-ink reader is suitable or not:
|
| - Small e-ink screens (e.g. 6 inch) are only suitable for
| paperback-sized, text-only books (fiction or non-fiction)
|
| - Small e-ink screens are not suitable for reading PDFs
|
| - A general rule of thumb when deciding whether to purchase an
| e-book: If the physical book is larger than a paperback size,
| then it is unlikely to be suitable for an e-ink screen (unless
| the book is text-only).
|
| - Small e-ink readers are not suitable for any books with
| complex layouts, layouts designed for larger books, or books
| with colour graphics: charts, diagrams, photos, etc. Amazon, in
| particular, encourage publishers to convert as many books as
| possible to Kindle format regardless of whether those books are
| suitable for e-ink screens.
| bhaak wrote:
| This blog post being on a .de url is somewhat ironic.
|
| The German ebook market is quite different. You can easily get
| DRM-free ePubs of most current books in German, most of the time
| only with a watermark. I don't know how large Amazon's market
| share is (I guess it is still very big) but you have other,
| viable options besides them.
|
| If you really want to read on a Kindle (it _is_ a very well
| designed piece of hardware after all, only the software is
| gruesome) jailbreaking it and putting koreader on it, is an
| option: https://github.com/koreader/koreader/releases/
|
| But also tell the publishers whose books you wanted to buy that
| you would have bought from them if you got it DRM free. I can't
| understand why so few publishers to this.
|
| Their margin would much bigger and Amazon's DRM is just token
| security. It's easily broken. Calibre does this automatically for
| crying out loud).
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The E-Ink world is running though much the same dynamic server
| and personal computing software did, and may approach that of the
| mobile computing world.
|
| Effectively, there's what hardware _can_ do, the economics of the
| hardware market itself, and what the content (software for PCs,
| books, articles, and audio for ebook players) producers and
| markets demand.
|
| In theory, and from a technical perspective, e-ink is pretty
| fantastic. I can carry well north of 1,000 books and articles in
| a form-factor the size of an A4 writing tablet. (The physical
| dimensions could of course be smaller, though that size works
| well with both human eyes and much printed material.) The
| capability to have multi-terrabyte storage currently exists (see
| high-end Apple iPad devices), and at a couple hundred TB, another
| few generations of storage development, you could literally carry
| the entire US Library of Congress around in your purse or satchel
| (roughly 200 TB at 5 MB per volume, ~42 million volumes).
|
| What we read and how and why has a huge impact on how the devices
| are used (I treat mine as a large reference library). And how the
| marketplace and property regime is structured has a huge impact
| on what the _permitted_ capabilities of devices are.
|
| Our fundamental problem is that the business model the book-
| publishing market was built on is no longer at all compatible
| with technological capabilities. It's possible to locate and
| access any of millions of books within a few seconds.
|
| What introduces obstacles to this is the mechanism of markets and
| property rights, neither of which now serve the interests of
| either readers _or_ authors.
|
| Information is a public good. It should be supported as same.
| This will create disruption, and the old giants will not go
| quietly. They will, I'm reasonably certain fall.
|
| I'm not sure what will rise in their place.
| Ishmaeli wrote:
| My problem with ebooks has always been the typos introduced by
| imperfect OCR.
|
| I look forward to wider availability of graphic novels on color
| e-ink displays, though.
| 30367286 wrote:
| >My problem with ebooks has always been the typos introduced by
| imperfect OCR.
|
| I'm the same. Unless it's a native epub, where it wasn't
| converted from print, it's frustrating.
|
| I wish there were some system whereby these typos could be
| corrected and the results committed to, i.e., a GitHub repo.
| Does any project like this exist?
| polskibus wrote:
| Just install koreader and be happy. I've been using it on my Kobo
| Aura One for several years, its pdf app is better than the native
| app. Koreader supports many devices.
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