The real issue with piracy is a hot topic this week, it seems.
Forbes published an article just yesterday which reported that pirating camcorder copies of the hit movie The Avengers which debuted last week didn’t seem to hurt moviegoer numbers any. They maintain that the movie-going experience is one that very few people compromise on for the big ones such as The Avengers.
I had a discussion with classmates and an course facilitator a few weeks ago on the issue that Forbes highlighted too: piracy of movies and music is not just about stealing what is available for purchase, and if The Avengers numbers are anything to go by, piracy of movies has more to do with accessibility than anything else.
There is a difference with eBooks, however. Presumably, accessibility of eBooks is of far less of an issue than platform and price-point. As editor here at Free-eBooks.net, I’ve heard from many a reader who’s primary electronic reader is not either of the big boys – i.e. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Sony, or Kobo. For them, it’s not so [ more ]
Last week, the world’s biggest science fiction publisher – Tor – announced that they were going to be dropping DRM from their entire list of books published. This is big news because ever since eBooks made an appearance on the market, most notably on the Kindle Store, Digital Rights Management has been part of the process.
Digital Rights Management – DRM – is how publishers ensure that the book you buy from them is only readable on the eReader it is bought for. The Kindle and Nook platforms are the biggest users of DRM since Amazon and Barnes and Noble can tie a particular copy of a book directly to a specific eReader.
The idea behind DRM was to ensure that eBooks bought were not easily reproducible on other platforms for sale and was a stringent measure against piracy. The problem with DRM is that it is easily removable with the right know-how and tools. The most dedicated of pirates found no stumbling block in DRM.
According to the Guardian Books article, one science fiction author John Scalzi, made one of the most [ more ]
And, enter a brand new way to send eBooks – especially ours – to your Kindle.
If you have ever struggled with the concept of “Send to Kindle” or transferring books to your Kindle via USB, it all got easier with Amazon’s latest release: the “Send to Kindle” app that sits on your desktop computer (Windows OR Mac) and is synchronized with your Amazon.com account. Anything you upload with the desktop app is archived to “the cloud” and accessible from any Kindle app or reader.
As your trusty resident technophile, I downloaded the app under both Mac OS X and Windows so I could tell you exactly how it works.
Let’s start with the Windows version since most of you use Windows anyway.
The first thing you should do is download the installation file from the Amazon “Send to Kindle” page here: http://amazon.com/sendtokindle. If you are like me and naturally suspicious of links, try searching for “amazon send to kindle” – it should be the top result returned.
Download the installer and run it. It doesn’t ask [ more ]