Quote:
Originally Posted by 6charlong
I know we're all speculating but I think the watermark will be a tasteful "Ex Libris" patch on the title page.
As to the WSJ thing, I really doubt the FBI and MI5 will go on "potter patrol" to hunt granny down for having an illegal copy of Goblet of Fire. My grandchildren's granny would do all she could to correct them if they showed up with any sort of stolen property. Frankly, I haven't trusted the WSJ as much since they became part of the Merdock empire. Their speculation may prove no more accurate than the USA Today article yesterday claiming Pottermore was a kind of Scavenger Hunt.
We'll all have to wait to know for sure but I think this will truly mark a turning point with the most valuable book series published essentially DRM free.
Too good to be true? Maybe. We'll see.
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I'm less worried about the government and more about (unethical*) hackers.
* Disclaimer: Not all hackers are unethical. To be clear, I'm only worried about the unethical ones.
The announcement seems to claim that individual books will be tied to individual people. And that the tie will be done in such a way that IF they wanted to, they could find you.
What can that mean, practically? There are about 3 pieces of information you give out in a purchase: Credit Card Number, Name on the Card, and Address.
Addresses and names are not really worthwhile as persistent location data. Names change; people move. Furthermore, names/addresses are hard to verify at time of purchase. Usually CC#s are the only piece of information that can be actually verified during the purchase, and even then it's a pass/fail: did the purchase go through? Card number must be good.
So I have to assume that IF they really are serious about ANY HP book being immediately traceback-able to the initial purchaser, then to me that means that identification data will be embedded into the book file.
Either the identification data will be directly associate with you -- in which case, the FBI and hackers and anyone else who accesses that file can crack the file open and get that data. OR the information in the book file will be meaningless to us but will map back to a database on the Rowling end where a GUID in the book file corresponds to your purchase request -- in which case, the Rowling end is planning to maintain all our CC# data in a database for perpetuity that will likely not be some stand alone mainframe somewhere.
A HP database containing the CC# of every HP fan ever will be Fort Knox for identity thieves. And I'm not confident that Rowling Inc is going to be able to keep it secure, especially with their attitude that they have to reinvent the wheel every time they do something.
I'm not going to trust the homebrew firewall of a group of people who make statements like "every eReader device can read ePubs". Rowling and her people aren't experts in every single field on earth just because she's richer than Croesus.