Cory Doctorow vs Apple DRM
p2pnet news view | DRM:- “I’m not even going to try to sell my short story collection audiobook downloads,” says Cory Doctorow on craphound.
How come?
Stupid DRM.
DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) consumer control is dumb and anyone using it is beating a very dead horse.
It’s simple. Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied. Period. Full stop.
Now, “In my latest Publishers Weekly column, I explain why I’m not even going to try to sell downloads of the audiobook of the my forthcoming experimental short story collection, With a Little Help,” says Doctorow.
“Apple won’t carry it without DRM; Audible won’t carry it without an abusive EULA; and all the major digital delivery systems are crufty and needlessly complicated.”
It’s no surprise that Apple wants DRM. After all, it practically invented it.
Doctorow goes on >>>
For my next book, Makers, we tried again. This time Audible agreed to carry the title without DRM. Hooray! Except now there was a new problem: Apple refused to allow DRM-free audiobooks in the Apple Store — yes, the same Apple that claims to hate DRM. Okay, we thought, we’ll just sell direct through Audible, at least it’s a relatively painless download process, right? Not quite. It turns out that buying an audiobook from Audible requires a long end-user license agreement (EULA) that bars users from moving their Audible books to any unauthorized device or converting them to other formats.
And, “Instead of DRM, they accomplish the lock-in with a contract,” her says, stating:
“I came up with what I thought was an elegant solution: a benediction to the audio file: ‘Random House Audio and Cory Doctorow, the copyright holders to this recording, grant you permission to use this book in any way consistent with your nation’s copyright laws.’This is a good EULA, I thought, as it stands up for every word of copyright law. Random House was game, too. Audible wasn’t. So we decided not to sell through Audible, which I was intensely bummed about, because I really like Audible.”
On Publishers Weekly,”I used to be a huge Audible customer,” says Doctorow, but, “When I switched operating systems, however, I discovered that Audible’s DRM wouldn’t work on my Linux computer.”
He continues >>>
I’ve spent thousands of dollars on my Audible collection, so I set out to convert it all to MP3. That required playing each book in real-time through the computer’s sound card, recapturing it with the AudioHijack program, and then saving it as an MP3. It took a solid month of running three old Macs 24/7 to get all of my audiobooks out of Audible’s proprietary wrapper and into the universal MP3 format so that I could take my investment with me to a new digital home.
Of course, I probably could have “pirated” the same audiobooks more quickly — after all, it’s not hard to find cracked Audible titles on the Internet. This is why I can’t understand why publishers or writers opt for DRM. It clearly doesn’t stop real pirates from copying, and it locks good customers into the DRM vendor’s ecosystem. I wouldn’t sell my books through a bookseller who demanded readers only enjoy them on a chair from Wal-Mart; why would I sell my audiobooks on terms that insist my listeners only use devices approved by a DRM vendor?
Doctorow adds, “for the record, I’d put my books in Audible and the iTunes Store in a hot second if only they’d sell them on the same terms that I’d be willing to buy them: no DRM and no license agreement except ‘don’t violate copyright law’.”
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craphound – Stupid DRM, abusive EULAs, hopeless ecommerce, December 10, 2009
Publishers Weekly – With a Little Help: Can You Hear Me Now?, December 7, 2009
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December 14th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I’m curious why Cory would have thought the clause, “[...]grant you permission to use this book in any way consistent with your nation’s copyright laws” wouldn’t have been riddled with problems in the first place.
All that would seem to do is toss any supposed rights you could have under a copyright agreement, and maintain the problems everyone else in the process is going to cause, citing copyright laws in their country. Either you get a solid agreement that suits you (yeah, as if!), or you toss the whole copyright thing out the window (recommended).
December 14th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
The article subtext reads “…and an ‘abusive’ Audible EULA”. I thought for a moment that meant they forcibly played an audio of someone reading out the EULA, and when they got to the uppercase text they started shouting it.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management. Some people may feel that it means Digital Restrictions Management, as per your article, but it does not.
December 14th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
Hi Don:
DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management, as per my article. Some people may feel that it means Digital Rights Management, but it does not.
Cheers!
December 14th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
@Jon:
December 14th, 2009 at 8:45 pm
The author has no idea what he is talking about. Jobs wanted no DRM from the beginning but was forced to implement it by the publishers. The only reason there is no DRM on a lot of iTunes content now is because jobs kept pushing the issue. This is quite well known. So blaming Apple is stupid and uninformed. If you had actually read and comprehended Doctorow’s article you will see he said Audible refused to sell it without DRM not Apple.
Saying Apple practically invented DRM is extremely uninformed. As in idiotic. If you want to publish an anti-apple screed at least get your facts right.
December 14th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Apple is the king of proprietary software and hardware. drm follows right behind that.
December 15th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Post title – Cory Doctorow vs Apple DRM
Times the word “Apple” was used – 5.
Times the word “Audible” was used – 13.
I’ll widen this to add the word “iTunes” to “Apple” – 6.
WTF?
This rant is incorrectly titled. Period.
December 15th, 2009 at 6:08 am
Well, Cory, you’re not only wrong, but you make yourself look like a moron by defending your stupidity. Dave said what you wrote was a rant. It’s not. It’s idiocy pretending to be important. Perhaps when you get out of 8th grade you’ll get a real job.
December 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
Cory ‘stampfootthrowpaddytrashnursery’ Doctorow
LOL is this the best you can offer your reader in logical thinking?
It’s a perverse universe for sure where bottom feeders try to skim the cream.
December 15th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Jon!
Did you upset the Macophiliacs again??
Bad boy!
