TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘drmfree campaign’ Category

By David Rothman

Boing Boing, the popular group blog from novelist-activist Cory Doctorow and others, has endorsed the drmfree tag campaign started here last week for books at Amazon and other stores.

And MobileRead has just put Steve Jordan’s related post on the home page.

“I’m with David on this,” Cory says in the blog, and he goes on to raise pesky questions. “I’ve been trying to find out for weeks, for example, what the story is with the ‘DRM-free’ option for Kindle… Is there a patent or contractual term that prohibits owners of Kindle DRM-free books from moving them to competing devices, or patents or other claims that prevents competitors from creating readers or converters for these books?” And what about DRM-related flags? Cory sensibly wants answers. Amazon will be using DRM to shut off text-to-speech when publishers request; what other DRM-enforced flags could be out there? And couldn’t Amazon turn them on after you buy?

“The point,” writes novelist Steve Jordan, a contributor to both MobileRead and TeleRead, “is simple: Let consumers see what is DRM-encumbered, and what is DRM-free in the Kindle strore, and vote with their wallets. Their hope is that eventually, Amazon will get the message and dump DRM from the Kindle store altogether, or at least wherever possible. They also advocate independent sellers using the tag. I’ve already added it to my website’s keywords, since all of my novels are sold DRM-free. I encourage any other authors of DRM-free material (and sites like MobileRead) to do the same where applicable.”

“The tag campaign is an interesting concept,” MobileRead editor Bob Russell adds in an e-mail to me. “If DRM becomes a prominently visible ‘wart’ that comes with locked-down e-books, it will certainly help to move the choice into the hands of the consumer. It’s hard to imagine that people will put up with e-book DRM any more than music DRM after they know what it means to them.”

Thanks, everyone! And similarly thanks to Steve Windwalker for his original tagging suggestion. Say My Name, his technothriller set in Boston, already has a drmfree tag. My Washington newspaper novel, The Solomon Scandals, will soon be getting one.

May your own book follow, with the standard tag! If you’re an author, add the tag if you can or ask your publisher to, as long as the book is free of DRM taint. If you’re a reader, tag books drmfree if you know they’re “safe.” You’ll can simply use the tag blank on the page listing a book. Takes less than a minute!

DRM is anti-consumer since it interferes with genuine ownership of books.

A tag for DRMed books

Meanwhile people are wondering what tag to use on DRMed books. Solution? Just use the tag drm. It’s nice and short.

The consensus here at TeleRead is now to avoid the defectivebydesign tag, so people won’t mistakenly think it refers to books’ contents or casts aspersions on the authors. I’d suggested that existing tag. But I’m won over by the objections to it.

And tags for reDRMed books

Let’s hope that writers and publishers will appreciate the risk of backlashes if they reDRM books with the drmfree tag. If not, there could be a tag for that situation. Maybe drmback or drmback-12april-09? What’s more, Amazon customers could issue “DRM back” warnings in the comments areas associated with books.

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