Good point. If I remember correctly, at one point, each title had a
little
cd with flames next to it to indicate that burning to cd was possible for
the title. By the time audible.com redesigned all its webpages, I was no
longer using the screen, but JAWS, so I don't know if they still indicate
this for each individual title.
On the other hand, when I was still driving and even now for road trips, I
burn titles to CD to share over the car audio system since it's more
interactive on a long trip, and we enjoy sharing some titles. I must have
40 to 50 books burned to cd, all in their little paper covers, filed and
stored [grin]. Yes, I'm such a geek. [laughing], but the cd's are about
the
only organized thing in the house, so I'm content.
So far, though, I've never run into a title that I could not burn to CD.
I've not made use of Audible Manager for quite some time, however. Do you
still have to download the cd burning software as a separate add-on?
Anyway, personally, I've always been extremely pleased with audible
overall.
And I have to agree with what others have said. If someone is really
intent
on breaking copyright, they'll find a way. It seems to me a matter of
weighing the potential for making money from selling audiobooks in a
reasonably protected format that is still somewhat flexible like the
Audible
books vs. having copyright protection as a primary concern, above and
beyond
all others.
How much control do authors and publishers have over whether or not their
titles are included in the NLS system? If they don't have "opt out"
options, and since the service is not about making money selling the books
with money going to the authors for their creative work, but about
distributing the books for free in good faith, then I can understand why
this issue is far more of a determining factor for the NLS books.
Personally, I'll just stick with the cassettes until the library players
come out or until I win the lotto.
When a regular public library buys audiobooks on CD to distribute (or
print
books, for that matter) , they pay an additional fee for the book based on
their potential readership to help compensate for the income not being
made
by forcing everyone to purchase copies. It doesn't cover the difference
by
any means, of course, and there's no real allotment for the chance that
someone will photocopy the pages illegally or rip the CD's while the books
are checked out. But having the books on audio CD for the local library
to
purchase and lend is part of the advantage of having them on audio cd for
sale at all, and the author or publisher gets to choose those risks and
the
potential for income against those risks.
There's no (or very little) potential benefit for the authors and
publishers
to having their titles in the NLS audio library system. So, yeah, those
who
didn't choose to take the risk of having their materials on audio cd would
be justified in their concern for copyright protection in the new NLS
formats, particularly since those titles could be distributed widely with
the click of a mouse once they were opened on a single personal computer.
As for who would screw around making 10 to 20 CD's or more for a book and
then rip them back into the computer in MP3 format? Well, few would do it
for a single copy to be played on a more convenient player. But money has
always made boredom more acceptable to many. Someone interested in
serious
piracy could do it and make cash, or 20 people who wanted to pay a dollar
each for a single Audible membership and then distribute copies amongst
themselves might find it less tedious than I would. All you can do is
hope
such people don't screw it up for the rest of us! But it's hardly such a
far
fetched idea as your comments seem to imply.
As an example, consider a book like The Historian or one of the other
titles
I have that are 48 or 50 cd's long and cost about $80 a pop in the
bookstore? The Historian was originally two audio audible credits or
about
24 bucks through audible, and now it's only one credit or about 12 bucks.
Amazon.com has used unabridged copies listed at $119.00; I don't recall
seeing this available unabridged on CD in the bookstores, though. Hard to
come by. Audible's "regular" price for the unabridged version is listed
as
$68 with the member cash price set at about $48.00 bucks for a 26-27 hour
long title.
The cheapest way to purchase the title, is, of course, through the
subscription service at 12 bucks for one credit. With a fast processor,
your talking about several hours of work to break the copyright through
the
cd to mp3 long route. Then, even if a schmuck only charged $40 or 50
bucks
for the book, the schmuck would make a significant amount of money per
pirated copy for all those who want "just this one title" without paying
the
premium market worth of the title or undertaking the liabilities of a
subscription. The creepy pirate would have plenty of takers in a big
city.
Should Creep have a fast burner and processor and be required to spend
significant amounts of time at the computer anyway or should creep want a
way to pay for his World of Warcraft time that he can do while playing
World
of Warcraft, the time spent to make this title accessible or pirate-able
would be nothing. Extrapolate now as to the value, ease, and dirty money
to
be made doing all this over the internet with something instantly
distributable via download once the protection code was cracked? Creep
could pay for college, buy even more computers for criminal activity,
lessons on how to hide his I p address by hacking into and through other
servers, and STILL spend all day and night playing World of Warcraft.
With
the money to be made for something that hits pop culture fame, like The Da
Vinci Code or Tolkien's novels, and the fact that my scenario requires
Creep
to have little to no skills for coming up with a way to work around the
protective software, I'm actually surprised it doesn't happen more often.
If the authors and publishers can't opt out of being in the NLS, and we're
talking about an instantly downloadable book acquired completely for free
as
the NLS books are, I can understand why they want more than just the
irritation and time factors to keep people from burning to CD as a
workaround. Also, given the vast number of titles eventually available
through NLS, the far reaching nature of potential piracy and the impact
such
piracy could have on the authors' incomes and returns for creative work
over
time, yeah, I'd be worried, particularly since the depth of the library
would make a crack program far more worth developing than it would for
audible.com's current, though admittedly growing, list of titles? The
easy
and perpetual access to the books also becomes a significant factor in
weighing the concerns of potential piracy. For many authors, NLS has
entire
bodies of work available, not just a single, more recent title, or a
series
as does audible or recorded books, or Audiobookstand.
Perhaps the only reason piracy hasn't yet happened on a larger scale in
audiobooks is that the percentage of the population who can actually enjoy
a
full length audio book is still relatively small when compared to the
percentage who can read print or who can listen to pirated music. As the
popularity of audiobooks continues to grow, though, I'm sure the criminal
element will follow. As it is, we who rely on audiobooks are still
spending
large amounts of time scrambling to find all the titles we want in spoken
audio format, so perhaps the potential and feasibility for criminal
activity
over the next five years is not so easy to recognize as our own
frustration.
[smile] An I agree with you, I'm surprised they're going to allow the
Icon
to play the books, too. But I'd never day they are paranoid.
Me, I'll stick to my bookport; it is just dandy for me, and I don't have
the nerves for that type of thing. When I grow up, retire, or win that
lotto, I'd love to make my living writing historical trash novels. [grin]
So I'm interested in maintaining a certain level of copyright protection.
And, for an individual, as you say, why bother? Audible is quite generous
with the number of devices you can have activated, so whenever someone's
wanted to borrow a title, I put it onto my old "Audible Otis" and let them
borrow the whole thing just like borrowing a paperback. MUCH more
efficient! I've been using Audible since 2002, so I've plenty of titles
that
can still go on such an "ancient" gadget. Though I've noticed fewer and
fewer titles still have the level one or level two formats available.
Again, as the copyright protections get more sophisticated, so must the
gadgets, which is exactly where we are with the bookport and NLS. Nice
loop, yes? Well, maybe more irritating than nice, but there you've got
me.
Oh, and thanks to Pam and APH for being straight with us. You've earned
my
loyalty yet again! And honestly, by the time you have the chance to
develop
the bookport 2 at the high quality we've gotten used to, I won't be quite
so disgruntled over having just gotten mine two years ago and being faced
with the need to upgrade! [grin]
--Christy
http://caution-blind-driver.blogspot.com/
-----Original Message-----
From: bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bookport-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On
Behalf Of Kitty Litter
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2007 7:02 PM
To: bookport@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bookport] Re: Audible vs. NLS
This is not quite true. The ability to burn certain audible books to CD
is
built-in to the audible software. If they wanted too, they could remove
that
component from audible manager. Publishers know this and I believe
audible
can turn this off on a per book basis. Who in their right mind would
screw
around making ten CD's or whatever and then ripping them to mp3? Most
people
wouldn't bother. And I'm curious whether the guy who said publishers
wouldn't allow audible to sell their books because of the lack of
security
can site the source for that statement?
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