O'Reilly To Release DRM-free Ebooks In July

andrewsavikas writes "Starting in July, O'Reilly Media will pilot select books as DRM-free ebook bundles (PDF, EPUB, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket) priced at or below the cover price of the book. David Pogue comments on the pilot in the wake of his own recent dustup about ebooks and piracy, covered previously on Slashdot."

Comments

I'll buy a few...

[SuperKendall]

I'm really surprised that we are actually seeing DRM free eBooks, I though this would take much longer to come about... I plan to buy a few to at least support the concept. I hope though the final title list presents some more interesting titles...

Re:I'll buy a few...

[Instine]

I don't have any but will be putting pay to that shortly in light of this news. I'm a dyslexic developer. My guess is, having seen some tech docs in my time, I'm not the only one.

While I love the web (I can use various assitive technolgies , easily, on most markup based pages, and even some PDFs), I HATE books, and DRMed PDFs put addional barriers between me and the knowledge I'm after..

This is, therefore, potentially, good news for a possible 10%+ of potential O'Reilly readers.

Well

[Mensa Babe]

"... priced at or below the cover price of the book ..." [emphasis added]

Well, that's the problem - "at or below" is not enough. If I am to get only the raw information without the physical thing, without the possibility to go to a park with my book (and not looking like a dork with a laptop, or worse yet - a Kindle), without being able to decorate my room with a book, et cetera - it has to cost at least 10 times less (which it doesn't) or be 10 times better (which it isn't). This is the same reason why the idea of selling mp3s was such a failure. In other words, great idea but it is sadly going to fail because it doesn't follow the "ten times" rule. Probably once again the marketing department wasn't listening to the engineers. What a shame.

Re:Well

[repetty]

> If I am to get only the raw information without the physical thing

Somehow, that's a peculiar point of view to encounter on Slashdot... the value of a book is its physical instantiation, not the information it contains.

I see it the other way around.

A couple years ago, I bought the PDF rights to a Ruby on Rails book during its development -- I needed the info immediately and couldn't wait for it to go to print.

I had a copy center print it up, spiral-bound, and I also used it in soft form on my computer. Later, when the book actually went to print, I bought it again. (It was a good book.)

I realized that I didn't like the officially printed book as much. My spiral-bound version was larger and easier to read and laid flat on my desk. Since I knew that I could print another if necessary, I didn't hesitate to write notations in it. Finally, the searchability of the PDF actually changed the way I read: I didn't have to refer to a table of contents, I didn't have to refer to an index, and I didn't have to thumb through pages looking for pertinent information.

Good move, pirated books are very easy to find

[yohanes]

I think this is great, right now, you can search for almost any o'reilly books on Torrent and Rapidshare, so this wont add anything to the already existing books in the pirated world. But this will give a chance to people who wants to buy their books but think that it is too expensive.

Re:Still too dear

[Tikkun]

Technical books have a much smaller audience than popular titles do. This drives up the cost to the reader, as fewer people are paying for the costs of the book, many of which do not have anything to do with distribution (i.e. research, testing, editing, etc.).

Resale: nothing lost.

[Odder]

Ever try to sell your old textbooks? You are lucky to get 1/3 rd the value the next semester. The kind of O'Reilly books you would sell won't get you much more. If you don't want it anymore, most people don't want it. You are not going to be losing much this way.

If I'm willing to pay for a print book, I'm willing to pay for the electronic copy. I want the information, not the paper. The easiest place to find it will be the publisher.

Re:DRM free eBooks could be easy

[Creepy Crawler]

DRM isnt the super-breakable trick everyone claims here on slashdot.

One could devise a DRM which procesess all state information within a signed VM. You have multiple exterior checks on the container to guarantee integrity, and once processing the VM, the VM itself checks itself. And if one was to go massively paranoid, a service could be required that satellite service for exterior verification.

Look at this in similar terms of Xen running SElinux with communication via satellite.

Is it crackable? Of course. Will you be found out? Most likely.

Yuo just wait... The next movie player will require a network connection to play videos and music. Blu-ray already uses the VM schematic. All they need is a continuously on connection. All they need is SSH or something similar and the thing'll be damn near unhackable. One would probably have to hook up to the TV lcd chips to record a signal.

Re:Always want ebook.

[Poorcku]

I tend to read a lot of Pdfs (articles and so forth), and they are fine for quick reference. still nothing beats good old fashioned paper. I find it more relaxing for my eyes. Could be the way I was taught though. Ideas on this one?