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.
Quote:
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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.
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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.