Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnFalcon
Real used Helix for years to do precisely that, format-shifting DRM'ed music files.
So it's hardly impossible.
(It's no longer available since it became pointless with DRM on music being a dead letter)
|
I've never been that interested in music so don't know what was done with DRM on it-but it sounds, from this, Real was stripping the DRM, converting the format, and then re-applying the DRM, which implies that the distributor had control of the DRM. That's not, as I understand it, the case with ebooks.
You know, I started writing that it's just a contract thing-but when I tried describing it I realized that I don't really know enough about how ebook distribution is handled. Does the publisher run their own content servers? If so, then the seller passes the buyer's DRM key to the publisher, who then applies the DRM to the book & delivers it to the buyer.
Or does the publisher provide a non-DRM book to the seller, under contract that it will only be delivered after DRM is applied? Or is it maybe more complicated? Technically, I think it would be possible for the publisher to apply one form of DRM, with a key from the seller, and the seller to embed the book in a 'wrapper' that contained that key, with the wrapper then being DRM'd with a key from the buyer. But that doesn't seem to be what's happening, at least in most cases.
So I suspect it's either one of the first two scenarios (DRM is applied by either the publisher or the seller) or something I haven't yet thought of.
If it's either one of the first two scenarios then there's no technical problem with making a book available in multiple formats-it simply requires multiple contracts. Whether or not that's expensive depends on how the DRM is licensed. If it's licensed on a per-copy basis (the reasonable way for the publisher to license it, IMO) then it would be little more expensive to provide multiple forms of DRM than a single form. OTOH if it's licensed on a 'site' basis (which is probably how the DRM providers want to license it-Microsoft made a fortune on that ripoff strategy before it was ruled illegal) then I can see where it would be much cheaper to provide a single form of DRM-take it or leave it.