[taming]

As ATDrake probably knows, the DRM fiasco at Kobo came about as Kobo was making an attempt to make it more obvious to website users which books had DRM attached and which did not. Previously, all books available in ePUB format had a button or label which said "download ePUB). The customer had no way of knowing, prior to purchase, if they were getting a DRM book or not. The change they were trying to make was to have two different buttons and labels, one for Adobe DRM ePUB books, and one for ePUB editions without DRM. The same was true with two versions of PDF files.

Something apparently went dreadfully wrong in the process and suddenly all books had DRM attached. As far as I know, they were not aware of this until the middle of last week and they are working on it. The week before Christmas was a horrible time to have this happen, as they were also rolling out other website changes that would make the website easier to use.

It is the kind of huge problem every business has nightmares about. From my perspective, it does nothing to take away from Kobo's well known philosophical commitment to openness. Hypocritical, I think not.

PS: The Smashwords books at the Sony reader store have always had DRM attached. I'm hoping that when Kobo gets this mess straightened out, the Smashwords books are DRM free, but they apparently don't have to be.