Adobe's New Ebook DRM Will Leave Existing Users Out In the Cold Come July

Nate the greatest writes "Whether it's EA and SimCity, the Sony rootkit scandal, or Ubisoft, we've all read numerous stories about companies using DRM in stupid ways that harm their customers, and now we can add Adobe to the list. Adobe has just announced a new timeline for adoption of their recently launched 'hardened' DRM, and it's going to take your breath away. In a video posted to Youtube, Adobe reps have stated that Adobe expects all of their ebook partners to start adopting the new DRM in March. This is the same DRM that was launched only a few weeks ago and is already causing problems, but that hasn't stopped Adobe. They also expect all the stores that use Adobe's DRM to sell ebooks (as well as the ebook app and ebook reader developers) to have fully adopted the new ebook DRM by July 2014. That's when Adobe plans to end support for the old DRM (which everyone is using now). Given the dozens and dozens of different ebook readers released over the past few years, including models from companies that have gone under, this is going to present a significant problem for a lot of readers. Few, if any, will be updated in time to meet Adobe's deadline, and that's going to leave many readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks."

Comments

good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

DRMed content deserves to die, as collateral damage of killing the DRM. If people stop buying it, eventually it goes away.

Re:good riddance

[davecb]

They're training customers to distrust them. Remember Amazon's "delete 1984" fiasco? This may be Adobe's.

Re:good riddance

[Enry]

You don't remember the fiasco all that well.

Someone who didn't have the authority to do so uploaded the book to Amazon for publishing. Yes, Amazon could have handled the communication a bit better, but the book should have never been able to be available for Kindle from that publisher in the first place.

Re:good riddance

[DeathToBill]

They're training customers to sue them.

FTFY

Re:good riddance

[LordNelsonthe2nd]

Well... I never bought any (Adobe-)DRM protected eBooks because I expected that this would happen some day. But: This was just a few years ago, didn't expect that bullshit-system to fail that soon, what the hell? I would be really really pissed if I would have bought some Adobe-DRM protected eBooks... Oo
Let's hope people will learn that they never "own" anything DRM protected and may be ****ed by Adobe or whoever provides the DRM the next day...

Re:good riddance

[SuperTechnoNerd]

O im sure there is something in the EULA that prohibits that.

Re:good riddance

[Sponge Bath]

The point is Amazon can delete books you purchased from devices you own, for whatever reason, without your consent. That you think the deletion in this case was justified does not make people more trusting of this Orwellian ability to make publications disappear.

Re:good riddance

[tbuddy]

It wasn't a secret at any point that Amazon could remove content. In this case they removed content that they didn't legitimately have a right to. If one purchased it and wanted to put in the effort to contact customer service they would get credit equal to an likely above their purchase. Amazon takes care of people.

I think many authors if they knew their work was being sold on Amazon by a third party would try to get that corrected. It's pretty apples and oranges the difference between that and other bookstores being shut out is pretty obvious. If nothing else Adobe is shooting itself and smaller publishers in the foot in the middle of a race that Amazon and Apple are already winning.

Re:good riddance

[gnasher719]

The point is Amazon can delete books you purchased from devices you own, for whatever reason, without your consent. That you think the deletion in this case was justified does not make people more trusting of this Orwellian ability to make publications disappear.

Apple can do the same thing. In a similar situation they didn't delete any books from users' devices but paid a fine of over $100,000 to the copyright owners. (Some poster here used that in an FSF vs. Apple thread to make claims how evil Apple is, by allowing itself being tricked by criminals, and then facing the cost instead of making the customers pay).

I'd expect them to delete software from my device if they reasonably know that the software will hurt _me_.

Re:good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

It is pretty amazing that the book people aren't learning anything from the movie people. With movies, it got to the point of "Blu-Ray? Fuck that, I'll just download the pirate release." I don't blame Slysoft for charging people for continuous updates, but I do blame movie publishers for requiring everyone on the planet to have such a subscription, just to be able to play the movies they've bought. The movie people have set things up where pirating things is the easiest way to watch movies and have stuff Just Work.

Want to be able to watch that new movie? pro tip: don't buy it. Let someone else deal with the problem, and just download the working file.

Any book publishers which follow Adobe on this course, are setting the same course. If I ever write another book (probably not, it's been over 10 years but you never know) you can be damn well certain I'm not going to join in on the "fuck the paying customers, just tell 'em to pirate if they actually wanna be able to read the thing" agenda.

"Adobe customer" == synonym for "non-profit organization."

Re:good riddance

[davecb]

Actually they had the legal right to provide them to Canadians, and did. It was only in the United States where Amazon feared their supplier didn't have the right to provide the book. They panicked and deleted purchased materials without colour of law from Canadian purchasers' devices. The contract only allowed them to delete material that was improperly sold, which was not the case, In addition, the law requires a refund be paid in such cases in Canada (and probably in the US as well).

The relevance, however, is that they had to publicly apologize to everyone for behaviour that was legal, but repugnant to their customers. That was a significantly bad thing for them, and sensitized Canadian courts and law professors to the problem of a new kind of unconscionable clause in contracts of adhesion.

It may well be a bad thing for Adobe.

Or, as one of my old colleagues used to say, "time wounds all heels".

Re:good riddance

[tlhIngan]

Apple can do the same thing. In a similar situation they didn't delete any books from users' devices but paid a fine of over $100,000 to the copyright owners. (Some poster here used that in an FSF vs. Apple thread to make claims how evil Apple is, by allowing itself being tricked by criminals, and then facing the cost instead of making the customers pay).

  I'd expect them to delete software from my device if they reasonably know that the software will hurt _me_.

Strangely enough, Apple is probably the only company that HASN'T removed content from users. Content has been removed, and if no local copy exists, that content is gone, but if a local copy is available, it still works.

The only known ability is Apple can disable an app through CoreLocation (i.e., the app uses location services), but they haven't demonstrated that ability, either.

Google, Valve (Steam), Amazon, etc., have shown they can remove apps and content from user's devices and computers.

It's strange, really. You'd think Apple would've pulled the trigger by now. Google has, many times.

Re:good riddance

[davecb]

They may get away with dropping support, but if they offer a continuing service and deliberately stop it, it's not just actionable, it's arguably fraudulent.

Re:good riddance

[rts008]

Yes, we do remember that fiasco well, and the point still stands.

Do you think that the people that had '1984' deleted from their Kindle were aware of your little fact?
I don't think so. To those persons, what they saw was this:
Hey 1984...cool! pay for it(in good faith), jump through Amazon's hoops, have it deleted...WTF?

I would say you had a point if everyone that had bought and downloaded the book KNEW that it was improper beforehand, but they didn't know.
They purchased '1984' in good faith, jumping through Amazon's hoops like expected of them, then had the system bite them in the backside out of the clear blue.

That's why I only buy ebooks without DRM (Baen Books, primarily), and put them on my book reader("Augen:the Book") I paid $50.00 US for, new, and won't own a Kindle.

Re:good riddance

[Enry]

Purchasing stolen goods is a crime and the purchaser is required by law to return the stolen goods, even if they didn't know it was stolen. The users impacted by this got their money refunded and got a legal copy of the book.

Re:good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

As evil as that is, there is one factor that can mitigate it, in my opinion: cheap.

If books cost me $2.50 or less, and the DRM is not intrusive, then I simply don't care that they could, in theory be taken away. In practice, it happens with such rarity as to simply not be an issue. So, in the extremely unlikely case, I lose a couple of bucks. I don't care.

I will not, however pay $10 for a book that I cannot share or resell, that perpetually requires me to prove I bought it, and that can be arbitrarily taken away from me. For that price or above, I will buy the physical copy just to protect my investment.

Incidentally, I buy games from steam when-and-only-when they are at or under the $2.50 price range, for this same reason, and this happens so frequently that I have a large backlog of purchased games that I haven't even played yet.

Yes, I am willing to surrender control in return for trivially cheap, but in no other case.

Re: good riddance

[Anonymous Coward]

I have. Good thing that I have stripped the DRM of every single book I've bought.

Guess I'll hold off on buying ebooks until the new Calibre plugin is ready.

Re:good riddance

[taustin]

You don't remember the fiasco all that well, either. The books (there were two, not one) was uploaded legally in the country in which it was uploaded (Canada, IIRC), as it was in the public domain there. It was offered for sale in the US (where it was still under copyright) by mistake - whose mistake, nobody knows - and deleted when the US copyright holder objected.

The real point is that Amazon initially responded to criticism about Kindles being a book rental system, not a purchase system, by saying that they couldn't delete stuff remotely without your permission, then demonstrated that simply wasn't true by deleting stuff remotely without permission.

This is, of course, a completely different situation, since this will apparently not affect books already bought on existing devices. What it will do, if this editorial rant is accurate, and we don't know that it is, is kill ebook sales until publishers agree to either go DRM free or switch to something else. And they will, when someone like Barnes & Noble says, "You know, we don't really make any money off of ebook sales anyway, so we'll just stop selling anything with DRM on it and rely on brick & mortar sales instead. That's where our profits are anyway."

Re:good riddance

[spire3661]

Doesn't matter. Once the file is on my device, Amazon should NOT be able to remove it without a court order.

Re:good riddance

[spire3661]

If you are going to spout law, at least get your terms straight. Improperly applied licenses is not stealing in any sense of the word.

Re:good riddance

[Enry]

It wasn't yours to begin with and never was.

Re:good riddance

[Mister_Stoopid]

It wasn't a secret, but it's still bad.

Amazon can't delete "content" from my kindle, because it has never seen an internet connection. It has never seen an internet connection because I don't like the idea that amazon can delete my books. As a side effect, I can't buy ebooks from Amazon.

To get me back into their ebook ecosystem, Amazon would have to modify the kindle such that they are technologically incapable of deleting my books, even if compelled to do so by law.

Re:good riddance

[Mister_Stoopid]

The point is, Amazon should have designed the Kindle from the beginning such that it was impossible for them to delete anything without the user's permission. This isn't a matter of law, it's a matter of my device doing what I want it to do.

Re: good riddance

[LF11]

I am looking at textbooks that cost $40 just to rent for 3 months, and $180 to "own." This is e-book format, for the kindle, that you cannot even view with the kindle app on a PC.

Re:good riddance

[morgauxo]

"I'd expect them to delete software from my device if they reasonably know that the software will hurt _me_."

This seems to be a common expectation these days. I don't understand why! In the hey day of the desktop I didn't expect (or want) the company I bought my PC from to delete software from it. If I did something stupid and isntalled some sort of malware it was my problem. Sure, not everyone was skilled enough to clean their own computers. But if you weren't able to install+run some scanner yourself there were plenty of places you could take your PC and pay someone to do it. (often the same place you bought it).

Nobody expected Dell, BestBuy, the mom & pop computer shop down the street, etc... to maintain a connection to their machine, know what is isntalled on it and delete things for the good of their users or for themselves. In fact, if someone did do this they could probably expect a lawsuit if not jail time!

Re:good riddance

[morgauxo]

I still remember the good old days when EULA's were untested in court and widely considered unenforceable.

So you clicked a button? Big deal. That is hardly tracable like a signature. Who witnessed this button clicking? More importantly some company already accepted your money and handed you the product before you even got it home and put the disc in the drive. If there was some contract they wanted to make part of the agreement then they should have taken care of that before they ever took your cash!

But alas.. a few software companies became more powerful than the courts. (or at least more powerful than some judges' common sense)

Re:good riddance

[davester666]

more on point would be Walmart deciding to exit the online movie business because of poor sales, and announcing their DRM servers were going offline in 30 days [which meant nobody would be able to watch their movies that they "purchased" after that day]. After a few weeks of negative publicity, they decided to refund everyone's "purchases".

Re:good riddance

[Jane Q. Public]

Agree with Mister_Stoopid.

DRM is the reason I don't own a Kindle.

Re:good riddance

[Mashiki]

In most places outside of the US, EULA's are considered non-binding and in extreme cases only applicable if signed. With that, most places have consumer laws that override the "you can not sue" clause in them. As various companies who operate in Canada and Germany have recently found out.

Re:good riddance

[sirsnork]

The simple answer to all this, is don't by a Kindle. By a device not attached to any seller like the Kobo. Sure the Kobo can use Adobe's DRM.... but why would you when you can just read epub files

Re:good riddance

[Darinbob]

However if this had been a mistakenly published paper book, then Amazon never have resorted to sending out strong-arm goons to yank back the books out of children's hands, instead they would have had to suck up the cost and learned a valuable lesson. Instead with DRM Amazon just pushes the "reload from last saved game" button and undoes their mistake at no cost. The fact that they could do this is a very bad thing, it does not matter if the books were incorrectly licensed or not, the ability to yank the books back remotely is something that should not be possible for a purchased product.

Now if Amazon offered only a book rental service, ala the public library, then having ability to read the book only with permission from a remote authority makes slightly more sense.

Re:good riddance

[Darinbob]

The correction should have been having Amazon sued by the authors rather than destroying the books that people paid for. This is what would have happened with paper books.

Re:good riddance

[Darinbob]

Citation: http://www.maximumpc.com/steam...

Ya, it seems that everyone hates DRM in all shapes and sizes, except if it's Steam when suddenly the fans come out to defend it.

Re:good riddance

[DadLeopard]

You never "Bought" the book, you just bought a license to read the book on the allowed device, or devices! You want to "Buy" an ebook, buy non-DRMed ebooks, then you "Own" them and can do anything with them you can do with the dead tree versions, except a few things like start the fire in the wood burner stove!

Non-Drm'd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or put another way, this is going to leave lots and lots of people unable to buy any DRM'd books.

I fail to see this as a bad thing.
DRM means you're giving someone else the ability to manage your digital rights.
Captcha - Vassal (I swear this thing is psychic)

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[AmiMoJo]

Comments like this from victims are pretty common (from TFA):

had a bunch of books on my laptop & yesterday ADE wouldnâ(TM)t let me access them. I purchased them 7 years ago. So NOT happy.

People are slowly learning that anything with DRM wasn't a "purchase", it was a "rental".

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why you should buy hardcopy books over DRMed ebooks. You get to keep it beyond the commercial lifecycle of a software platform.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[SJHillman]

That's one argument. A better argument, in my opinion, is to only buy from vendors that offer DRM-free formats (eg.g: O'Reilly) and pirate DRM-free versions from those that don't. I've seen a lot of people choosing to buy older games from GOG instead of spending those dollars on games they might want more on Steam for this very reason.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just pirate your books. If you feel bad about that, then buy the books, but use pirated copies.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. I can't log in on this machine right now (mcgrew here, sorry, I won't be able to see if you reply), I'll be glad when I'm retired. Anyway, a couple of things: IMO anyone who buys DRMed anything is a fool, and anyone who employes DRM in their content is equally foolish. DRM makes your content harder to sell, because it has less utility than a pirate copy. If I buy a DVD I have to sit through piracy warnings (after paying for it!) and sometimes even trailers for other films. Meanwhile, a TPB download you click "play" and the opening creduits start; no piracy warnings, no trailers, no menus... which is how disks should be made. Some are, a few movies play right away and the menu only comes up after it's over. I keep asking myself why anyone would pay for an inferior version of something that's free, then I remember Linux vs Windows and kind of get it. Marketing rules all.

Like has been said, you can't buy DRMed content, you can only rent it. But you don't buy a novel, you buy a book. The novel belongs to everyone (although the author has a "limited" time monopoly on publication).

I personally think electronic data should be free, which is why HTML, PDF and ePub versions of Nobots will be released for free download on my web site March 15th (or perhaps earlier, I'm thinking of moving it up).

The RIAA, IMO, really screwed the pooch with Napster, that was a really dumshit move on their part. They should have embraced P2P and advertised how superior CDs were to MP3s (and back then they really were vastly superior). P2P would have been additional, free advertising. I've found out with Nobots that word of mouth is crappy marketing, so along with owning terrestrial radio they have little to worry about from independants; they can bury any little guy.

Since registering the copyright and obtaining ISBNs I've been getting ads from marketers, Christ those guys are expensive! Writing a book is easy, getting anyone to read it is hard. So read it, it's free, both as in speech and beer. Only the hardcover costs (working on a paperback version, also working on getting The Paxil Diaries in print, I've been getting requests for ten years).

It will also have no DRM, I released an abridged PDF for free several years ago.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[bberens]

Bro, nothing beats Tux Racer.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[tompaulco]

If it was a rental, it should have been made clear from the beginning. They sell you the electronic copy as if it is yours to keep and reread whenever you want. If it was sold as a rental, the price needs to be adjusted accordingly. I am willing to pay $10 to $15 for a physical copy of a book. I am not willing to pay that much for an electronic copy because it doesn't have the same tactile feedback, is less convenient and I have to have accessories to use it. To me an electronic copy is worth less than a physical copy. My library is willing to rent me physical books for free, so if the DRM companies are going to rent me electronic copies, they are going to have to do make a better offer than the local library. For example, they could pay me to read their book. This might make up for the inconvenience of having to have some sort of e-reader to read them.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Vegard]

Or, if you live in a country which still haven't protected DRM by law, you should always remove DRM as part of your buying process.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[tompaulco]

Never, ever pirate anything. It spurs their belief that people really want their product, but just aren't willing to pay for it. Instead, avoid the product altogether and encourage others to avoid it.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[jeffmflanagan]

Resorting to cutting down trees, causing environmental harm processing them, and taking up space with ink-covered bound-paper seems like a pretty extreme response to a problem better solved by storing text digitally without DRM.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Githaron]

Unless it is being constantly handled, I doubt it disintegrates faster than you. Also, you have the right to attempt to recoup some of your costs by reselling it when you are done with it. You also have the option of giving it to someone else.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[AJH16]

In this case they are right though, people do want their content, just not their restrictions on the content. I do agree with you that piracy isn't the answer, but sadly, the majority of the world, including the self righteous pirate, actually do want the content more than the freedom.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Verio Fryar]

When I buy a book with DRM I remove it just after the purchase. I don't buy books with a DRM that I can not remove.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[PsychoSlashDot]

Never, ever pirate anything. It spurs their belief that people really want their product, but just aren't willing to pay for it. Instead, avoid the product altogether and encourage others to avoid it.

You're missing that people do want their product. Avoiding the product altogether sends a false message that the product isn't wanted. What we don't want is the packaging.

The closest equivalent to buying a physical product and throwing its packaging away is buying a DRM product and pirating the content. Once I've paid for the content, it's mine morally, ethically, and logically. It's just the law that needs work.

Throw away the packaging and tell the manufacturer why.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Penguinisto]

Paper disintegrates over time, takes much longer, but still a rental.

Given the time periods involved, it may as well be considered ownership.

I have some books in my home library that are well over 150 years old. They're still perfectly legible, and as long as I care for them properly they'll likely outlast me.

Hell, there are books in some uni libraries that are well over 200-300 years old. Sure, you have to handle them with gloves and such, but honestly, 100+ years is plenty of time to make a backup copy of the thing.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[spire3661]

A better argument is to ignore copyright altogether.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[spire3661]

WIth the current state of copyright, its impossible for content creators to claim the moral high ground you are attempting to stand on.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[spire3661]

You can legally photocopy the book and store the backup as long as you retain the original.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Grishnakh]

Not true. Pirating usually requires some mechanism for sharing among pirates, and these days that usually means BitTorrent or other P2P networks. It's pretty trivial to snoop on BitTorrent and see how many people are sharing a particular file; in fact this is exactly what media companies do when either suing people for infringement or complaining to the government about piracy.

When you get on BT and see millions of IP addresses sharing a copy of your product, then you know that people apparently do want your product, but just don't want to pay for it. However, if you get on BT and your product isn't on there at all, or no one's bothered seeding it for a year, then you know that no one wants that POS.

This isn't like 1986, when piracy meant giving people copies of stuff on floppy disk. Back in those days, you were mostly correct: piracy happened entirely in the dark. Not any more.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[morgauxo]

Hmm... I think anyone who defines a person's loser/winner life status by what games they play most likely are pretty big losers themselves regardless of what games they posess.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[davester666]

The "license" you clicked through, probably as part of signing up to begin purchasing from the site, most likely had statements along the lines of "reserve the right to stop the DRM servers with 30 days notice to the customer, for no refund".

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[marcosdumay]

Stigmatized by who exactly?

I don't see it happening at all, but in case it's happening, I see one party with plenty of reasons to act like that.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[AJH16]

I believe you misunderstood me. I'm not speaking in favor of the content creators. I'm stating that if you steal the content, it legitimately says you want their content badly. They are right to think that. Keep in mind that content was pirated before the start of obtrusive DRM. The way to stop DRM is to stop partaking of any content that is DRM protected in any way. This would show that it isn't that the DRM isn't working well enough, but rather than people actually object to the way they handle the content.

Civil rights protestors didn't go in to a restaurant and steal the food, they simply sat in and expected to be served. There is a difference between protesting that which you don't approve of and taking that which isn't yours because you simply don't like the conditions the owner of the content put on it.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[nurb432]

It spurs their belief that people really want their product, but just aren't willing to pay for it.

Which is often true.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Darinbob]

GOG has some great games too. Got Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics free! I had them already but it makes a nice backup, and I've gotten a digital version for a couple dollars when I found some issues getting an older CD to read (the CD has no scratches or smudges but the high density optical drive seems to be cranky about reading them sometimes).

I have some Steam games, but mostly older game franchises which used to be DRM free but are now encumbered with it (elder scrolls, fallout), or things which were sold dirt cheap (almost but not quite as free as GOG). But I don't use it as a major game platform, it's just too annoying to use that way (having to start steam before you can play games with it, adding extra time, wait time for the steam client to update itself, headaches dealing with user added mods, no way to revert to a previous patch revision, etc).

Imagine if Game of Thrones series of books, or Wheel of Time, decided that halfway through it would be e-book DRM only?

I think many younger games just don't care. They will play a new game once and once only, with parents actually paying for it. They don't even play a two year old game, it's too uncool. That's the market that keeps DRM going strong on games and movies whereas with books and music there is a much stronger push back against it.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Darinbob]

At my age, I assume that I'm being stigmatized by everyone who's under 40, even if some of them are polite enough to keep it hidden.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Darinbob]

I agree about owning the book part. I don't own the novel but I own my personal copy of it, and I can do whatever I want with it except make copies. I can burn it (literally), or resell it, or give it away as a gift. I can read it in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, or even Antarctica, without begging for additional permission. I can even make copies of part of it as long as I don't give them away (ie, laminated map of Middle Earth, a copy of a paragraph to recite in a speech, etc).

Meanwhile DRM clamps down on all those legal activities. It is a runaround of the legal system and the courts who have sided with consumers in the past, ensuring that publishers always retain as much control as technology allows.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[Darinbob]

Pirated copies just encourage more people to buy the DRM encumbered version. Ie, it makes the product more popular. I indeed see people who pirate things like Downton Abbey telling other people what a great show it is.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[citylivin]

"Never, ever pirate anything. It spurs their belief that people really want their product, but just aren't willing to pay for it."

I guess you are no fan of libraries then.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[tompaulco]

I guess you are no fan of libraries then.

Big fan of libraries. It lets the people know that you like their product and are willing to support it with public tax money.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

I personally think electronic data should be free ...

'Free' is fine for people that are happy with the amateur work found in fan fiction and (to a slightly lesser degree)that still dominates the self-published arena. The problem is, producing a high-quality novel takes a massive amount of time, hard work and frustration:

-- author dedicates 6-9 months worth of full-time to write the best they can on their own
-- editor aggressively criticizes potential flaws, demanding drastic cuts & changes
-- author picks up ego, spends another 2-3 full-time months rewriting based on criticisms
-- editor criticizes that copy &suggests still more changes
-- author (who by now hates the book) spends another1-2 full-time months rewriting it yet again

Writers that are working just from the joy of using their craft (e.g. for free) are very unlikely to go through the painful & frustrating chore of the editing stages (particularly as that would cost hundreds of dollars), will drop that particular story when they lose interest, and most will only share completed work with a small limited group. The ones that do earn some money but not enough to quit their day job don't have remotely as much time to hone the quality of the initial book or the rewrites, so the results end up subpar.

Re:Non-Drm'd?

[TheSeatOfMyPants]

Corporate rights-holders like Disney are the ones that want over-long copyright periods. The actual creators just want the right to earn an income from their own work during their lifetime, and many would be happy with 10-20 years.

Ifavor an altered form of lifetime rights, as I'll explain quickly in part:
-- The creator should not be able to sell or transfer ownership of the copyright. Instead, they would 'rent' non-exclusive licenses to companies for a limited timespan, with a certain guaranteed profit percentage for the creator (so they couldn't be screwed like writers & musicians are now).
-- The company would have the right to full sell those copies, not rent them. If it sold copies it didn't have a license for, it would then be required to pay the creatorthe full cost plus a fine and any legal costs the creator would incur handling the matter.
-- Ideally, the companies would compete with one another on cost, quality, and speed/ease of delivery. Few people with any money will pirate if they can get a high-quality copy to their device(s) in an instant by clicking a button.
-- DRM wouldn't exist within ebooks. Instead, since many people just do whatever is easiest and don't care about DRM, allow store owners that produce their own branded e-readers have the default software place limits on lending out or reading lent-out books. (People willing to root their device to install third-party e-reader apps or that pick non-store readers could avoid it, as they're the ones motivated enough to crack DRManyway.)
-- Rather than wasting resources fighting it as a blanket criminal issue, a tiny fraction of those funds could be used to stigmatize impersonal 'sharing' (obtaining from a stranger as opposed to a friend) as being on par with accepting the free lunch at school or being on welfare.

My logic:
-- If someone does the hard work of creating something, IMHO they should be in control of it. Not a corporation, their neighbor, or their relatives.
-- If copyright will expire within the creator's lifetime, the companies (Hollywood studios, game studios, publishers, etc.) will all refrain from touching the work until it expires in order to avoid having to pay up.
-- Copyright is essentially an attempt to compensate for the fact that creators are paid by a lot of people over a long time period rather than an equivalent amount all at once by one person/group. These days, it takes far longer to reach that point than it used to.

RMS called this one...

[Anonymous Coward]

There couldn't be a clearer example of why DRM on books is a bad f***ing idea.

Re:RMS called this one...

[bberens]

I can reasonably see DRM on "rental" content such as Netflix or library books. However, if I purchase a digital copy of a movie from Amazon/Google I should be able to download that movie DRM free, same for books.

In other words...

[Noryungi]

Hate him or love him: Richard Stallman was right! Read it and weep: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...

The whole thing was written in 1997, for pete sake - when ebooks where still pretty much prototypes.

Re:In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Illicit debugging tools are a whole lot easier to use in 2014, too. Good thing they're not illegal yet!

Re:In other words...

[gmuslera]

Project Guttenberg is around since 1971. Ebooks (and in particular, public ones) didn't started with Kindle.

Re:In other words...

[TWiTfan]

No, but using them is. Thanks, DMCA.

Re: In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the source : Cohen, J. (1996). A Right to Read Anonymously, Connecticut Law Review 28, 981

Re:In other words...

[rhazz]

Which is also correct. Your point?

*Shrug*

[magic maverick]

I don't buy DRMed shit. I do buy titles from Baen Books and Tor, but they aren't infested with digital restrictions management. If I want a title, and I can't find it from a publisher that doesn't use DRM, I just pop over to my favorite torrent website. And normally I'll find what I'm looking for. (If I don't, I'll find it at my second favorite torrent site, easy.)

I.e. DRM doesn't work. Moreover, it has the opposite effect, rather than preventing copying, it encourages more copying!

(I might buy DRM infested titles, if Adobe made their software work on */Linux. But probably not. But considering I don't run anything else, there is no point in my forking over money for something I can't read or use.)

Oh, and ignoring all the above: why should I have to update the firmware or software on my ebook reader? It's an appliance. I don't expect to update the firmware on my TV, microwave or rice cooker. Why should I? It works now.

Re:*Shrug*

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM is the reason I buy paper books and download DRM-less epubs via torrents. After all, the price for the paper book is almost the same as the e-book anyway.

Re:*Shrug*

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't really buy it, this is exactly what DRM is about.

Re:*Shrug*

[cdrudge]

Oh, and ignoring all the above: why should I have to update the firmware or software on my ebook reader? It's an appliance. I don't expect to update the firmware on my TV, microwave or rice cooker. Why should I? It works now.

Nothing is forcing you to upgrade, since you know what you are doing and can find "alternate" sources. For the millions of ebook readers that don't have a clue what they are doing and think that they must buy their ebooks from Amazon, B&N, or whatever their device is configured to use, they don't know they have a choice when the store informs them that they need to upgrade to be compatible with the updated store. "Want to buy more books? Upgrade your device's software. It's free and easy!"

Re:*Shrug*

[RabidReindeer]

I buy DRM-infested titles, but that's because the current DRM scheme can be decrypted if the provider goes belly-up or does an Amazon-style "1984" on them. I'm not interested in piracy, but I AM interested in protecting my investment.

I don't but into the "rental" concept of book "purchases". If my bookseller starts using a DRM scheme that does not meet the criteria I just listed, they can expect me to stop buying ebooks.

Re:*Shrug*

[meta-monkey]

To be honest, I need to start locating and downloaded DRM-free versions of the Kindle books I've bought (or find something that cracks the kindle DRM). I have a lot of them, because I liked the convenience, but I'm sure they're going to fuck with their system and I'll lose my book collection.

Re:*Shrug*

[SJHillman]

That's the part that's always bugged me. The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution of the dead trees (that's not even counting more costs if you sell through a brick and mortar store). If you double sales, all of the overhead doubles. Ebooks have almost negligible costs to do all that - which gets even closer to zero if you share resources (e.g sell through Amazon).

I buy two or three ebooks in a given year and about the same number of books in print because books are damned expensive. If you priced ebooks downward to have similar (or slightly greater) profit margins as print books, I'd probably end up spending twice the money on them overall because I would be getting much more value for my individual dollars, and the companies would end up with more profits overall. Ebooks are largely stuck due to using a similar profit model to music and movies.

Re:*Shrug*

[Walterk]

It would be useful if there was a list of retailers that sell these DRM books, so they can go on my boycott list.

Re:*Shrug*

[dargaud]

Calibre can easily strip the DRM off your Kindle books. Yes, it's a Linux app.

Re:*Shrug*

[Chaos Incarnate]

Calibre can't do it out of the box; you need to go find certain addons for it.

Re:*Shrug*

[Chaos Incarnate]

From the publisher's perspective, the ebook's costs are hardly "negligible", as the retailer gets to skim 30% off the top. Less than a print book (the retailer gets 40-50%), but a decent-sized chunk of change all the same.

Re:*Shrug*

[SJHillman]

The costs are still significantly lower than print books. If a print book costs $20, I would expect the ebook version to cost $10 or less. The cost discrepancy is enough that the publisher would probably still end up with as much or more profits than the print book, and it would possibly increase sales. Although it's not as bad as a few cases where I've seen the ebook cost up to 25% more than the print book. Ebooks are also a format in which a publisher could much more easily sell it themselves rather than going through a retailer, because it doesn't have all of that other overhead. I'm fairly sure the only reason they keep ebook prices as high as they are is to prevent them from killing the dead tree market.

Re:*Shrug*

[afxgrin]

Calibre is a god send piece of open source software. I don't really use it for stripping DRM, most documents I read don't have any DRM. But for converting between formats especially when the default formatting is crap for ebooks - fuck yes this is the shit.

Main website and for the sourceforge page in case you're are too lazy to Google search it yourself. Apparently this guy is hosting DeDRM the DRM stripping tool. I've never had to use it.

Re:*Shrug*

[Bradmont]

You can also get the paper books far cheaper if you buy them used. You can also sell them after you're done with them. It's called ownership, and it's becoming less and less accepted by the copyright industry.

Re:*Shrug*

[RabidReindeer]

It would be useful if there was a list of retailers that sell these DRM books, so they can go on my boycott list.

There isn't one because it's usually the publisher who mandates it, not the retailer.

Barnes and Noble sells ebooks from many publishers. Some, like HarperCollins-we-want-ebooks-to-wear-out are real jerks. Some, like Baen, have been DRM-free from the get-go.

B&N generally notes on the purchase information when a publisher has requested DRM-free format. So far, however, they've not felt obliged to list whose/what DRM format the other books are in.

Re:*Shrug*

[fustakrakich]

It's called ownership, and it's becoming less and less accepted by the copyright industry.

Just the opposite. They want to own everything.

Re:*Shrug*

[SJHillman]

The time cost is negligible and depends entirely on what you're buying and what kind of reader you are.

Scenario 1: Only buy novels, rarely re-read.
Scenario 2: Buy reference books, refer to them briefly now and then.
Scenario 3: Buy novels, but re-read them often.

Each of those three scenarios will give vastly different time-spent-to-money ratios. Personally, I stock up on a huge number of reference books that I spend relatively little time actually using and very few novels that I spend a lot of time reading.

Re:*Shrug*

[Pembers]

The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution of the dead trees

Actually, no. That accounts for between 15% and 20% of the retail price. Most books don't make a profit for the publisher, so the costs are dominated by the overheads - the author's advance and the cost of employing everyone who's involved in making the book ready to be sold. It doesn't seem to have occurred to the major publishers that if they lowered the prices of ebooks, more titles might sell enough to make a profit. (Indie authors and smaller publishers figured it out a long time ago.)

Re:*Shrug*

[gnasher719]

That's the part that's always bugged me. The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution of the dead trees (that's not even counting more costs if you sell through a brick and mortar store). If you double sales, all of the overhead doubles. Ebooks have almost negligible costs to do all that - which gets even closer to zero if you share resources (e.g sell through Amazon).

You have been modded as "insightful" while being totally wrong. Printing and distributing books is dead cheap compared to the actual worked involved in creating the content, marketing, and so on.

Re:*Shrug*

[Quirkz]

Amazon lets you choose whether or not to include it. Big publishers may have their own policy, but self-published works can go either way.

Re:*Shrug*

[cnaumann]

If you are not expecting to update the firmware on your TV, you have not purchased a web-enabled TV. Mine updates its firmware all the time. Same with your car.

Re:*Shrug*

[taustin]

The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping, warehousing, distribution of the dead trees

That isn't really all that true, actually. Charlie Stross has written quite a bit about the subject.

The executive summary is that the cost of putting ink on paper and shipping it to the store isn't much of the final retail price, and if you expect to buy ebooks for more than about 10% less than paper books, you expect lower quality.

Re:*Shrug*

[mcgrew]

That's what I used to think until I tried publishing my own book. The expensive part is marketing; since buying ISBNs I've been contacted by marketers wanting to market it, no way can I afford to gamble that much cash. So sales are going to continue to be tiny.

Re:*Shrug*

[EnglishTim]

From what I remember of the process it involves getting Kindle reader for PC, and then cracking the DRM on that. And what's Kindle Reader for PC based on? Adobe DRM.

Perhaps there's a better way now that cracks open the files directly on the device.

Re:*Shrug*

[Anonymous Coward]

so the costs are dominated by the overheads - the author's advance and the cost of employing everyone who's involved in making the book

Actually, you're not even a little bit close, but way way off the mark. Author's advance, and all payments to the author amount to less than 5% of the cost of a printed book (higher % for ebooks). There are hard numbers for publishers, and its been this way for decades. 70% of the cost of a commercially available printed book is distribution alone. And if you stop and think for a minute, you'll see that this is correct: Though printing presses are expensive, they run 24/7 and basically print money -- they pay for themselves and the print staff. Paper is cheap. Unskilled labor is cheap. Books are very heavy and fuel is very expensive, thus the bulk of the cost of a printed book is distribution.

Re:*Shrug*

[sootman]

> The big cost in publishing is the printing, shipping,
> warehousing, distribution of the dead trees

Wrong, wrong, wrong. "Out of that gross revenue, the publisher pays about $3.25 [12.5% of the example $26 book] to print, store and ship the book"

NY Times, May 2010.

Re:*Shrug*

[NetCow]

I.e. DRM doesn't work. Moreover, it has the opposite effect, rather than preventing copying, it encourages more copying!

I actually take issue with your assertion that DRM doesn't work. I posit that DRM works exceptionally well - it's just that most people aren't aware of exactly who DRM mechanisms are mostly aimed at: the distribution channel, the software and hardware vendors. Not the end users.

I urge you to read Ian Hickson's most excellent post on the matter. It's well worth the couple of minutes invested, but if you're impatient, this is the main takeaway:

DRM's purpose is to give content providers control over software and hardware providers, and it is satisfying that purpose well.

Re:*Shrug*

[0123456]

Most books don't make a profit for the publisher

Uh, yes, they do.

Most books don't earn out, but that's because publishers know how many copies they plan to print, and are good at estimating how many of those copies will actually sell, so the advance is a pretty good estimate of the royalties owed to the author. That doesn't mean the publisher didn't make a profit.

And they're making a ton of money from e-books, which is probably what's keeping them alive as print declines.

Re:*Shrug*

[trawg]

How do I buy DRM free books from Tor? Every few months I try again and I feel stupid because I can't figure out how to do it.

They have a "looking for Tor books?" module which takes you to http://us.macmillan.com/TorFor....

Then I end up on a page like http://us.macmillan.com/thehum... which just gives me a list of normal retailers, like Amazon, Kobo, etc to choose from - with no evidence that I'm getting a DRM-free version.

I just want an epub, like what Baen deliver - is that possible?

Is it possible to buy

Re:*Shrug*

[magic maverick]

Go to Kobo <http://kobobooks.com>. Search for the title you want to buy. See that it says "Adobe DRM EPUB" or "EPUB (DRM-Free)". Don't pick any title with DRM. Pick the other titles. (For an example of an author with both DRMed and non-DRMed files, see Charles Stross.)

And don't feel bad. It too me a while as well.

Also, I remember reading that Tor USA titles everywhere should be DRM-free. If you get one that isn't, you can email them and they'll send you a copy that is DRM-free (perhaps).

Re:*Shrug*

[trawg]

I'll try that. I actually have a Kobo reader - every book I've wanted on their store has been DRM'ed, so I haven't bought anything. I'll give it another crack.

Thanks. I just wish everyone was on Baen - that is exactly how I want to buy books.

Re:*Shrug*

[Man Eating Duck]

...can be decrypted if the provider goes belly-up or does an Amazon-style "1984" on them.

Don't wait, do it now. Download calibre and some plugin tools, and deDRM is just a drag'n'drop operation. There is no need to use it to manage your books if you don't want to, you can just use it as a "storage shed" for your uncrippled books.

Re:*Shrug*

[RabidReindeer]

...can be decrypted if the provider goes belly-up or does an Amazon-style "1984" on them.

Don't wait, do it now. Download calibre and some plugin tools, and deDRM is just a drag'n'drop operation. There is no need to use it to manage your books if you don't want to, you can just use it as a "storage shed" for your uncrippled books.

Actually, I bypass the middleman and decrypt directly.

I know I'm the odd one out, but I never could get excited about Calibre. I have other tools, and they may not be drag-drop-drool simple, but they're easy enough and allow me to do just about anything I want to any format I want.

Incidentally, I just read that Adobe has dropped the "drop dead" deadline, although they're still pushing the new DRM scheme for the long term.

Re:*Shrug*

[Man Eating Duck]

Actually, I bypass the middleman and decrypt directly.

I know I'm the odd one out, but I never could get excited about Calibre. I have other tools, and they may not be drag-drop-drool simple, but they're easy enough and allow me to do just about anything I want to any format I want.

Sure, whatever works for you. I inferred from your comment that you deferred decryption to some later date, and that would've been risky. Using calibre and just leave the books unorganised, but searchable, might have been the most efficient way to do it in bulk. I didn't intend to tell you how to do it, only to do it at all :)

Incidentally, I just read that Adobe has dropped the "drop dead" deadline, although they're still pushing the new DRM scheme for the long term.

Yeah, I read that too, and I'm not surprised. As many, many others are saying, breaking the reading habits of millions of customers (both those who remove DRM and those who don't) would have been a PR nightmare. I'm inclined to think that Adobe was just testing the water to see whether this was something they could pull of, I'm only surprised that they thought it would fly at all.

And...

[wbr1]

The new 'hardened' DRM will be broken quickly and be of little use. If it is not broken, those who wish to pirate will get the material through other channels.

Meanwhile, customers get alienated, pissed off, pissed on, anally probed, and money taken from them. Those that get tired of it will add to the masses that go to pirate.

Models like Netflix, Steam, and iTunes show that light or zero DRM can work, and it allows customers easy access to products they want. You make it painful, difficult and costly, potential customers turn to other avenues. That may be forgoing that entertainment and going elsewhere, it may be pirating. The HBO/Game of Thrones model is a good example.

I have money in my wallet. I am willing to spend it, if the price is fair, and I do not have to get butthurt for it. Provide me that opportunity and you have my money. Do not, and you will not. There will always be a portion who steal or pirate, either because they are broke, or because they can. No amount of DRM will stop that. Instead you make yourself a target for those who politically do not like your methods, break your protection/racketeering schemes then provide it to everyone.

However here on /. I am largely preaching to the choir, so while my rant here may do little, remember this slash kiddies. Vote with your wallet, do your best NOT to support companies that do these things. Explain it to your family and peers. Even if they disagree, maybe you sparked a seed of thought that was not there before.

Re:And...

[TWiTfan]

Models like Netflix, Steam, and iTunes show that light or zero DRM can work

Netflix doesn't really apply here, as they're quite up-front about the fact that their streaming service is only all-you-can eat rental and that their content can disappear at any time (and frequently does). There is a big difference between that and companies that claim to sell you content that you presumably "own" into perpetuity--only for you to find out later that you were actually just renting it long-term.

Re:And...

[umafuckit]

Please tell me how the DRM on my Kindle is more cumbersome to me the user than that of Netflix or Steam...

Personally I find it is. With Netflix, all I have to do to watch is sign into my account and be on-line. If I'm abroad, it switches to the local content. That's not intrusive. The steam experience is pretty similar, TBH. I have just one gaming machine and I don't even notice Steam. Books, OTH, are different. I read on my phone, tablet, e-reader, and computer (Linux or OS X). I want to be able to get my books onto the device of my choosing reliably. To do this, I've stripped the DRM from every book I've bought. Some are MOBI books that I've converted to epub. It wouldn't be possible for me to use my books in this way if they were still DRMed (it would be much harder, anyway). It certainly wouldn't be possible if the supplier I purchased them from went bust.

Re:And...

[bberens]

There was a famous story a few years back about Wil Wheaton flying on a plane to/from Canada and suddenly his DVD stopped playing because his region changed or something silly. Are e-book readers smart/dumb enough to do this also? Is it even possible to region restrict an e-book?

Re:And...

[tibit]

You're completely wrong. The only thing that has changed is the barrier to entry. Nowadays, the satellite systems and PS3 and iPhone simply require hacks to be done by people with knowledge that makes them unwilling to waste time doing all this hacking. They can simply pay for the stuff and not think about it twice.

Re:And...

[mlts]

To make content publishers happy, Adobe has to update its DRM scheme once in a while. This could be as simple as obfuscating a stored key a slightly different way on disk. However, it keeps the content people happy, as it makes it look like that their works are kept well protected and the pirates are at bay.

Re:And...

[umafuckit]

There was a famous story a few years back about Wil Wheaton flying on a plane to/from Canada and suddenly his DVD stopped playing because his region changed or something silly. Are e-book readers smart/dumb enough to do this also? Is it even possible to region restrict an e-book?

E-books aren't region-locked and the DVD playing story sounds like complete fiction.

Re:And...

[RDW]

With ebooks, the 'region lock' is at the time of purchase. Amazon US will happily ship printed books to (e.g.) the UK, but you can't (officially) buy US Kindle books from a UK-registered account. You can use the Amazon UK Kindle store, of course, but if the price is higher or the book simply isn't available in the UK, tough luck. For obvious reasons all this is about as effective as the DVD region lock, but if DRM and location checking were perfect, country-specific ebooks wouldn't be available elsewhere.

Re:And...

[chihowa]

I wouldn't really include satellite encryption as a "DRM works" example. Their story is one of extremely high expense and ultimately they needed new laws passed and aggressively enforced to make their DRM work. Their technical DRM is less effective than their use of law enforcement resources and subsequent prohibition of enabling technologies.

That's like saying CSS works because the MPAA will sue you for torrenting movies.

Re:And...

[umafuckit]

Yeah, sure, but it's still possible. I'm in the US and I've found ebooks I wanted that were only available in a UK store (Waterstones, IIRC). It's been quite feasible to purchase them from here.

Re:And...

[umafuckit]

So now you have a collection of ebook files that can be used on any device and will always be available until you decide you no longer want them. Show me your collection of Netflix movie files.

Bogus argument. My purchased e-book is my file to read as and when I choose. That is what I paid for. My Netflix subscription is exactly like a subscription to a private lending library, such as The London Library. i.e. I pay for access to a content collection. I am not purchasing the content collection or even a part of the content collection. If I wanted to the latter, I'd buy the movie in a format of my choosing. Netflix is actually an example of DRM done right.

Disturbing lack of imagination...

[geogob]

I'm having a hard time following the train of though behind such moves. What do they expect the people will do once they are not able to buy ebooks and read them on their device. Worse, what do they expect people will do once they actually buy ebooks and then notice they can't read them on their device due to DRM?

It almost feels like dark scheme to push people towards piracy and undermine the profit of the compagnies. It somewhat reminded me of how Garmin handles its customer with its mapping product. I had a map installed on a handeld device and on old car device. After I bought a brand new device from that exact same company, I couldn't install the map on that new device as it was already installed on two device, one being the old car GPS replaced by the new one. The officiel support answer was "sorry, we can't help you. You can buy a new copy of the map _here_". With such a policy, they lost a good customer that was happy up to that point. I expect the ebook users to experience about the same kind of feeling being put in the situation that lays before them.

Re:Disturbing lack of imagination...

[Nokey]

I've got a garmin handheld and switched over to openstreetmap maps on it. Works real good for me, both for bicycle and car navigation (different maps, but can be switched on/off).

Re:Disturbing lack of imagination...

[geogob]

How did Garmin avoid the loss of a good client (and the multiple other I discouraged to buy their products) with such a politic? Although I agree with the idea of loss aversion, I think that believing such a move will avoid loss is flawed. It's even more flawed considering the fact that most of the people breaking copyright on an ebook, film, music or piece of software wouldn't have payed for it if it wasn't made available through piracy. So, in fact, by using DRM you not only loose real paying customers for piracy, you gain back very few from those who use pirated products anyway. How does that help mitigating loss?

It's not quantum computing. Some decision maker must have made this observation at some point in the decision process.

Re:Disturbing lack of imagination...

[davecb]

You're trying to re-use something. The (book) publisher's model is "read once and throw away". They don't care that it's not applicable to music, movies or even books other than "summer blockbusters".

The level of willful blindness is getting a bit high (;-))

Re:Disturbing lack of imagination...

[Sockatume]

They just don't understand that they have to compete with piracy. They get mired in the moral issue and overlook the simple economic one: it's an alternative option that people can choose that for many forms of media is so much better in convenience and price that it's worth the vanishingly small chance of a comically inflated financial penalty. The "No You Shouldn't" blind spot is killing them.

Re:Disturbing lack of imagination...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Garmin standalone GPS, and I got one with "LMT" at the end of the model number. That stands for "Lifetime Maps and Traffic". The map updates come via USB and a PC app. The serial number identifies itself to Garmin's servers as an LMT-enabled model. The whole update process takes about 5 minutes. The traffic is realtime-ish, and apparently comes from a satellite.

Oh, and this particular model has pedestrian pathing too, including major subway systems around the world (NYC, Paris, etc.).

I have no idea how much of a premium I paid for LMT, but it can't be more than $140, because that was the entire cost of the unit. Costco tends to sell the LMT models. That's where I got mine.

Adobe

[nightsky30]

Adobe can choke and die on its DRM if it wants. I hope the ebook community can find an open alternative.

Re:Adobe

[Pi1grim]

I think open ebook community should thank Adobe for demonstating (at the cost of their reputation and revenues) to everyone who ever did something as stupid as buying a book with Adobe's DRM, what't it's all about and all the dangers of having someone else manage your access to the content you bought right to access. Only through these actions will people learn, as they only listen when they've been hit in their wallet. Luckily, ebook reader (hardware) manufacurers will also learn the hard way, that implementing an obscure DRM scheme is more expensive in the long run (and more damaging to the brand and sales) than partnering up with a shop that not only allows you to buy the books, but even keep them after it changes the technolgy (or goes down in flames) without taking all the books with them.

All that aside - those who suffer from it, deserve it. Hopefully this lesson will be painful enough to remember not to mess with DRMed content any more.

Re:Adobe

[PetiePooo]

This was my thought on reading the article as well. "Adobe is doing more to kill DRM with this move than anything they've done in the past." There's nothing like punishing the innocent to get people's attention.

Re:print is dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Good news! That printed book you purchased was printed in disappearing ink.

Yippee! Fewer Adobe customers

[redelm]

foot ... aim ... fire!

Product "upgrades" always sound compelling to software "product managers" but are always less-so to customers. The managers do not suffer the upgrade costs (which are always far greater than relicence costs, especially when backwards compatibility is not advertised).

Any upgrade is always marginal -- the initial app solved the problem and captured most of the benefits. An upgrade hunts for scraps. Many upgrades are forced by obsolescence -- if customers could keep the old system running, they would.

Sure, with new systems you want the "latest" to have decent lifetime. And with really compelling uses (mobile), new systems will be bought.

I do not see anything remotely compelling about the new Adobe DRM, Amazon will eat their lunch even faster.

Adobe and ebook DRM? Color me surprised

[Speare]

So, we all know how well this worked out for Dmitry Sklyarov last time. Learning how DRM is a self-defeating technology is kinda like the cycles in the fashion industry: everything old is new again. The stakes just get higher and higher with all the maximalist lobbying that goes on between each cycle.

What devices does it affect?

[OzPeter]

How much of a market share does Adobe DRM have in the eBook world? I didn't get a clear picture from any of TFA's (yep I read them) as to how prevalent this DRM is.

But yeah, if I had an affected system I would be pissed, and rightly so.

Re:What devices does it affect?

[magic maverick]

Adobe Digital Editions and Adobe DRM is used by virtually all publishers (that actually use DRM) and device makers except Amazon. I.e. it is everywhere (sort of like how ePub is used by virtually everyone except Amazon). But, you don't have to use it. No device that I know of requires that an ePub file has DRM.

Two publishers in the SF/F field that don't use any DRM at all are Tor and Baen Books. Baen Books is excellent for other reasons, including their Free Library (you can download and read the first book in most of their series'). Tor is just part of one of the Big Six, and so otherwise has nothing to distinguish them from any other publisher.

Re:What devices does it affect?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Most of the ebook industry uses either ePub or is an Amazon Kindle, many if not most DRM on ePub is from Adobe

Note this will also affect some unexpected devices - iPhone, iPad iPodTouch ...

Re:What devices does it affect?

[RabidReindeer]

How much of a market share does Adobe DRM have in the eBook world? I didn't get a clear picture from any of TFA's (yep I read them) as to how prevalent this DRM is.

But yeah, if I had an affected system I would be pissed, and rightly so.

It's a stealth thing. They provide DRM under the covers for a lot of ebooks and e-magazines, in addition to the more obvious lock on PDFs. The common ebook formats have places to plug in DRM, and thank goodness, publishers such as Baen, Tor and O'Reilly don't use them. Anybody can create and inject a DRM scheme into an eBook, but Adobe pretty much owns that market.

Overdrive, the ebook lending service does use their DRM, and their DRM reader. The particular schem that they use not only has the text encrypted, but time-sensitive so that the book "returns" to the lender after a set interval. I don't especially mind this, since library lending isn't supposed to guarantee me a permanent copy, but the only readers available that can handle this format are provided by Adobe. And they don't provide one for the Linux desktop.

Non-DRM'ed ePub-format books, on the other hand, can not only be read on the Linux desktop, there's even a Firefox plugin that can read and manage them.

Re:What devices does it affect?

[tibit]

You'll like to hear, then, that there are multiple projects that routinely, in a fully automated fashion, photograph said library-lent ebooks and torrent them. That's my take on what's going on, at least. The so-called analog hole doesn't diminish the quality of the reconstituted digital version in any shape or form, as long as we're talking about text only, or text-with-tables. All you need is a computer-controlled SLR and a couple RC servos to push the buttons on the reader. Books are very different from movies in that respect.

Re:Now wait until we are required by law

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to require DRM by law on all copies of the New Testament. Christians everywhere will rightfully denounce DRM as the Mark Of The Beast.

Error in summary

[Anonymous Coward]

They also expect all the stores that use Adobe's DRM to sell ebooks (as well as the ebook app and ebook reader developers) to have fully adopted the new ebook DRM by July 2014.

Those stores ain't selling any ebooks. They're renting you a license to read the book. A license they can revoke at any time... And now we know when that time will be.

Re:Adobe and ebook DRM? Color me surprised

[JasterBobaMereel]

DRM cannot work (Except in the USA) the logic is, here is a locked box, and here is the key, please only use the key how we say ... (in the USA it can be illegal to use the key except how specified! )

The fashion industry is an perfect example of why copyright is not needed... there is no copyright on clothing design, yet the fashion industry still exists and makes lots of money ... but is forced to continually come up with new ideas, which because there is no copyright quickly propagate around the entire industry

Re:Adobe sold ebooks?

[gmuslera]

If their proposal for ebooks are DRM'd PDFs, i feel ok that they put a stronger DRM on it. It's simply the wrong approach, so making it even more evidently wrong will give reasonable alternatives (even a .txt is easier to read in all kind of devices than a .pdf that for viewing comfortably must have the same physical dimensions as the original paper book) more visibility.

Not even rental.

[Anonymous Coward]

You have certain rights to rental.

And it's cheaper than "buy to [not really] own".

I've never even heard of Adobe ebooks

[TWiTfan]

Unless this effects the Kindle or Nook, how many books could this even be? I wasn't even aware that Adobe HAD an ebook format. Realistically, how many books does this expiring DRM even effect, a few thousand, maybe?

Re:I've never even heard of Adobe ebooks

[xenoc_1]

It's everything that isn't Kindle. Including the Nook, Sony, Kobo, iRiver. Everything.

Re:I've never even heard of Adobe ebooks

[tazan]

I'm pretty sure Nook uses adobe.

Re:I've never even heard of Adobe ebooks

[Somebody Is Using My]

Every single e-book offered in my state's public library system (maybe 1000 municipal libraries, total), for one. I am not sure how many that is, but I doubt it is an insignificant number.

Even if they aren't forced to re-purchase all these books, I have no doubt that the publishers will drag their feet on updating the DRM on all these books (I mean, if the libraries aren't re-purchasing these e-books, what advantage does the publisher get from doing all that work? It's not as if libraries are going to stop buying books). And then there's the added cost to the libraries of updating their websites and dealing with the inevitable technical issues as older devices no longer work...

And the upside of all this is that not only does Adobe push out new DRM that will likely be broken in a month, but it introduces a whole host of new bugs and security vulnerabilities which are the common denominator of all Adobe software! Yay!

Re:Use Project Gutenberg for your ebooks

[TWiTfan]

Great advice for anyone not interested in ever reading anything written after 1923.

Nope, Steam doesn't work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Steam's DRM is entirely intrusive.

If you have two games and two computers, you cannot use one whist someone else uses the other if they're Steam titles.

If they were DRM'd with SecureRom or whatever, you would.

Re:Nope, Steam doesn't work.

[0123456]

so you've bought one copy of the game, and expect to be able to use two copies of it?

why is that Steam's fault? how would it be different if a game needed a DVD to be able to play it?

So are you unable to read, or unable to do math? Hint: the poster said two games. Two is, like, more than one.

Re:Nope, Steam doesn't work.

[tompaulco]

I don't think that is what the GP is saying. I think he is saying if you have bought two games from one Steam account, you cannot play one on one computer and one on another computer. At least that is my understanding of what the GP was saying. I am not vouching as to whether that is true.
I do know that my stepson bought me Civ 5 for my birthday last year, a physical copy, but for some reason, it seems to want to connect to Steam in order for me to play it. I don't understand that at all, and I will probably never buy anything from Steam for that reason.

Laugh

[koan]

I have an idea, what if we printed books on paper...

Re:Laugh

[StripedCow]

You are not allowed to do that with this new DRM.

Re:Laugh

[jxander]

Hurry up and file a patent for "Like eBooks, but using the pulped and dried remnants of wood." It's gonna be big!

Re:Adobe and ebook DRM? Color me surprised

[DriveDog]

Yep.

"...we can add Adobe to the list."

Ridiculous statement—Adobe was a charter member.

Re:Adobe sold ebooks?

[SJHillman]

Did you read the summary? At all? Adobe is the company that came up with PDF. The article is about how they're changing PDF DRM and expect ebooks that use Adobe's DRM to comply with the new one. Many iPad and Android books are affected, as well as (possibly) B&N ebooks, which uses a variant of it. Kindle books should not be affected. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

forward reverse forward reverse

[epine]

Would someone knowledgeable about this—someone who can refrain from jumping on one finger-wagging bandwagon or another long enough to compose a sober paragraph—please jump in and sort out whether this is primarily a problem of older hardware not being able to handle newer publications, or of newer hardware becoming unable/unwilling to render older content?

These are totally different things.

This circus of layered tread marks is not shedding much light.

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[davecb]

I read it as

1. - old hardware being able to read old content already on the device
2. - old hardware no longer having a source for (old format) content.
3. - new hardware being unable to read any old content

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[stoploss]

This circus of layered tread marks is not shedding much light.

Good lord, *where* do you shop for your metaphors?!

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[quixote9]

That would be "B." Any hardware will become unable, at the software/DRM level, to render the previous content.

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[eam]

There was a better metaphor, but it is DRM'd & we can't use it anymore.

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[RabidReindeer]

Would someone knowledgeable about this—someone who can refrain from jumping on one finger-wagging bandwagon or another long enough to compose a sober paragraph—please jump in and sort out whether this is primarily a problem of older hardware not being able to handle newer publications, or of newer hardware becoming unable/unwilling to render older content?

These are totally different things.

This circus of layered tread marks is not shedding much light.

It really depends on 2 things.

1. Whether the device in question is amenable to having alternative DRM code jacked in. In theory, just about all of them are, but for whatever ones aren't, newer books - or re-encryted books - are going to be unreadable.

The re-encrypted part is the nasty part, since for a lot of ebooks, the book's true "home" is on the vendor's server. You may have purged your local copy, the device might have deleted it to save space, or the vendor may even "update" your local copy the way Amazon has been known to do.

2. Whether or not the vendor is committed to retro-fitting ancient devices with the new DRM code. I have an original paperwhite Nook and I still use it. In many ways it's not as nice as the Nook Tablet, but it's still an excellent reader and with a longer battery life. There are already things I've bought that cannot be read on it, however. Chances are that B&N won't be offering DRM upgrades for it, either.

This is strictly a change in DRM we're talking about. Obviously, if an ebook was renderable once upon a time, it should be renderable after the DRM change, since the DRM is a modification to the encoding of the book, not its format or contents. But if you aren't provided with a DRM decoder update, your content becomes essentially trash.

Re:forward reverse forward reverse

[Shagg]

please jump in and sort out whether this is primarily a problem of older hardware not being able to handle newer publications, or of newer hardware becoming unable/unwilling to render older content?

Both.

Re:Use Project Gutenberg for your ebooks

[Chrisq]

For all your non-DRM, out of copyright (mostly, some creative commons material as well) ebook needs: http://www.gutenberg.org/

Also check out the proof reading project where material for Project Gutenberg is produced, http://www.pgdp.net/

Unfortunately this is no longer a growing domain. The length of copyright extends before anything can become "out of copyright".

really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean it's ALSO a Linux app.

1.8 million different ebooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless this effects the Kindle or Nook, how many books could this even be? I wasn't even aware that Adobe HAD an ebook format. Realistically, how many books does this expiring DRM even effect, a few thousand, maybe?

Adobe's ebook DRM is used by OverDrive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OverDrive,_Inc. to let more than 27,000 public libraries and schools lend ebooks to citizens and students. They make than 1.8 million different ebooks from over 1000 publishers available to libraries and schools using this scheme.

Adobe's termination of the existing DRM mechanism means that those thousands of schools and libraries will have to buy new ereader hardware and the students and citizens who borrow ebooks from them will have to buy new ereader hardware. So Adobe's termination of the existing DRM mechanism is going to cost American tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions).

Re:1.8 million different ebooks

[RabidReindeer]

Unless this effects the Kindle or Nook, how many books could this even be? I wasn't even aware that Adobe HAD an ebook format. Realistically, how many books does this expiring DRM even effect, a few thousand, maybe?

Adobe's ebook DRM is used by OverDrive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OverDrive,_Inc. to let more than 27,000 public libraries and schools lend ebooks to citizens and students. They make than 1.8 million different ebooks from over 1000 publishers available to libraries and schools using this scheme.

Adobe's termination of the existing DRM mechanism means that those thousands of schools and libraries will have to buy new ereader hardware and the students and citizens who borrow ebooks from them will have to buy new ereader hardware. So Adobe's termination of the existing DRM mechanism is going to cost American tax payers hundreds of thousands of dollars (if not millions).

Just as an observation, I was reading a book via Overdrive just now and wanted to search it for something I'd missed.

My Overdrive client has no search function.

Since this is a DRM book locked in a hidden space, I cannot use any other, more capable, program to do the search for me either. I'm limited to strictly what few feeble capabilities Overdrive itself has.

How'd that cloud based software work for ya?

[retech]

/sarcasm/ Good job Adobe. You really know how to encourage people to use your licenses legally. /sarcasm/

Working Just the Way it was Supposed to...

[avgjoe62]

...that's going to leave many readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks.

Oh no, it won't. They'll be able to buy all the DRMed books they want, just with the new DRM. And they'll have to, because they won't be able to use the old ones they purchased from a company that no longer exists. Do you think this isn't what they had in mind? You insisted on buying a copy instead of a license to use the content for a set time, so the publishers have found a way to make you pay again...

Re:Working Just the Way it was Supposed to...

[joe_frisch]

If you view a "purchase" of an ebook as a short term rental, and buy things you want to keep in paper, then it isn't so bad. Its deceptive advertising, but I'm OK with paying ~$10 to rent a book to read in a convenient (eg light weight) format when I'm traveling.

Re:Working Just the Way it was Supposed to...

[GrBear]

And this is the exact reason why when I buy an ebook, the first thing I do is stip out the DRM.

You're missing a point about that

[Anonymous Coward]

What Adobe was doing was ILLEGAL in Russia.

What Dimitry did was legally right in Russia.

Hell, it was legally allowed (interoperability clause) in the USA.

But Adobe has more clout in the US government than a Russian citizen.

Of course, if Adobe had been done for their crime in Russia, the US gov would then declare trade war on Russia, because heaven forfend that a US corporation obey laws.

Re:Now wait until we are required by law

[RobertLTux]

The Gideons would like to speak to you on this subject.

In fact they would love to hit you over the head with entire CASES of NTs for suggesting something this stupid.

but anyway the Crosswire/Xiphos projects are standing by for your bible needs

Just more dumbness

[Anonymous Coward]

This is one of those things which absolutely only works to inhibit the honest user only. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a person wants to copy a DRM'ed book. And, let's say that this DRM is completely unbreakable (no such thing, but humor me). They simply hook a video camera up to a computer with an OCR program and can copy the book as fast as they can physically swipe on the e-reader screen. A pirated ebook can then be made available at all the usual suspect sites. Adding more DRM to something is crappy management's answer to declining sales, not looking at their price points (really, why does an e-book which requires no physical production, shipping, and storage cost almost as much as a hardcopy?), or the change in consumer preference for different media, or general lifestyle, or maybe that people prefer hardcopy in lieu of looking at yet another screen.

Adobe DRM isn't PDF, it's everything except Kindle

[xenoc_1]

It's not just PDF, nor even primarily PDF. It's reflowable standard EPUB. EPUB with Adobe DRM is the standard commercial ebook format for the "rest of the world that isn't Amazon". Barnes & Noble Nook (now mostly Microsoft Nook). Kobo, which is number 2 in much of the world. Google Play Books. eReaders from Kobo, B&N, iRiver, white-box Chinese brands affordable in emerging markets, even iBooks own Appleized format, have Adobe DRM inside. eReading apps from third parties like the well-respected Aldiko Reader and Bluefire reader use Adobe DRM. Only Kindle doesn't use it.

I've got Google Play Books and Kobo books on my Nook Color early-gen ereading tablet, because of Adobe DRM being near-universal. Have Google Play books on my Kobo WiFi e-ink eReader and on my newer Kobo AuraHD e-ink eReader. On my Android phone, whitebox cheap 10" tablet, and Kobo Arc (Android tablet with Kobo's shell but full open Google Play Store Jellybean tablet), I have the Aldiko app so that I can combine my Kobo and my Google Play books into a single library rather than reading in separate apps per bookstore. (Nooks can sideload and read standard EPUB/AdobeDRM but Nook books can't be read outside of Nook hardware or apps due to B&N weird variant AdobeDRM).

Adobe is breaking all this relatively open ecosystem. Sure, it's DRM, but it's an "anything except Kindle" open system. Adobe is screwing over all the people who bought into the non-Kindle commercial ebook ecosystem over the past half-decade or so.

I'm writing from the perspective of a normal human, not a /. geek. Normals don't break DRM because they don't know how, they don't even know it's a thing. They don't buy only non-DRM books, because they want to buy books from their favorite authors, not obscure corners of the web. Even many self-published books, if distributed through "normal channels" carry Adobe DRM (or Amazon DRM). They might, if they read the very simple info on the Kobo, Google Play, and other ecosystem-member web pages, have realized they can buy a book from Google and read it on their Sony eReader, buy a book from Kobo on sale and read it on their original Nook or Nook front-light newer e-ink reader. They may be all over Goodreads and ereader websites where there are lots of how-tos about just that, but they are nowhere near Slashdot. Nor near Linux. And O'Reilly tech books are irrelevant. As are, to most readers, Baen and Tor SF.

Hell, I don't want to deal with this myself, and I know how or can easily figure it out. Just going to the "Download Adobe DRM" link at Kobo or Google Play, getting the .ACSM (Adobe Content Server Mechanism) license file, double-clicking on the download and having previously-installed Adobe Digital Editions get the DRM-unlocked-to-my-ID content was simple. Bang, read it on my PC in Adobe Digital Editions, or tether my Android phone/tablet to drag into Aldiko or Bluefire, tether my Kobo eReaders (e-ink actual ereaders for readers) and drag it into their libraries, tether the Nook Color and drag it into its library.

Now I'd' have to go break DRM on all those files and future purchases. But that would be wrong...

Looked into DRM at one time...

[Chas]

My company puts out gaming materials (as in tabletop, pnp). When we initially looked at putting out an ebook format ten years ago, we did look at DRM as a form of content control. At the time, though, the requirements to implement such a platform were...to be frank, ridiculous.

So we decided to invest a little bit of trust in our community. We KNOW e-pub versions of our rulebooks and the like are shared amongst gaming groups. It's a given.
But we've had great interaction with our player communities over the years, and they understand that if we're seeing everything popping up on BitTorrent, we have less incentive to put up new material in a timely manner.

Now, we've had to issue a few takedown requests over the years. But only a few, and most of the stuff came down with nary a whimper. As such, we have pretty much ZERO impetus to move from standardized PDF distribution to DRM'ed versions. It's still a waste of time, effort and money. And it also would do damage to our relationship with our players.

Will this really anger customers?

[hendrips]

I'm seeing quite a few comments about how this is really a good thing because will make customers angry about DRM, but I'm not sure. It seems to me that no-one in any of the following groups will be visibly affected:

-Anyone who buys e-books from Amazon - they don't use Adobe
-Anyone who uses buys books for a Nook, iDevice, Kobo, etc. using the official bookstores - they'll make sure they're in compliance because they have no choice
-Anyone with an objection to DRM - they're presumably only buying DRM free books anyway
-Pirates - they're pirates, so of course this isn't going to affect them

Is there a meaningful number of ebook consumers that don't fall into one of those categories? It seems to me like there's very little pushback against DRM in ebooks, because in practice it just doesn't affect enough customers. That's a different situation than we had 10-15 years ago, when DRM in music really did (temporarily) inconvenience a large segment of the buying public.

Re:Will this really anger customers?

[Man Eating Duck]

Is there a meaningful number of ebook consumers that don't fall into one of those categories?

I believe you forgot the category "Power users who don't care about DRM as long as they can remove it". The crowd over at MobileRead may not be representative of the majority of customers, but amongst them it is common to deDRM everything as SOP. In the linked thread there are a lot of people who *do* care indeed :)

I remove DRM as well. I have never bought a book with DRM I can't remove, and I never will. I suspect that this new scheme will be broken soon, but if it isn't I will not buy another Adept-encrypted book.

I know that the "correct" thing to do would have been to boycott DRM-infested stuff completely, but that would limit my choice of books severely. I have absolutely no problem paying a fair price for a good product. In fact, the publishers who have abandoned DRM altogether (for instance Tor, O'Reilly) find that only their support requests and negative feedback decline, not their sales, so there must be many like me. Not that DRM will ever stop pirates from providing a superior product.

Ultimately I hope that the publishing industry will realise their insanity and drop DRM. The only ones they're hurting are their legitimate customers, the pirates will not even slow down because of any type of DRM.

I think they have to.

[tazan]

The only one I've looked into is the Nook, but it seems to me like it is fundamentally flawed. It has a lot of bits so it can't be brute forced. But, they use a pass phrase to generate the key. The phrase is your name and credit card number, so it's not as many bits. But if I get a hold of your Nook I can get your name from one of your screens. And the last four digits of your credit card. The first 6 digits of your card are not secret either and are determined by your bank and card company. If you don't know it at least many can be eliminated. So the only really secret part is the middle section of 6 numeric digits. I'm not sure how long it would take to brute force but it doesn't seem like it would be too long and it's easily parallelizable. So if you leave your Nook somewhere not only could I copy your books, I can have your credit card and name as well.

Re:I think they have to.

[flonker]

First 6 are non-secret, last 4 are non-secret. And one additional digit is a checksum, therefore non-secret. So, a credit card has 5 digits of secrecy.

Re:Now wait until we are required by law

[clickclickdrone]

but anyway the Crosswire/Xiphos projects are standing by for your bible needs

I bet they're not given I mostly burn them to keep the house warm.

Re:Now wait until we are required by law

[tibit]

Well, King James Bible is still subject to crown copyright on the other side of the pond, so yeah, having DRM on it is not unthinkable at all.

Re:Use Project Gutenberg for your ebooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. As a curious fact, when US copyright was 28+28 years (until 1976) only 15 percent of the rights holders went for the 28 years extension. [1]

Richard Stallman has proposed that we used tax money to support arts. This way artists would get paid and not some uncreative fat cat execs. Also he suggests that funds be distributed e.g. using the cube-root of artist's popularity so we can have a wide base instead of a handful of super stars. [2]

[1] http://thepublicdomain.org/the... page 9
[2] http://shop.fsf.org/product/fr... page 125

I have a solution

[epyT-R]

Buy dead tree until these companies realize no one wants to pay big bucks for indian-giving schemes. There've already been cases where purchases have been revoked due to publishing squabbles and other rubbish. Whether it was accidental or not, the point is, they shouldn't be able to yank anything after it's been sold.

If publishers want DRM on their products, I want the same DRM on my money.

Re:costs of making a book

[SJHillman]

Those costs are fairly low and recouped in the first few hundred or thousand sales, which is why self-publishing ebooks has been table to take off. The typical author's advance is only a few hundred to a few thousand dollars (depending on the genre, content, etc), and royalties count on volume to be profitable. And compared to authors, editors get much less and proofreaders hardly anything.

Source: I write. For money. Also, go check out Writer's Market for actual dollar figures.

Re:costs of making a book

[0123456]

Uh, no.

You're right for mass-market paperbacks; they're cheap enough that the cost of returning them isn't worthwhile, and stores just destroy them and claim a refund. But the returns mechanism for hardcovers and trade paperbacks wouldn't exist if those books weren't worth shipping out again.

As for the author, a typical e-book publishing contract pays 25% of the royalties to the author. The publisher and retailer make far more from an e-book sale than the author does.

DRM

[oshkrozz]

The point of DRM is not to limit copying of material by those in the know. It is meant, and the sole purpose of it is to limit how long the content is good for. That basically after a few years your device is now obsolete, the DRM used is no longer supported. If you want new content you need to buy a new device ... if you want your current content well, you need to buy it again for the new device. There are still a significant number of people in their 40s and up that will buy into this model.

Nothing Sucks Like Adobe

[MarkvW]

Adobe wants to hook you, lock you in, and keep you forever. They don't want you just buying their software, they want your credit card permanently and irrevocably hooked up to their (leaky) computer system.

The HELL with them.

Dmitry Sklyarov

[jdavidb]

we've all read numerous stories about companies using DRM in stupid ways that harm their customers, and now we can add Adobe to the list

Only now? Adobe was using DRM to harm Dmitry Sklyarov over a decade ago. And in harming one of us, they harmed all of us.

And will be cracked in 24 hours.

[Lumpy]

Adobe is one of the dumbest companies, their DRM is easily cracked across the board and this new one will also be cracked within moments of it appearing in the wild.

They need to give up, they also need to fix PDF so that it's not a fat bloated pig it has become. go back to what PDF was 10 years ago when it was not full of crap.

Gotta wonder how vendors are reacting ...

[MacTO]

As far as I can tell, most of the ebook vendors who use DRM use Adobe's DRM. The exceptions are Kindle, Kobo, and (maybe) Nook. Even then, a lot of people who buy from Kobo use Adobe's DRM on third-party readers.

Now for users of computers and tablets, this isn't a huge issue. Just upgrade your software. Users of ereaders though will depend upon upgrades that may never be forthcoming. This will force at least some people to take a second look at why they're using ereaders and perhaps why they are even reading ebooks. After all, a lot of the momentum behind ebooks for your typical reader is going to be the ease of use. Well now it ain't going to be so easy.

Netflix has light DRM?

[Cajun Hell]

I don't understand how you can refer to Netflix in the same breath as "light or zero DRM." Has anyone yet made a second Netflix client? Maybe I'm not as plugged into the underground as I used to, because I haven't heard anyone say they have managed to play Netflix streams yet. If I'm wrong, then it's time to bring on the XBMC and MythTV plugins.

I found one hack that tries to bring Netflix into the fold, but that actually uses Netflix's own software (running within Chrome!).

As far as I can tell, Netflix still uses extremely heavy DRM, so heavy that currently, only 31337 d00ds crack it (probably to pirate) (and I bet they don't even do that, and are instead capping the output), and regular uses still can't use their own clients.

If anyone other than Netflix ever implements Netflix's protocol (and it gets disclosed in public), you're going to hear words like "lawyers" and "ton of bricks" used repeatedly. There's nothing even slightly "light or none" about Netflix DRM, or how DMCA would apply to it.

Re:Netflix has light DRM?

[flonker]

I don't know about anybody else, but the reason I don't find Netflix DRM unpalatable is because I didn't purchase the content. The "rental" is very explicit in the agreement between the Netflix and the consumer. If Netflix were to start to sell movies, I would find that objectionable. I do find Steam objectionable, as well as most DRM.

Re:Netflix has light DRM?

[Cajun Hell]

Weird how transaction duration and issues of "palatable" are starting to seep into discussions about what/whose code your computer is allowed to run.

Maybe we have different takes on what it means for DRM to be "light" or "heavy." To me, it's just a question of how decisively someone else dominates your computer. To you, I think it's about how hostile (or not) they have your computer act toward you, once they have already decisively won the battle for dominance.

Libraries

[McFly777]

Adobe's ebook DRM is used by OverDrive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OverDrive,_Inc. to let more than 27,000 public libraries and schools lend ebooks to citizens and students.

THANK YOU! This makes the motives clear. The attempt is not to kill the ebook industry, just the ebook LENDING that libraries and schools allow.

Polar opposites.....

[rts008]

All of that is true, and most here on /. (including myself) also knew Amazon refunded/replaced the user's purchase.

However, either you are incapable of getting the point here(i suspect this by the use of 'stolen goods' describing digital files), and so different from myself, that we will never find common grounds for a meaningful discussion. Or you are deliberately being obtuse.

If it clarifies my view on this subject (DRM), I mostly agree with Richard Stallman about this subject, and see your type as part of the problem here.

Good day to you, Enry, I'm done with you.

Re:Polar opposites.....

[Enry]

You're not understanding the issues here.

I don't like DRM. I use it in places (like my Kindle) because I have to. I don't rent videos online, I buy the DVD/BR and rip it so I can play it where I want to. That's my choice and I pay more for it ($10 for the BR vs. $1.99 or whatever to rent it). There's no requirement for you buy DRMs books, you can still buy a dead tree version, you're just going to pay more for it. In return for the lower price, you give up some of your rights to it. Music companies have figured out the proper balance between cost and piracy and things are pretty settled. Hopefully the movie and ebook industries follow suit at some point.

At the same time, content creators need to ensure they're properly compensated for their work. US copyright law has thrown this way out of skew, so until that gets fixed we're stuck in this situation for now. Either way, this doesn't give you the wholesale right to steal (pirate, borrow, whatever you want to call it) content from others. Neither side is talking about what should be a reasonable timeframe for length of a copyright. Should it be 20 years? 30? 50? 100? How long after content is made should the author (or heirs) continue to be paid for that work?

I'm not being obtuse, I'm at best being a devil's advocate to make you realize there's two sides to the DRM issue and by being deliberately obtuse about one instance of DRM use barely scratches the surface of the problems, companies, and ideas that are involved in producing digital forms of what was traditionally dead tree (or cellulose or vinyl) media.

Strategy confirmation

[Koyaanisqatsi]

That's just confirming that I'm on the right path, when I buy an ebook, the first thing I do is to strip-out the DRM and then save this copy in my backed-up storage. If I paid for it, I want to make sure I own it, period.

unable to buy DRMed ebooks?

[vanyel]

that's going to leave many readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks

Like that's a bad thing? Thank you Adobe for accelerating the move away from DRM!

Summary was cut off

[Minwee]

"Few, if any, will be updated in time to meet Adobe's deadline, and that's going to leave many readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks."

...for the five point seven minutes that it will take for the new "hardened" DRM to be broken and removal tools to be distributed through all of the usual channels.

There is a reason the original acronym was

[AutodidactLabrat]

Content Restrictions Access Protocols (CRAP)

Obligatory observation . . .

[mmell]

Digital Rights Management manages digital rights in much the same way that Federal Prison manages freedom.

unable to buy DRMed ebooks

[nurb432]

yay!

readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks

[frovingslosh]

readers unable to buy DRMed ebooks

Sounds good. Adobe seems to be finally doing its part to kill DRM. I look forward to all the chumps who bought DRMed books no longer being able to read the library they purchased when their current reader dies.

Digital Editions has been a nightmare.

[jpellino]

Heck, even following their rules results in abandoned purchases. Early-adopter the user end of Adobe Digital Editions. Freak show. Bloated install? Check. Mobo swap? DRM dies. HD upgrade? DRM dies. Resolving this? Days of back and forth proving who I was, explaining why I needed a larger hard drive... Tried it again this past year, thinking sure a large company like Adobe had learned their lesson from tolerable eBook implementations (Kindle, iBooks...) Nope. $100 worth of purchased books are still dead.

Chill out

[Cochonou]

After nearly 300 comments here, has anybody noticed that Adobe has backed off on this decision ?

Re:epub + google play books

[DrXym]

Because uploading all your legal (sure) books to Google is an extremely well thought out plan.