Nook is dead in the UK, and customers who bought books thinking they might actually own them are now being told they might be able to still access some of them once the Nook store implodes, due to a partnership with “award-winning Sainsbury’s Entertainment on Demand”.
[…]
…this again showcases how DRM merrily punches in the face consumers who try to do the right thing. If you spent money on Nook books, chances are you’ll lose at least some of them now. Had you torrented those books, you’d still have copies.
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Purchasing digital shouldn’t be a glorified extended rental. It’s no wonder many people now opt out of paying for media at all.
Yep. Once again, DRM screws users. Google can tell you how to get rid of DRM on some kinds of ebooks. Not that I’m suggesting it, but to make sure you can read the books you paid for, it’s worth considering your options…
Yes, DRM sucks for consumers. But were I part of the content producing industry, I’d be all for DRM. The refusal of the music industry to scrap the non-DRM CD format in the mid/late ’90’s and take a serious short-term hit is what decimated their business.
But that’s not my real point here. Instead, it’s about how MOST paid ‘bits’ are tied to a particular hardware platform. Buy a video game, and the console maker goes out of business or stops supporting that particular platform, and you may be SOL. Same for computer software. Buy a lot of Mac software, and suddenly find out it won’t run on your new Mac once your old one dies and you upgrade; again SOL.
In short, this isn’t advice not to buy DMR ‘bits’. Instead, it’s to choose your platform vendors VERY carefully. For example I buy digital rights to all my books and video from Amazon, because their interests and my interests seem closely aligned in keeping those digital rights accessible to me over the long-term. I don’t feel that alignment with ANY other vendor, including Apple.
And for software, I’ve always wanted to switch from Apple to Microsoft, since they used to have a serious commitment to letting legacy software run, although that seems to be going away these days. (Never made the switch, because I couldn’t justify the horrendous downsides of Windows just for that one big advantage.)
Of course, if that’s not enough for you, there are always physical video discs and dead-tree books…
(And for computer software, I’ve long strived to use software that keeps my user-generated data in some sort of open-source format, so that even if I lose my software, I’ll still have my own data. My only exception is Microsoft Office, since I think Microsoft’s interests and mine are aligned in keeping those formats readable in near-perpetuity. I’ve got Word docs generated in the early ’90’s that I can still use. And even so, I started exporting my most crucial docs to RTF as backup a long time ago.)
Yes, I buy ebooks from Amazon, more because their software runs on all platforms, and the Kindle is superior to the iPod. I would never have bought a Nook, because it didn’t seem like there was longevity.
But one thing that should be done is making it possible – requiring that it be possible – to transfer licenses for such content. With video games, it’s more complicated, but with ebooks, as long as they’re sold by another vendor, the publishers should ensure that users don’t get screwed like this. It’s not clear what percentage of books will be affected, and one can imagine that the lawyers will come out if there’s more than just a handful that cannot be transferred.
Yes, DRM sucks for consumers. But were I part of the content producing industry, I’d be all for DRM. The refusal of the music industry to scrap the non-DRM CD format in the mid/late ’90’s and take a serious short-term hit is what decimated their business.
But that’s not my real point here. Instead, it’s about how MOST paid ‘bits’ are tied to a particular hardware platform. Buy a video game, and the console maker goes out of business or stops supporting that particular platform, and you may be SOL. Same for computer software. Buy a lot of Mac software, and suddenly find out it won’t run on your new Mac once your old one dies and you upgrade; again SOL.
In short, this isn’t advice not to buy DMR ‘bits’. Instead, it’s to choose your platform vendors VERY carefully. For example I buy digital rights to all my books and video from Amazon, because their interests and my interests seem closely aligned in keeping those digital rights accessible to me over the long-term. I don’t feel that alignment with ANY other vendor, including Apple.
And for software, I’ve always wanted to switch from Apple to Microsoft, since they used to have a serious commitment to letting legacy software run, although that seems to be going away these days. (Never made the switch, because I couldn’t justify the horrendous downsides of Windows just for that one big advantage.)
Of course, if that’s not enough for you, there are always physical video discs and dead-tree books…
(And for computer software, I’ve long strived to use software that keeps my user-generated data in some sort of open-source format, so that even if I lose my software, I’ll still have my own data. My only exception is Microsoft Office, since I think Microsoft’s interests and mine are aligned in keeping those formats readable in near-perpetuity. I’ve got Word docs generated in the early ’90’s that I can still use. And even so, I started exporting my most crucial docs to RTF as backup a long time ago.)
Yes, I buy ebooks from Amazon, more because their software runs on all platforms, and the Kindle is superior to the iPod. I would never have bought a Nook, because it didn’t seem like there was longevity.
But one thing that should be done is making it possible – requiring that it be possible – to transfer licenses for such content. With video games, it’s more complicated, but with ebooks, as long as they’re sold by another vendor, the publishers should ensure that users don’t get screwed like this. It’s not clear what percentage of books will be affected, and one can imagine that the lawyers will come out if there’s more than just a handful that cannot be transferred.