Digital Comic Publisher Quits, Customers Lose All Their "Purchased" Titles

http://www.jmanga.com/urgent-message

by Daiz • 13 years ago

127 98 13 years ago

Daiz• 13 years ago

Yet another case that demonstrates that as long as DRM is involved (in this case, being restricted to online reading of titles only), you're never actually buying anything, merely renting them indefinitely. http://xkcd.com/488/ keeps being sadly relevant.

It's also such a damn shame that genuine digital purchasing (as in, something that involves DRM-free downloads) is such a rarity outside the music industry. I just can't understand why every other industry (especially the video industry) thinks that offering DRM-free downloads would somehow kill them or whatever when digital music sales have only got better since the wide-scale ditching of DRM, especially since huge video files are much harder to share casually than small music files. There is value in the catalog subscription model that the likes of Netflix offers, but it should really have actual buying options available next to it (ideally, a service could combine both models - pay a lump sum for catalog streaming rights, then actually buy individual titles, and as a bonus, not only do you get DRM-free downloads, but you could also offer extras, formats that aren't possible with streaming, unlimited streaming rights for actually purchased titles since they have the available infrastructure for it, and so on).

InclinedPlane4• 13 years ago

I've been able to buy a lot of e-books without DRM (mostly tech books). But still, it is rather ridiculous, I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.

DanBC3• 13 years ago

Maybe. Or perhaps people just give up and the corps get their way and all content is rented; and can only be accessed by devices with DNA biometrics.

There will be niche boutique artists creating dead tree books of obscure short stories and bad poetry, for phenomenal pricing.

porsupah• 13 years ago

Though, we might also wind up in the scenario depicted in the satirical three minute short, "Welcome to Life"..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E

coldtea3• 13 years ago

>I can't help but think that the people of, say, 2050 will look back at the way we have gone about "managing" content in this era and think we were all mad.

Only if those people have progressed beyond capitalism and big corporations having control over laws.

shmerl11• 13 years ago

Why, you are buying it. You just need to be diligent and back stuff up. And if DRM is not easily breakable - avoid buying it altogether. Publishers who use DRM can't be trusted, so backups should be a norm.

Fargren2• 13 years ago

DRM may be easy to break, but breaking it is illegal under the DMCA. And even if it's not a crime normally prosecuted, that's a very big problem.

spc4762• 13 years ago

Copy protection has been a recurring problem since the early 80s. That's over thirty years. You'd think by now we would have learned our lesson, but I fear it will take another thirty before the powers-that-be start to question the wisdom of copy protection, and another thirty for them to give up.

JOnAgain• 13 years ago

The punchline:

>> Is there a way to download the manga I have purchased? It is not possible to download manga from My Page. All digital manga content will no longer be viewable after May 30th 2013 at 11:59pm (US Pacific Time)

koide• 13 years ago

Companies should have the term "buying" forbidden if DRM is involved.

(This page http://www.jmanga.com/hoshi-no-samidare-the-lucifer-and-bisc... is filled with "buy" this and that)

hga7• 13 years ago

I'm inclined to agree ... but on the other hand, from reading the Anime News Network forum topic it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith and that the rug got pulled out from underneath them.

You could effectively ban DRM that depends on active servers or schemes like this where the content is always kept on theirs' by requiring them to post a bond sufficient to refund the customers who've been screwed. Not the full amount, but enough to compensate for value promised but not delivered. It would be essentially declaring it is not in the public interest to allow companies to play these games, but here's a mechanism if you're really determined.

Liability of some sort really needs to be established, and it would be wise for the companies playing these games to do something intelligent before extreme DRM becomes too toxic.

rhizome• 13 years ago

At least in the US, the word "buy" should apply only to things subject to the right of first sale.

polemic• 13 years ago

> "...it seems very likely the people running the company were operating in good faith"

I don't think that matters. They're not in good faith selling ownership, because they're not selling ownership.

clinth• 13 years ago

Good faith means less when you're selling an ongoing service and accept money. When they promised an ongoing service to host purchases, they laid the rug out and stood on it.

belorn2• 13 years ago

If a product is bought and sold, it should mean that ownership has been transferred.

If ownership has changed hands, then the previous owner should not be allowed to retain control over the product. DRM, withholding of root passwords, forced updates, it really shouldn't matter. The owner should be the person of total control, and anyone interfering with that should be sent to court as a thief or intruder. This was after all the economic model in USA before DRM was invented.

hga7• 13 years ago

Surely they were depending on representations by the Japanese companies they were fronting for. Although as we've seen in the anime market, those, at least implicit ones, can be very iffy (Pioneer/Geneon, Bandai).

spc4762• 13 years ago

I asked a lawyer about this. Well, specifically, about the difference between a physical book and an ebook (Kindle). He basically stated that when you buy a physical book, you are, in fact, obtaining a license to read the contents of said book. While you own the physical object, you do not own the contents. You can transfer this "license" to another party (gift it or sell it) but you, in fact, licensing the contents.

It makes a weird kind of sense. I can sell the license to my physical copy of _Neuromancer_, but I cannot sell the contents (or claim to be the author) of _Neuromancer_.

WalterBright• 13 years ago

It always bugged me that dvds would be advertised as "own the movie now!" I wonder how that would play in court.

Wingman4l72• 13 years ago

There's actually a "We The People" petition on this: "Force companies to change language from "buying" to "licensing" when dealing with DRM-restricted goods." https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/force-companies-ch...

Before you derisively dismiss this, you might want to take a look at their response to the cellphone unlocking petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cel...

wuest• 13 years ago

This is an awesome petition. Thanks for bringing it to our attention; I've signed it.

That being said, I don't view the cellphone response as particularly progressive. The way it parses for me is "we think your phone should be unlocked if you don't have a contract." It didn't address the criminalization of unlocking cellphones while under a contract. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'd love to hear if I am, but I've read it a few times and I can't find another way to read the response.

Gormo3• 13 years ago

A petition - especially to the executive branch rather than the legislative - is hardly the way to approach this.

How about class-action lawsuits for fraudulent misrepresentations for businesses that use the word "buy" in deliberately deceptive ways?

uvdiv• 13 years ago

Before you derisively dismiss this, you might want to take a look at their response to the cellphone unlocking petition: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/make-unlocking-cel...

The one that clearly says they won't support unlocking cellphones under contract, and doesn't even address the outrage over criminal penalties?

"...neither criminal law nor technological locks should prevent consumers from switching carriers when they are no longer bound by a service agreement or other obligation."

sinak• 13 years ago

Just a quick plug for http://fixthedmca.org

If you care about issues relating to DRM, please spare a few minutes and take action by tweeting at your Congressional representatives. Not only should owner's rights be protected, but people should have the right to circumvent DRM systems when there's no copyright infringement.

mikecane• 13 years ago

It will probably be unpopular to say so: But learn how to strip DRM. If you paid for it, you should own it.

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

It wouldn't help in this situation, since you can't even download the stuff you bought[1]. Your "purchase" only got you on-line viewing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5377617

gngeal2• 13 years ago

What about a caching proxy? You can't view it on your screen unless the browser downloads it anyway.

icebraining4• 13 years ago

Better yet: stop paying for, and therefore encouraging, the production of DRMed content.

Whether that means abstaining is a personal choice.

theg2• 13 years ago

Abstaining is the correct choice though. Piracy only breeds stronger and more invasive DRM and I'm personally of the mindset that no one should work for free or produce goods without compensation unless they choose to.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

> If you paid for it, you should own it

That's facially nonsense. I pay for my apartment--it doesn't mean I own it.

You pay for the specific rights you purchase. It's morally wrong to bargain for one set of rights and use a broader set.

shrikant• 13 years ago

This is nitpicking. He clearly meant to say:

> If you bought it, you should own it.

If the "real" meaning if the transaction is "rent till we decide you can't anymore", then it shouldn't be misrepresented as a purchase.

jiggy20114• 13 years ago

The purchasers are issued a refund in the form of a gift card. So, if you purchased it and DRM stripped it then you get to keep the comic and get the refund!

Edit: Looks like you don't

The point I am more worried about here is that we are actually reliant to an extent on piracy and DRM stripping in order to preserve abandoned works.

Tcepsa• 13 years ago

The refund appears to only apply to "Unused JManga Paid Points". If you used your points to <strike>buy</strike> license manga, you will not be getting a refund for them. (edited to replace "buy" with "license")

InclinedPlane4• 13 years ago

This is a big problem with the web as well (the transfer of data may be distributed and redundant but the hosting of it is not).

jiggy20114• 13 years ago

True, but at least with the web we have archive.org and other archiving efforts.

With DRMd ebooks there are legal and technical measures in effect to try and prevent archiving.

ChrisClark• 13 years ago

The refund is only for the points you haven't spent yet. If you 'bought' something you will not get the money back and you will never get to see it again.

tomjen32• 13 years ago

Fraud. Isn't that what chargebacks are for?

DanBC3• 13 years ago

How does the DMCA handle cases like this?

Are you allowed to rip the protection to keep access to something you've "bought"? Or is that circumvention and thus a criminal offence?

dangrossman2• 13 years ago

It is circumvention and it is illegal. There are only 6 allowed exemptions to the rule as of the last rulemaking, and making backup copies is not one of them, no matter the situation. The only exemption that exists for DRM-protected ebooks is to make stripping that DRM legal when no version of the ebook compatible with screen readers or read-aloud functions exists, so that the visually impaired can access the text.

shmerl11• 13 years ago

What about it simply being fair use? Scraping DRM for personal backup is well within it.

kefka3• 13 years ago

So, why buy any media then? I'd rather just pirate it and be on my way. Xkcd/488 makes a great point: buying and then freeing from a dying system is just as illegal as copyright violation.

So, media types that use any DRM: why should I buy your product?

shmerl11• 13 years ago

Most probably DCMA even prohibits from looking inside the stream of that data. But should people care to heed it? DMCA itself is a draconian idiocy.

cmorgan8506• 13 years ago

Friend of mine runs something similar. http://www.thefabler.com/

kefka3• 13 years ago

If your friend uses strong DRM and/or uses cloud based "purchasing" to keep users from possessing the bought files, I hope he fails.

The last thing I want is more DRM peddlers catering to people who aren't in the know about every tech nuance out there. So yes, it can he unduly harsh. But in our legal environment (with little recourse), drm providers almost always deserve it.

An exception to that is companies that sell "drm" servers to authenticate that only X licenses of software are used at one time. License compliance is another drain on innovation, but can be effective in keeping legit in compliance.

shmerl11• 13 years ago

Another reason to backup all your purchases from the "cloud" services, scraping off any DRM from them first.

unsignedint• 13 years ago

Ah... JManga... I didn't think this place was the best example of electronic publishing to begin with. Their page structure was very misleading, too. They had some "informative" page, that is unavailable to "buy" and such.

The idea of the service it was actually interesting, and they perhaps had a better chance if it was all-you-can-eat subscription model as opposed to retailing.

A bit of shame especially after coming into the market with big fanfare of how all Japanese publishers joined the force making this possible... (and, it is plausible whole business model was dictated by influences of those publishers.)

RexRollman• 13 years ago

The problem is that there are no consumer protections built into DRM law. People should never be locked out of their content.

In my opinon, JManga should be forced to continue to support their authentication systems or be forced to permanently unlock the content.

jiggy20114• 13 years ago

The problem is, how do you define DRM vs just a regular online service?

If I launch a web-app for example I don't necessarily want to have to support it forever.

pifflesnort• 13 years ago

This is, at its core, the problem with webapps.

PeterisP2• 13 years ago

You don't differentiate anything for consumer rights.

If you advertise and charge a monthly fee for a service, you don't need to support it forever.

If you advertise and charge a one-time fee for "premium gold star membership" on your site, then you need to support it for the lifetime of your site, not forever.

But if you advertise and charge for a product or content, saying "Buy it now!!! Own this beautiful widget for only $9.99!" then you have the following options:

a) Hand over the product, take the cash and be happy; b) Instead of handing over the product, promise to show the product on demand, and keep your promise eternally; c) Sell a promise to show the product on demand, but don't actually do it - that's called fraud and should be prosecuted.

But noone is asking jmanga.com for eternal support - they can quit, but they have to deliver the paid-for goods if they want to stop providing on-demand access.

ehmuidifici• 13 years ago

So let's change the title: instead of "Digital Comic Publisher", put "Steam", "Sony" or EA. DRM is the 21th century worst trap of all and we must stop it from spreading.

rcfox• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, it looks like the preview books simply have every byte XOR'd with 0x42, and you can see the image requests coming in on the Network tab of the Chrome developer tools while you're in the Flash-based reader. (I can't say for sure if the previously-for-sale books have the same scheme though.)

I doubt that this will reach the eyes of most of the users being screwed by the DRM though...

johnrgrace• 13 years ago

What has me puzzled is why they didn't try and sell their usebase, I'd be willing to make a modest offer. But now that they've gone off really pissed off their customers the value of that asset just dropped like a rock.

Digital Comic Publisher Quits, Customers Lose All Their "Purchased" Titles

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