09-09-2003, 06:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Barnes And Noble Just Took Your eBooks Away From You
We've received several emails from Barnes & Noble eBook customers with the following note:
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Dear eBook Customer,<br /><br />As of September 9, 2003, Barnes & Noble.com will no longer sell eBooks.<br /><br />If you are a Microsoft Reader customer, you will be able to download your eBooks for the next 90 days through your Microsoft Library.<br /><br />If you are an Adobe eBook customer and have not yet downloaded your eBook, please remember you have 90 days from your date of purchase to complete the download via the email link you received.<br /><br />After December 9, 2003, eBook titles that have not been downloaded to the appropriate Readers will no longer be accessible.<br /><br />If you have questions related to your past eBook purchases, please send your inquiry to [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>.<br /><br />As always, we appreciate your patronage, and we regret any inconvenience this may cause you.
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<br /><br />:evil: If there was <i><b>ever</b></i> an acceptable argument for DRM5 encrypted eBooks, it just died. Let me explain what this means. If you buy a new device, hard reset your current device, do a full ROM upgrade or MS does another MS Reader upgrade that requires you to redownload your eBooks and you purchased them from BN.com, you are out of luck.<br /><br />Long live <a href="http://www.peanutpress.com">Peanut Press!</a> :rock on dude!:
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09-09-2003, 06:08 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 88
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Re: Barnes And Noble Just Took Your eBooks Away From You
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
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Well, since Palmgear just acquired Palm Digital Media, even that might be in question. I hope somebody kicks B&N butt for this. I'd laugh my butt off if they have to file Chapter 11 in a few years because of lack of involvement in the electronic media... Wishful thinkin' though.
Cheers,
Rok
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09-09-2003, 06:08 PM
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Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6,878
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If I had purchased any ebooks from B&N, I would demand they give me an unlocked copy of every one of them before discontinuing support...
Steve
__________________
"My eyes are rolling back in my head so far I can see my grey matter bubbling and frothing from reading this thread....bleh." JD
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09-09-2003, 06:09 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 412
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It depends on cost
I could live with someone 'losing' my ebooks IF I paid a significantly reduced cost for those books....like less than paperback.
But publishers seem to think it's OK to charge a premium for a product that has less value than the paper copies. This sort of profiteering is going to kill the ebook business...of course, that's what the publishers really want.
Karen
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09-09-2003, 06:11 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Re: Barnes And Noble Just Took Your eBooks Away From You
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Originally Posted by Rok
Well, since Palmgear just acquired Palm Digital Media, even that might be in question. I hope somebody kicks B&N butt for this. I'd laugh my butt off if they have to file Chapter 11 in a few years because of lack of involvement in the electronic media... Wishful thinkin' though.
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The difference is that DRM5 locks per device, while PDM locks by credit card. As long as you keep a copy of that number around, the ebook, and the program, you can unlock your ebook.
--janak
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09-09-2003, 06:15 PM
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Moderator
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 6,878
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Re: Barnes And Noble Just Took Your eBooks Away From You
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Originally Posted by Janak Parekh
The difference is that DRM5 locks per device, while PDM locks by credit card. As long as you keep a copy of that number around, the ebook, and the program, you can unlock your ebook.
--janak
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And, if need be, you can change the card number as well...
Steve
__________________
"My eyes are rolling back in my head so far I can see my grey matter bubbling and frothing from reading this thread....bleh." JD
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09-09-2003, 06:20 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Dec 2003
Posts: 1,639
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I have a number of eBooks that I have purchased in .lit format from bn.com.
I'm glad I spent the time to convert them into Mobipocket format so that I am going to be able to read them in the future.
Any MS Reader books I obtain, whether purchased ones or the free MS ones, are downloaded and converted right away.
This way, I don't have to worry about things such as this BN fiasco and I also don't have to have my RAM taken up with the Reader upgrade. The version that comes in ROM still works just fine for public domain books.
As someone mentioned in one of the other threads on this topic, let's hope that BN are not starting a trend so we see others pull out as well.
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Originally Posted by Karen
This sort of profiteering is going to kill the ebook business...of course, that's what the publishers really want
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Looks as though they are doing a pretty good job so far. 
__________________
Cheers!
David
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09-09-2003, 06:21 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 1,350
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Re: Barnes And Noble Just Took Your eBooks Away From You
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Originally Posted by Rok
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Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
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Well, since Palmgear just acquired Palm Digital Media, even that might be in question. |
AFAIK there is absolutely no indication that the Pocket PC version of the Palm Reader will not be further developed. I have tons of confidence in the people behind this program.
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09-09-2003, 06:37 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 338
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I, personally, haven't bought any e-books...
DRM is the reason why... In one sense it's good to see BN get out of e-books because it's starting to show that the economic model to support the way this is being distributed today doesn't work. It's bad, because all of the people that bought those books now are, as illustrated, out in the cold.
I hope this story gets a lot of heat in the news media... this is exactly the kind of saga that the avg. digital consumer needs to hear about before buying "electronic" versions of music, books, you name it.
I'm furious... and I'm not even a victim!
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09-09-2003, 06:51 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jan 2003
Posts: 129
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That is disgraceful customer service. They could at least keep a server or whatever going for those that have purchased books already.
Dom
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