From: Oliver Drobnik
Sent: October 04th 2007 18:29
To: Leo Laporte
Subject: DRM and Audible.com
Hello Leo,
I am listening to most of your Radio Leo shows on my Nokia N95 which has a nifty podcast client available for download directly from Nokia. When you recommended the audio book “Getting Things Done” you won me over to sign up with Audible.com and with my free book credit I downloaded this great audio book. I am an IT engineer with little time to read but listening to podcasts and audio books is always possible.
It was only after I had set up Audible on my home PC that I discovered that neither my trekstor organix mp3-Player nor the N95 are supported by Audible and thus I would have been only able to either burn the book or listen to it on my PC. I tried the player for N93 but this would not install on my handset.
While I understand that Audible sees a need to protect its assets the copy protection in their AA-files would have made it impossible for me to use their product for my intended purpose. So I saw myself justified to purchase a program (called Sound Taxi) to crack the DRM and convert my AA-file into a regular mp3 file to put on the devices I choose to. That’s called “fair use” isn’t it?
In the end after all these measures I was able to listen to “Getting Things Done” on my N95 and I loved it! Thanks for the recommendation!
You of all public figures are frequently speaking out against the music industry annoying users with DRM. But I am wondering why it is that you never mention Audible in this regard when precisely the same scenario is happening here that is forcing people to circumvent DRM to be able to peruse their purchased content. Could this by any chance be because Audible is a sponsor of yours?
Kind regards
Oliver Drobnik