FYI: DRM is Evil. Very, Very, Very Evil
Amazon have closed my brother's account because he was returning too many articles to them. He'd apparently crossed some sacred threshold or other--presumably one calculated to be the least profitable to Amazon--with the result that he can no longer log in to his account.
And you'll never guess what that means for his very handsome collection of Audible books.
Go on, take a guess. You'll probably get it first time ...
The DRM on Audible content requires that any device obtain a key from Amazon, after logging in to an account. Any device already possessing that key can of course continue to download and play any content, but without logging in, a new device cannot obtain the key. Amazon have made it very clear to my brother that they have no intention of allowing him further access to his account. So Amazon has put an effective end-of-life date on all of my brother's Audible "Purchases"; as soon as he resets the devices, sells an d replaces them, etc, his Audible collection will be no more.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that DRM is thoroughly and fundamentally evil. It's wicked. It's corrupt. It's iniquitous. And it's not about piracy at all, it's about control. You don't own the things you "buy" if the content is locked with a key you don't have and can't get. The true owner is simply parting you from your money with the vague promise of letting you use the key, which they endeavour to keep you from discovering, lest you use it in ways not approved by the owner--for instance by unlocking your digital content permanently and thus freeing yourself from the owner's grip--but which they will make available to you while using software that they trust to protect their, and not your, interests. And of course, the owner always has the option of not letting you use your key at all, by telling the server not to give it to th e software. While your decryption key is in their hands, anything might happen to your content, at any time, even if the owner promises to the contrary.
This racket is only possible because we give these content distributors the money to enable it--to write the software that keeps the keys safe from discovery while in your hands, to write laws that prohibit people from breaking the software to access the content without use of that software, and to criminalise perfectly legitimate uses of content that are inconvenient for the bottom line, but that are recognised by copyright and common sense as being reasonable and fair. I sincerely hope you take something from this incident, as I surely do, with something like this so close to home happening, and I hope you'll be willing to think carefully about whose business practices you'll be willing to support if you have the choice. I understand that we don't all have the choice to exercise all the time, and that it' s easy to make up excuses and pray that it never happens to us. I'd say that this was particularly true for blind people and those with other reading challenges, because the selection of material is already very limited. Audible makes a fantastic, sometimes exclusive collection of audiobooks available.
But they, and any other DRM pedaler, simply cannot be trusted. I have made it a habit never to value any protected content too highly, and I'm gratified to see the truth in it, sad as I am for my brother's plight. For your own sake, wherever possible, you should make arrangements to avoid DRM. Try not to purchase anything you wouldn't keep from a DRM merchant. You never know, it could be you this happens to, and you might be the next person to own a handsome collection of strongly encrypted, utterly useless files that you have no hope of playing, and who will be out of pocket for the amount you "Bought" them for.
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