Consumerist
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cable
Streaming Cable Content: For Comcast Subscribers Only
Yesterday's news that Hulu soon plans to start charging for its service actually came fresh on the heels of Comcast's announcement that it's about to officially launch online streaming video for subscribers to both their cable TV and Internet services. More » -
Kindle coming to a PC near you next month. Amazon's Kindle software will be available as a free download for PC users starting next month. Versions for Macs and BlackBerrys will be available next year. All will have DRM, though users will be spared the pain of having to download their locked-down lit via AT&T's 3G network, which has replaced Sprint's more reliable data network in recent hardware Kindles.
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ebooks
B&N Ebook Reader Lets You Loan A Book Just Once
One of the big selling points about the Nook, the new ebook reader introduced this week by Barnes & Noble, is that unlike Amazon they'll let you virtually "loan" your ebook to a friend for up to 14 days (if the publisher allows it). What they don't tell you—some smart readers over at MobileRead sussed it out—is that you can only do this one time per book. You'd better lend wisely—and your friend had better finish that book within 14 days. More » -
buying blind
Amazon Answers My Questions, Sort Of, About Kindle Licenses
Let's get straight to the bad news: although Amazon did answer my questions, their answers included "we're working on that," "I don't know," and "I don't know (but it's the publishers' fault)." To be fair to the "Kindle Specialist" I spoke with this morning, he has promised to talk to the Kindle marketing department—why marketing? these are DRM issues!—and get back to me with better answers. Until then, this is what the average consumer can expect from a Kindle ebook license. More » -
software
Quilt Design Software Runs Out Of Thread Too Soon
Let's be honest here. There is not very much overlap between the groups of "people who are quite tech-savvy" and "quilters." (I can say that because I'm a quilter! Put down the rotary cutters!) That's why reader T. is annoyed that the makers of popular quilt design software Electric Quilt only offer their users four "activations," or installations on a particular operating system, and has their users scared to upgrade their Windows version or purchase a new computer. More » -
jailbreaking
Apple Blames Jailbreaking For Recent AT&T Visual Voicemail Outages
Apple's not through with their blitz against jailbreaking, with this newly updated support doc that says, among other things, that the recent Visual Voicemail outages from AT&T were caused by—and happened to—hacked iPhones. More » -
you get nothing!
B&N Wraps Public Domain Books In DRM To Protect Authors' Copyrights. What?
The ebook "war" is a race to the bottom, apparently, with Barnes & Noble trying to out-do Amazon on DRM stupidity. A reader emailed B&N customer service to point out that their "free books" offer consists of 5 public domain titles that are no longer protected under copyright, yet are still locked down with digital rights management (DRM). Their response? "For copyright protection purposes, these files are encrypted and cannot be converted or printed." More » -
free stuff
Coldplay Is Giving It Up For Free
Coldplay, the band everyone's little sister and mom loves, has been offering its album LeftRightLeftRightLeft for free since May. More » -
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drm
Amazon Tries To Clarify Download Limits For Kindle Books, Doesn't Quite Succeed
Dan, the Kindle owner who last week found that some of the books he'd purchased were no longer available to download due to unspecified limitations set by the publisher, spoke to more Amazon reps on Sunday. They clarified the DRM policy. Well, sort of. More »
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drm
Amazon Kindle Books Can Only Be Downloaded A Limited Number Of Times, And No You Cannot Find Out That Limit Before You Hit It
An Amazon Kindle customer discovered last week that every time he bought a book through the Amazon Kindle store, he was agreeing to a special, invisible restriction that's supposedly buried in the fine print that he agreed to when he first registered his account:
[The CSR said] that there is always a limit to the number of times you can download a given book. Sometimes, he said, it's five or six times but at other times it may only be once or twice. And, here's the kicker folks, once you reach the cap you need to repurchase the book if you want to download it again.
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drm
Netflix Can't Decide Whether Puerto Rico Is In The USA
Puerto Rico and other U.S. Territories are in sort of an awkward place. Are they part of America, or not? Sure, they can't vote in presidential elections, but they are on the back of a quarter. This confusion has led to problems for Netflix users in Puerto Rico. Netflix will provide them with DVDs-by-mail service at the same price as service in the 48 contiguous United States, but considerably slower. However, they won't let Puerto Rico customers stream movies over the Internet, which would be handy while they wait three or four days for their DVDs to show up. More » -
text to speech
Amazon Begins Selling Kindle Books With Text To Speech Disabled
As promised, Amazon has begun to implement the text to speech (TTS) flag that lets authors and their publishers turn off the "read it to me" feature of books on the Kindle. MobileRead members note that Toni Morrison's A Mercy and Stephen King's The Stand both have TTS disabled, and it seems to be on an author-by-author basis instead of by publisher or imprint. More » -
drm
Amazon Can Ban You From Your Kindle Account Whenever It Likes
Amazon recently banned a customer for making what they considered too many returns, and when they did this they also disabled his Kindle account, although the returns were never related to Kindle purchases. So what happens when your Kindle account is taken away? Your Kindle still works, and the books you already bought for it will work, but you can't download those books ever again (better have made a backup on your PC!), you can't receive your magazine, blog, or newspaper subscriptions on it anymore, you can't email documents to Amazon to have them converted and sent to your Kindle, and you can't buy any new books for the device. That $360 device only works so long as Amazon decides it will work. More » -
saving
Seven Things That Aren't Worth Your Money
Want an extra $1,000? The Wall Street Journal has a list of seven things that you can easily stop buying without making drastic changes to your lifestyle. More » -
apple
Why Apple's New iPod Shuffle Isn't Consumer Friendly
Update: It turns out the special chips used in the headphone controls of the third generation Shuffle don't contain any DRM after all, so any attempts at reverse-engineering won't bring on the wrath of the DMCA.
Despite that, they're still not very consumer friendly. DRM or no, moving the controls off of the actual unit and placing them on an accessory increases the potential* cost. (*Obviously if you use the included ear buds, there's no additional cost.) More »
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itunes
ITunes Offers To "Upgrade" The Already DRM-Free Songs You Bought From Amazon?
Update: Mike writes back to say that after reading the comments below, he checked his purchase history and the album is indeed listed there. What's confusing is Mike didn't buy it through iTunes, but through Amazon, but he says that other people did have access to his account and may have purchased it without his knowledge. More » -
drm
Gears Of War Shipped With DRM That Shuts The Game Down After 01/28/09
Do you play games for more than 3 years? I do! I still like Super Mario 3, and that's no lie. Well, if you are like me, you might be concerned about the fact that the PC version of Gears of War shipped with DRM that automatically made the game unplayable after 1/28/09. More » -
how to
"Star Raids" Thrash Product Ratings, Get Company's Attention
Add this to the Consumerist toolbelt: Star Raids. If a company is pissing off a bunch of customers and refuses to change some aspect of their product, some consumers are finding it effective to band together and thrash the product's rating. An avalanche of "zero" ratings can make a ratings score plummet, and turn away potential customers. The fall-off in sales will definitely grab their attention.
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drm
New York, 11:01 PM
Sat Nov 7
7 posts in the last 24 hours
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