DRM and eBook Formats

[6charlong]

I didn't know where else to post this. I apologize if this is the wrong spot.

I’m writing to ask for help understanding eBook DRM. I’ve been looking for a nice, inexpensive 5-inch eInk reader. The offerings seem only to support Mobipocket. I like to read recently published commercial eBooks which all seem to come with DRM. I have several reasons not to want to strip the DRM from commercial books*.

As I understand it, Mobi DRM comes in two types: the original version and a new version used on the Kindle. If I buy a new 5-inch reader (like the BeBook for example) which is only available with support for Mobi formatted books with DRM, will the BeBook be able to read the newer Mobi format? If not, does Amazon sell new books in both formats?

I should mention that I already have some books in eReader DRM format, but not so many that I couldn’t change to Mobi if it is strongly supported by Amazon.

*For me, there are some beautiful editions of paper books but I’ve run out of shelf space so I have to pass them up. I’ve found that there are sometimes attractive editions of eBooks achieved through the aesthetic use of fonts, layout, formatting, graphics and images. The process of stripping a file of its DRM and converting the result to another format entirely seems to rob the edition of the beauty and readability the publisher added in. When I pay for an eBook I look for the book’s content, of course, but I also pay attention to the efforts of some anonymous editor to create an attractive edition that’s easy to read and clarifies the author's intent. Conversely, I can’t help but notice editions that are poorly prepared. eBooks like that seem to me to demonstrate a publisher’s contempt for me, their customer, and the book they are selling.

Despite the understandably primitive formatting support Mobipocket and eReader offer they can just be made to do an adequate job in the hands of someone who cares enough to format an attractive edition. The ePub books I’ve bought have proven very disappointing on my PRS 505. They are readable but they’re also uniformly ugly, so getting books in ePub even without DRM is not something I want to do until Sony cleans up.

Speaking of Sony, if someone would manufacture a 5-inch reader that can render BBeB I’d buy it in a minute, but I suppose Sony DRM is inviolable.

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

The process of stripping a file of its DRM and converting the result to another format entirely seems to rob the edition of the beauty and readability the publisher added in.

Not in my experience. I don't think stripping the DRM makes the slightest difference to the appearance, nor do I see how it could.

Regards, Alex

[GeoffC]

There are many, many books produced without DRM - a good many of them are here - and all DRM free.

All DRM is, is a procedure that publishers use to attempt to prevent a purchased book being read by a device other than which the book was registered to using the PID. A paperback book can be passed from person to person, an ebook with DRM cannot. Stripping DRM (where legal) from a book should not materially alter the content (though the conversion program may do something).

A goodly number of ebooks appear to be 'straight' OCR copies of paper versions, marred to a large extent by not being proof-read and full of mistakes...

[pdurrant]

Not so. For eReader the current stripper does indeed do this - because it also converts to HTML.

For Mobipocket and ePub, the result is the same book, just without the DRM.

Originally Posted by 6charlong

The process of stripping a file of its DRM and converting the result to another format entirely seems to rob the edition of the beauty and readability the publisher added in.

[GeoffC]

A description of DRM, from MR wiki ....

[6charlong]

Thanks to all of you. This was helpful.

After reading the Wiki I learned that it's illegal to strip DRM from eBooks where I live and since I believe in the rule of law, I won't be doing it.

That makes the problem of getting recent books even harder. If I have to use Mobi on a device like the BeBook, things like the recent release of The Lord of the Rings have me worried. It seems to be available only from Amazon and only in Kindle Mobi format, and I understand that Kindle is the only device that can render books with that DRM.

I may be reading this wrong, but the usual stores I go to don't offer The Lord of the Rings for MobiReader. If this is a clue to the direction things are going, I seem to be caught in a double bind if I want to get the 5-inch BeBook.

[RWood]

You are in luck, Lord of the Rings is available in Mobipocket from Fictionwise.

Amazon may at times have an advance of a week or so over other publishers in offering new titles; but, LOR is now available in all formats. (It is even available for Sony.)

I have not seen any great difference between the DRM formatting for Mobipocket and the DRM formatting for Sony. Both are prepared by the publishers. There are good and bad in both groups. Kindle, as you point out, is just another flavor of Mobipocket -- but one specific to the Kindle. While Amazon owns Mobipocket, they do not sell books ready to read in that format, only the Mobipocket dealers sell these. Likewise, Amazon sells Kindle formatted books that cannot be directly read by units that read Mobipocket DRM files.

While many readers can render Mobipocket DRM books, only those readers offered by Sony can render BBeB books -- LRF and LRX.

If you already have a Sony 505 and LOR is available for the 505, why are you looking to get another reader that supports Mobipocket DRM?

[vivaldirules]

DRM??

[GeoffC]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

DRM??

Trust you ....

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by RWood

If you already have a Sony 505 and LOR is available for the 505, why are you looking to get another reader that supports Mobipocket DRM?

I'm interested in getting a reader with a 5-inch screen. So far, the BeBook seems to be the only one that size and it comes in MobiPocket only. I'd love it if someone sold a $200 reader with a 5-inch screen that can read BBeB files.

Oddly, when I searched this weekend, Fictionwise was one of the places I looked and they only listed LOR for eReader and Microsoft Reader. Today they list it for Mobipocket too. This post is misinformed. I apologize.

[Xenophon]

Originally Posted by 6charlong

Thanks to all of you. This was helpful.

After reading the Wiki I learned that it's illegal to strip DRM from eBooks where I live and since I believe in the rule of law, I won't be doing it.
[SNIP]

Actually, it's rather more complicated than that! The current legal status of stripping DRM from eBooks in the US is thoroughly unclear. First, I'll hit a few things that are excrutiatingly clear:

• Providing tools for stripping DRM is clearly a felony under the DMCA. As a corollary, telling someone else where to get such tools or too much about how to use them may also be a felony as it might count as "providing tools."
• Uploading DRM-removed (or DRM-not-removed!) ebooks for others to download is a copyright violation -- unless, of course, you are authorized to do so by the copyright holder.
• Authors and copyright holders should get their proper compensation for their works (translation: don't "steal" content).

What's not clear is the effect of the concept of "Fair Use" in the context of the DMCA, in part because the DMCA claims that it does not set aside any fair use rights.

It turns out that legal experts disagree as to whether or not removing DRM is legal. I participated in a graduate seminar at CMU that covered this topic (among others). We had eminent legal experts explain to us why (in their opinion) such stripping of DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use only is obviously perfectly legal. We had other equally eminent legal experts explain to us why it's obviously against the law.

Because Fair Use is defined only through case law (and not via statute), and because no court has yet ruled on this issue, we do not yet know whether or not removing DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use only is legal. It just isn't clear. And it will remain unclear until either there's a relevant court case or the Congress decides to address the issue in statute.

Xenophon

[6charlong]

Originally Posted by Xenophon

Because Fair Use is defined only through case law (and not via statute), and because no court has yet ruled on this issue, we do not yet know whether or not removing DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use only is legal. It just isn't clear. And it will remain unclear until either there's a relevant court case or the Congress decides to address the issue in statute.
Xenophon

Laws should be something people can understand. This sort of confusion makes it impossible to obey the law.

If some court decides this is a felony and no ordinary person (apparently not even if they are also a legal expert) knows what behavior the law was intended to prohibit, would a court actually punish someone?

[Xenophon]

These weren't just any old legal experts, either. Rather, they were specialists in IP law and the details of Copyright issues. And they come down on both sides. And even the ones who agree on legality (or lack thereof) gave thoroughly different reasons.

It's as clear as mud!

My personal position is that removing DRM from legitimately acquired content for personal use is morally and ethically OK. After all, either I bought and paid for the content (in which case the copyright holders have presumably gotten their share of the money) or it's a freebie (in which case someone somewhere along the distribution chain decided to eat the cost to drum up business). In either case, my decision to remove the DRM harms no one and improves my life substantially. YMMV, of course.

Xenophon

[Xenophon]

Oh yeah... As to whether a court would actually punish someone, that's not clear either.

But there's clearly a good reason why no one has pushed hard to get either the courts or the congress to clarify these issues: fear.

Everyone on all sides is afraid that the outcome of encouraging the Congress to address the issue directly in statute would be worse (from their point of view) than the confusion we have now. Corporate content owners (e.g. Hollywood and record companies and some publishers) fear that a clearly delineated definition of what is and is not Fair Use would greatly reduce their ability to charge us for content. Fair Use activists (some legal experts, many libraries and consumer organizations) fear that a clearly delineated definition of Fair Use would reduce that definition and so make illegal various practices that are now clearly OK under existing case law. And everybody fears that the "other guys" will have better lobbyists or stronger grass-roots support, and would thus do a better job of influencing the Congress.

Meanwhile, remarkably few Fair Use cases actually make it to trial. Individuals usually settle, because defending a major legal case is extremely expensive -- likely many many times more expensive than any plausible settlement offer from the other side. And large corporations (like Google, in the recent book scanning class action lawsuit) have strong incentives to settle for "good enough" rather than pushing for a legal victory.

And so, with everyone afraid to push the Congress and hardly anyone willing to see a test-case through the courts, we wait for clarification. And wait. And wait. And...


Despondently,

Xenophon

[6charlong]

Thank you Xenophon, for your clear and reasoned explanation of this core issue. It seems to me that this issue of DRM-and-copyrights is what is confounding wider adoption of eBook publishing. It seems like the technological issues are more easily addressed than this political one. Yet if we can get this political issue resolved so that everyone knows what the rule is, job definitions for programmers can be written with more confidence and rational technology investment decisions can be made by manufacturers, publishers and consumers.

I'm no lawyer but as a layman I can hope that the courts will someday rule portions of this law too vague to be enforced in the context of current technologies (most of the copyright laws--especially as regards books--were developed in a different reality). I'm hoping the courts will toss the whole mess back into the political arena where it belongs. But it's understandable why the courts are reluctant to take such a step, especially if neither side of the debate wants to let the courts look at it in any detail.