Wowio used to give away "sponsored" ebooks. These ebooks contained some advertisements in them. They've recently extended their services internationally and now they sell most of their books, but they state in their FAQs that they still offer sponsored books for free when they can line up a sponsor in a regional area.
The advertisements in the books are not obnoxious or flashing, just a page at the start of the book and a page at the end of the book. I got a few of their sponsored books, but unfortunately, all of Wowio's books are in PDF format only. The ebooks I got from Wowio were password protected which made it impossible to read on the Cybook, since the Cybook has no way to enter a password (however, there are tools to remove password protection from PDF books)
Their approach to DRM management is described as follows:
Quote:
Does WOWIO use any kind of digital rights management (DRM)?
Since anyone can defeat the most “sophisticated” DRM with the print screen button, we believe that technology-based DRM is essentially a fraud. Our approach takes the market incentive out of misbehaving, rewards people for doing the right thing, and tries to stay out of the way of honest users. To help keep everyone honest, however, each ebook is serialized with the reader’s authenticated name and a unique serial number, as well as other less visible markers. WOWIO will immediately terminate the account of anyone caught illegally distributing ebooks, and will prosecute serious offenders.
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