Surprise: Kindle DRM lacks clarity, consistency, common sense

Amazon now has three Kindle book-reading devices on the market, plus software for at least two generations of the iPhone and iPod Touch. Die-hard technology enthusiasts could conceivably have five different places where they'd like to read the ebooks they've purchased from Amazon... but it turns out, that may not be so simple, as Dan Cohen discovered this weekend.

One of the Kindle's selling points has been that you don't have to manage your electronic library by syncing with your computer and manually downloading titles like you have to do with, say, an iPod. Amazon does it all for you behind the scenes. You buy your titles and they can be zapped to whichever device you're using at the time. Or all of them: Another big idea with the Kindle back-end is that you can read some of a book on your Kindle, then pick up your iPhone and keep reading exactly where you left off. This was a great help when Amazon sent a replacement Kindle DX after my review unit broke. Once I re-downloaded the books I was still reading on the new unit, they were still "open" to the right pages.

But I got lucky, it seems. As Cohen writes in this detailed blog post on the subject, not all Kindle books can be re-downloaded, and even if they can, all Kindle books include limits on the number of times those books can be re-downloaded. But that limit varies depending on the book (and can be as low as one re-download), and nowhere on Amazon.com is the limit revealed. (Discussion groups intimate that, at the outside, no book can be download more than six times.)

Cohen's case began simply enough: He upgraded his iPod Touch to the new iPhone 3.0 software, wiping out the old apps along the way, then reinstalled his applications from scratch. After reinstalling the Kindle reader, he found that only a few of his books were now listed on the device. He instructed Amazon to send a certain reference work to the iPhone. It, along with several of his other purchases, threw out an error: "Cannot be sent to selected device."

To make a very long story short, Cohen spent time talking to Amazon's customer service center where he was told about the re-downloading policy, and found out that he had hit the download limit on several of his titles. According to the rep, there's no way to find out how many downloads you are allowed; publishers have the right to control that and, in a statement I find hard to believe, the rep said that Amazon doesn't always know what the limit is. (If that's true, how would it be able to restrict them?) In fact, Amazon itself says, "You can wirelessly re-download books for free anytime."

So what's the takeaway here? Once again, DRM is rearing a painfully ugly head and treating its best customers (Cohen is a devout Kindle user) like common criminals, generating heaps of ill will and, of course, lots of stories like this. The end result will be a general souring on the Kindle and protected ebooks in general, as users feel like they won't be able to upgrade to new devices and take their paid-for libraries with them. Amazon's not entirely at fault on this one, as DRM is being driven by the publishers (though Amazon stands to benefit when you have to re-buy your books every few years as new Kindles are introduced), but it really ought to take a stand. If Apple can convince the music industry to back down on audio DRM, Amazon can -- and should -- do the same with book publishers.