Episode: 1144
Title: HPR1144: Who Owns Your Files
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1144/hpr1144.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:45:10

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Hi, this is Ahuka and welcome to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio. I have a topic I
want to talk about today that by the very nature of it means there's going to be a metric ton of links
in the show notes. So I'm just telling you that now so that you don't worry about it. The
be a lot of information here but I'm going to try and make sure that's easy for you to get it.
And what sparked this for me was an incident that as I'm recording this is fairly recent
and that is that a Norwegian kindle owner by the name of Lynn found one day that her kindle had been
wiped clean of all the books she had purchased from Amazon. And she called Amazon and said,
hey what's going on? And I don't think she called. I think she wrote and got a response that,
well your account's been linked to a known bad account. And she said, what do you mean? We
can't tell you that. Yeah it was pretty nasty. It was basically Amazon saying, we think you're a
bad person and we're not going to talk to you about it. We're just going to cancel your account
and wipe out all your books and your SOL here. Now this was not good. I can tell you that
Amazon, once they realized they had a public relations disaster on their hands,
did turn around and fix the problem and give her back her books.
But I think it exposes something and really what I want to get to here is not
whether Amazon made a mistake or this is proof of their absolute evilness. You know it could
have been either or both and I don't think that's particularly relevant. The key to me is that
Amazon could do this and the so-called owner could do nothing. According to Amazon's Kindle store
terms of use, Kindle content is licensed, not sold. Ha, that one again. So you know if you do
anything that they regard as being against their terms of use like removing the DRM and you know
I think for the people who are listening to Hacker Public Radio, removing DRM is not a big speed bump.
We all know how to do that and if you don't know, Google is your friend. It's not that hard to find out.
So you know you could try and do that. You could try and transfer your purchase to another
device or any of those things that you might think you could do with product that you own.
Amazon says in their terms of use that they can legally revoke your access to the Kindle store
and all of your Kindle content without any refund at all. Now Amazon did not invent this. Okay,
this particular form of evil is traceable to the software industry. They introduced the concept
take a look at those ulas that no one pays any attention to and you know for those of us in the
open source community, that's less of an issue. In fact, that's one of the reasons why I'm in the
open source community. But if you take a look at ulas, that's is basically the first sentence of every
ula of proprietary software says this software software is licensed not sold. Okay, note the
identical language. Now this is a questionable practice when done by the software industry.
Court cases have gone both ways and in the terms of in the case of Amazon, well done court case
could in fact overturn Amazon's use of this tactic because of a number of people have noted
when you are on the Amazon store, the button you click does not say get a license to this,
the button you click says buy this and I think we all have a pretty clear idea of what that means.
So that's the situation. Now what do we do about it? Okay, and that's really what I want to talk
about in this particular recording is what's the best way to respond to that? I think the best thing
we can do is we can create a scenario where companies that impose DRM and take your ownership away
from you even though you've given them your hard earned money get punished. And I think the only
way to do that is to not purchase from them. See if you buy an ebook from Amazon and then break
the DRM you haven't sent any kind of message to them. From Amazon standpoint it was well we put DRM
in the book and this guy bought it anyway. So obviously DRM is not an obstacle to selling stuff.
But if instead you patronize a seller that does not impose DRM then you send a signal that you
will pay for products that respect your freedom. And that's really where I want to go today. It is
increasingly possible where ebooks, audiobooks, and music are concerned to purchase these things
from companies that do not restrict your freedom that do not put DRM on their product or other
onerous ULA terms that simply treat you with respect. Now I do this. I patronize these places.
I have to tell you it's not a strategy that is completely without drawbacks. And so we want to
go into this with our eyes open. Number one, to a large degree it is the publishers and the
rights holders that insist on the DRM. Now some of them have discovered that removing DRM does
them no harm, may even do them some good. You may have heard of all of the different cases of
artists who put their work out there very often for free and found that their sales started going
up as a result of it. You know there was a famous case of an author who was caught by his publisher
putting his books out on torrent sites. But the thing is that he discovered the more he put it
out on torrent sites, the more money he made from sales. So he was doing it as a publicity thing
but his publisher was not amused. Now if a company does put stuff out without DRM and they do
start to see increased sales then you know it might start moving the rest of the industry to not
being quite so evil. Some you know what rights are we talking about? Well if I buy a CD
I can lend it to my friend, can't I? If I buy a book I can sell it to a used bookstore when I'm
done. When I die I can pass along my books and CDs to my ears. Now is an excellent chance they'll
end up just selling them all because they may have no interest in the books and the CDs that I've
accumulated. But the point is I have ownership rights to any physical product that allow me to
own the product and act accordingly. It's when those products become digital that you encounter
that phrase this product is licensed not sold and every time you see that what that means is all
of your rights have just been removed. Now because some rights holders have become enlightened
but others have not the main tradeoff you would encounter is that some products you might want to
purchase are not available in ways that respect your freedom. For some people that might be a
deal breaker. It is not for me. If I want to buy music there is so much good stuff available to
me. I could never come up with enough money to buy all of the music that I would want to buy.
There's a ton of it out there. I think music in fact has gone furthest at this point.
I think that the music industry after the whole debacle with shutting down Napster and
suing everyone in sight and watching their market share disappear is finally I don't know if
they've just given up or if they've started to realize that's a really stupid way to do things.
In fact a lot of music is available without DRM now. But not necessarily all of it.
If you wanted to buy the latest hit track that's on the top of the charts,
if that is owned by a record company that's one of the troglodites you might not be able to do it.
I mean I'm a curmudgeon and I happen to think that most of the music that is popular today is
crap anyway so I don't really mind. As long as I can find lots of music I like to listen to I am happy.
Same thing with books. Both ebooks and audio books for that matter. I can only read or listen to
so many books in the time I have. Where books are concerned time is more of a limit than money.
I can find more books than I have time for. Books that I really want to read or listen to
without giving up my rights. But again if I wanted to get the latest number one book on the
New York Times bestseller list I might not be able to get it in a format that respects my freedom.
Now for me I don't care. I figure it is their loss when I don't buy their book.
But this is the essential tradeoff you will encounter if you go for freedom.
You will have to occasionally accept that some products are just not available on those terms.
Now my hope is that if enough people do value freedom enough to deliberately make
those purchases this will send a two pronged market signal. Publishers that do not respect your
freedom will see sales go down and publishers that do respect your freedom will see sales go up.
As an example take a look at the recent humble ebook bundle.
That was all DRM free files that respect your freedom.
And it sold a ton. I read that if if digital copies were counted the same way physical copies
are every author in that bundle would have qualified as New York Times bestseller.
Just on the sales of the humble ebook bundle.
You have to think that that starts to get the attention of publishers.
Just as we saw earlier with the humble indie games that you know people are willing and
this is the thing I want to emphasize it is by purchasing these products that we send these
market signals. So the fact that people are willing to pay money for products that respect their
freedoms does send a signal in the marketplace. And at some point the companies that want to have
us as customers are going to realize that and take advantage of it.
Now how long is that going to take? Well you know for some for some publishers they have a
rectal cranial insertion problem. But let's see what our options are. So what I want to do now is
I just want to run through some of the ways you can get books both ebooks and audio books and music
in ways that respect your freedom. It turns out there's quite a few of them.
So first music. And the first question you have to ask what kind of music are you looking for?
If you're looking for music that is published by the major labels
you will be paying for it. No doubt about it. And as I said I think that's a feature not a bug
because it's by paying for it that we send these signals. But certainly none of the major labels
are giving their stuff away. But what has happened is that we've got a lot of very mainstream ways
of buying these tracks without DRM. The first one I want to mention is e-music
because they were doing this before it was fashionable. And I like their deal. Okay you get a
monthly subscription. It's like $12 a month is the most basic plan and then you buy tracks from
them and the tracks are 49 to 79 cents. They did it a little differently before but where you
could just buy tracks essentially all at the same price. But record labels have had this thing
about how they have to be able to charge different prices for different. So e-music has done that.
But they've got a lot of stuff from the record labels. There's a lot of back catalog available.
And you know you can you can acquire a whole lot of music there. Amazon okay when you get to
e-books and audio books you know Amazon sucks. But with music they are selling tracks from the major
labels without DRM. They tend to be a little more expensive than e-music. Amazon you're probably
going to be paying 99 cents more often. I haven't seen anything for 99 cents on e-music. In fact a
lot of my tracks are 49 cents. But if you're looking for that one track that you just have to have
and you can't find it on e-music chances are you will find it on Amazon and you know in addition
to that they offer online storage and streaming of your tracks. You can store all of your music
on their servers and then stream it. iTunes. I don't often say anything good about Apple but
this is one of the ones where they know they initially sold tracks with DRM but you know five
years ago they started getting away from that. They do not currently offer online storage and
streaming but the reports I've read and you know take it with a grain of salt is that that might
be coming in 2013. You know I wouldn't want to bet on that there are other reasons why I avoid
iTunes but I just mentioned that in case that's important. Google Play all right if you have an
Android phone like I do chances are you use Google Play a lot DRM free tracks from the record labels
online storage streaming all of that stuff and Ubuntu 1 also DRM free tracks online storage and
streaming. So you've got if you're interested in the major label music those are some options you
have. Now you might be interested in more of the creative commons indie music scene and there's
a number of these and from now on the sites that I've mentioned I'm going to put URLs in the show notes.
I'm not putting in URLs for iTunes and Amazon and stuff because you know chances are if you need
help finding them you've got other problems but the first one I'm going to mention is SoundCloud
and this is primarily music and audio sharing site but it a place that has creative commons stuff.
There is the free music archive that has lots of creative commons licensed music.
Jemendo that was it's one of the premier creative commons music sites. A lot of good tracks there.
A place called Bandcamp. I just learned about this one from my friend Craig Maloney who does the
open metal cast which is a podcast and he gets all of the tracks for that podcast from Bandcamp.
So it looks really interesting they've got a lot of creative commons music from bands that want
to build a relationship with their fans. I noticed for instance Amanda Palmer is on the Bandcamp site
so you know a lot of musicians have figured out that you know if you build a relationship with
your fans they'll start buying music merchandise what have you and it works a lot better than
trying to sue them all the time. So that's that's what we've got on the music scene.
Next I want to look at e-books. All right now e-books isn't quite as good as with music because you
are the mercy of individual publishers. Some of them are better than others.
The first thing I'm going to mention is Project Gutenberg. Now this is the granddaddy of DRM
free book sites. It goes back many many years and they primarily offer books that are in the public
domain so they're not subject to copyright anymore. Older books yeah because newer stuff is not
in the public domain. A lot of classics there so you know if you wanted to read Frankenstein or
Dracula, the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dickens, you know what have you. All of that stuff is in
the public domain and you can get that there. Bain Books B-A-E-N. Now this is a publisher that
specializes in the kind of the harder side of science fiction but they really understand the
new media landscape. They not only offer most of their books DRM free and in multiple formats
but they also have the Bain free library where they offer selected books free of charge.
The hope is that with the first taste free you will want to buy more and it works. I went
there to see what they had discovered that they had the entire collected works of one of my
favorite authors James H. Smith's for those of you who wonder and so I bought all of them from
you know they attracted me there with the free books and then you know got me to spend money on
stuff that they had. Another science fiction publisher Tor. They just announced that they were going
going DRM free a few months ago and a part of the statement was from the publisher was we've seen
other publishers doing this and they're making money. Therefore we're going to give it a try.
That's a market signal folks that's what we're talking about. Now you know a lot of these are
science fiction sites. I think maybe in science fiction the publishers might be a little more
forward looking. So another one I'm going to mention there is Angry Robot which is one of the
along with Bain one of the pioneers of selling DRM free books in the science fiction and fantasy
areas but it's not just that. Avon Romance. Now I have to confess I am not a romance novel reader
but Avon Romance I think is one of the larger publishers in that area and they just announced that
they are going to start experimenting with DRM free ebook sales. Then in terms of the technical stuff
O'Reilly Media. O'Reilly Media publishes many of the top technical books and they've got a
great that they sell you books without the DRM. Not only that but if you buy an ebook from them
and a new edition comes out generally you can upgrade to the new edition for pretty nominal fee.
I bought a book by Kevin Purdy on the Android telephone operating system and when the second
edition came out I think it cost me a buck as I recall to upgrade to the to the new version.
Not only that but with older books that are that they no longer see a need to keep in print
instead of just locking them up they do just the opposite they remove the copyright and put them
out as public domain so you know O'Reilly is good people. Another technical site a press
a lot of technical books and they have a program where if you've bought a print version of the book
you can get the ebook version for a reduced price which is pretty good. Packed publishing
PACKT another technical book publisher that's selling DRM free books. Then there's a site called
many books.net a lot of overlap overlap with Project Gutenberg but they also have some newer works
that have been made available. I saw Charlie Strasse's book Accelerando there and Charles is one of
the people that has pretty reasonable ideas on how to build a relationship with his fan. There's
a place called Fiction Wise although they're heavy on the science fiction and fantasy they've got
a lot of offerings and other genres reasonably priced in DRM free. Drive through Fiction
it's an interesting site they've also got comics and RPG games and all of that is DRM free
and then I mentioned individual authors and Charles Strasse was one. Corey Doctoro is another.
Corey has always offered his books. In fact what he does he puts them on the site and he won't
even take your money for the ebooks. It's just not worth his time. So he just puts it there and he
said look if you want to pay me buy a copy of my book and give it to your library.
Hasn't heard his sales at all. Now interestingly he just put out a book recently within the last
few months with co-authored with Charles Strasse called Rapture of the Nerds. Now I knew I could go
to his website and get it free. I immediately went to the Google Play Store and bought it because
you know when people are do right by you you want to do right by them. So that's a
it ebooks that's a pretty good you know you got a lot of options there for ebooks.
Audio books. I got to say this is still a bit of a disappointment.
The leader in this field is audible and they insist on DRM which is why I refuse to get an
account with them. I love audiobooks but I will not do business with audible as long as they're
putting DRM on everything and the strange thing is they're now owned by Amazon and when Amazon
bought them at the time Amazon was selling MP3s of music without DRM and we thought oh great
Amazon will make this reasonable. It hasn't happened and it's been so long at this point that
I don't know that it will. But there are some alternatives nonetheless. First one e music.
All right now I talked about them in terms of music tracks which is you know how they started.
But they also do audiobooks and that's a subscription plan. It's $10 a month and it gets you
generally one book. Now occasionally you'll you'll find books that require two audiobook credits
because they're bigger or the publisher's greedy or whatever and you'd have to buy an additional
thing to get that. But you know they've got a lot of stuff. I would say their list has been
growing. It's not as extensive as audibles but you know I've listened to Walter Isaacson's
biography of Albert Einstein. Alex Ross's book on 20th century music. The rest is noise.
GM Roberts' history of Europe you know there's a lot of good stuff that they have.
So check those out. It's a site called Potty O Books and this offers audio books in serialized
form. Much like podcasts that you know you get a file every week. Pretty heavy on the science
fiction and fantasy at this point but worth checking out. Scott Sigler and JC Hutchins are both
available here and those are a couple of authors that I think a lot of people think very highly
of who have been using the internet and the new media to build relationships with their fans.
Scott for instance still offers free audio versions of all of his books on his website
even though he is selling his books through a publisher. Now he's an example of someone who
used this to get his name out. As Cory Docturo famously said the biggest battle for any artist
is not piracy it's obscurity. So if you can get your name out that's a big deal. So Scott started
by putting stuff out for free on the web got some attention got people listening and he just
recorded them as podcasts basically and started putting them out and built an audience.
And so now he's got a publisher but you know he's still putting them out for free and I like that
and of course Cory Docturo. Now Cory offers his e-books free of charge the audio books
a little bit different and you got to give him that producing audio books is just more complicated
there's a lot more involved than producing an e-book which is you know once you've written the
book making an e-book is fairly simple. So he does ask money for this but he puts all of his
books as audio books on his site on a name your own price basis. He trusts his fans to do the right
thing and he's got a number of readers. Here's some of the people reading his books on the audio
books. Neil Gaiman, Will Wheaton, Spider Robinson, Leo Laporte. He even sells files and CDs in
Og format. Talk about respecting your freedom okay but if you know anything about Cory Docturo you
know he is all about freedom. So in conclusion I've gone on a little bit here. The alternatives
are not always perfect. Particularly with audio books your selection is less than if you're willing
to give your rights away but there are enough that you can always find stuff you will enjoy.
Second you know I probably missed any number of things. The marketplace is changing rapidly
and I don't know everything that's going on. I just wanted to demonstrate that there are a
sufficient number of viable alternatives that you don't have to sacrifice your freedom.
So if you do get caught by DRM it's because you chose to.
A third well some of these offerings are free of charge. That's not the point. I selected items on
the basis of respecting your rights and freedoms and most of them do in fact require payment.
That's how we send the signal. That's how Patrick Nielsen Hayden of Tor Books says
you know we're going to do this because we see other companies being financially successful.
So we'll try going without DRM. We don't move the market by trying to find ways not to pay.
We move the market by voting with our dollars for products that respect us and I hope I've given
you enough ideas that you can help us to move to a DRM free world. And so with that I'm going to
sign off. This is Ahuka and don't forget to support Free Software. Thank you.
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