I'm very disturbed by the steady erosion of ownership that has been happening for the past few years. Subscription models are an attractive way to get some digital content for a low price, whether it's music, software, movies, or books—but the internet has a notoriously short memory, and I fear that we're condemning ourselves to becoming cultural goldfish.
I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf and are there for me any time I want to revisit them. Heck, I even have software from back then because I never got rid of my Apple II.
Of course, there are emulators, and Spotify probably has 60%-70% of the records that are in my collection, and I can find A Wrinkle in Time on the Kindle. But how long is that guaranteed to be the case? And how can I be sure that the digital simulacrum are really the same as the originals, if the originals are gone?
For the moment, it's an easy answer—just don't use the subscription services, and keep owning things. But will that always be an option? Why should ownership continue to be an option ten, twenty, or thirty years from now, when it's so much more attractive to companies to rent their products to you for a constant stream of monthly income?
Will books end up getting unskippable "updates," or even being deleted at the whim of the publishers or Amazon one day?
I can fully understand your sentiment, and to some degree emotionally connect with it, but rationally: my entire bookshelf of computer science and literary classics has gone untouched since my initial read through the vast majority of books.
I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, moving books is an awful experience).
This is probably an expression of what I've been feeling in general as of late, but I am extremely happy with the "subscriptionification" of media that's been happening. Spotify's huge library is a net win for me, as opposed to collecting albums for them to just collect dust. For me, revisiting what I used to listen to in high school by over-hearing someone's playlist has a far stronger emotional reaction than revisiting it by walking past a bookshelf.
Regarding stuff disappearing ten, twenty, thirty years from now: my experpience has been the opposite. The Internet has been getting better and better and archiving content of yesterday, and has provided better and better access to it.
My personal lean has been to own less stuff in general, which includes books, music and media in general. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited about Kindle Unlimited.
I hear you on this, and am in sympathy with your point. But this bothers me less than Amazon selling Kindle books does, because at least this is clearly marked as rental.
All your points are just as true about the Kindle books that Amazon sells to people -- you lose the right of first sale(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine), so you can't re-sell or lend your books; they're tied to a specific DRM scheme; they can be modified or "turned off" remotely without your consent; etc. -- only Amazon charges you a flat fee, as if you were actually purchasing it the way you purchase a physical book, which you aren't. You're just purchasing a limited license to access its content via specific devices.
If they're going to be in the business of only selling limited licenses, I'd rather they do it via a subscription model, where every customer will understand that they'll lose access if they stop paying, than via a model designed to look and feel as much as possible like buying a real book. It's at least more honest that way.
The purchasing model that amazon has isn't ownership either, it's rental with an indeterminate end date. Any time you cannot resell something or your children cannot inherit something, you don't own it. In some ways this kindle unlimited subscription is more honest, because it doesn't pretend to be something it isn't.
I totally get what you're saying, but as I've gotten older all of my physical stuff (including books and music) has accumulated to the point where it's become more of a burden and a logistical PITA than a source of pride or pleasure to me.
Up until my mid-30s, I was all about collecting and accumulating things, but since then (~10 years) I've been much more focused on minimizing the amount of physical things I own. The sheer volume of it became oppressive to me. Among other things, I stick to digital media whenever possible. I still own way too much stuff but at least it's kind of under control.
It's all trade-offs, like just about anything in life. I give up some nice things by avoiding physical media, including all of the concerns you (and everyone else) are raising, but at this point in my life, what I get in return far outweighs what I'm losing. This applies to physical vs. digital media, and also to subscription vs. ownership models for digital goods. The weighting pros and cons for these things are different for different people.
Not just ownership, but rights in general, and even worse: the concept of individual independence and empowerment.
There has been a consistent trend to portray the digital/online realm as a world apart from the "real" world, rather than, as is the truth, just another facet of it. This has facilitated massive erosions of civil liberties in the online world. Government censorship is the norm on the internet, not the exception. Warrantless monitoring and trespass on private systems and data by the government and law enforcement is also rampant, with few safeguards. In a similar vein, the protections of the rule of law and the criminal justice system are completely thrown out the window in many circumstances when it comes to the online realm. You can be effectively punished online merely due to an allegation (i.e. DMCA takedown), and often only arbitration is available as a remedy, erasing centuries of traditional protection for individual rights through the court system.
And that's aside from the ongoing war over DRM and the desire of major content aggregators to deny ownership rights and privileges to customers.
Add to that the growing reliance on paternalistic relationships with large corporations and business entities, eroding individualism. People rely on their ISPs and their cell carriers for access to the online world, a major aspect of modern business and private life. Unlike phone service these service providers have much greater leeway to decide what you can and cannot do online and have increasingly taken advantage of consumers. People rely on major services (gmail, hotmail, facebook, twitter, etc.) for their primary means of communication, services that in many cases border on unregulated monopolies. And at work people are increasingly dependent on their employers to provide medical and dental coverage, retirement savings, and so forth.
> ... when it's so much more attractive to companies to rent their products to you for a constant stream of monthly income?
Which companies are you thinking of here? Amazon is still trying to drag book publishers into participating in this, and hasn't had much luck yet. Video subscriptions are more miss than hit. Spotify is the most mature, and (by your estimate) only has 60%-70% of what you want. And there's all kinds of complaints that Spotify doesn't result in the same kind of income that record sales did. I don't think the companies that own the products do like this model.
The reason they do it at all is because it's an effective way to compete with illegal downloading. The $10/month doesn't represent the actual value of the product (which for me at least is probably higher), but seems to represent about what the market will tolerate before it goes back to just torrenting stuff.
And that brings up a really good thing about these services: they address the market-efficiency losses of the copyright regime without needing to either break the law or change it.
For example, suppose the only way to get an ebook is to buy it, and each book costs $X. There are a small number of ebooks you value at more than $X, you buy those ones, and (in economic terms) positive value is created by each exchange.
But there is a much larger number of ebooks you value at more than $0 but less than $X. Those ones you would pay money for, and positive value would be created by that exchange, but the regime of "sell each ebook for $X" doesn't allow that value to be created.
Piracy fully reclaims that value, but has its own problems. All-you-can-eat monthly services also fully reclaim the value (as long as you can afford them and they allow the use you had in mind), but in a way that is mutually agreeable to everybody involved. That makes them a good thing to have around.
The real problem you're bringing up is that all-you-can-eat services don't allow some good and important uses, like saving stuff for later. But so far I'm not seeing any indication that they are replacing buy-it-and-own-it services -- or that content owners have any reason to want them to.
i had the same shock you're displaying when i came to the us.
"what do you mean your bank own your home? what if it goes under?"
"what? you pay your car every month, are required to pay the most expensive insurance, and in the end the dealership still owns your car?"
... my guess is that in America anything that makes you pay a little less will have consumers. nobody cares about a bookcase full of old paper as you do. also i think that when the thing matures past the amateurs like EA we will see companies buying rights from other just like it happens with mortgage. apple went under with its flopped Newton watch? amazon buys all its drm licenses and continue to give you access to your media in hopes that your new purchases will come her way.
Half of what I read as a kid came from the library (and by "the library" I mean any one of at least 7 systems) and went back a week later. Half the remainder came from thrift stores and was left back in there in boxes when we moved. How common is it to have a personal physical copy of all your childhood possessions? What's the demographic variation?
Other than some software, as far as I know you still have the option to "own" (ignoring copyright issues for the moment) most digital content. By "own" I mean "make a one-time purchase and then download the media onto your own device" as opposed to "pay a regular subscription fee and stream the media to your device."
I think the "erosion" you observe is simply the phenomenon that many people genuinely prefer subscription models to one-time purchases, or perhaps they prefer to not manage their own files, syncing, etc. I don't think there's anything bad about that.
I think there is something to be said about the environmental impacts of ownership. As much as we love to own things, it isn't sustainable for the environment.
As far as culture goes, I'd like to see mass archiving. I'm unclear whether what the Library of Congress does suffices, at least for the US, but a copy of everything should exist somewhere.
As far as personal access goes, I hear you, but that's how I took myself into near-hoarder territory with media.
I'm not too worried about subscription services becoming the only game in town. As long as some people will pay for permanent access of individual titles, or for value-adds like movie extras, someone will sell them.
The bigger worry is the yanking of the access to stuff you've "bought," of course. But I suspect the first time someone with power either gets hurt or even scared by a DRM-related action, we'll get some mass decisions that come down to "if it looks like a sale and acts like a sale, it's a sale."
You may or may not be able to resell or transfer it (legally), but I seriously doubt the courts will stand for someone arbitrarily taking it away. EULA or no EULA, there's a pretty fat implied promise there, and "buy" is used all over the place in language. That alone would be enough for the EU's courts to seriously hammer anyone who switched it up for "rent".
The early software-related decisions around owning "licensed" copies were in the infancy of digital licensing, and there's plenty of room for reversal there. The VHS time-shifting/personal backup decision is much more in line with what I'd expect the theme to be over time.
In particular, I expect format shifting to become legal as soon as a format shift or service closure screws someone with money/influence.
Right now, the only real-world examples are video game console libraries, and they just don't garner the same sympathy because everyone's predisposed to the idea that software ages out with tech shifts. It'll be when iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, one of those does it that we'll see action.
And it is all or none. If you fall on bad times and can't pay the subscription, you cannot have any books. Unlike your owned collection which you can reduce down to books you love. If you are low on cash, you cannot save and buy a book - you have to be subscribed all the time.
If subscription becomes the dominant mode of book consumption, it would be disastrous. As an add on service, it is nice. Especially in the areas without strong library systems.
However, I think you're also underestimating the risk of all or parts of your stuff disappearing or getting destroyed in a house-burglary, fire, flood or another kind of disaster.
I'm not entirely sure what the actual risks are, but my gut feeling is that there's a higher chance of losing what you physically own than for it to disappear or get 'updated' as a digital / for-rent product.
I learnt to read before attending school by literally reading through my parents' bookshelves, the simpler books at first of course … today, I still have many books on shelves but all never books are digital and invisible, especially to children. In addition, digital content is not made for use in a family, it is usually linked to a single account …
Any time I see something that is both interesting and obscure, like an article or a podcast, I have a tendency to packrat it. I have a USB RAID drive full of that stuff. It's a habit I've had for a while and it comes from exactly what you say: the Internet has a short memory.
You can even have your cloud-like experiences with software like Plex and Calibre (though I like Plex better, it won't do plain ebooks). Audio books work well enough on Plex, and you can even share the server with friends if you want.
When that holographic storage media finally comes around, we'll just store a full copy of all of human knowledge in our pockets, and this won't really be a problem anymore.
That's one possible solution at any rate.
Shall we also get off thine lawn? Having big stacks of books in your home is a relatively recent phenomenon. People used to borrow them from the library or circulate them from person to person. Mass availability of inexpensive books has only been with us for 100 years or so.
How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a change will be far, far easier with digital publications than it ever was with paper.
I love the idea, but the selection is not good enough (for me) yet. I keep an Amazon wishlist as a "reading queue" and none of the 60 books (technical, business, pop-psych) in it were available on Kindle Unlimited.
I usually buy 2-3 Kindle books a month at around $9/per, so I would definitely use this service if the selection improves. I kind of wonder if Amazon could get away with charging $9/month for any book they have and just cash-in on folks that "spend" less than that a month.
To all the "this is just a 10 dollar library card", I ask you this: if library books are the way to go, why do people buy endless amounts of books from amazon. Amazon became successful by selling books. Audible is another successful company that offers a feature that according to you, can be achieved at a library. Clearly libraries are missing something or else we'd be using them more. Maybe it's one click instant access. Maybe it's the larger selection, or that lack of having to wait. Regardless, it's not the same.
This of course all depends on which country you live in. Where I am from libraries already offer ebook and audiobooks and university libraries have bought licenses from most academic publishers, so that students can download most of their course material and almost all journal articles free of charge. Also all libraries are a 15 minute bike ride away. All of them combined carry a higher quality selection of books than Amazon with their 600.000 could possibly have. Of course they probably won't have some obscure medieval vampire romance novel.
The only books I ever ordered from Amazon were books in foreign languages and academic books that Amazon apparently prints on demand on behalf of publishers. Books in my mother tongue can only be sold at a fixed price set by the publisher, so there is little incentive of buying from a company that mistreats their warehouse workers.
I'm surprised by all the comments in this thread saying that you have to physically go to your library during their open hours to borrow a book. Most libraries I know offer digital downloads through the Overdrive app.
I regularly borrow audiobooks and ebooks from the library with a couple of taps on my iPhone.
> Maybe it's one click instant access. Maybe it's the larger selection, or that lack of having to wait.
Yes. Yes. Yes. As well as book condition/cleanliness, and being able to keep books forever.
My local library is also only open from 10am-6pm, and closed sundays, so unless I want to take time off of work, my only time to go to the library is on a Saturday afternoon. Usually when I buy a book via Amazon, it's spontaneous because of a recommendation. I'll have a friend recommend me a book. Click, it's ordered and shipping. I'll see a book recommended several times in the same HN thread, check reviews for it, click, ordered and shipping. I don't really remember the book's info in order to look up later while at a library.
Currently I have no idea how to check if a book is available at my branch or a nearby branch. I tried going to the library website and clicked their "check availability" link, and I was brought to a calendar for conference room reservations. Amazon is just a much more polished experience than my library. So yeah, I'll buy a book instead of getting it free from the library.
It reminds me of when people say that services like Netflix, Spotify, Steam, etc are cutting down on piracy because in many cases, they provide a simpler experience than the piracy does. Amazon and books (hell, Amazon and most products) provides that same simplification over a cheaper/free distributor.
Libraries have fixed locations you must travel to, and limited collections (rarely more than one copy of each book) of aging content (limited range of latest material). If you want something in particular, good chance it's not available.
Amazon will, from the convenience of any computer (mobile devices included), ship you books from a vast & nearly inexhaustible collection at acceptable costs.
Now the Unlimited plan brings you both for $10/mo: beyond-library-scale of practically free books delivered instantly, and bringing you in close proximity to darn near every book ever written available at modest cost in 2 days.
Heck, many subscribers would pay more than $10/mo just in gas driving to the library.
Can anyone offer any guidance on the audiobook aspect of this? What is a "Kindle book with narration"? If I'm an audible customer... doesn't this seem like a far better deal? Their page seems very light on details for audiobooks.
It can be pretty fucking annoying to have these laws in place (they do have their merits, but... that's a completely different debate), but I can understand Amazon not having worked out all the legal issues to go worldwide with this
Given that Amazon royally screws independent authors (not being a publisher, I can't speak to whether they screw larger publishers too) who want to price their works about $9.99 (if you're after a vertical market, Amazon hates you) I can only imagine they'll extend the screwing to authors who won't also make their works available via Unlimited.
(How do they screw us? They cap the 70% less download fee royalty at the $9.99 level. In order to make more than $7 (less download fee) per sale, you need to price a book at over $20. So if I sell a $20 book on Amazon, BN, and iBooks -- I get twice as much from BN and iBooks as I do from Amazon. To make the same royalty from Amazon, I need to charge $40, but Amazon won't let me do that. So I pulled my book from Amazon and revenues increased.)
If I have a digital copy, it's important for me to have a physical copy, as well.
At different times, I prefer different media.
Until I can buy a book and get a digital version for either free or for a (very) small added fee, I'm just not getting on board with kindles (or whatever e-reader device).
Amazon did roll out some version of this book+ebook service a few months ago, but it included such a small number of volumes that it was virtually worthless.
It's dependent on publishers. At any time you can ask Amazon to search through your _entire_ history of Amazon print purchases and it will give you free access to the Kindle versions, if the publisher enabled this feature.
Perhaps my reading behavior is atypical - but "Hyperion", "I Robot", "Ringworld", "Stranger in a Strange Land", "Dune" - none of the books I read were in the Kindle Unlimited List, and they were all in the Vancouver Public Library.
I love the concept - but I need at least a 50% hit rate on the books I read before i'll be willing to pay $120/year to use it.
Well, I looked up a small handful of books I have been interested in reading next, and while all are available on Kindle, none are on the Unlimited program.
So let's see... 10 bucks for books, 10 bucks for Spotify, 10 bucks for Netflix. That's $360 a year. It kind of adds up, doesn't it? :)
When I was little I went to the local library. There I had unlimited access to movies, music and books, for free. Sure, it's hard to compare the music collection to Spotify. But at the time I was content. And I actually think I'd still prefer both the movie collection and the book collection of the library (especially as my native tongue is Swedish).
It looks like I was incorrect when I predicted that the ebooks would only be available on true Kindle devices (and not for example the Kindle app on iPad).
Unfortunately it looks like the Lending Library (which comes with Prime membership) still only works on true Kindle devices. I wonder if this is a licensing issue, or just a deliberate choice on Amazon's part.
This service would have the extremely interesting effect of replacing itself with all your reading sources. Consider: Given a choice between buying a book elsewhere and reading it here, you're going to choose the latter because it's free. But also, if you normally read a book per month, since you're paying for it whether you read or not, you'd have to basically read more from here to be able to make it "worth it". So given a choice between buying a book elsewhere or reading a different one here, you're still going to lean towards reading it here. Pretty smart!
If you're in a rich Western country, the time you spend reading a book probably has an opportunity cost much greater than the cost to acquire rights to read the book. Why would you spend 10 hours with a book whose marginal cost is $0, when you could pay $10 and spend those ten hours with a better book?
I think Amazon's always done a pretty good job of rolling out new services, but this is a train wreck. About 3 minutes after I signed up for the free trial, I cancelled it. 99% of the books are the same type of low-quality, spammy nonsense that I was already getting free through Prime.
I was hoping for something along the lines of Safari Books, only with a much wider range of categories. As hard as it might be to imagine, the selection of books here is far far worse than Netflix's selection of movies. That's pretty fucking sad.
this is the first comment in this thread that is not predicting the future. there is some 200 i just scrolled past above.
yeah, amazon prime content is anything but prime. odd seasons of old series. movies that even late night open tv is embarrassed of showing, and now teen romances.
I think the audiobooks part is going to be more interesting than the rest. I spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, so listening to unlimited audiobooks is something that might be amazing.
As an author with two books enrolled in KDP select, I didn't know they'd be included in Kindle Unlimited. It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on sales.
Do you know how you and the publisher are compensated in this situation? I'm assuming there is some sort of royalty stream coming back to you? (I'm not asking for details, just generalities).
Is this the same as the Lending Library you'll get with Prime, where you can get 1 book for free per month if you're Prime customer? If so, the offer in Germany is absolutely terrible. I found only 2 books in that library, because they count endless self-published garbage-titles to their library of "600,000+" titles.
From the comments here, I assume that the model is similar in the US and 9.99$ is only so cheap, because there's mostly junk in the library.
[+] [-] jaysonelliot|11 years ago|reply
I have books and records from my youth that sit on my shelf and are there for me any time I want to revisit them. Heck, I even have software from back then because I never got rid of my Apple II.
Of course, there are emulators, and Spotify probably has 60%-70% of the records that are in my collection, and I can find A Wrinkle in Time on the Kindle. But how long is that guaranteed to be the case? And how can I be sure that the digital simulacrum are really the same as the originals, if the originals are gone?
For the moment, it's an easy answer—just don't use the subscription services, and keep owning things. But will that always be an option? Why should ownership continue to be an option ten, twenty, or thirty years from now, when it's so much more attractive to companies to rent their products to you for a constant stream of monthly income?
Will books end up getting unskippable "updates," or even being deleted at the whim of the publishers or Amazon one day?
[+] [-] yan|11 years ago|reply
I keep looking around and I'm not sure that I'm happy with the "ownership" aspect of books, or a lot of stuff in general. (Having moved three times during the last six years, moving books is an awful experience).
This is probably an expression of what I've been feeling in general as of late, but I am extremely happy with the "subscriptionification" of media that's been happening. Spotify's huge library is a net win for me, as opposed to collecting albums for them to just collect dust. For me, revisiting what I used to listen to in high school by over-hearing someone's playlist has a far stronger emotional reaction than revisiting it by walking past a bookshelf.
Regarding stuff disappearing ten, twenty, thirty years from now: my experpience has been the opposite. The Internet has been getting better and better and archiving content of yesterday, and has provided better and better access to it.
My personal lean has been to own less stuff in general, which includes books, music and media in general. So needless to say, I'm pretty excited about Kindle Unlimited.
[+] [-] smacktoward|11 years ago|reply
All your points are just as true about the Kindle books that Amazon sells to people -- you lose the right of first sale(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine), so you can't re-sell or lend your books; they're tied to a specific DRM scheme; they can be modified or "turned off" remotely without your consent; etc. -- only Amazon charges you a flat fee, as if you were actually purchasing it the way you purchase a physical book, which you aren't. You're just purchasing a limited license to access its content via specific devices.
If they're going to be in the business of only selling limited licenses, I'd rather they do it via a subscription model, where every customer will understand that they'll lose access if they stop paying, than via a model designed to look and feel as much as possible like buying a real book. It's at least more honest that way.
[+] [-] Joeri|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwfunk|11 years ago|reply
Up until my mid-30s, I was all about collecting and accumulating things, but since then (~10 years) I've been much more focused on minimizing the amount of physical things I own. The sheer volume of it became oppressive to me. Among other things, I stick to digital media whenever possible. I still own way too much stuff but at least it's kind of under control.
It's all trade-offs, like just about anything in life. I give up some nice things by avoiding physical media, including all of the concerns you (and everyone else) are raising, but at this point in my life, what I get in return far outweighs what I'm losing. This applies to physical vs. digital media, and also to subscription vs. ownership models for digital goods. The weighting pros and cons for these things are different for different people.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|11 years ago|reply
There has been a consistent trend to portray the digital/online realm as a world apart from the "real" world, rather than, as is the truth, just another facet of it. This has facilitated massive erosions of civil liberties in the online world. Government censorship is the norm on the internet, not the exception. Warrantless monitoring and trespass on private systems and data by the government and law enforcement is also rampant, with few safeguards. In a similar vein, the protections of the rule of law and the criminal justice system are completely thrown out the window in many circumstances when it comes to the online realm. You can be effectively punished online merely due to an allegation (i.e. DMCA takedown), and often only arbitration is available as a remedy, erasing centuries of traditional protection for individual rights through the court system.
And that's aside from the ongoing war over DRM and the desire of major content aggregators to deny ownership rights and privileges to customers.
Add to that the growing reliance on paternalistic relationships with large corporations and business entities, eroding individualism. People rely on their ISPs and their cell carriers for access to the online world, a major aspect of modern business and private life. Unlike phone service these service providers have much greater leeway to decide what you can and cannot do online and have increasingly taken advantage of consumers. People rely on major services (gmail, hotmail, facebook, twitter, etc.) for their primary means of communication, services that in many cases border on unregulated monopolies. And at work people are increasingly dependent on their employers to provide medical and dental coverage, retirement savings, and so forth.
[+] [-] JackC|11 years ago|reply
Which companies are you thinking of here? Amazon is still trying to drag book publishers into participating in this, and hasn't had much luck yet. Video subscriptions are more miss than hit. Spotify is the most mature, and (by your estimate) only has 60%-70% of what you want. And there's all kinds of complaints that Spotify doesn't result in the same kind of income that record sales did. I don't think the companies that own the products do like this model.
The reason they do it at all is because it's an effective way to compete with illegal downloading. The $10/month doesn't represent the actual value of the product (which for me at least is probably higher), but seems to represent about what the market will tolerate before it goes back to just torrenting stuff.
And that brings up a really good thing about these services: they address the market-efficiency losses of the copyright regime without needing to either break the law or change it.
For example, suppose the only way to get an ebook is to buy it, and each book costs $X. There are a small number of ebooks you value at more than $X, you buy those ones, and (in economic terms) positive value is created by each exchange.
But there is a much larger number of ebooks you value at more than $0 but less than $X. Those ones you would pay money for, and positive value would be created by that exchange, but the regime of "sell each ebook for $X" doesn't allow that value to be created.
Piracy fully reclaims that value, but has its own problems. All-you-can-eat monthly services also fully reclaim the value (as long as you can afford them and they allow the use you had in mind), but in a way that is mutually agreeable to everybody involved. That makes them a good thing to have around.
The real problem you're bringing up is that all-you-can-eat services don't allow some good and important uses, like saving stuff for later. But so far I'm not seeing any indication that they are replacing buy-it-and-own-it services -- or that content owners have any reason to want them to.
[+] [-] damontal|11 years ago|reply
Amazon can already do this.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-cu...
[+] [-] gcb4|11 years ago|reply
"what do you mean your bank own your home? what if it goes under?"
"what? you pay your car every month, are required to pay the most expensive insurance, and in the end the dealership still owns your car?"
... my guess is that in America anything that makes you pay a little less will have consumers. nobody cares about a bookcase full of old paper as you do. also i think that when the thing matures past the amateurs like EA we will see companies buying rights from other just like it happens with mortgage. apple went under with its flopped Newton watch? amazon buys all its drm licenses and continue to give you access to your media in hopes that your new purchases will come her way.
[+] [-] jacalata|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
I think the "erosion" you observe is simply the phenomenon that many people genuinely prefer subscription models to one-time purchases, or perhaps they prefer to not manage their own files, syncing, etc. I don't think there's anything bad about that.
[+] [-] cnaut|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geoelectric|11 years ago|reply
As far as personal access goes, I hear you, but that's how I took myself into near-hoarder territory with media.
I'm not too worried about subscription services becoming the only game in town. As long as some people will pay for permanent access of individual titles, or for value-adds like movie extras, someone will sell them.
The bigger worry is the yanking of the access to stuff you've "bought," of course. But I suspect the first time someone with power either gets hurt or even scared by a DRM-related action, we'll get some mass decisions that come down to "if it looks like a sale and acts like a sale, it's a sale."
You may or may not be able to resell or transfer it (legally), but I seriously doubt the courts will stand for someone arbitrarily taking it away. EULA or no EULA, there's a pretty fat implied promise there, and "buy" is used all over the place in language. That alone would be enough for the EU's courts to seriously hammer anyone who switched it up for "rent".
The early software-related decisions around owning "licensed" copies were in the infancy of digital licensing, and there's plenty of room for reversal there. The VHS time-shifting/personal backup decision is much more in line with what I'd expect the theme to be over time.
In particular, I expect format shifting to become legal as soon as a format shift or service closure screws someone with money/influence.
Right now, the only real-world examples are video game console libraries, and they just don't garner the same sympathy because everyone's predisposed to the idea that software ages out with tech shifts. It'll be when iTunes, Vudu, Amazon, one of those does it that we'll see action.
[+] [-] Alex_MJ|11 years ago|reply
There are a number of books I enjoyed in the paper era that I flat out can't find on Amazon now, and I tend to think of Amazon as "ALL THE BOOKS".
[+] [-] abhaga|11 years ago|reply
If subscription becomes the dominant mode of book consumption, it would be disastrous. As an add on service, it is nice. Especially in the areas without strong library systems.
[+] [-] gingerlime|11 years ago|reply
However, I think you're also underestimating the risk of all or parts of your stuff disappearing or getting destroyed in a house-burglary, fire, flood or another kind of disaster.
I'm not entirely sure what the actual risks are, but my gut feeling is that there's a higher chance of losing what you physically own than for it to disappear or get 'updated' as a digital / for-rent product.
[+] [-] ripter|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chmars|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] api|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoMoreNicksLeft|11 years ago|reply
You can even have your cloud-like experiences with software like Plex and Calibre (though I like Plex better, it won't do plain ebooks). Audio books work well enough on Plex, and you can even share the server with friends if you want.
[+] [-] findjashua|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epaladin|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownaway2424|11 years ago|reply
How do you know Jeff Bezos didn't tweak a couple of sentences in your Kindle copy of Catch 22? I don't know, but I do know that detecting such a change will be far, far easier with digital publications than it ever was with paper.
[+] [-] swanson|11 years ago|reply
I usually buy 2-3 Kindle books a month at around $9/per, so I would definitely use this service if the selection improves. I kind of wonder if Amazon could get away with charging $9/month for any book they have and just cash-in on folks that "spend" less than that a month.
[+] [-] kenny_r|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrt0mat0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orbifold|11 years ago|reply
The only books I ever ordered from Amazon were books in foreign languages and academic books that Amazon apparently prints on demand on behalf of publishers. Books in my mother tongue can only be sold at a fixed price set by the publisher, so there is little incentive of buying from a company that mistreats their warehouse workers.
[+] [-] jaysonelliot|11 years ago|reply
I regularly borrow audiobooks and ebooks from the library with a couple of taps on my iPhone.
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|11 years ago|reply
Yes. Yes. Yes. As well as book condition/cleanliness, and being able to keep books forever.
My local library is also only open from 10am-6pm, and closed sundays, so unless I want to take time off of work, my only time to go to the library is on a Saturday afternoon. Usually when I buy a book via Amazon, it's spontaneous because of a recommendation. I'll have a friend recommend me a book. Click, it's ordered and shipping. I'll see a book recommended several times in the same HN thread, check reviews for it, click, ordered and shipping. I don't really remember the book's info in order to look up later while at a library.
Currently I have no idea how to check if a book is available at my branch or a nearby branch. I tried going to the library website and clicked their "check availability" link, and I was brought to a calendar for conference room reservations. Amazon is just a much more polished experience than my library. So yeah, I'll buy a book instead of getting it free from the library.
It reminds me of when people say that services like Netflix, Spotify, Steam, etc are cutting down on piracy because in many cases, they provide a simpler experience than the piracy does. Amazon and books (hell, Amazon and most products) provides that same simplification over a cheaper/free distributor.
[+] [-] ctdonath|11 years ago|reply
Amazon will, from the convenience of any computer (mobile devices included), ship you books from a vast & nearly inexhaustible collection at acceptable costs.
Now the Unlimited plan brings you both for $10/mo: beyond-library-scale of practically free books delivered instantly, and bringing you in close proximity to darn near every book ever written available at modest cost in 2 days.
Heck, many subscribers would pay more than $10/mo just in gas driving to the library.
[+] [-] hospadam|11 years ago|reply
Edit: I just found a link that includes Kindle Unlimited books with Narration: http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=9630682011
[+] [-] fleshgolem|11 years ago|reply
Selling books is actually quite the complicated matter in some countries. At least in Germany you are not allowed to sell a book at a price of your choice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price_agreement)
It can be pretty fucking annoying to have these laws in place (they do have their merits, but... that's a completely different debate), but I can understand Amazon not having worked out all the legal issues to go worldwide with this
[+] [-] Tloewald|11 years ago|reply
(How do they screw us? They cap the 70% less download fee royalty at the $9.99 level. In order to make more than $7 (less download fee) per sale, you need to price a book at over $20. So if I sell a $20 book on Amazon, BN, and iBooks -- I get twice as much from BN and iBooks as I do from Amazon. To make the same royalty from Amazon, I need to charge $40, but Amazon won't let me do that. So I pulled my book from Amazon and revenues increased.)
[+] [-] ryanklee|11 years ago|reply
At different times, I prefer different media.
Until I can buy a book and get a digital version for either free or for a (very) small added fee, I'm just not getting on board with kindles (or whatever e-reader device).
Amazon did roll out some version of this book+ebook service a few months ago, but it included such a small number of volumes that it was virtually worthless.
[+] [-] walterbell|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghshephard|11 years ago|reply
I love the concept - but I need at least a 50% hit rate on the books I read before i'll be willing to pay $120/year to use it.
[+] [-] lukev|11 years ago|reply
Looks like I'll be giving this one a pass.
[+] [-] WhatsName|11 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/?docId=1000739811&ref=...
[+] [-] unicornporn|11 years ago|reply
When I was little I went to the local library. There I had unlimited access to movies, music and books, for free. Sure, it's hard to compare the music collection to Spotify. But at the time I was content. And I actually think I'd still prefer both the movie collection and the book collection of the library (especially as my native tongue is Swedish).
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
Unfortunately it looks like the Lending Library (which comes with Prime membership) still only works on true Kindle devices. I wonder if this is a licensing issue, or just a deliberate choice on Amazon's part.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000739811
[+] [-] edent|11 years ago|reply
That's ok Amazon. My local library lets me check out as many ebooks as I can read. And audio books. And paper books.
Total cost? FREE!
via taxation which works out as £13 per year (budget is £8 million, population is 650k)
[+] [-] makmanalp|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rahimnathwani|11 years ago|reply
If you're in a rich Western country, the time you spend reading a book probably has an opportunity cost much greater than the cost to acquire rights to read the book. Why would you spend 10 hours with a book whose marginal cost is $0, when you could pay $10 and spend those ten hours with a better book?
[+] [-] phaus|11 years ago|reply
I was hoping for something along the lines of Safari Books, only with a much wider range of categories. As hard as it might be to imagine, the selection of books here is far far worse than Netflix's selection of movies. That's pretty fucking sad.
[+] [-] gcb0|11 years ago|reply
yeah, amazon prime content is anything but prime. odd seasons of old series. movies that even late night open tv is embarrassed of showing, and now teen romances.
[+] [-] programminggeek|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugh4life|11 years ago|reply
I searched for a philosopher I like to read and none of his books had the "unlimited" indicator... so I don't think this is for me.
[+] [-] bennesvig|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiremine|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ntaso|11 years ago|reply
From the comments here, I assume that the model is similar in the US and 9.99$ is only so cheap, because there's mostly junk in the library.