MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Adobe coming to its senses: Move to DRM lite

Alexander Turcic · 10-31-2007, 04:02 PM

There hasn't been much attention paid to Adobe Digital Editions lately, but apparently Adobe's engineers have been busy improving the software where improvement was clearly needed: they changed the way it operates on DRM-protected e-books.

What's been unknown to me before, there are actually two ways Adobe allows publishers to protect their content. One way is called "Easy Activiation", enabling the customer to read e-books on a single computer (the book gets essentially "tied" to that machine). The other option for the publisher is to use "Named Activation", which is giving the customer the option to read a purchased e-book on any computer or device. Instead of tieing the book to a computer, it's tied to the purchaser's Adobe ID which contains his personal information (you can compare this mechanism to how other popular e-book formats work, for instance eReader PDB).

So, the great news is, the next incarnation of Digital Edition (1.5) will exclusively support "Named Activiation." What's even better, previously purchased Adobe e-books that were using the overly restrictive "Easy Activation" license can now be converted to be using "Named Activiation", thus allowing you to read them on any computer or device you wish.

Jump over to the Digital Edition blog for more information.

10-31-2007, 04:02 PM	#1
Alexander Turcic Fully Converged Posts: 18,175 Karma: 14021202 Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Switzerland Device: Too many to count here.	Adobe coming to its senses: Move to DRM lite There hasn't been much attention paid to Adobe Digital Editions lately, but apparently Adobe's engineers have been busy improving the software where improvement was clearly needed: they changed the way it operates on DRM-protected e-books. What's been unknown to me before, there are actually two ways Adobe allows publishers to protect their content. One way is called "Easy Activiation", enabling the customer to read e-books on a single computer (the book gets essentially "tied" to that machine). The other option for the publisher is to use "Named Activation", which is giving the customer the option to read a purchased e-book on any computer or device. Instead of tieing the book to a computer, it's tied to the purchaser's Adobe ID which contains his personal information (you can compare this mechanism to how other popular e-book formats work, for instance eReader PDB). So, the great news is, the next incarnation of Digital Edition (1.5) will exclusively support "Named Activiation." What's even better, previously purchased Adobe e-books that were using the overly restrictive "Easy Activation" license can now be converted to be using "Named Activiation", thus allowing you to read them on any computer or device you wish. Jump over to the Digital Edition blog for more information.