> Scammers claiming to have the rights to my books commission narrators to record them on the cheap, with the promise of a royalty split when they are live. Inexperienced narrators, excited at the prospect of recording a major book by a bestselling author, put long, grueling hours into recording them. Then the book goes live, and I discover it, and have it taken down. The scammer disappears with the profits from the sales in the interim, and the narrator is screwed.
If I was a narrator, why wouldn't I do a basic search to see if the audiobook exists, or contact the author/publisher to verify ownership rights, before investing all this time and effort because someone said they own something?
99% of scams work because the scammee didn’t do due diligence. “Why wouldn’t you check property records to see if the person renting you that sweet apartment actually owns it?” Sounds like common sense yet people fall for this scam all the time.
Simply because it would never occur to you that it could be part of a scam.
We're trained to think of scams as involving Nigerian princes, misspelled e-mails, password phishing, .exe attachments, or "I've got a bridge to sell you".
It's nowhere near obvious how contracting an audiobook narration, of all things, could or would be a scam. You'd have to know there was a market/scam for counterfeit audiobooks which I never imagined until I read this. In fact, it's pretty convoluted and I'm still pretty surprised to discover it exists.
On top of which, contacting an author isn't always easy, and figuring out how to navigate from a publisher's consumer customer service to a person who can actually correctly verify rights is probably going to be a long annoying journey.
I am mystified by the idea that 'the scammer disappears' - does Amazon do zero vetting of people they pay out money to? Can I continually commit copyright fraud for profit on the most popular audiobook site?
I very much agree with him regarding DRM, and I understand why it puts him off launching audiobooks on Audible.
Still, it is worth commenting that there are trivial ways to remove DRM from Audible files. I myself do it to my own collection, partly out of "lockout prevention", and partly so that I can listen to the books using apps that I find infinitely more covenient and feature rich than Audible's own (shout-out to Podcast Addict).
I won't detail how it is done, out of respect for the fact that HN is based in a jurisdiction where the DMCA represses free speech on the topic. However, Doctorow could always release his audiobooks on Audible while pointing with plausible deniability towards information on how to remove DRM, hosted from countries where we're lucky enough that talking about technical procedures is not a crime.
Yes, that is why I suggest making the explanation and process more readily available. Non-tech savvy users who already care about the problems of DRM should kmow it is possible to remove it, and ideally have access to a user-friendly way to do it. On the other hand, those who don't even know what DRM is or why it matters may get greater exposure to the issue.
I have some friends who are quite non-technical, who told me that they were were aware of (and subsequently purchased) some software that they knew could remove the DRM from Audible books (before I got a chance to tell them I'd be happy to help them out for free).
This is why I don’t mind buying TV Shows on iTunes. What I ultimately want is a DRM Free file, and I know how to losslessly strip DRM from iTunes media, so whatever, I’ll go ahead and buy whatever I want to watch.
The difference with audiobooks, though, is there are several audiobook retailers that are natively DRM Free, such as downpour and libro.fm. Why buy from the DRM’d vendor, who could increase their protection at any time, when you have DRM-Free options you could be giving your money to instead?
Is there an updated way since TunesKit got broken and you needed to keep around an old version of iTunes for Windows (which apple will eventually break)?
No, I just use the old version of iTunes in a virtual machine. When Apple breaks it, I'll stop buying things on iTunes. But I already have DRM-Free copies of all my current purchases.
And then for new movies I use Amazon alongside a different program which works with that.
> it is worth commenting that there are trivial ways to remove DRM from Audible files.
say i share with a loved one or close friend the de-DRM'd audiobook. now their computer becomes infected with a RAT, and 'my' file/audiobook fingerprinted with the proprietary fingerprint algorithm (to identify me as the unique purchaser, the same techniques are probably applied industry wide) is leaked online as a consequence (or their backup system is compromised or any kind of infosec violation out of the hands of my friend). next, Amazon corp identifies me. their immediate next step: lawsuit on me as an individual because 'my' file is now leaked on p2p filesharing sites and forums without me knowing about it.
capitalist-enforced DRM is cancer because it's artificial scarcity imposed on a non-scarce resource (computer data/audio file). it's the result of trying to work with the limited and violent toolsets of a capitalist economy.
the internet is still young and there are likely so many better options for publishing things.
for example, an author i've followed for a while by the name of Charles Eisenstein has a deal with his publisher, North Atlantic Books, to initially launch his book as paperback only, and then after a six month period, his whole book is available free to read on his website (also of course there's the wonderful Library Genesis).
i just wanted to add my two cents after seeing encouraging discussions/debates here on this page. hybrid strategies like Eisenstein's give me signals that ultimately make me feel hopeful for a post-capitalist society which would allow any child to listen to any audiobook (and be infinitely curious in whichever direction feels most natural for them), regardless of whether their parents can afford Audible/Storytel/whatever. i focus on a child's curiosity because they suffer the most from the capitalist commoditization of culture and science and more.
The audio fingerprinting is used by services like shazam to identify music, not a per user re-encode of every single song in order to find out leaks.
The watermarked music files I have come across only go as far as identifying the distribution service, not an individual.
From what I remember the metadata of account information is added as an editable extended tags. I actually don't know if audiobooks are even tagged by account in audible's case, it's true for iTunes.
Children will have access to free audio books in the US as long as libraries are around. I can get digital audiobooks for free from my library.
Libby/Overdrive and Hoopla are great, especially for children's audiobooks.
I don't know if your argument against using dedrm tools even makes sense. The point is that you shouldn't share your decrypted audiobooks. It shouldn't matter what happens to your friend's computer. More importantly, an audiobook isn't important enough to steal, that a giant leap.
Dedrming an audiobook is the only way I know to make sure that one day audible won't wake up and say, no we don't want you listening to that book anymore and just take it off their platform after I have paid for it. That's not a theoretical, that's already happened to some with certain kindle books.
the real question is: why not lend some brain power to an open source project? or write some kick-ass documentation... and always get involved in your local community project /s
>Not surprisingly, a lot of people assume that if an Audible search for an author or book comes up empty, that means there is no audiobook available. They don’t think of searching for the book on Google Books, or Libro.fm, or Downpour. They never think to check to see whether the author maintains their own storefront, as I do, where you can get all their ebooks and audiobooks without DRM.
Yes I was hoping that he was announcing a collaboration with others with similar problems. One of the things that leads to this kind of abuse is industry dominance, and one of the things that encourages industry dominance is that average consumers don't want to have to think about more than a couple of places to go to get their content. A collaboration of those who have been bitten by audible would be much better than each of them doing their own thing.
“ My agent tells me that if I’d been willing to set aside my ethics and allow Audible to slap DRM on my books, I’d have made enough money to pay off my mortgage and save enough to pay for my kid’s entire college education.
That’s a price I’m willing to pay.”
I have to be honest and say… I think I would be very frustrated with my spouse if this principle cost us so much potential financial freedom in other parts of our lives.
That’s not to say they shouldn’t do this. That would just be hard for me to swallow!
this person is just being a little weird and stubborn about this.
Audible members know what they are getting and choose to do so. Audible DRM is not a big deal, just use this Audible app, some of the arguments made in this article are invalid.
If you've paid attention in the last century or so - it is a big deal in countries all over the world, there is a global political crisis of people sacrificing morals for money.
I agree, that sacrificing morals for money is not a good thing.
What I am saying is that putting your book on audible is not really unethical. It's not such a big deal, people on audible know how the system works and the DRM is fairly irrelevant for most people without tinfoil hats.
You're seriously making mountains out of mole hills here. There is no slippery slope trying to get your content on a platform that consumers actually use, regardless of the ethics of that platforms that's where the users are!
I'm guessing Cory Doctorow's spouse knew what she was getting into. For all you know, it might have been her idea to eschew Audible. Plus she sold a company to Disney, so they're probably fine financially. Cory's mortgage reference was probably less reality and more just to illustrate a point.
I'm glad my spouse would be unhappy with me if I sold my integrity for money. It makes for a great marriage, knowing we have each others backs and will be loyal to one another and can count on one another.
I believe Doctorow is doing this for the reasons he outlined, but let’s be clear: his brand is all about being anti this kind of shit.
Selling out on his principles to make half a million in the audible store might still be a net financial negative if it causes him to lose credibility with the many people who buy his other books and pay his speaker fees.
Maybe? You do enough of this kind of stuff and you’re going to lose credibility. Possibly your devoted fans let you off the hook for the first offense. But Audible has a pretty scummy reputation in some circles (as evidenced by other comments here).
Also, making a big fuss about it is content marketing, which works because of his brand. He’s on the front page of HN with a blog post that mentions a bunch of his offerings/plays up the quality of his audiobooks. More financial incentive to forego the Audible dollars.
Doctorow still has a mortgage? (Like, and not because the interest rate is so low that he’d pay it as slow as possible? And even then, why use that as your standard of “having a lot of money”?)
It’s relative to how much money you have already. A quick search for “Cory doctorow net worth” suggests he is well-off enough to be able to turn that down.
Heck, in this article he mentions spending $50k on recording a previous audiobook, which looks to be the cost of two years at Harvard. I’m pretty sure he’s got a lot of financial freedom already.
Tangential question (and a serious one, since I'm pretty much baffled by the whole thing) : I don't use audiobooks, since I find them 'slow'.
Why do people listen to them instead of reading books? Is it because, say, listening to one while driving is better than not being able to read since you have no time to do so?
Or is there a specific pleasure in listening to a book read by someone else?
I generally favour podcasts over audio books, but generally whether I read or listen on my commute is determined by whether I got a seat on the train - can be difficult to read standing up on a crowded train
I prefer reading books myself, but sometimes the hurdle to actually sit down and read can be a bit big. So while I'm an avid reader, I have bouts where I read nothing at all. Not because of time constraints or anything, just feels a bit heavy starting something new.
But listening to something is less of a commitment. As you say, can combine it with something else. So it's a way for me to ease back into reading mode again.
Edit: but I would recommend staying away from Audible. When I wanted to take a break from my monthly membership, they forced me to use all tokens I had amassed.
That reminds me when I learned how blind people use the screen reader, the setting for the voice can be at an incredibly fast speed, where the words turn into "bits" of sound.
I know people who watch YouTube videos like that, and my brain cannot process spoken words so fast.
It also reminds me of hip hop, some of those raps are like a machine gun of words that overload the brain.
It's probably about personal preferences in "modes of thinking", visual, verbal, auditory, etc. I much prefer to read something than to watch a video or listen to audio, and can consume information the quickest.
Not at first. This is something that people train themselves to do gradually. For me it didn't take very long to get to 3x playback speed for audiobooks, which untrained people usually find incomprehensible, but I started out much slower and then increased the speed a little every day because I wanted to be able to listen to more books.
That's interesting to know. It makes sense, it's a listening skill that can be developed.
I've always wanted to deepen my knowledge of web accessibility, and get more familiar with screen readers - but was afraid it might be too frustrating to navigate while listening to a voice, slow enough to understand.
Youtube videos with closed captions on are a nice way to ease into it. There's chrome extensions to increase the speed over the '2x' playback option youtube gives you. I personally don't enjoy podcasts at above 1.3x to 1.5x speed but when I am reading along with subtitles, I can increase the speed easily to 2.7x+. I don't think I did any specific practice.
After a certain amount of minutes, at 1.5x speed, the cadence of lectures at high speed start to feel normal and going back to 1.0x speed feels slow, as if it was 0.7x speed. Sort of like an audio illusion.
It reminds me of the feeling you get when you have been on a highway at a high speed for hours on a road trip. For whatever reason, my brain stops understanding how fast the "slow" speed of 20mph is is. So it feels extra slow even though relative to walking it's really fast.
Recently I came across Jump Cutter https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jump-cutter/lmppdp... which is an extension to speed up silences while keeping spoken audio at normal speed. You can customize it, but it's been an interesting experience, the audio is at an effective 1.9x speed while only being 1.4x during the spoken section.
Screen readers have a place, but the value in screen readers for the non-visually impaired is limited to the text-to-speech function. After a certain point, the synthetic voices and physics make it hard to produce intelligible sounds even if your brain can process it faster. Certain sounds end up getting cut or the software starts skipping words and it not something you can fix for every scenario. https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/131 an ongoing thread talking about how this can be mitigated.
I also know that some visually impaired people get used to certain voices to the point where they can make at words at a higher speed using a specific voice compared to others. The robot voices easier to understand than the more human sounding ones.
Getting to 3x is much much easier than you imagine, it will take less than an hour if you increase the speed by 0.2x every 15ish minutes. You get used to it really quickly. The human brain is pretty fantastic in that regard. I personally found that past 2.7x speed, even if I can understand the words, I can't comprehend new ideas and words fast enough for it to make sense and I end up having to pause. There definitely is a a point of diminishing returns, and for me it's around 2.6x, 2.7x. It depends on the lecturer cadence though.
If you want simple emulation of navigating using a screen reader, navigating having disabled your mouse is a good starting point. NVDA is the gold standard for screen readers.
There a lot of times in my day when I can listen to a book (commuting, chores, taking a walk), but not as many when I can sit for a decent amount of time and read (usually around bed time). I do both, and on balance I slightly prefer actually reading myself, but I don’t think of listening to a book as a lesser experience.
There are books that are enhanced by a great narrator (Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson) or the author gives a bit of extra info/context while reading (Good to Great by Jim Collins).
Also, Audible has a huge selection of “Great Courses”, which are lectures from professors. Obviously, they aren’t as rigorous as a real college class, but I love being able to listen to 12ish hours of lecture about something I find interesting.
I listen to books at 1.2-1.5 speed depending on the narrator and topic, so that helps to not feel “slowed down”.
You can play them at faster than normal speed in the audible player, but I have to ask you a question, do you also find movies slow?
For my personal use, I tend to do podcasts/audiobooks in my car and sometimes when doing chores around the apartment. I can't read while I am driving or vacuuming, but neither takes much mental capacity.
No, I don't find movies slow. The rhythm of a film is the one that was decided by the filmmaker, so it's part of the experience(at least for fiction).
For fiction books, since the book is written, I expect to be able to read it at my own pace, and since I am a very fast reader, I usually end up 'waiting' in an audiobook, without getting anything extra in compensation. In other words, I'm frustrated by the fact that I could read much faster, but can't. I can understand from the previous answers that there are audiobooks/dramas with high production value though. I'll look into this. In such a case, I guess I should view the audiobook as a different object, i.e some kind of adaptation, much like books are turned into films.
Non fiction is completely different - I very much dislike anything audio/video. I need a book, since I want to be able to jump around non linearly (go back , skip, stop, explore this bit/ask a question , etc).
reading requires 100% focus. you can't listen to anything else. you can't use your hands unless you read off a computer screen, and then you still need to switch pages somehow, you can't move around either. people watch tv on a treadmill, but reading won't work because you need to keep the focus on the current line. reading while commuting with public transport works at least.
on the other hand listening opens up a number of other activities at the same time. i started listening on my commute. when that went away i discovered going for a walk as a replacement exercise and as a great way to get some listening time in. in fact because i want to get more time to listen, i end up going for longer walks.
besides audiobooks i also listen to audio drama and podcasts. i started with the latter. audio books came later, when i decided that i wanted to read more, and it allowed me to start picking up some books without changing my habits.
i love reading. i was a bookworm when i was a kid. i stopped because i got to busy and just would not find the time. i was also traveling a lot and didn't want to carry books around. if i pick up something to read now i loose track of time.
> on the other hand listening opens up a number of other activities at the same time.
Not for everybody. I can't listen to an audiobook and do anything else at all if I expect to be able to actually absorb what I'm hearing. I find it amazing that other people can do that. Perhaps Agingcoder is like me.
I find them slow too. Depending on the author, I can read a novel in an evening. Mostly, I do quick bursts for time reasons. My average is a few nights.
An audio book can take a long time. Listening fast is a mixed bag. I generally have a poor experience. And I can take aural "input" quickly, and do that when it is about learning something, not pleasure.
A while back, I gave audio books another try. My brother in law loves them, BTW. He encouraged me to try again largely because he had one he wanted me to comment on.
I find my ability to visualize, become immersed in the story to the point where I do not notice I am reading is not as well developed when listening! For me, this is my number one reason for not using audiobooks.
For my brother in law it is the opposite!
I find it hard to restart sometimes too. Have to go back some and let the book ramp up. This is near instant when I read. Maybe go back a page or few tops, if it has been a while. I need to ramp up on a listen every time.
I bet something along these lines drives people to on medium or other. People appear to vary widely.
That said, audio books have some great use cases:
When reading, many labors can't be done. Listening works along with many labors. This is compelling! I personally prefer podcasts, but audio books will plug right in here.
I already mentioned immersion differences.
Some people really enjoy the readers inflection and characterization. I like this too. It is one of the better things about audio books, assuming one has some affinity for a reader. There definitely is potential for pleasure here. A great reader does add to the experience.
Shared reading! This one surprised me! I know a couple who listen together while doing other projects. Pretty cool! They just have it playing and do whatever they are doing.
That is all I got. Maybe it is useful perspective from a reader who prefers visually reading a book, but who has also appreciated audio books.
Audible has some flagrant dark patterns in their design for consumers as well. While you _could_ buy independent audiobooks at cost, their most popular model is to subscribe to a monthly membership where you earn one credit a month. This monthly credit can buy any audio book.
The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subscription for an account with remaining credits, you'll lose all your credits. Your choice is to either spend them all at once or keep your account active and keep paying the monthly fee while hoping to eventually pay down the credit debt enough to cancel.
The only thing that's compared in my experience is for Adobe Stock.
I really hate the cancellation thing. There's no reason it has to be that way, it's just plain extortion (that might be a bit dramatic of a word for it, but it's the dynamic).
I bought a sub a year ago because there was a good deal ($5/mo for 6 months or something). Now I have a pile of credits and a recurring monthly charge. Yeah, I knew what I was getting into, but it's annoying all the same.
I tried to find this in the switch plan and cancel plan processes to no avail.
Their cheapest plan in the cancelation flow is "Switch to a credit every other month for $8.50/mo" which doesn't show a title in the UI but sounds like the "silver plan" from [1].
Audio books seem to cost like £25 each, but credits are £8 a month. Seems like an absolute no-brainer if what you want to do is actually listen to books? If you're accumulating credits then you shouldn't be subscribed in the first place.
It is an absolutely horrible way to treat customers. Don't use their service.
I've had a subscription for a while and it has helped me read more books but this cancellation policy is absolutely bonkers. They really are actively trying to hurt and squeeze the customer more than any other service I've used. I downgraded my subscription (to stop receiving credits) but I'm still having trouble using the credits I did build up. As soon as I'm done I'll be cancelling forever.
There are many valid criticisms of Audible, but I think membership pricing is just something that will suit some people more than others.
Personally, I have no trouble buying on average one book per month. I think that the ability to accumulate credits offers quite a lot of flexibility. Instead of being forced to buy one book every month, I can opt not to buy a book this month, but instead buy two books next month.
Although it is annoying that you lose all your credits if you cancel, there are plenty of books to spend them on. And I don't think it's entirely reasonable for Audible to hold on to your credits for eternity – since you could redeem them at any point, they'd have to keep a pot of money sitting around for paying rights holders. Imagine if something happened and a huge amount of people decided to redeem all their credits all at once – without a huge amount of cash set aside, Audible could have trouble fulfilling all those orders.
So I think the pricing system isn't so bad, but the DRM situation is very disappointing.
Credits or vouchers are not a new thing. Common schemes are limited duration, buying when you need them (possibly with bulk discount) instead of every month or buying every month but automatically stopping if you still have 10 stocked up (e.g. pop-up for phone's) or returning/selling unused vouchers for X%, ...
Given all these options available offering "nothing at all" seems not that reasonable.
At some point this year Audible also stopped letting you see the price of audiobooks in the Audible app, you also can't purchase books without using an Audible credit via the App.
It's clearly so that people like me who save credits and only use them on $22+ books have no idea what a book actually costs without looking them up. I buy anything under $12-15 with cash since credits are basically $12, at least in the 3 credit bundle.
Jokes on them though, now I buy even less books and stick to my unread library more nowadays.
I’m pretty certain the price removal was due to App Store and Play store policy. If you list the price, users expect to be able to purchase in-app, which then means Audible forks over the 30% tariff the platforms take.
For people like me, who read a lot of books, Audible was and is absolutely wonderful.
Audiobooks used to cost like $30-$40 each, at least. With Audible, I pay a monthly fee and get access to books at $10 each. They also routinely have deals selling books for $10, or 2-for-1 deals, etc. The difference in price is huge and a no-brainer if you read a lot of books.
Note: I actually do the year-subscription plan, in which you get 24 credits for the cheapest price, to spend during that year. Buying extra credits will give them to you at that low price as well.
"This essay, which I am about to record as an audiobook […], and will thereafter upload to ACX as a self-published, free audiobook."
Doctorow seems to have intended to release this audiobook on Audible for free. However, when I look it up on Audible's website, it is on sale for a regular price of £3.69 (or £3.23 / one credit for Audible members). I wonder why this is.
This is not a criticism of Doctorow; I think he probably doesn't expect people to actually pay for it, and he's released a DRM-free copy, free of charge.
I wonder if this is something that Audible enforces (i.e. they do not normally allow audiobooks to be available free of charge). I have seen some audiobooks available free of charge on Audible, but perhaps those are the exception rather than the rule.
I really like Cory's books, and have even purchased some of his audiobooks from him, but I find that I do 100% of my audiobook listening through Audible. The convenience and massive library that I've amassed as a result of their credit scheme has fully captured me.
When I had a standalone music player, it was far easier to deal with random MP3 files.
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[ 0.84 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadIf I was a narrator, why wouldn't I do a basic search to see if the audiobook exists, or contact the author/publisher to verify ownership rights, before investing all this time and effort because someone said they own something?
We're trained to think of scams as involving Nigerian princes, misspelled e-mails, password phishing, .exe attachments, or "I've got a bridge to sell you".
It's nowhere near obvious how contracting an audiobook narration, of all things, could or would be a scam. You'd have to know there was a market/scam for counterfeit audiobooks which I never imagined until I read this. In fact, it's pretty convoluted and I'm still pretty surprised to discover it exists.
On top of which, contacting an author isn't always easy, and figuring out how to navigate from a publisher's consumer customer service to a person who can actually correctly verify rights is probably going to be a long annoying journey.
Still, it is worth commenting that there are trivial ways to remove DRM from Audible files. I myself do it to my own collection, partly out of "lockout prevention", and partly so that I can listen to the books using apps that I find infinitely more covenient and feature rich than Audible's own (shout-out to Podcast Addict).
I won't detail how it is done, out of respect for the fact that HN is based in a jurisdiction where the DMCA represses free speech on the topic. However, Doctorow could always release his audiobooks on Audible while pointing with plausible deniability towards information on how to remove DRM, hosted from countries where we're lucky enough that talking about technical procedures is not a crime.
The difference with audiobooks, though, is there are several audiobook retailers that are natively DRM Free, such as downpour and libro.fm. Why buy from the DRM’d vendor, who could increase their protection at any time, when you have DRM-Free options you could be giving your money to instead?
And then for new movies I use Amazon alongside a different program which works with that.
say i share with a loved one or close friend the de-DRM'd audiobook. now their computer becomes infected with a RAT, and 'my' file/audiobook fingerprinted with the proprietary fingerprint algorithm (to identify me as the unique purchaser, the same techniques are probably applied industry wide) is leaked online as a consequence (or their backup system is compromised or any kind of infosec violation out of the hands of my friend). next, Amazon corp identifies me. their immediate next step: lawsuit on me as an individual because 'my' file is now leaked on p2p filesharing sites and forums without me knowing about it.
capitalist-enforced DRM is cancer because it's artificial scarcity imposed on a non-scarce resource (computer data/audio file). it's the result of trying to work with the limited and violent toolsets of a capitalist economy.
the internet is still young and there are likely so many better options for publishing things.
for example, an author i've followed for a while by the name of Charles Eisenstein has a deal with his publisher, North Atlantic Books, to initially launch his book as paperback only, and then after a six month period, his whole book is available free to read on his website (also of course there's the wonderful Library Genesis).
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein: https://charleseisenstein.org/books/the-more-beautiful-world... (i love the final story 'A Gathering of the Tribe')
i just wanted to add my two cents after seeing encouraging discussions/debates here on this page. hybrid strategies like Eisenstein's give me signals that ultimately make me feel hopeful for a post-capitalist society which would allow any child to listen to any audiobook (and be infinitely curious in whichever direction feels most natural for them), regardless of whether their parents can afford Audible/Storytel/whatever. i focus on a child's curiosity because they suffer the most from the capitalist commoditization of culture and science and more.
"How does Audio Fingerprinting work": https://emysound.com/blog/open-source/2020/06/12/how-audio-f...
The watermarked music files I have come across only go as far as identifying the distribution service, not an individual.
From what I remember the metadata of account information is added as an editable extended tags. I actually don't know if audiobooks are even tagged by account in audible's case, it's true for iTunes.
Children will have access to free audio books in the US as long as libraries are around. I can get digital audiobooks for free from my library.
Libby/Overdrive and Hoopla are great, especially for children's audiobooks.
I don't know if your argument against using dedrm tools even makes sense. The point is that you shouldn't share your decrypted audiobooks. It shouldn't matter what happens to your friend's computer. More importantly, an audiobook isn't important enough to steal, that a giant leap.
Dedrming an audiobook is the only way I know to make sure that one day audible won't wake up and say, no we don't want you listening to that book anymore and just take it off their platform after I have paid for it. That's not a theoretical, that's already happened to some with certain kindle books.
Full disclosure, powered by my employer.
They mention "Google Books, or Libro.fm, or Downpour" or having your own storefront, but it's mainly a problem statement.
> A policy cure?
Removing Section 1201 from the DMCA?
I have to be honest and say… I think I would be very frustrated with my spouse if this principle cost us so much potential financial freedom in other parts of our lives.
That’s not to say they shouldn’t do this. That would just be hard for me to swallow!
This mindset is a driving force behind our corrupt politics: sacrificing morals for money.
this person is just being a little weird and stubborn about this.
Audible members know what they are getting and choose to do so. Audible DRM is not a big deal, just use this Audible app, some of the arguments made in this article are invalid.
HN user: Not really a big deal though is it?
If you've paid attention in the last century or so - it is a big deal in countries all over the world, there is a global political crisis of people sacrificing morals for money.
What I am saying is that putting your book on audible is not really unethical. It's not such a big deal, people on audible know how the system works and the DRM is fairly irrelevant for most people without tinfoil hats.
Selling out on his principles to make half a million in the audible store might still be a net financial negative if it causes him to lose credibility with the many people who buy his other books and pay his speaker fees.
Also, making a big fuss about it is content marketing, which works because of his brand. He’s on the front page of HN with a blog post that mentions a bunch of his offerings/plays up the quality of his audiobooks. More financial incentive to forego the Audible dollars.
I guess I overestimated the returns to fame?
Heck, in this article he mentions spending $50k on recording a previous audiobook, which looks to be the cost of two years at Harvard. I’m pretty sure he’s got a lot of financial freedom already.
That kind of sacrifice is a negative sum game: when we all do it, we’re all worse off.
1. Sign in to audible.com.
2. Download the book file from your Library (the .aax file).
3. Use https://audible-converter.ml to generate a version of the ebook absent DRM. All processing happens in the browser.
Why do people listen to them instead of reading books? Is it because, say, listening to one while driving is better than not being able to read since you have no time to do so? Or is there a specific pleasure in listening to a book read by someone else?
But listening to something is less of a commitment. As you say, can combine it with something else. So it's a way for me to ease back into reading mode again.
Edit: but I would recommend staying away from Audible. When I wanted to take a break from my monthly membership, they forced me to use all tokens I had amassed.
Audiobook players all have speed controls that let you make them go faster.
I know people who watch YouTube videos like that, and my brain cannot process spoken words so fast.
It also reminds me of hip hop, some of those raps are like a machine gun of words that overload the brain.
It's probably about personal preferences in "modes of thinking", visual, verbal, auditory, etc. I much prefer to read something than to watch a video or listen to audio, and can consume information the quickest.
Not at first. This is something that people train themselves to do gradually. For me it didn't take very long to get to 3x playback speed for audiobooks, which untrained people usually find incomprehensible, but I started out much slower and then increased the speed a little every day because I wanted to be able to listen to more books.
I've always wanted to deepen my knowledge of web accessibility, and get more familiar with screen readers - but was afraid it might be too frustrating to navigate while listening to a voice, slow enough to understand.
Now I know, it just takes practice. Thanks!
After a certain amount of minutes, at 1.5x speed, the cadence of lectures at high speed start to feel normal and going back to 1.0x speed feels slow, as if it was 0.7x speed. Sort of like an audio illusion.
It reminds me of the feeling you get when you have been on a highway at a high speed for hours on a road trip. For whatever reason, my brain stops understanding how fast the "slow" speed of 20mph is is. So it feels extra slow even though relative to walking it's really fast.
Recently I came across Jump Cutter https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jump-cutter/lmppdp... which is an extension to speed up silences while keeping spoken audio at normal speed. You can customize it, but it's been an interesting experience, the audio is at an effective 1.9x speed while only being 1.4x during the spoken section.
Screen readers have a place, but the value in screen readers for the non-visually impaired is limited to the text-to-speech function. After a certain point, the synthetic voices and physics make it hard to produce intelligible sounds even if your brain can process it faster. Certain sounds end up getting cut or the software starts skipping words and it not something you can fix for every scenario. https://github.com/espeak-ng/espeak-ng/issues/131 an ongoing thread talking about how this can be mitigated.
I also know that some visually impaired people get used to certain voices to the point where they can make at words at a higher speed using a specific voice compared to others. The robot voices easier to understand than the more human sounding ones.
Getting to 3x is much much easier than you imagine, it will take less than an hour if you increase the speed by 0.2x every 15ish minutes. You get used to it really quickly. The human brain is pretty fantastic in that regard. I personally found that past 2.7x speed, even if I can understand the words, I can't comprehend new ideas and words fast enough for it to make sense and I end up having to pause. There definitely is a a point of diminishing returns, and for me it's around 2.6x, 2.7x. It depends on the lecturer cadence though.
If you want simple emulation of navigating using a screen reader, navigating having disabled your mouse is a good starting point. NVDA is the gold standard for screen readers.
There are books that are enhanced by a great narrator (Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson) or the author gives a bit of extra info/context while reading (Good to Great by Jim Collins).
Also, Audible has a huge selection of “Great Courses”, which are lectures from professors. Obviously, they aren’t as rigorous as a real college class, but I love being able to listen to 12ish hours of lecture about something I find interesting.
I listen to books at 1.2-1.5 speed depending on the narrator and topic, so that helps to not feel “slowed down”.
For my personal use, I tend to do podcasts/audiobooks in my car and sometimes when doing chores around the apartment. I can't read while I am driving or vacuuming, but neither takes much mental capacity.
No, I don't find movies slow. The rhythm of a film is the one that was decided by the filmmaker, so it's part of the experience(at least for fiction).
For fiction books, since the book is written, I expect to be able to read it at my own pace, and since I am a very fast reader, I usually end up 'waiting' in an audiobook, without getting anything extra in compensation. In other words, I'm frustrated by the fact that I could read much faster, but can't. I can understand from the previous answers that there are audiobooks/dramas with high production value though. I'll look into this. In such a case, I guess I should view the audiobook as a different object, i.e some kind of adaptation, much like books are turned into films.
Non fiction is completely different - I very much dislike anything audio/video. I need a book, since I want to be able to jump around non linearly (go back , skip, stop, explore this bit/ask a question , etc).
on the other hand listening opens up a number of other activities at the same time. i started listening on my commute. when that went away i discovered going for a walk as a replacement exercise and as a great way to get some listening time in. in fact because i want to get more time to listen, i end up going for longer walks.
besides audiobooks i also listen to audio drama and podcasts. i started with the latter. audio books came later, when i decided that i wanted to read more, and it allowed me to start picking up some books without changing my habits.
i love reading. i was a bookworm when i was a kid. i stopped because i got to busy and just would not find the time. i was also traveling a lot and didn't want to carry books around. if i pick up something to read now i loose track of time.
Not for everybody. I can't listen to an audiobook and do anything else at all if I expect to be able to actually absorb what I'm hearing. I find it amazing that other people can do that. Perhaps Agingcoder is like me.
An audio book can take a long time. Listening fast is a mixed bag. I generally have a poor experience. And I can take aural "input" quickly, and do that when it is about learning something, not pleasure.
A while back, I gave audio books another try. My brother in law loves them, BTW. He encouraged me to try again largely because he had one he wanted me to comment on.
I find my ability to visualize, become immersed in the story to the point where I do not notice I am reading is not as well developed when listening! For me, this is my number one reason for not using audiobooks.
For my brother in law it is the opposite!
I find it hard to restart sometimes too. Have to go back some and let the book ramp up. This is near instant when I read. Maybe go back a page or few tops, if it has been a while. I need to ramp up on a listen every time.
I bet something along these lines drives people to on medium or other. People appear to vary widely.
That said, audio books have some great use cases:
When reading, many labors can't be done. Listening works along with many labors. This is compelling! I personally prefer podcasts, but audio books will plug right in here.
I already mentioned immersion differences.
Some people really enjoy the readers inflection and characterization. I like this too. It is one of the better things about audio books, assuming one has some affinity for a reader. There definitely is potential for pleasure here. A great reader does add to the experience.
Shared reading! This one surprised me! I know a couple who listen together while doing other projects. Pretty cool! They just have it playing and do whatever they are doing.
That is all I got. Maybe it is useful perspective from a reader who prefers visually reading a book, but who has also appreciated audio books.
The dig comes if you decide you have too many credits cached. Perhaps because you can't get through one audiobook a month. If you cancel a subscription for an account with remaining credits, you'll lose all your credits. Your choice is to either spend them all at once or keep your account active and keep paying the monthly fee while hoping to eventually pay down the credit debt enough to cancel.
The only thing that's compared in my experience is for Adobe Stock.
I bought a sub a year ago because there was a good deal ($5/mo for 6 months or something). Now I have a pile of credits and a recurring monthly charge. Yeah, I knew what I was getting into, but it's annoying all the same.
Their cheapest plan in the cancelation flow is "Switch to a credit every other month for $8.50/mo" which doesn't show a title in the UI but sounds like the "silver plan" from [1].
[1]: https://audiobookaddicts.com/audible-silver-plan/
I've had a subscription for a while and it has helped me read more books but this cancellation policy is absolutely bonkers. They really are actively trying to hurt and squeeze the customer more than any other service I've used. I downgraded my subscription (to stop receiving credits) but I'm still having trouble using the credits I did build up. As soon as I'm done I'll be cancelling forever.
Personally, I have no trouble buying on average one book per month. I think that the ability to accumulate credits offers quite a lot of flexibility. Instead of being forced to buy one book every month, I can opt not to buy a book this month, but instead buy two books next month.
Although it is annoying that you lose all your credits if you cancel, there are plenty of books to spend them on. And I don't think it's entirely reasonable for Audible to hold on to your credits for eternity – since you could redeem them at any point, they'd have to keep a pot of money sitting around for paying rights holders. Imagine if something happened and a huge amount of people decided to redeem all their credits all at once – without a huge amount of cash set aside, Audible could have trouble fulfilling all those orders.
So I think the pricing system isn't so bad, but the DRM situation is very disappointing.
Credits or vouchers are not a new thing. Common schemes are limited duration, buying when you need them (possibly with bulk discount) instead of every month or buying every month but automatically stopping if you still have 10 stocked up (e.g. pop-up for phone's) or returning/selling unused vouchers for X%, ...
Given all these options available offering "nothing at all" seems not that reasonable.
It's clearly so that people like me who save credits and only use them on $22+ books have no idea what a book actually costs without looking them up. I buy anything under $12-15 with cash since credits are basically $12, at least in the 3 credit bundle.
Jokes on them though, now I buy even less books and stick to my unread library more nowadays.
Audiobooks used to cost like $30-$40 each, at least. With Audible, I pay a monthly fee and get access to books at $10 each. They also routinely have deals selling books for $10, or 2-for-1 deals, etc. The difference in price is huge and a no-brainer if you read a lot of books.
Note: I actually do the year-subscription plan, in which you get 24 credits for the cheapest price, to spend during that year. Buying extra credits will give them to you at that low price as well.
Was it intentional? Can someone ping the author and see if they can remove the paywall to increase the blast radius of such an important piece?
https://craphound.com/news/2022/07/24/why-none-of-my-books-a...
You could write to the author and ask him why he posts on Medium. My bet is that posting in multiple places increases the blast radius.
Doctorow seems to have intended to release this audiobook on Audible for free. However, when I look it up on Audible's website, it is on sale for a regular price of £3.69 (or £3.23 / one credit for Audible members). I wonder why this is.
This is not a criticism of Doctorow; I think he probably doesn't expect people to actually pay for it, and he's released a DRM-free copy, free of charge.
I wonder if this is something that Audible enforces (i.e. they do not normally allow audiobooks to be available free of charge). I have seen some audiobooks available free of charge on Audible, but perhaps those are the exception rather than the rule.
When I had a standalone music player, it was far easier to deal with random MP3 files.