Speak Geek to Me: Geek's Lament

I’m so often feeling “Kumbaya” about the aspects of my geeky lifestyle that it hits me like a train every time two aspects don’t quite mesh. In this moment, it's my love of geeky toys vs. my card carrying EFF member's stance against DRM and other shackles on digital content.

On one hand, I love my toys. I added up how much tech I carry around with me (camera, digital recorder, Flip video cam, iPod, Blackberry…) and was a little amazed. I never thought I was a gadget-head, and I am usually one to hold back when something shiny hits the market so I can get opinions on it and allow the company to work out kinks (I’m still not sold on the iPhone). But when I do get the toys, I love them dearly.

On the other hand, I’m an avid enthusiast for open media, Creative Commons, and digital content. I love what the Internet has done for creators and the doors it’s opened for us. DRM (Digital Rights Management) is a foul word in my language, and I am very pro-sharing of content, believing the artists’ fans will give back if/when they can. (And I hope this will be proven next week as my book Playing For Keeps will be released via free PDF and a print version on Amazon.com.)

I didn’t think these two things could butt heads, but I was wrong. I discovered this when my mother bought me an Amazon Kindle for my birthday.

Now, I’d heard that the Kindle was pure evil in a tapered, white tablet. It has DRM on the files, it won’t let you share, it’s unmodifiable (one of the requirements of DRM is you have to keep the device pure, else people can modify it to unlock said content), it won’t support simple PDFs. It is too expensive and it eats babies.

I’d also heard that the Kindle was going to be the ebook reader to end all readers. Its wireless capability would allow for amazing versatility in regards to purchasing books, emailing files to the Kindle, even listening to music while you read. The screen is ePaper, as readable as regular paper (no glare, no backlight), and buying content is so simple I would see my kid’s college money draining away.

So my Kindle in hand, I contacted a friend who’s a staunch anti-DRM advocate. I asked him, “My mom bought me a Kindle for my birthday. What’s an anti-DRM woman to do?”

His advice was to sell it and buy a Palm.

Possibly good advice if I’d won it, but considering my own mother gave it to me, I feel it’s rude to treat it like a big Amazon gift certificate. And besides. It’s shiny.

I was delighted to find that the Kindle was inspired in part by one of my favorite books, The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, which centers around an interactive smart book that falls into the hands of a little poor girl and is instrumental in raising her.

I spent a lot of time exploring the capabilities of the Kindle, from the basic browser (I can log into Twitter, but can’t seem to actually tweet from it) to putting music on it to testing out the various PDF conversions. Lack of PDF support was one of the biggest issues with the release of the Kindle, but the conversion support that allows you to email DOC and TXT files to your Kindle (among others) seems to work with PDF now. At least, I was able to get a PDF on my Kindle with no problems. (I also checked out the program Stanza, which also converted it to a Kindle-friendly format, but removed the paragraph breaks of my books, which would get rather annoying. For windows users I believe the MOBIpocket program works for conversion. But try just emailing a PDF first and see how that does.)

But damn. It’s shiny. It looks good. The instant gratification factor is high. The thought of putting all my ebooks that I didn’t want to read on my computer makes me giddy. I am not on board with paying for otherwise free blogs, but I did get a subscription to Asimov’s and was thrilled when the August and September issues landed on my Kindle. I’d like to have the cover art of the magazine, but that’s a minor quibble. And the deal is, honestly, I can see a lot of room for improvement. I mean that in the best way; the problems are clear and look like they can be fixed in the next generation - no page numbers is puzzling, some people dislike the blink in the page that comes before a new page loads, etc. But damn, a Kindle with these minor problems fixed would be formidable.

But the big problem still exists: I can’t stand DRM. It’s a principle thing. I’m not fuming at being unable to send the file to all my buddies, I’m annoyed at the assumption that I’m a criminal and would do so if they didn’t stop me. Also, I’ve purchased this content, but I can only read it on my Kindle. If I drop my Kindle and break it, too bad! I have to buy another Kindle to keep reading. I don’t like not having access to content I pay for.

And as a creator, DRM offends me. It feels vaguely unsettling to have this device (shiny!) and enjoy it a lot (so shiny!) and yet when I consider my book coming out in a couple of weeks, I don’t want it to be available for the Kindle. I don’t want my content crippled by DRM; if people want to download my PDF and put it on their Kindle, rock on with their bad selves. But I want them to have the same control over the content they pay for that I demand from the content I purchase.

Thus, even as I squee and dance around with my shiny toy, this small, gnawing sense of hypocrisy is always there. I’ll read others’ DRM protected work, but won’t do the same for my own. I am considering how to deal with this, but I haven’t reached a conclusion yet. As far as I know, my publisher doesn’t release Kindle editions yet, which I know is just a cop-out for me, but this is a bridge I must cross eventually.

So make it easy on a conflicted geek with principles and a shiny toy, Amazon. Kill the DRM. Then I can happily squee, put my books on your Kindle, and when the second gen comes out, maybe I’ll even buy one myself. OK?

(It’s so shiny!)

Mur Lafferty is a writer and podcaster from Durham, NC. Her first book, Playing For Keeps, will be released in print August 25 - there are no plans for a Kindle edition.