Loss of Privacy

This is the FBI warning DVD easter egg from Freedom Downtime.

The FTC is finally going to look into the reasons why DRM sucks through town hall meetings, but we already have several reasons why. They don’t even have to search hard to find the answers.

Now, Fictionwise is reporting that any books you downloaded using OverDrive are not able to be downloaded again if you lose them.

Fictionwise obtains “feeds” of eBooks from several different content aggregators, and these aggregators use their servers to deliver encrypted files to our customers. One of these aggregators, Overdrive, recently gave Fictionwise notice that they would cease serving files to Fictionwise customers as of January 31, 2009. That means that eBooks purchased from Fictionwise via Overdrive’s servers will no longer be downloadable after that date. To protect our customers’ investment in eBooks, Fictionwise immediately ceased selling all Overdrive eBooks and began negotiating with publishers to allow eBooks previously purchased from Overdrive to be substituted, where possible, with eReader format files.

This affects over 300,000 ebooks and, while Fictionwise is trying to obtain other ways to get the same books again, it’s a gigantic hassle that should never have there in the first place. If you have backuped your ebooks properly, you shouldn’t need to redownload them, however, we all know that this can, and does happen.

Fictionwise strives to maintain your purchases indefinitely, but our terms of service do not guarantee they will be available forever. Forever is a long time. We have control of our MultiFormat files and we have control of the Secure eReader format, so that gives us the ability to ensure we will continue to be able to deliver those formats to you. However, as noted above, other formats are delivered through third party aggregators. We do not have legal control of those third party servers. If those third party servers “go dark” for one reason or another, we have no way to continue delivering those files.

Herein lies the problem. Yes, forever is a long, however, if I purchased a product, it should be mine. It shouldn’t be mine just as long as some mysterious, third party has control over whether I can view or play the item I purchased.

If you want to wait 95 years until the book is in the public domain, then feel free. Your other options is to download unencumbered copies or try to fight it, starting with the upcoming FTC town hall meeting.

The FTC town hall meeting will take place March 29,2009 in Seattle, Washington at the William H. Gates Building, located at the University of Washington Law School. The town hall will be from 8am to 4pm and you can get your directions here.

You can get unencrypted ebooks at Fictionwise, Baen Books, LibriVox, and other sources as well.