Don't "buy" e-books from Oxford University Press

5 hours ago 2

by bandali on Tue, 20 May 2025

Last month I watched the book talk Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture by Jennifer Jenkins with James Boyle facilitating the discussion, co-hosted by the Internet Archive and the Authors Alliance:

Looking to get a copy of the book, I found the book’s page on the publisher’s website, Oxford University Press. Seeing it available as an e-book, I opted to go with that as a more eco-friendly option and to save some physical space. I worked my way through the checkout and payment steps, under the impression that I would be purchasing a copy of the book that I could download and do with as I wished. The use of the words “buy” and “purchase” throughout the book page on the publisher’s website certainly did not suggest otherwise.

In hindsight, there were red flags I failed to notice at the time, such as confusing and seemingly redundant, if not contradictory, information on the book page:

“Downloaded copy on your device does not expire.”

Um, okay? I’d sure hope and expect as much about any file I download.

“Includes 4 years of Bookshelf Online.”

Whatever — as long as I could download, store, and use the book offline I’d be happy.

It’s only upon hovering the small and generic, if not misleading, “E-book purchasing help” link that one would be presented with this vaguely informative eyebrow-raising sentence:

E-book purchase

E-books are granted under the terms of a single-user, non-transferable license, and may be accessed online from any location.

“E-books are granted” (??) is news to me. I thought I would have rightful access to something I bought and paid for, rather than being “granted” (read “allowed”) access to it by and through some overlord. Oh but of course, we live in a time where vendors get to redefine well-established words like “purchase” and “buy” on page N of their terms and conditions.

I obviously did not see that “E-book purchasing help” before giving Oxford University Press my money: being a tech-savvy person, I didn’t think I needed any help “purchasing” an e-book.

Everything became clear shortly after I completed the “purchase” and was redirected to VitalSource to access the book: the VitalSource “Bookshelf” user interface offered no way to download a copy of the book I thought I bought and paid for. It is instead a glorified pile of proprietary JavaScript DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) that wraps around the underlying representation of the book in VitalSource’s possession. The only other option for accessing the book would be through VitalSource’s proprietary application available only for certain versions of certain proprietary operating systems.

At this point, the only method I could think of to try and obtain a copy of the book that I could read without subjecting myself to the shackles of DRM or proprietary software was trying to print the book to PDF. Given that VitalSource’s DRM interface is a proprietary wrapper around VitalSource’s likely ePub-based underlying representation (guessing from the presence of epubcfi in the URL of their book renderer page), the book pages are not exposed all at once, practically forcing one to use the interface’s Print function to get all the pages in one go. After waiting what felt like an eternity for the website to prepare a printable version of the book, I was presented with this abomination (click image for sample in original PDF form):

That is a sample of the output generated by the interface’s Print function: an utterly useless, inferior copy of the book that has giant watermarks on every single page, with the only selectable text in the whole book being the repugnant threat at the top of each page — the actual body text of the book is converted to low-resolution, blurry images, and is therefore neither selectable nor searchable.

Going forward, I will NEVER “purchase” anything from Oxford University Press (and most definitely not from VitalSource), so long as they have no problem “selling” [access to] DRM-infested copies of books with no way to download a usable copy of what I paid for.

The key takeaway for me from this whole experience is that due to the sad and sorry status quo of our current times, this kind of insulting (mal)treatment of users is all but common, and really can happen to any one of us. Therefore it is all the more important for us to band together in protest of this, rather than dividing and isolating ourselves through misguided better-than-thou sentiments toward each other.

For Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture, I ordered and a few days later received a paper copy from the local bookstore. It’s a copy I truly own, and can read whenever, wherever, and however I please.

Take care, and so long for now.

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