Quote:
Originally Posted by sakura-panda
It would be nice to be able to purchase a book and upload it into whatever reading app you prefer, with or without DRM. Purchased videos sync across services; why not books?
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I am by
no means an expert, but this may have to do with the cost of licensing.
I think there are currently only two major video DRM systems: CPRM/CPPM and AES. CRPM/CPPM was developed by an LLC that consists of IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba. AES was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US. NIST is part of the Dept. of Commerce so AES may be free/open source.
For ebooks, there's three major systems: Adobe DRM, Apple FairPlay and Amazon DRM.
The cost of licensing Amazon DRM is $250 a month for the first 10,000 licenses, then a sliding fee based on how many additional licenses are purchased per month. I'd bet Apple and Adobe have similar pricing.
Again, I am by no means an expert so I may be completely all wet on this, but if a third-party ebook app needs an Amazon DRM license for each time the app's downloaded, or an Amazon DRM license for each time a user tries to open a Kindle book, that could get
really expensive. Ditto for both Apple and Adobe.
Not only that, but IMO one of the things both Apple and Amazon have always understood is the "real" money is in repeat business. DRM's a tool to coerce consumers into their ecosystem, and therefore repeat business. Making things "easy" on consumers costs them $. IMO even though it's Bookshop and not a big conglomorate like Amazon or Apple, they don't necessarily want to make it easy either because that could cost them $.
We're also probably never going to be able to get Amazon, Apple and Adobe to construct one, or even two, common ebook DRM systems.