Books enter the public domain. Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.

The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad. You should explore all of the above a lot more, and much more besides.

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tgsovlerkhgsel 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I assumed that that was clear from the context, but let me rephrase it then:

"being made available DRM-free on Amazon" (and I'd narrow that down to "primarily/only on Amazon")

Of course public domain books are DRM free but I'm getting those from Gutenberg, not Amazon. Likewise, the copyleft books I'll most likely download from their own homepages, not Amazon.

I'm aware that DRM free media exists, including for currently copyrighted content that Amazon distributes ;)

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sallveburrpi 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Mildly sad is also that you seem to fault GP for not “exploring” more, instead of the insane practice of DRMing everything in the first place. I never have purchased DRM protected media and never will - I’d rather pirate everything digital and but physical hard copies.

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PaulRobinson 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I don’t actually think it’s their fault, and if they feel I’m faulting them, that wasn’t the intention.

I think it’s sad that what we thought everyone saw as a nonsense is now so normalised that alternatives are just disappearing from view. Everyone should be encouraged to explore.

Piracy is your preferred option, but when that became more mainstream we actually ended up creating the market for more DRM, in the form of iTunes, Spotify and others. I’m not sure I want the future of digital media to be entirely subscription-based like that.

What might be a better solution is showing that media creators can achieve more of their own objectives through releasing media without DRM. This only works if their objectives are not entirely around making money from media sales, and more aligned to influence, or audience building.

I’m actually surprised at this point that musicians - given they don’t make money from streaming services and see them as tools to build audiences for live tours where they really make their money - don’t just jump over already.

	▲	sallveburrpi 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was just talking about books, but sure for music there are tons of alternative options as well. I detest streaming platforms and it’s pretty easy to buy music directly from the creators in almost all cases - except maybe the top “superstars” but I would argue that they are probably doing fine anyway… Also physical records still exist for music as well. Lots of artists can do just fine with living from media sales. Look I’m not saying “pirate everything and never pay the artists” - I’m saying “never pay the predatory tech companies that have inserted themselves between us and artists”

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input_sh 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Books enter the public domain.

...and then they get re-packaged with DRM on Amazon's store, mostly because people uploading public domain books on Amazon have no idea what they're doing.

> Project Gutenberg and others produce DRM-free versions. Many academics and people who wish to share their knowledge also publish works DRM-free, sometimes under permissive (copyleft), licenses.

You can read DRM-free stuff on a Kindle already, so that's not particularly relevant here.

> The fact you see DRM as the norm and non-DRM as “a unicorn” that “doesn’t exist”, is mildly sad.

When every big publisher is doing it, it is the norm. That doesn't mean there doesn't exist any book publisher which doesn't do this, but the vast, vast majority of the books actually sold today contain DRM. We don't have to like that norm, but pretending it isn't one is just denying reality.

	▲	g947o 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This. While lots public domain books are on Amazon's store, most of those books are not free, both in the sense of "free or charge" and "DRM free". A lot of literature classic are released by a major publishing house with foreword and annotations, which to be fair, are copyrighted works and provide value. And they cost a bit of money. The "real" public domain versions provide by Amazon are barebone. Those versions are often good enough for many people, but you don't need to get them from Amazon in the first place. In other words, public domain or not does not have much to do with DRM-free or even Amazon.