BookFob - cripple DRM on a chain

[Alexander Turcic]

We are not sure this is going to win any hearts and minds, but Numly Inc., a company who provides authors a way of branding individual copies of digital content, just introduced BookFob, a USB stick with an embedded DRM-capable e-book reader.

The BookFob device must be attached to the computer to verify ownership of the e-book content. Entire documents or sections of the document can be password protected to insure an additional layer of security. In addition to passwords, the documents can be set to expire after a certain number of days or number of times accessed. This technique allows an author to distribute promotional material or full books for a limited time before making the content unreadable. Another important security feature of our e-book reader software is the ability to distribute books that are not printable as well as the ability to disable the copy and paste features. Since these documents are complied into the reader, this insures that no one will be able to hack or copy the contents unless the author approves.

That's exactly what we've craved for ages: crippled e-books that can expire, are not printable and have the copy and paste feature disabled - provided that you are using Microsoft Windows, because otherwise the reader won't work at all. And if this isn't enough to make fresh milk sour, check out their BookFob Library, where you can buy excellent public domain books such as Around the World in 80 Days, assuming that the "buy it now" link would actually work.

PS: It seems David of Teleread fully agrees that this is a gadget we could easily live without.

[Liviu_5]

Hi,

Actually a smart implementation of this idea may be interesting. As mentioned in all my posts, I hate drm and do not buy drm'ed books (I may make an occasional exception for convertible ones but here in the US we have dcma so even if I would I could not talk about it... ).

I still think that an open format business model will evolve for most fiction books at least (I like that ad idea for textbooks too, so maybe there is hope for nonfiction also - I make this distinction since fiction has far longer life than nonfiction hence it will be far easier to get an open format business model for it starting with say those "orphans" and with midlist books who will have some audience as opposed to most older nonfiction which just expires).

However with a crossplatform good reader (like that dot reader to come) so any device that has a usb port can read the content (or maybe changing usb to something like sd/rs-mmc that is more universal since you always can use a usb reader), with drm tied to to the keydrive not the owner, or easily transferred to another owner, with physical durability, creative marketing (bundles, posibility of adding more content), no stupid things like expiration dates, this may be a compromise that recreates the physical unicity of a pbook (you can scan a pbook, you can snag anything on your screen but it is still work), allows transferability hence reselling, and conversely can put a library on a stick and so on...
You could read it on a device at a time, but as long as you could read it on most devices, it is durable and you can resell/transfer it legally, it is far more acceptable than the current drm models.

Liviu

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

We are not sure this is going to win any hearts and minds, but Numly Inc., a company who provides authors a way of branding individual copies of digital content, just introduced BookFob, a USB stick with an embedded DRM-capable e-book reader.
[/i]

[Pride Of Lions]

This sounds so interminably lame. How can they charge for public domain eBooks?

[Adam]

Not all the readers have usb slots in them. Even the ones that do can most likely are not set up to use the key capability just retrieve info on the memory. This will cripple a lot of book readers if it gets popular.

[NatCh]

Well, as this is similar to something I had suggested earlier, I can see a way to implement such a thing that wouldn't be a complete finger in the eye of the customer.

But it would absolutely have to not expire my content.

I suspect they're only selling PD stuff right now because they haven't gotten buy-in from any actual publishers yet.

While I don't think they'll get many takers on selling PD stuff, all they're really selling is the reader software and the physical packaging -- pbooks don't have "reader software," but you still have to pay Barnes & Noble for the packaging when you pick up a copy of Round the World.... there.

[Pride Of Lions]

That's true, the physical copy does cost some sort of money. But, you can read it anywhere or anytime, keep it on your shelf as long as you want, and/or sell it/give it away to whoever whenever.

And there's a standard: words on a page (in English, reading from left to right). Until we have standards for eBooks every little PITA whim by these DRM people will continue to retard the market.

[NatCh]

Ah, but you CAN read this rascal anywhere you've got a windows machine with a USB port. Since it includes its own reader software, how the data is saved is largely irrelevant (sp?).

Don't mistake me, I'm not necessarily pushing for this thing, but it does deliver text in a standard format across a reasonably universally available platform. I'd prefer an SD approach, myself, something enclosed once it's connected (not sticking out like a sore thumb drive). Maybe CF, since they already have things like microdrives.

As far as the hardware itself goes, you're correct, it may have a ways to go for standardization.