Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I beleive that B&N's ePub scheme uses the same server software from Adobe, and the licensing cost is the same.
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I don't think that's true. The DRM in B&N's ePub's is based on the user's name and the credit card assigned to the account at the time the book was downloaded. (Normally the one at the time of purchase, but a user could update their credit card and redownload the books with the new information).
It's basically the old eReader (Palm Digital Media/Peanut Press) DRM wrapped around the ePub.
It's always been my preferred method of DRM because it DOESN'T require access to Adobe's servers to activate.
The book could be opened on any computer - without that computer having to be "authorized" or limited to Adobe authorization limits - as long as the user knew the name and credit card number.
If my computer crashed every month for 5 years and had to be reloaded from scratch, I wouldn't have to deal with reauthorizing the software and redownloading all my books - they would still open because I still know my own name and internet credit card number!
If the DRM tools ever disappeared and stopped working, I'd go back to only buying ebooks from B&N because it's closer to owning my books "forever" than the other models. It's why most of my early book purchases were in the eReader format - and those books can still be read on my old PDA, if desired. (I don't remember if any of the current version of eReaders can read that format - at one point Aztak was going to, but I think it fell through because that was about the time B&N bought Fictionwise/eReader).