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Saturday, April 06, 2019

Microsoft's eBook store: When this closes, your books disappear too

From Dave Lee for The BBC

4 April 2019

There’s bad news for users of Microsoft’s eBook store: the company is closing it down, and, with it, any books bought through the service will no longer be readable. To soften the blow, the company has promised to refund any customers who bought books through the store (a clue that there may not have been that many of them, hence the closure. Microsoft did not offer further comment). But just think about that for a moment. Isn’t it strange? If you’re a Microsoft customer, you paid for those books. They’re yours. Except, I’m afraid, they’re not, and they never were - when you hand over money for your “book”, what you’re really paying for is access to the book. That access, per the terms and conditions of every major eBook store, can be taken away at any moment. This is how we’ve been led to this curious situation, where Microsoft’s eBook customers - however few - will see their book collection vanish, just because company executives have decided it’s no longer worth keeping the store running. It’s a reminder, one I think which needs repeating regularly, of the shift in how we define ownership in the always-online era. In this case it’s about books, but it’s the same with most of your digital purchases - we’re increasingly leasing our minor belongings, which I think means leasing aspects of our memories and even personalities too.

I doubt we’d accept such a scenario in the offline world, with some kind of book bailiff barging through the front door, and emptying your shelves, because a local bookshop has closed down. But online, that’s the status quo we’ve created. Or perhaps more accurately, technology companies have made it work that way. Ebook stores from Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, Barnes and Noble all follow broadly the same rules. You’re buying a licence to read, not a licence to own. This means, also, you generally can’t freely give away your book to someone else once you’ve read them. It’s a restriction that, to my mind, goes against one of the true joys of reading - a joy second only to reading itself. Ebook stores and publishers will tell you there’s one very big and very valid reason for all this restriction: piracy, both massive and casual. Books sold on most eBook stores (but not all) come loaded with digital rights management software - DRM - which makes sure the copy you are accessing has been bought and paid for properly. It does this by authenticating your file via the servers of the book store in question (or sometimes a company such as Adobe, which acts like a kind of DRM wholesaler). Publishers and eBook retailers say that while DRM is restrictive, it’s a necessary evil we must put up with if we are to make sure authors, and everyone else in the food chain, get paid. That may well be the case - it’s certainly a view shared by other industries like music and video gaming, where DRM also stops us sharing too widely, and where again you’re often paying for access rather than ownership. You, the consumer, may be fine with all this right now. But with the 5G boom about to hit, experts will tell you we’re set to see a massive increase in connected devices and appliances, many of which we’ll probably only be able to license, rather than own. Taking a book away is, at worst, mean-spirited. But in the future, what if we start to see more consequential belongings in our lives ceasing to operate? Should tech giants reserve the right to take away something we have paid for, just because they’re not making as much money as they’d hoped?

[..and THAT ladies and gentle-beings is why I like HARD COPY. I’d like to see them try to take my books back when the stores I bought them from goes bust. From my cold DEAD hands!!!]

9 comments:

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

TIL Microsoft had an Ebook store.

I've been saying for many years that the model has to change. DRM is only successful with software and games because they need to run code to work and DRM can make it harder to get a working copy of some games or other software.

Ebooks, music, and video are a completely different cricket match. If someone doesn't want to pay for any of those they don't have to if they know how.

The licenses need to change to ownership and be transferable. The closest I've seen to this is the MoviesAnywhere service. I enter my credentials from Amazon, Apple, Google, VUDU, etc. and most of my movies are now available to watch on MoviesAnywhere or on any of the mentioned services.

Brian Joseph said...

This is a troubling development and a very bad precedent. There do need to be solutions that prevent this from happening in the future. It sounds as if Mike’s comment has some good ideas. I am still positive about the digital world, but we do have to be vigilant about this stuff.

mudpuddle said...

excuse my ignorance re computer stuff, but does this mean they can somehow wipe out the books i've downloaded onto my ereader?

Mike aka MonolithTMA said...

Mudpuddle, I doubt they would delete the books, but you would not be able to download them again if something happened to your E-Reader or your Microsoft E-books.

mudpuddle said...

so do we foresee a future in which people with ereaders connect up with publishing companies to print in hard copy the books that the computer companies have erased? haha, resistance is futile, heehee...

CyberKitten said...

I spoke to some of my more geeky friends about this - yes, I have friends who are actually geekier than me - and they said this really depends on the platform you're using. One friend has several back-ups of various books on multiple devices so even if the company he bought them from *wanted* to delete or modify his downloads they just couldn't catch 'em all. I have heard stories though of electronic books being 'edited' post purchase because of a court ruling somewhere. Just imagine the future possibilities of air-brushing someone out of the history books... at the touch of a button. Who would even notice they've gone? DEEPLY troubling.

If you are buying e-books I'd definitely check the small print of what you're actually buying. It looks like, at least some times, you're not buying the actual 'book' but just a licence to read it. Paper is SO uncomplicated.

Stephen said...

I've noticed Google and Microsoft both trying to sell books and wondered....why? Amazon has that locked up, full stop.

With me, if Amazon suddenly folded and I lost all my ebooks...I don't know that'd I'd notice the ones I'd lost, so much, as the opportunity to get new ones. I've grown fond of reading books on my phone and taking advantage of sales.

Judy Krueger said...

I always say that if the internet goes down, I have enough books on my shelves to read until the end of my life. Of course, if my house burned down (and it almost did two years ago from wild fires) I would be out of luck.

mudpuddle said...

i'm in the same spot, Judy... but we're surrounded by clear cuts, so not so much chance of forest fire... just poisoning from the godawful stuff they like to dump on new trees: pesticides and the like... tons and tons of it...